We received this comment from Antony (who never leaves a website address in his comments or we’d link to him) on Why Your Amazon Affiliate Site Is Failing Miserably regarding a place called the OnlineHostingNetwork.com and a terrible Amazon affiliate store we stumbled across.
Hey El Admin,
You have just uncovered another scam. I wonder if you realize that. How about making this one yet another cautionary tale for your readership?
The owner of the first site – dwlane.com is likely out a lot of $$$ right now. Far more than the few hundred $$ a month than the Google Cash types take folks for.
While dwlane.com doesn’t look like much, it cost anywhere in the neighborhood of $1500.00USD to $6000.00USD to have “developed”.
The poor owner of dwlane is an innocent who fell for the high-pressure sales tactics of a group called the “Onlinehostingnetwork” who promises to build you an “Amazon Store”, often with a banner or two from a couple of other popular affiliate programs. They also promise a minimum of say, 10,000 (useless) clicks to “get your business off the ground”.
Of course, as El Admin notes, dwlane’s store is not likely to generate much if any sales. dwlanes “Coach” at the “Onlinehostingnetwork” will soon offer “help”. The “help”? Well, because s/he only invested $1500.00USD for the “Basic” package, the “coach” will do a hard-sell to get dwlane to upgrade to the “Platinum” package for about $3500 which is absolutely certain to generate the promised riches — likely another banner or two and some more empty promises.
Of course, even the Platinum level will begin to wear down dwlane’s patience after a while. However having invested so much effort (read dollars) in this website, the Coach will aggressively suggest upgrading to the 5K “Gold” package.
Of course the “Gold” package will be similarly yield nary a sale. At this point, the “Coach” gets harder and harder to contact since the max $$$ have been taken from the unsuspecting dwlane and heaven forbid dwlane should contact an attorney or the FTC or the local DA’s office in Phoenix. These schemes seem to thrive in AZ, possibly because of some loophole in the law. Also the “Onlinehostingnetwork” is likely to undergo a name change if things get complicated and will morph into one a new company name among the galaxy of similar operations that operate in this cruel manner. Company names in these sort of schemes change faster than you change your undergarments.
IMO, this sort of high-pressure, heavy-duty, big ticket scam is much more pernicious than even the slimy “Adwords Riches” spam offers that are all over our Inboxes each morning. The Adwords type scams which will create the headache of cancelling credit cards are pikers on the scale of evil compared to the outfits that “helped” dwlane create that “store”.
Those “stores” often wipe out the life savings of the unsuspecting and folks desperate to make a living in this so difficult times. Contracts are signed, in-your-face high pressure “investment” tactics have been honed by the “Coaches” and the companies behind them.
It’s enough to make one almost thankful if they’ve only been taken by a “Google Millions” scam which I believe was the impetus for El Admin starting this blog to educate folks to the lies and just barely within the law “opportunities” that we’re inundated with.
El Admin, I think it’s time for a new thread devoted to these types of operations. While I’ve only read of angry folks taken by “Google Riches”, I’ve been brought near tears after reading of folks who “invested” thousands of dollars in a “store” like dwlane.
Antony
Wow! Thanks for the tip Antony! Now we can not say anything for sure about the Online Hosting Network as there is not much information on their website at all and we have not heard any first hand stories of any users of their service. But, a quick investigation yields the following:
Bad Sign #1: No Information on the Online Hosting Network at the Better Business Bureau
There is no information on them at the Better Business Bureau that I could find, searching in both the US and Canada. That makes any claimed refund policy very hard to trust, since there is no history on if they have actually honored it.
Bad Sign #2: Onlinehostingnetwork.com Has a Private Registration
Try to do a whois lookup on onlinehostingnetwork.com. It’s registered through the Godaddy proxy service which keeps registrations private. There is no way to check on the businesses actual location or principal operators names or business history. You really want to give them thousands of dollars? Note that we here at The Electron Plumber have a private registration, but that’s to protect ourselves as some of the “offers” we call out have some very unscrupulous characters behind them. And we do not ask you for anything or sell anything. A real business that asks for your money through an online site should never have a private registration.
Bad Sign #3: The Website ohnlive.com Was Registered In June 2009
That’s about 4 months ago. onlinehostingnetwork.com was registered in March 2009. If they try to tell you they have been in business for longer than that, find out what their previous name and website was and let us know please. Looks like they are either brand new or might be trying to hide something. Either way, not instilling a lot of confidence.
Bad Sign #4: Plenty of Bad Reviews, Only One Good Review
Look around the internet and you’ll see nothing but people asking on various sites if they’ve just made a huge mistake by signing up with them. You can find one glowing amazing review on a Google help forum which in my opinion is either faked by an employee of the company, or from someone who doesn’t realize how badly they have been taken. That comment was written the day their website was registered, so maybe it’s a real customer who just did not realize yet. They claim how the site is amazing and how it will be money in the bank. Luckily they link the site name. Go look at the site and it’s a total failure. A bunch of affiliate links and direct links to Amazon.com pages, no content at all. There is only one link to it according to Yahoo from one Ezinearticle that is on an entirely different topic and no traffic whatsoever according to both Alexa and Compete.com, despite being close to two months old. Even a bad site with a tiny trickle of traffic should have been ranked by Alexa in two months, even if poorly.
The sad thing is, for the money Anthony is talking about for their lowest level package that yielded that junk Amazon site, even if he had no experience building websites, he could have two Site Build It sites and then have enough left over to pay a good article writing service for 100 articles at $8 an article, and a couple hundred bucks left over to buy some links from a link building service and had a couple of real useful income generating site for themselves.
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Thanks to ElectronPlumer for emailing me with some answers and feedback.
ART – you are better than you think !! Every great inventor and every millionaire
made mistakes at the beginning. This is just the beginning for YOU.
Re OHN: I rang them and have had my web addresses released to me for my own use. This means that I am no longer connected with OHN (the site has been shut down) and can put my web site address to another server (Hostgator). You just need the DNS numbers.So, off I go again….as you can.
There IS FREE stuff out there to learn from – check out BumMarketingMethod.com – you will not be sorry..all FREE. Never, never give up Art-the best is yet to come. (I would hug
you if I could – yo can do it!!!)
Work is really buggin me…tired of being used/abused there and am obviously desperate and weak right now.
All started with wanting to make a little extra money doing surveys……AND that was it.
The vultures find you. I’m usually careful and distrust everyone on the net….BUT i needed to believe….you know. So I did, and they got me through the first stage,6 or 7 hundred bucks down for a website I prob don’t even own. Where’s my paperwork for that site with it’s name and my name on it????? Anybody know if I can keep that site going??It’s crap man, I can just set up a site myself if thats what I really want.Every step you move on to they hit you with more charges, to advertise, then coach. I’ve been called by a Frank several times about advertising…almost paid them too. He asked for $2400 USD and I told him I could’nt afford that, then he dropped the price to $12965 USD …too easy.
Now I fricken check….feel like a real tool. They get us because we need to have more money, so are we too greedy….maybe.If you stop and think first you’ll save yourself alot of trouble. Nothings easy or free…NOTHING
LIZ – re your question.
Assuming the domain names for your stores are in YOUR name not theirs it should be quite easy to set up with HOSTGATOR (I do recommend them as I use them myself for hosting)
You simply need to sign up with one of their hosting plans
Point your domain names to their server
Download your sites files and database from your current host and upload them to your new hosting – or, I’m pretty sure with some plans hostgator will move your files for you free (much easier if you don’t know much about websites.
For those of you stuck with one of these ripoff sites I advise that to salvage something from this you firstly add a blog to your website (you can download free from wordpress) and fill it as often as you can with fresh content (try reviewing your products or highlight great deals etc) and focus on your link building, submit to directories, link lists other blogs etc – put in enough time on this and you will get traffic and hopefully sales!
Foolishly signed up with OHNlive as a brand new newbie.
I have three websites with them (two they set up without my permission).
I can remove myself from OHN which is basically an affiliate connection
with Amazon BUT what can I / should I do with the websites which I paid
for ? I have spent a couple of days reseaching how to do this. Please help ?
Or should I approach GoDaddy ?
I was going to set up with Hostgator etc etc. I am nervous to do anything -
obviously way to techi. PLEASE HELP
I subscribed to the online hosting network aout 2 months ago. Since then i have not recieved a single penny in earnings. I am tired of people posting comments about how they luckily decided not to join this scam. I want to hear about other people who made the same mistake as me not the lucky bastards who avoided it.
Hello All
I’m sorry but it’s not enough that those few of us who are smart enough to know better dont get duped, thease ‘people’ ,for lack of a word that won’t be sensord, need to be stoped, somebody buy this clown a plane ticket downunder and tell em they won a holaday, and i’ll pick em up from the airport then get all “Wolf Creak” on there ‘bhind’ LOL
But seriously, they need to be stoped, legitimate business is fine, but lies and deception…..
cybersloth.
Hello all.
Thanks to all your comments I did NOT join Online Hosting Network!!!!
I too had the hard sell from a Steve Brady. I live in New Zealand, so it
would have cost them a pretty penny for all my dithering around.
He tried to get me to pay by cc over the phone I said definitely not. Give me
a secure https site and I will do it online. He said the only way I could do it
online was with paypal.
Gratefully to Paypal NZ, it takes 48hours to set up an account and in that
time I found your blog and now I decided not to join.
A BIG THANK YOU.
Jaki
Hi everyone, I too have been contacted by Online Hosting Network, I have recently been doing alot of surveys and offers so now i need to find out who offerd a fraudulent business opertunity to me.
I have had the call, ‘Kevin Pasley’ was his name, (irony here is that there is a famous baseball player with the same name) he played a recorded discription of there ’service’ to me and then proceded with the sales pitch.
he quoted the folowing prices:
$149US basic
$288US standard
$488US elete
I also recived an email that was flaged by the ‘Sender ID Framework’ within hotmail, so i called them on there freecalll number and asked them why this had happened, a guy told me that he could not tell me, he said he needed to get pen and papper to take my details so a superviser could call me back, I asked why he didn’t just put it in the computer, he said he didn’t have one, strange that an internet based company would not put computers in there call center.
I tryed calling back as i had not recived a responce, it is apparently out of there business hours now (1530h AEDST GMT+11)
I have included my email for the administrators of this site, I am interested in undermining decitfull scammers, people should not lie to me…
One final note, they have freecall numbers in many countrys, here is a list, someone must be paying for these numbers that redirect to the USA, maby all the hapless victoms?
USA/Canada – 888 230 0459
Australia – 1800 637 842
UK – 0808 101 7618
NZ – 0800 451 184
South Africa – 0800 982 163
Ireland – 1800 550 487
Chile – 1230 020 9238
Why not rack up there phone bill
The direct line is – 602 343 2217 but this won’t cost them money
this is the address they claim to have:
8050 N 19th Ave #214
Phoenix, AZ 85021
checked google maps, looks like some kind of business complex
I will report back with further developments
cybersloth..
Hi,
I was contacted today and had a half an hour phone call with an employee of the company called Online Hosting Network. I listened to a recorded message for about 8 minutes and then had another chat with the employee who was very good at marketing this product. Unfortunately I have lost quite a bit of money in the past by not doing my homework and I now search the Internet for any information I can find before jumping into any home business.
I have found this information about the company so THANK YOU!!
It is great to have the input from others who have been bitten so as not to make the same mistake.
I must say though that I do run a successful business and have done for 5 years.
Thank you again for your website.
same story paid a lot off money because i thought i make money with them aand since time are bad i saw a great opportunity in it wich was the biggest mistake i ever did so if someone from the OHN comes up to you and tells you about it don`t join ask them if you can see blueprints if they are listed somewhere and tell them that you only read bad stuff about them and that they are a big big big scam
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