Apr
5
Ning Social Network Controversy
Filed Under Alerts, Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, Ning Sites, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 18 Comments
A comment last week to my October 2008 blog post, Ning Social Networking Sites Update, linked back to Ning Exposed - Tech Company Scams its Clients, an article which sharply criticizes Ning’s latest business model and platform, and it alleges foul play on Ning’s part in reacting to complaints by network creators.
As a Ning social network creator and user, I happen to appreciate Ning’s recent platform improvements and tend to disagree with the article’s assessments. While the allegations of censorship are disturbing, my careful reading of Ning’s Terms of Service leaves me hopeful that Ning has acted fully within its rights.
Aggregating Ning Social Networking Sites
I have always looked at Ning as a family of social networking sites. An individual chooses to become a member one or many Ning sites.
Ning members can connect to become friends, and the friendships that they make will extend across sites. Friendships aren’t limited to the site at which they were forged.
I have found managing my Ning memberships and friendships across sites somewhat complicated, so I was pleased when Ning tied everything together for me in one place at Ning.com.
I always viewed myself as a member of the larger Ning community, not just the semi-independent sites which I created or joined, so aggregating Ning sites and Ning members made perfect sense to me. I didn’t view it at all as some kind of sinister plot.
Member Contact Across Ning Sites
The article referenced above mentions a “hole in the system, which is convenient for Ning, which allows people to gather friends across any website using Ning’s technology and then invite them all to join their website.”
The article is referring to the ability of members to share their favorite Ning social networks and content with all their friends across Ning sites as a convenient loophole, not as an intended and beneficial system feature.
I admit that this feature can be and is often abused by members, but that’s not Ning’s fault. The real problem is that people often make friendships indiscriminately. If the friendships were truly meaningful, they would naturally anticipate and welcome contact, even across sites.
Ning Social Concept Epitomizes Web 2.0
As I indicated before, I believe that Ning is true Web 2.0. It takes social collaboration a step farther than Twitter, Facebook, MySpace , LinkedIn and other social networking sites. Individual social networking sites are created and contributed by users, not just the content within these sites.
I applaud Ning for providing us with a unique social networking venue.
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Aug
31
Orovo and Network Success Builders
Filed Under Alerts, Home Based Business, News | 36 Comments
Did Orovo Make a Major Blunder?
Reading Down to End of Comments is a MUST !
This is not so much a blog post about Orovo.
It’s a post about one man’s lack of personal and business integrity and how it is impacting a large number of people.
I have no strong opinions about Orovo products one way or the other. It seems to me that Orovo products have gained a lot of popularity, and based on that observation I can easily believe that Orovo’s products are effective.
It is not at all the purpose of this article to raise any questions or doubts about the Orovo product line or to imply in any way that Orovo is a scam or rip-off. I will however expose a recent decision that Orovo supposedly made which, if true, could jeopardize Orovo’s entire business.
Money Making Schemes
In a recent post I discussed how Radio Stations Tout Money Making Schemes. Hard times have forced mass media to carry advertising that was once taboo.
On July 10, 2008 in ASD Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator I exposed a popular money making scheme that has since received some much publicized and unwanted attention from the Office of the U.S. Attorney General.
This time my focus is on one of the people behind money making schemes. I turn my attention to Bill Arnold of Network Success Builders, the man whose unscrupulous business tactics and lack of personal integrity may in time cause tremendous damage to Orovo and to Orovo’s distributors.
The Anatomy of a Scam
It sounded too good to be true.
I met Bill Arnold a while back through Direct Matches, the online social networking site. Since springtime Bill on his Network Success Builders conference calls has promised listeners the moon.
To qualify for Bill’s money making dream a new recruit was required to join Vitamark through Network Success Builders, place a 100 point initial product order, and continue to place 100 point product orders every four weeks.
In essence here is what Bill Arnold promised Network Success Builders members:
- A team of top InterNetwork marketers who — once Bill “flicked the switch” — would supposedly build down in Vitamark under Network Success Builders members generating massive amounts of what is commonly known as “spillover” for Network Success Builders members. The plan was to “feather the nest” with as many new recruits as possible before Bill flicked the switch.
- Bill had supposedly made a deal with Internet Marketing Gorillas, LLC, the inventor of the AUMMB lead generation technology, whereby Internet Marketing Gorillas would place several dozen people into Vitamark under Network Success Builders members thereby creating even more spillover. Internet Marketing Gorillas would generate free leads for all Network Success Builders members in exchange for the spillover that they too would receive as part of the money making scheme.
- Bill had supposedly made another deal with Peter Minglis of PM Marketing / Network Leads to supply free leads and a free contact manager to Network Success Builders members in exchange for spillover they too would receive as part of the scheme.
- Network Success Builders members were to receive free marketing training and free custom search-engine friendly websites — co-branded Vitamark and Network Success Builders — as part of their membership package.
If Bill had followed through on his promises, there would be scores of happy people, and I wouldn’t be writing about his callousness and about Orovo’s possible oversight. I fully believe that he had intended at the outset deliver with Vitamark, but several obstacles got in his way.
- Bill over promised. People who lack personal integrity tend to do that.
- Bill got very sick. That was sad, poor luck and poor timing. It set him back, and made it harder to deliver on his inflated promises.
- Bill has control problems that prevented him from accepting help from people who would have pitched in and helped.
- Bill’s delay, control issues, and lack of open communication alienated people whose support was essential for the project’s success.
- Peter Minglis’ leads turned out to be really bad just as they have pretty much always been. I had very bad experiences with Peter’s brother and with PM Marketing about five years ago which left me without any desire to give them business ever again. In recent years Peter has lent support to the Distributors Rights Association. Kudos to Peter, but I still wouldn’t give PM Marketing my business.
- Bill’s training is mediocre. It’s kind of like buying a defective CD, and only the first track plays. It keeps replaying over and over. I wonder what will happen once Orovo realizes this, since they’re swinging their whole organization under Bill Arnold in order to get his training.
New Round of Promises
Bill announced that he’s quitting Vitamark. Here’s what he had to say:
Vitamark has excellent management and great products. The fact is that I was in the single best position to reap the benefits of that program. I have nothing bad to say about Vitamark.
However, I am cancelling my Vitamark position. This means I am walking away from a serious income that is already generated. True revenue that was being paid out each month…. Surprised? Me Too!
The reason is simple is that Bob Gatchel and myself have been offered an opportunity that makes the Vitamark one seem anemic. ANYONE WHO JOINS ME WILL FIND THAT THIS IS THE SINGLE BEST OPPORTUNITY TO A SIX FIGURE INCOME! The Company is OROVO!
How can I be so sure, Bob Gatchel and [I] have struck a deal with the President of Orovo. In exchange for our training programs they will put in several hundred people beneath us each and every month. They will also move over existing downline and teams. For those who sign up now, by next month you will be in a positive cash flow and on your way to very serious income very quickly. OROVO has no sign up fee, just the cost of buying the monthly auto-ship.
Too good to be true?
I don’t know what will happen when Orovo discovers that Bill Arnold is a buffoon and unable to deliver the training he promised. I can’t imagine that it will be very pretty.
I also don’t know what will happen if and when Bill quits Orovo and herds people over to his next program.
Incidentally, Bill’s Vitamark exit strategy includes taking his downline’s downline with him, not just the people he personally sponsored. This form of cross recruiting is totally unethical.
When I confronted Bill on this subject, he replied:
The fact is that I sent the email to everyone in my downline with Vitamark.
Everyone on my team deserved an equal to know that I had made a material shift and why.
I am not trying to leverage anyone to anything, But offer everyone an opportunity that is a phenomenal way to quickly earn a significant income.
Pure rationalization!
Lack of personal and business integrity is a major problem in our society.
We must work on our own integrity and that of out children. We must also seek out leaders, Go-Givers and people of noble character.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions in this article are my own based on my knowledge and experience at the time of writing. They are not to be construed as fact nor taken as business advice.
You may append your views and opinions by posting a comment to this article. Please represent them as opinion rather than fact. As blog publisher I reserve the right to edit or reject any comment for any reason but assure you that I do not do so capriciously.
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Aug
23
Radio Stations Tout Money Making Schemes
Filed Under Alerts, News | 17 Comments
Mainstream radio stations such as WCBS Radio 880 and WQXR, the radio station of the New York Times, now air spots for money making schemes. I have heard them myself while driving down to my office.
This is a fairly new phenomenon.
Home businesses and money making schemes are very much more prevalent today than when I joined Excel Communications as a representative back in March 1997.
Why do I think?
For sure there is wider access to information today through the Internet than there was a decade ago.
There is also increased economic pressure due to offshoring, mergers, acquisitions and downsizing. More and more people turn to the Internet, often out of desperation, hoping to solve their financial problems.
I am bombarded by phone and mail solicitations for anything from illegal chain letters to gifting programs to legitimate direct sales opportunities.
This is not at all new.
What is new is that so-called “mainstream” media are looking to make a quick buck or two carrying some very questionable advertising.
I recall a time when these media wouldn’t accept ads from home businesses, even legitimate ones. They were unwilling to expose themselves to complaints and criticism.
Times however have changed. A decline in ad revenue has apparently led radio stations and other mass media to relax their standards and accept almost anything, even possible scams and rip-offs.
Here’s my advice to you:
- Don’t believe any money making ads you hear on the radio.
- Throw away the home biz junk mail you receive in your mail box.
- Delete all spam from your e-mail or online social networking inboxes.
Don’t get ripped off. Only accept business advice from people you know, like and trust.
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Jul
10
ASD Ad Surf Daily Review and Forum
Filed Under Alerts, Home Based Business | 93 Comments
Is ASD Real or Just a Scam or Ponzi Scheme?
Reading Down to End of Comments is a MUST !
My May 6 post, The SpiderWeb Marketing System, garnered many readers, especially from search engines.
While I expressed some concerns over the Spider Web program, I never implied that it was a pyramid or scam. My issues with Spider were the hype, the spam and the choice of GDI as a web hosting platform for their blogs. It was the spam over at Direct Matches, one of my favorite social networking sites, that first grabbed my attention.
A recent unexpected development however has dramatically hurt the growth of the Spider Web just as it was starting to gain steam. The SpiderWeb Marketing System is facing some serious competition from a program that may be little more than the latest money scheme and perhaps the next 12 Daily Pro.
Andy Bowdoin Launches ASD at ASDCashGenerator.com
The get-rich-quick crowd has welcomed the new ASD Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator with open arms. With oil prices moving up and real estate prices moving down who wouldn’t want to make a quick buck?
If you could spend a few hours a week viewing ads and make a load of money without having to recruit a single person, wouldn’t you at least want to check it out? I know I would.
So yours truly put on his business analyst hat, transfered $30 to his Alert Pay account, and gave that money over to ASD so that he could report back to you first hand with the inside story.
Here’s the story. You decide for yourself whether ASD is the real deal, another scam or something in-between.
The ASD Business Proposition
ASD purports to sell website traffic and to rebate a percentage of the sale price to qualified members. The rebate percentage is currently set at 125%, and amount tied in to new sales volume and subject change in the future. To qualify, members log on and surf 24 sites of other members daily for 125 days.
My Evaluation Criteria
My research and analysis of ASD Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator focused on answering some important questions.
ASD claims to be in the business of selling website traffic. Is their advertising a reasonable value at the price asked, or would it sell only to people hoping to make money from the ASD rebate scheme?
ASD shares revenue from new business by paying rebates. Can ASD sustain itself without continually recruiting new members? Can rebates adequately compensate members for the use of their funds, their time and for the associated risks?
Traffic Exchange Visits
Website visits provided by traffic exchange schemes are very much untargeted and incentivized. Moreover, such visitors are typically multi-tasking while plodding their way through the required website rotation.
I want to be generous rather than conservative in my assessment. If you could make a perfect match between the ASD viewing membership and your target websites, each visit to your sites might be worth as much as a nickel. While it’s likely to be less, let’s tentatively assess the value of a page visit as $0.05.
ASD charges $1.00 per page visit. There is a large 20-to-one discrepancy between price and value. If you can find me somebody who’s genuinely prepared to spend a dollar for one traffic exchange site visit, put us in touch. I have a bridge I’d like to show him.
Seriously, nobody in his right mind would pay more than pennies for a traffic exchange visitor.
I have to conclude that members are paying ASD for the privellege of making money from rebates or recruiting — and not for website visits. It appears that ASD is in the money business and not in the advertsing business.
If government authorities reach a similar conclusion, they could rule that ASD handles investments and is threrfore subject to the purview of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC). Such a ruling would not be favorable in the least for ASD nor for ASD’s membership.
Sustainability
In a video Andy Bowdoin explains that, unlike 12 Daily Pro, ASD doesn’t make payments to members at a fixed rate, and that it may not continue to make payments in the future. I appreciate that Andy was up front in raising the possibility that ASD as we know it today may not be sustainable long-term.
Andy’s disclaimer may allow ASD to comply with anti-pyramid statutes today and to bow out in the future if new sales ever decline sharply.
ROI Return on Investment
Whether money paid to ASD legally constitutes an investment or not, I’m not competent to decide.
However, to qualify for rebates members need to surf through a rotation of 24 sites each day. Given the slow speed of ASD’s site and frequent hiccups, it takes about three hours per week to run their Cash Generator.
How much is three hours of your time weekly worth to you? $50? $100? More?
If you’re buying rebates, not advertising, you need to figure the value of your time. The amount of rebates you will earn relative to the value of the time you spend determines whether or not ASD is profitable for you.
Your profit threshold will probably not be the same as mine. It might be higher, or it might be lower.
Just as an example, let’s suppose that you would like to earn $35 per hour, and any benefit you get from your advertising you’ll accept, and consider it gravy.
Math-phobics may skip this part if absolutely necessary.
You consider the possibility of purchasing 500 units for $500. Each day you receive $5 which is one percent of the principal.
$4 of the $5 is recovery of principal, not profit. 125 days times $4 equals your original $500.
$1 of the $5 is your daily profit, so each week your earn $7.
You want to earn $105 or three-hours times $35. You’ll need to invest 15 times as much or $7,500.
Invest $7,500 and do the required surfing. You’ll earn $105 profit per week.
Invest less, you’ll earn less.
If you don’t have much money, you won’t make much. If you do, you probably have better things to do with it and prefer not to devote a month per year of productive time to this type of risky project.
Risk Management
Yes, there’s definitely a considerable risk factor. I’m not going to call Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator a scam, but I’m telling you… It is risky.
You might not recover your $7,500 or earn the 25% bonus of $1,875.
You have to account for risk and plan for it — if you can. You can try Lloyd’s of London if you need help.
Sure everybody’s making money now. Some are making tons of money, but will ASD last indefinitely?
Perhaps not.
Every gambler who makes money at Las Vegas faces the same dilemma: cash out or let it ride.
There were many people who made big money at 12 Daily Pro and many other high yield income programs (HYIP’s) that circled the globe a couple of years ago.
And there were people who lost. Some of them lost a lot.
A Few Quirks
Like most other growing sites ASDCashGenerator.com can be very slow. They’re upgrading their servers, but their upgrades will soon need upgrades. You’ll have to be patient.
It can take days for your payment to show up in their system. Perhaps some things are done manually. Submit a support ticket and be patient.
I created a unique e-mail address just for ASD and received an unsolicited business offer from a woman oversees sent to that address a couple of days after registering. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that my sponsor exposed my address when sending a group e-mail.
I requested to buy 30 units of advertising but received only 28. I guess they took $2 as a processing fee.
A Major Fallacy
I hear people explaining that they already made their money back, and that they’re playing with profit as if the profit isn’t their own money.
You can take your profit and do something for yourself or your family. It definitely is your money just as much as your original principal was. If you throw it away, you’re throwing away your money, not ASD’s or anybody else’s.
It Boils Down to Using Common Sense
You don’t have to be a top business analyst to figure these kinds of things out.
If you get down to the basics and avoid the hype, you can make excellent business decisions. As my mentor Diane Hochman, founder of My Private Classroom, says, “Use your common sense.”
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May
14
Wowzza Alert
Filed Under Alerts, News, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 5 Comments
I strive to write upbeat online social networking posts. However, sometimes I have to publish a bad report.
I told you that I had found the social networking site Wowzza Disappointing. I decided to withdraw during Wowzza’s 10-day grace period, and I expected to receive a refund.
When my refund wasn’t issued after more than a week, I contacted Jim Vigilante, the site’s founder, who said that he would look into it for me.
Last week I wrote him again. This time I did not receive a reply.
If I eventually receive my refund, I’ll post a comment to this article to let you know. As of now both social networking sites, Wowzza and Zion 5, are suspect.
If you already belong to either of them, enjoy! No need to quit.
But if you haven’t joined them, you should consider taking your online social networking business elsewhere.
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May
6
The SpiderWeb Marketing System Review and Forum
Filed Under Alerts, Home Based Business, Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, SPAM | 132 Comments
History Repeating Itself
Reading Down to End of Comments is a MUST !
Pay It Forward for Profits, a quasi downline club pretending to be a funded proposal, collapsed last year. I hoped people would learn a lesson from it.
Members were funneled into marginal programs such as GDI and Empowerism for the sake of the income streams they provided — and perhaps too because the Pay It Forward founders had a prior interest in those programs. Members had sought to promote their primary businesses when joining PIF4P, but that idea typically got lost in the shuffle.
As Diane Hochman teaches in My Private Classroom webinars, marketing systems are simply not sustainable. They implode once a large enough number of users adopt or tout the system.
Rather than develop or teach systems and shortcuts, Diane Hochman and I teach key leadership skills and offer excellent social media marketing training.
After all, isn’t it better to invest a few months to develop strong marketing and communication skills that will serve us a lifetime than to invest the same effort in a system that might make us a few fast bucks if we’re lucky?
It’s not good to rely solely on a marketing system to build a business, but when the system itself is the product, as was the case with Pay It Forward for Profits, then the ultimate end comes quickly, usually within a year or two, and the program is completely wiped out.
Unfortunately most people don’t learn. They blame their result on bad luck or external circumstances and jump on one of the next bandwagons to come along.
As Alexander Pope said, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” and new marketing schemes appear every week.
Caution Recommended
What’s astonishing about The Spiderweb Marketing System is how closely it resembles Pay It Forward. When I signed up and looked inside, I could hardly believe my eyes. There was GDI front and center, just as it was in PIF4P.
That’s where the automated blogs are set up. Global Domains is the first paid component of this free system.
Hmm. Did I just say that?
I guess the system isn’t free. Users buy overpriced web services for $10 per month from GDI in order to use The SpiderWeb Marketing System.
When you get to the Direct Matches* sign up, you really can sign up for free. However, if you do, you won’t be able to implement the Direct Matches piece of the traffic system — better pay another $10 per month for that. I think I’m beginning to see a pattern here.
Ever hear of bait-and-switch?
Sorry. Let’s call it upsell.
There are multiple income streams — some pretty good. And there’s no made-up story about funded proposals like with Pay It Forward for Profits — also good. However, I wish they were up front about the cost. Spider Web is not a free system.
Many people will join Spider looking for multiple streams of income, but instead they’ll find themselves saddled down with multiple streams of outgo.
Oh, there is one other thing. In addition to clogging the Direct Matches MyMail system with spammy messages, The SpiderWeb Marketing System is a proponent and proliferator of automated blogs.
An automated blog is a system generated blog. The system creates the blog and pumps posts into the blogosphere faster than you can say “global warming”.
I just though of a name for this new phenomenon, it’s a blog infestation.
Okay. Needs some work. Give me some time. I’ll think of a better one.
All kidding aside, I can’t understand why somebody would want to spend hours spamming members at Direct Matches and Yuwie while polluting the blogosphere on auto-pilot.
There’s a moral issue too which I hope to discuss in detail in a future post. For now, consider this. When somebody visits a blog, they assume that it’s the journal of a real live person — not the fiction of a computer program. How can this type of impersonation be right?
Kimball Roundy, creator of the Spider System, has given us something interesting to watch. We’ll get to see how Google and the other search engines cope with his quasi-blogs and how visitors react to them as well. We’ll also get to see if automated blogs are really scalable and if a substantial numbers of people actually make money with them.
Meanwhile please be careful. If you see a low hanging spider web, duck!
Speaking of ducks, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. I wish we could still say that about a blog. 
*Direct Matches happens to be one of my favorite social networking sites. Too bad it’s going to be overrun yet again with spammers. I was so relieved when Pay It Forward fell by the wayside. Now I’ll have to put up with another wave of spamming for a year or so until The Spider Web Marketing System runs its course.
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May
1
Zion 5 Alert
Filed Under Alerts, News, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 3 Comments
One of the social networking sites I’ve used recently is Zion 5.
I’m writing this post to let you know that the site’s founder Darren Merrett did not pay me my Pro commission for March despite several attempts to contact him late April.
I think it’s fine to use the site as a free member or even as a Pro Member as long as you don’t care about receiving your commissions.
If there are new developments, I will let you know.
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Apr
23
What is Wowzza?
From my perspective Wowzza is thousands of networkers running around like chickens with their heads cut off — quite a messy sight — or should I say site?
The situation became so messy that site founder Jim Vigilante felt compelled to axe the site’s top feature, sending direct messages to all contacts in one fell swoop. Members were bombarded by spam in their in-boxes and the latest greatest pre-launches. Something had to be done. Now members are limited to 50 bulk mail messages per day.
Incidentally Wowzza is extremely slow, but I’m sure that this problem will eventually be addressed and corrected.
Let me remind you of my earlier post, Online Social Networking Entering New Phase, in which I said, “Use social networking sites to network, to make new friends, to make new business contacts, and to make deals. Do not use them only to get paid by them. If you want to make money, doing business through these sites has much more potential than creating income streams from the sites themselves.”
I also said, “Join, use and refer people to sites that you enjoy, that offer the services you want, and that attract the types of people you wish to network with.
“Do not join sites because you are impressed by their hyped-up revenue sharing plan. Avoid paid membership sites unless they are the only ones that provide the services you require and attract the clientele you seek.”
Since I believe that there’s nothing particularly unique about Wowzza, I’m not going to pay $32.95 for the privilege of getting other people to do the same, just to make a buck.
In case you’re not already receiving enough spam or you’re desperate to get information on the pre-launch du jour, Wowzza may be just the social networking site for you.
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