Archive for Scams

Paid for Blackhat forums a waste of money?

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Blackhat SEO: Simply means techniques that might get you penalised or banned from a major search engine. Blackhat is a very generic term and the Blackhat Forums do often include email marketing techniques that most would consider spam. This is not an endorsement of such techniques.

Quadzilla opened up his SEO Blackhat forums on Christmas day for a limited time as a Christmas present so I spent half an hour looking round, I was pretty disappointed and I left feeling sorry for those members who spent their hard earned cash on membership.

Let me put some background to this post, Quadzilla Blackhat forums cost $100 a month membership fee, not to steep but enough to make most people think twice. For the $100 you are promised a forum that has some top notch experts and to be fair there are some pretty impressive guys in there. The issue I have is they are not talking.
So what if you are a;

  • Newbies ??? If you???re a newbie then you are after questions being answered, so it was disappointing to see lots of unanswered questions, sure most of them were very newbie???ish but still this is not the place to find answers.
  • Intermediate ??? You probably will want to go straight to the parasite hosting and large database section and will be disappointed, Syndk8 and Wickedfire have discussions all at a similar level.
  • Advanced ??? You will want to go to the labs, to see the sophisticated cutting edge stuff and yep you guessed it nothing sophisticated or cutting edge mostly old posts.

The overall feeling was one of depressing lingering and slow death, which is a shame because it could have been so much more. Of course with 30 minutes I did not read every post and I???m sure there are a few gems but if I???m going to spend $100 a month I expect a forum that is organised, is moderated, has question answered or at least be told my question wasn???t appropriate. I would want to see stickies with the cutting edge latest ideas. I would not want to shift through posts looking in vein for a thread which might answer my question though to be fair this would not take to longer, in that respect it does keep one of its promises, their are not 100s of threads to crawl through.

Quadzilla forums are not the only places to find Blackhat/Greyhat SEO information as already indicated Wickedfire and Syndk8 are both excellent places to find information on various techniques, Wickedfire also offers a paid for area, which is either invitation only or by paying $55 a month which is significantly less.

There is one good thing to come out of the Christmas day present, it reminded me to resubscribe to SEO Egghead a fantastic blog, so not all bad.

The ancient Egyptians didn’t rush around but they still built pyramids

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People tend to join pyramids looking for riches even at the bottom

Don’t rush to install Blog Rush

Every man and his dog is currently pushing Blog Rush (no link guys not even with condom) which describes itself as…

The fastest and easiest way to drive to instantly drive targeted readers to your blog

Only it won’t and it never would have, this is an absoultely pointless widget backed by one of the most successful marketing strategies of all time.

The Idea

First off you go and install the widget quite blindly not checking what it does is it a trojan, what sort of data its collecting (to the best of my knowledge its clean but that’s not the point). Next you promote the widget and get people to sign up the more people who sign up using your referral link the more referrals and the more time the widget is seen the more time your links are seen by others. Is this sounding familiar?

Oh yes you got it’s a pyramid scheme, sorry its a syndicated content system :D those at the top with 1000′s of page views and 1000s of sign ups dominating the widget the small guy well his blog is no more seen then it was before all he done is promote the guys at the top.

Ok before people jump on me technically its not a pyramid scheme as no money passes hands, and most schemes require money up front or in this case links but you just being semantic, apparently rather then pyramid its a Ponzi scheme. Which is just like a pyramid scheme in the way referrals build up like a pyramid but not a pyramid scheme.

So what I’m an A list blogger I don’t care about the lowly bloggers

Well lets face it if your in such lofty positions are you likely to notice a huge increase in traffic? Well Darren Rowse has already indicated that his click through rate is 0.005% so the answer is its not likely to bring in that rush of traffic, remember we might not be at the peak but nearly every Internet Marketer is talking about it yet in our own field few people are actually using it to find new content.

Your jealous because no one signs up using your links

Bugger your right but to be fair I haven’t even signed up, I just can’t see this working as anything but another ugly looking widget (it won’t even integrate into most blog themes nicely) but I’m not alone Sebastian also has decided against BlogRush his reasoning is:

  1. You won???t get free targeted traffic to your niche blog.
  2. You???ll make other people rich.
  3. You???ll piss off your readers.
  4. You???ll promote BlogRush and get nothing in return.
  5. You shouldn???t trust a site fucking up the very first HTTP request.
  6. Pyramid schemes just don???t work for you.

I agree with all except Pyramid Schemes just don’t work I guess that one really depends where you are in the pyramid :)

I can’t stop you

I know your going to do it, by now you have signed up and if your reading this you may have found it looking for “why do I get no traffic with BlogRush” well I’m afraid that’s life. I just wish I had started it the next question is really who going to buy BlogRush ;) and its large userbase.

End of Rant

CodeAds review

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Recently I was searching for a new CPM company to use with sites that I don’t have good results with adsense. Then I read a thread in a webmaster forum about CodeAds. Their program looks very promising so I thought to give it a try.

Here are some things that made me choose to start over with CodeAds :

  • Fast payments. They pay 48 hours after you reach the minimum payout ($10)
  • They pay through paypal
  • 5% referer bonus

Starting with CodeAds

One bad thing about them is that they pay only for US traffic, but I guess that would be fair. Before using them on every site I have, I thought to give them a try from one site and monitor what happens.

In the meanwhile I got two referral signups which somehow later vanished from my control panel :) I know this looks fishy but it happens if the company ban someone you refer (or maybe not?)

CodeAds review

To be honest CodeAds is one of the worst networks I ever tried. My overal experience was really poor, and in many cases they caused problems that were visible to my sites.

For instance I was frequently get a “500 error – bad request” instead of an advertisement which exposed me to my visitors. Another thing that made me feel bad about them is that their ads are 99% from third party networks (adengage, CJ, friendfinder, etc.) and they even displayed a “Buy ads from this site” banner which was actually an ad of them from adbrite!

After a few thousand pageviews I finally got my first payment which was $10, but for some reason that I don’t understand they’ve sent me $9.5 :) Anyway I would suggest to stay away from CodeAds as there are countless programs that are better than that.

$250 to spend let Tim help you spend it the grey way!

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Psst want to make money, loads of money well I???m going to show you how and I bet not a single one of you will do it!

What???s more I???m glad you won???t as I???m going to introduce you to the 6 month scam. Its called the 6 month scam because it takes six months and relies on you being a little deceptive at the end but lets start you can always decide which point you want to stop.

The six month scam

Take $250 and make $2500 in 6 months and less then 10 hours work.

You???re a webmaster right? So we are going to make a website, then direct lots of traffic to it then sell it. Simple, now we could do this all very legitimately and most of this post can be used without any thought to morals, but this wouldn???t be a grey hat post without some moral compass twiddling. If you don???t have $250 don???t panic just ask Nick to ask me back so I can write about how to make your first $250 on the web.

Shopping List

  • Domain
  • Hosting
  • Articles
  • Traffic

Domain

Well in reality a nice which can become a domain, try to think of a niche that is not to close to your primary interest (remember unlike most sites we ultimately want to sell it and have no need to create competition) but you have some knowledge, you want the subject to be general and pretty vague for this example we will use beer the stable drink of many! So next we need to come up with a domain name, when choosing domain names avoid names that need extra registration details, such as .org,.net or regional names, also avoid .biz and .info which has become the home of spammers, its worth paying the couple of $$$ more for the .com name.
Final words of warning register the name with one of the larger companies, ???Go Daddy??? or similar this will ease transfer and keep you main domain pool separate

Quick Tip

When registering domains find a single supplier for your main domains that???s not one of the big boys, its worth paying to have these domains well looked after, but make sure your larger network are on different registrars. While I would never suggest faking the Whois info on your ???network?? it???s probably worth not making it public, while making your smaller main domains, fully readable.

Hosting

So once we have the domain we need to host it, again its time to think this through, I suggest finding a cheap reseller account, then set up a further account as a customer of the reseller. This way you can have multiple sites in the larger network up and running, while appearing at least at first glance to be independent. When looking for hosting make sure it has the usual php/mysql etc, also cron and ssh would be a nice touch but price should override features.

Once the hosting is set-up get yourself WordPress or similar and set it up grab yourself a theme, if you???re a designer, then design one, otherwise find a theme that has very few downloads at the various sites (even an ugly one that is near unique is better then a common one)

Now we are optimising the site for traffic and traffic alone, so go grab an auto translation software scripts, a couple are knocking around on Digital point (note: the one I use I had to modify so that rather then creating a page on the fly each request, it pulled the language and then was stored as a new post)

You might also wish to generate pages, from search results, Google now penalises such pages but other engines do not.

Articles

6 months is 24 weeks, ideally you need 24 articles on your subject, now this is not always going to be easy so I suggest writing between 5-10 yourself, and using pre-published articles for the rest, you will almost certainly be penalised by Google but that???s not an issue, we are using them simply to pad out the site. From the 5 to 10 that you do, you can pay some one, or simply write them yourself, try to include at least 1 post that is a list for example ???the best 10 beer recipes??. Start posting to the site once you have written 3 articles, the first 2 articles published should be yours (make 1 sticky so it always appears at the top) then use some of the pre published stuff, adding your articles every 5 posts or so. If possible, the last few weeks should just be your posts.

I would suggest a posting strategy such as

Yours
Article
Article
Yours
Article
Yours
Article
Article
Article
Article
Article
Article
Article
Article/Yours
Yours
Article/Yours
Article
Article
Yours
Article
Article/Yours
Article/Yours
Yours
Yours
Yours
Yours

You will note that your articles are at either end with one in the middle, now most of these articles are destined to supplemental pages on a Google search, though the translated versions may not have such a problem ;) Your articles are key when a person searches the site at the 6 month mark we want them to see as much original content as possible, and where is he/she going to look at the latest posts, then back at the first ones.

It is important to remember while the site may be using blogging software you want it to appear as an article site (turn off comments completely, don???t use track back in fact make it as un blog like as you can.) Organise the articles into categories.

Traffic

So you got most of the articles sorted and everything is going well, cool but we need traffic, lots of it and only for the last 3 months. We also need to raise the sites PR now you and I know PR is a complete waste of time used only by morons, but they are the people we are selling to, so before generating traffic, submit your site to say 50 high PR directories spread it over the first month but only go for high PR directories also look for other links from High PR based sites. If you feel you want or need to buy a couple of links (oops the Google thought police will be on to me) and then leave the site for 3 months.

When we sell the site we are only going to show a months worth of data, and when people ask for more give them 3 months worth so we don???t need to worry about the first 3 months, indeed don???t even install Google Analytics till month 3 (plausible deniability when asked can I see number of users from 4 months ago, oops sorry didn???t install Google Analytics sorry) In month 3 we start to build traffic we do this in 3 stages,

  • Stumbleupon
  • Social networks
  • Paying for it

I love stumbleupon it brings hundreds if not thousands of visitors to my sites every day, from month 3 on wards stumble the site, and all your articles (unique ones) even the old ones, over a period of a month or so, always wait a couple of days before stumbling each new one.

Social Networks ??? In month 3 try to get onto dig, reddit and other social book marking sites, choose your best article for that month and of you go, repeat in month 5 and 6

However most of our traffic is coming from paid traffic, simply visit Digital Point and find the cheapest trafficker, you don???t care if its untargeted after all you???re selling the site. Build this traffic over 3 months and make sure it will end as the new owner takes over, unless you are using my second quick tip example, in which case fade it out over a month or so.

Quick Tip

This is where we go from grey to very dark grey!

A buyer with even some sense will want to see where all your traffic is coming from and it will be immediately obvious that you are paying for this traffic to avoid this we can go down 2 routes.

The first is to simply fool the user into thinking what they are seeing in the Google Analytics logs is all nice organic traffic, the second is to fool the web server into thinking its organic. Fooling the user is easier.

Fooling users looking at the analytics couldn???t be easier when we ask for our traffic, we simply specify the URL as http://www.myexample.com/?utm_source=google.com when directing the traffic, yep that it now it will appear (at least on the pie chart) as traffic from Google. Easy huh!

Well its obviously best if you vary the refer between your major referrers but you can hide loads of traffic that???s been paid for and make it appear to be all legit!

The second method involves creating a proxy that generates a referral header that is based on a list, you point your traffic at the proxy it appears on the site as coming from your various sources, more complicated but also capable of standing up to scrutiny, and once built can be reused again and again.

Selling it

So we move on 6 months, for the last few months we have been sending as much traffic as possible to the site, its been Dugg and Stumbled, now its time to sell. The site should have a good PR 4 minimum but with the right directories and 1 or 2 links PR 5/6.

Collect your Analytics data, don???t reveal referral logs unless you really have to, and initially only give rough (but accurate figures) producing the images only if really needed) place a BIN price of $3000 and auction the site of at major web sites.

That???s it you just sold a site for a couple of thousand dollars, now if you have done everything in this thread the site is probably worth $500 so you may have a very pissed off guy or you might have some one who really doesn???t know what???s just happened!

Note: If your going to do this and please don???t its not nice to scam someone, don???t place adverts on the site particularly Google Adsense as it would violate your TOS with paid traffic, use affiliate schemes instead ;)


Guest Blogger – Tim Nash

Is a reputation management and Search engine Optimisation consultant, when asked if he would consider himself a grey hat, he said ???Off White??.
When asked does he do these sorts of scams he replied ???I charge over $250 an hour for my consultancy service what do you think??.

You can find out more about Tim on his site Tim Nash Blog and read more cool posts like this one at the Venture Skills blog.