The Google Boys!

If you like Search Engine Optimization, you'll LOVE the Google Boys!

Andrew Hazen, President of Prime Visibility speaks with Google Boys regarding Search Engine Optimization and Marketing.

Mike Filsaime's "The 7 Figure Code Internet Marketing Millionaire Strategies"

"Mike Filsaime giving an inside look at how he built a 7-Figure business utilizing the techniques shared in The 7 Figure Code."

Are You Frustrated by Your Online Business?

In response to our question, "What is your single most important issue regarding marketing your products and services?" one person wrote:

Hi Vincent,

The one thing that I can't stand most is all of the misinformation. I've spent 100's of dollars on paid advertising, free and paid safelists, free and paid TE's and countless hours trying to market various programs and all for nothing. I'm told I need a list. I'm told I don't need a list. I'm told I need a website. I'm told I don't need a website. I'm told I need to create my own blog and then the opposite. Banners, splash pages, forums, articles, bulk mailings, opt-ins, double opt-ins, nothing works and yet everywhere I turn everybody else claims great success using these very same tools. Pish Posh! All baloney & hype! I'm ready to throw in the towel but I'm not likely to spend more money on advertising until the day arrives when I know my money is actually earning its keep.

Stewart

Boy, do we feel your pain! After all these years online, one thing is obvious to us: Creating a business is like having a baby - you've got to be in it for the long haul. It sounds like you, Stewart, have been in it for the long haul. Be assured that you are not alone in your difficulties - in fact, we showcased your message because it so perfectly encapsulates the problems some 95% of internet marketers are having.

While we can't go into every detail on how to succeed online, because it's a very complicated issue, we are actively working to find things that DO work. At this point, I - Jamie - have tried almost everything available to the average person and then some. We have had enough success that we can sustain our business, but those who skyrocket to the top with little effort are very few and far between. And many of them have engaged in clearly unethical and distasteful behavior to get there. From our studies, it seems that it takes at least two years of hard work for the majority of those who have succeeded. Others have figured it out much quicker, but even their success is not so easily reproducible. For one thing, as soon as something that works becomes popular, it often stops working!

In the meantime, consider these truisms:

• If you want to be truly free of search engines, you will probably want a list. There are many ways of getting traffic, other than search engines, but most of these are in the "nose bleed" section cost-wise.
  
• If you want to create some "easy" money, you will probably want a blog and an Adsense account (or Yahoo Publisher Network, MSN, etc.).
  

We have found these to be the "easiest" routes to make at least a little change to defray costs for other business endeavors. The first one - list building - is substantially harder to do, and in general it will take some time. There are many promises of quick list-building and so on - these methods are always worthwhile checking into, but almost nothing will be as easy as it is pretended to be.

Stay tuned, as we are always (time permitting) examining these problems and exploring the options.

Project Black Mass, Part 3

We are now reviewing the videos that come with this product, Project Black Mask. Overall, the product is very good, as it contains quite a few ideas that are useful for those who really want to know about how people are making money online. We ourselves will not be implementing the black-hat techniques anytime soon, but it is very helpful to empower ourselves with this sort of knowledge, as it can be used in our more ethical endeavors as well.

In the second video, Alex Goad is discussing using the RSSGM content generator software, when he remarks about the fact that the content is not reader-friendly, i.e., it's a bunch of garbled keywords and other relevant text. Goad then claims that this incomprehensible text is nevertheless good "spider food" and the search engines will love it. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the sort of long-tail keywords (obscure search terms only used a handful of times per month) he's discussing are in desperate need of any content to show up, so a site with any sort of theme would be useful.

However, rumor has it that one of the purposes behind Google's book project, wherein they are entering into their computers every book they can get their hands on, is to make the artificial intelligence even more intelligent by teaching it proper grammar. Therefore, incomprehensible gobbledygook, one would think, would not rank well at all, even if it is stuffed with keywords and relevant terms. It would seem, then, that this technique will not work for long.

Again it comes down to the alleged threat by Google to shut down all Adsense accounts that use a "business model" Google disapproves of. We personally don't know for a fact whether or not Google has done such a thing - as it was rumored to start doing in June 2007, if it had not been doing it all along - but we have to wonder if that's the reason this new product has been released. Has Alex Goad possibly lost his Adsense accounts for using this frowned-upon business model? Also, isn't it only a question of time before Google and other companies start suing spammers, as MySpace has done?

With that caveat, if you want to become savvy as to the sneaky methods black-hatters and spammers are using to make tons of money on the net, you probably can't do much better in one product than Project Black Mask.

Willie Crawford's "Really Fast Money"

For $5 you can have internet marketing superstar Willie Crawford's musings about how to make a decent amount of money fast - that is, $1,000-$2,000 in 24 hours. For this price, the product "Really Fast Money" is worthwhile having, as it provides some ideas that many people may not have encountered or considered.

That being said, however, few newbies will be able to implement these techniques in order to make the kind of money we're talking about here in that amount of time. To wit, Willie thinks we should be able to make 420 sales of our own product in one day! His methods of selling this product - which we are to create from an already-existing private-rights label (PLR) product - are fairly pedestrian, which means that everyone and his brother have already tried to use them.

For instance, a couple of months ago there was a "new" fad of placing $7 offers in sig lines and essentially spamming forums. Well, it worked great for the first person or two who did it, but I'd be surprised if anyone else had much success.

"Really Fast Money" is pretty good and probably worth the spend, as it contains some ideas to add to a new or intermediate marketer's arsenal.

Rich Jerk at the Playboy Mansion

So, I see from Mike Filsaime that the notorious "Rich Jerk" (TM) is throwing a party for charity in August at - ta dah! - the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills. All the top names are falling over themselves to be there, frantically reminding us that they are going there for the charity, not the Bunnies.

I (Jamie) have actually been to the Playboy Mansion, many years ago, watched a movie in the inhouse theater, sat next to actor Robert Culp of "I Spy" fame at dinner, saw the toy-filled pool in the infamous "Grotto" and checked out the live flamingos on the lawn. I was most impressed by the live flamingos. Heff's very short.

It was nice to see how the other side lives. I'm sure the guys will have a blast.

Project Black Mask, Part Deux

Continuing with our review of the latest buzz product, Project Black Mask. Although we personally are not going to be getting involved in spamming search engines, as is the thrust of PBM, there are certain sections of the book that are highly useful.

For example, Alex Goad's writing on developing large keyword lists is some of the best we've seen so far. Certainly some of his material can be used in the "white hat" SEO game, or at least the gray hat.

One thing that kept screaming out at me (Jamie) as I read Project Black Mask is, "What about keeping your Adsense account from being canceled?!" PBM provides no solution to this problem, and I honestly don't think it's worth risking your Adsense account, if you are making any kind of decent money with it. Unless you are a criminal, I can't see any way you could get another Adsense account - and to our knowledge, Google has promised to cancel accounts left and right, if it hasn't already been doing that. We've read about many people having their accounts canceled for what appeared to be much less than spamming the search engines with thousands of pages of computer-generated content.

The keyword lists, however, can be used for different and more ethical purposes - as far as we are concerned, knowing how to developing keyword lists is an essential research tool for internet marketing in general.

Delving into Project Black Mask, I came across this stunning remark regarding cloaking websites in order to send search-engine traffic to them - a big no-no with Google and ethically within the "white hat" community:

...I know at least one of the big name gurus you would all recognize who does exactly this. He has grabbed nearly 40,000 free subscribers and made untold amounts of affiliate commissions from them, all from using cloaked domains.

This guy never talks about black hat. In fact I have even heard him bad mouth it at times. If I told you who it was, you would be shocked.

To be continued...

Stay tuned in - join the Cool Marketing Products mailing list.

See ya on the other side.

The Carlos & Lupe Traffic "Scam?"

If you're one of the tiny percentage of people who've suddenly heard of Carl Garcia and his wife, Lupe, count yourself lucky to find yourself at this blog. These two have managed to send millions of hits to their websites over the past several years, not using search-engine traffic. And, according to their videos, they have been making $5 million a month. Alas, the reality behind this stunning success is not as attractive as it seems.

The Garcias have a site called Traffic Tactics, where they will be releasing products to teach their methods. These methods appear to be complicated to learn, but the results promise to be far more spectacular than the highly complicated search-engine optimization. SEO is incredibly time consuming, and as the Garcias show, the yield is miniscule compared to the traffic sources they use - this fact alone is important to know, as it puts Google into a whole new light.

There are several problems with this model, however. Firstly, few people will be able to reproduce the Garcias' success, even in part, without obtaining sufficient credit. Do many people even know what are "trade references?" Also, risking that sort of credit is like gambling or trading commodities - can you afford to lose it? Because if you don't have a product that will take off, such as what the Garcias have been pushing, you will lose your shirt.

The reason the Garcias are showcasing data from 2004 and 2005 - an eternity ago in internet marketing - is because these are their best products and promotions. These products were pretty scammy, from what we can tell. The "cable boxes" Carlos refers to are allegedly descramblers that didn't work; nor did the diet patches, which is why that site has disappeared - and why there have been lawsuits against the Garcias.

As many know, online marketing tactics and products go out of date very quickly, and once a bunch of people jump on a bandwagon, the novelty factor and potential for making money are lost. In reality, it appears that the Garcias flew too close to the sun, burned out and crashed, and it's possible that their recent promotions are designed to help replace the income they lost when their previous products fizzled out.

The skinny on this system is not good for the average person - take a look at Eric Holmlund's blog on the subject.

Project Black Mask Review

We really like everything that Chris McNeeney produces, from Affiliate Project X to Day Job Killer to Project Black Mask. We didn't go to the head of the class with his products and make a killing in internet marketing, although we have had some interesting successes in affiliate marketing based in part on some of his methods and insights.

We will learn from Chris's latest product as well, but...we have to say that many people are simply not going to like Project Black Mask at all. Although we'd love to have the commission, we're not really going to try to sell you this product, so we'll tell you like it is. If you decide to buy it through this site or anywhere else after reading this review, we wish you the best of luck!

First of all, there's no doubt that Chris has accomplished some truly astounding things within the field of internet marketing. That in itself is amazing, considering how intelligent, determined and fierce is the competition. So, nothing he produces is not worth the time. And, certainly, getting people to think about Adsense income is probably always a sure-fire hit.

However, this product, Project Black Mask, is most definitely not for the faint-hearted or for anyone who wishes to keep his or her personal Adsense account. The meat of PBM includes the "black hat" seo strategy of spamming the search engines, which will also get your sites deindexed in a hurry. In PBM, Chris turns to notorious "Black Hatter" Alex Goad, who recommends building mass-generated content sites and putting up Adsense - a very old trick that's been around pretty much since the beginning of Adsense.

However, building mass-generated sites may work for a while, but Google will find them and cancel your Adsense account. If you don't care and have all the time in the world, you can open an account at Yahoo, MSN or another publisher network.

The hype and allure of the black-hat payoff all sounds great, but how do you keep from getting your Adsense account canceled? Google's been very much onto this exact same problem of spamming the search engines for quite a while, and this month, rumor has it, they began canceling accounts en masse for this particular problem. And then there's the problem with deindexing - you won't get much traffic if Google catches you and removes your sites from their index.

In PBM, Chris also daringly goes into the very black-hat SEO method called "cloaking." This one will get you banned faster than any other. If you value your Adsense account and any of your websites, don't do it. However, if you are curious as to what cloaking is and how people use it, then you've come to the right source with Project Black Mask. There's no doubt about it, you can learn Black Hat methods from Project Black Mask - and it is advertised as no more or less such a guide.

There's more to PBM than we've gotten to yet. We may cover some other parts down the road, or maybe not. Since most of these methods are designed to bring in traffic, we will say that there are better ways than risking Google's wrath. (Oh, there's this funny little thing about lawsuits and legal actions being taken against spammers as well - MySpace has won a couple of those.) These methods may not be easy to learn but they yield far more results than the search engines. So, in the long run, "It's not about Google." Better to learn how to get away from depending on Google than how to game them.

If you like living on the edge, you will love Project Black Mask. But, you've been warned!

P.S. If you want to know more about those other traffic methods that are NOT Google-dependent, stick around. Join our mailing list, and we'll be letting you know along the way.

Traffic Exchange Issues

One reader writes:

Some top online marketers make a big deal about traffic exchanges for online marketing. I have read everything I can about the topic yet, I'm finding it very difficult to get anywhere meaningful. I've hit a wall with this. I've had no success with traffic exchanges at all so far.

Many websites have a F.A.Q. but do not clearly state how to really get started. I'm still waiting for replies to my questions about this as I write this. I've taken the time to build a fantastic website but I'm stuck until I work out how to build my traffic exchanges.

Any help is sincerely appreciated.

We admit that we do not like traffic exchanges at all, as they can be extremely time-consuming to learn - and for some people, impossible. TEs do, however, work in driving traffic to your site on a steady basis, and, if you create the right offer, you can have some very nice success using traffic exchanges. One product we really like that teaches how to market to traffic exchanges - not how to use them, but how to market to them - is "Zero to Fifty in Thirty Days." It's only $7 and well worth the price, as it provides a neat business blueprint that practically everyone can follow. If nothing else, this one ebook can serve as a great start for learning about internet marketing, as it provides a very timeless and well-documented business plan.

And, if you really want to use traffic exchanges but don't want to learn from it, there are certain companies that will deliver TE traffic for $10 for a thousand hits. Again, if you have the right offer, you might benefit from such cheap and somewhat targeted traffic. Not highly targeted, as the people who will be visiting your site are not simply surfing the net and are not looking for anything in specific, although they are open to money-making offers in general.