Web Empire

Over on his Product Launch Formula site, Jeff Walker has removed video case studies that he claimed demonstrated how well that product works. Glowing testimonials from real people achieving amazing results. Sounds so compelling, why remove them? Here is what Jeff had to say:

NOTE FROM JEFF WALKER: due to the new FTC guidelines on testimonials that took affect on 12/01/2009, I’ve had to remove the Case Studies from this page until we get further clarification on the new FTC guidelines.

Further clarification? Why? The new guidelines were quite clear. The only part likely to affect this kind of testimonial is:

Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.

So all Jeff would need to do, is add a quick disclaimer that the results in the testimonial were ‘cherry picked’ for their excellent results — and tell us what the typical results for Product Launch Formula are. I don’t think he wants to do that. So I think we can conclude that giving the typical results would not encourage sales, or he would be anxious to present them. Now what does that tell us? I’ll leave it up to you to add the 2 + 2.

There a hundreds of sites popping up offering to show you how to make money by scamming honest businesses. For now, these methods actually work, but think about what you are doing. Signing up for a special offer when you have absolutely no intention of following through, but know you will cancel before the free trial period ends, is scamming. And YOU are the scammer. Not Project Payday or other facilitating company … it’s you who are being dishonest. Do you really want to make your money that way?

The facilitating company arranges for you to contact an affiliate who will get paid for your accepting the free offer, then you split that payment with the affiliate. The affiliates are, of course, scamming the companies too. They are paying you to accept an offer, knowing you will cancel before the company makes any money. It works — but it is unscrupulous, and your conscience should bother you.

All these sites are doing is making it harder for an honest business to profit from giving away free trials. Either the free offers, or the payments for leads, which is the other half of the equation, will simply go away as companies find them ineffective.

An aside:

Ever wonder what happens when you abandon a blog (i.e. stop posting, but leave the blog up)? This is my first post in eight months — I’ve been totally ignoring this site (sorry!) — but I noticed in the stats that there are still 60 to 80 visitors per day here. That is way down from the 350 per day we were getting at the end of 2008, but still a substantial number of visitors for a small site with fewer than 100 posts. Maybe if you build it they will come!

Building your own web empire begins with a single profitable website. On this site, and hundreds more, we talk in bits and pieces about how to produce that first profitable site. If you have searched and searched, and are getting nowhere fast — if the deluge of information you find is so full of contradictions that you can’t make any progress because you don’t know who to believe — we have a simple solution.

Take a step back, and follow one reliable and education process, through which you can learn all the basics, and profit at the same time. Ken Evoy is the grandfather of how-to-make-money online guides — but unlike modern gurus, his approach is basic commonsense, no hype, thorough and effective. He wrote an ebook guide to making profitable websites back in the 1990s that many of today’s gurus used as their starting guide. You hear it all the time when phrases like ‘over deliver’ or ’site monitization’ pop up.

Now you can download an updated version of that ebook for free, because Ken is no longer selling ebooks — he is selling a complete process for profitable website building. Now, if you are a veteran webmaster, you do not need his service — but you can still benefit from the tons of free information he provides to help people make money online. And if you are just starting out — there is no better way to learn than by purchasing a Site-Build-It website, and following the step-by-step instructions to make money.

I explain all this on another site, in much more detail. Also, I produced a free downloadable report listing and analyzing 101 SBI websites, so you can see exactly what others have done with the system. Check it out at Site-Build-It Review.

I’ve opened a new website using Pligg software, to see how it works. The site is called The Ads Broker and it allows users to advertise text links, banner ads, or other sorts of advertising, including free exchanges. There are three categories, Exchange, Buyers Seeking Ad Space, and Ad Space for Sale.

Pligg is a ’social bookmarking’ enabled content management system (CMS), so people can rate offers, comment on them, even comment on comments. The Ads Broker site does not allow postings from spam sites, or for gambling or other non-family-friendly type sites.

Check it out, and post an offer. It is a free link to your website, and may bring in advertisers if you are seeking to monitize. I’m not expecting a lot of action in the ‘Buyers Seeking Ad Space’ category, but if you have special needs — like a particular type of site to advertise on (for SEO purposes), it might be the way to find the right sort of ad space.

UPDATE: The above site was removed. The amount of monitoring required to delete spam was more than the effort was worth. I created the site mostly to try out Pligg and see what it did — it works fine, but you need a large and vigilant community before installing it, or the spammers will just move in and make it unattractive for real users. I’ve replaced it with a blog that posts current news and other information about the advertising industry.

My brief sojourn into writing posts for beginners has generated no response, so I’m dropping that unless you tell me otherwise. I haven’t posted in a while, in part because I was busy moving, and part because I’m not sure what to say.

What should I talk about? How I made my first million? — Maybe next week, I’m sure that’s coming, but it hasn’t happened yet. But I have been earning a living from the Internet for the past ten years or so, and that should count for something.

I centered my efforts on personal interests (ajmorris.com) thinking that would be the road to profitability. Everyone says so. Do what you love. That didn’t work. Trying to sell anything to genealogists is like charging for sex — so many people are willing to give it away for free, it’s hard to find a reason worth paying for.

So I’m leaving it up to you. What should I say? I have learned a lot in recent years about making money, and am doing much better than I did when I was only an on-line genealogist. But I’ve not yet gone beyond a decent income and into great wealth. I see it coming. I have a plan, and so far it working better than I could have hoped.

But I’m also in the position of having dozens of web sites, of varying profitability. This is one of the more labor-intensive and least profitable. Should it continue? If so, what direction should we go?  Leave a comment on this post to have your say in the future of this site.