It must be wonderful to have a friend/business partner like Simon Stepsys when he is willing to shamefully shill for you.
Stepsys has published two poorly written articles on “articlebase.com” to try and rank for the term “Shaun Smith Scam“. Looks like he is trying to help out Shaun as they appear to be working together in order to sell a product.
The product is called “How to Market Experts” and promises £70,000 per month. In fact, Shaun and Simon are, according to their adverts, “Two of the Top UK Internet Marketing Experts“.
Not sure I could agree with that description. I’m not even sure I could find anyone other than those two who would agree with the description either.
Shaun is facing problems as some of his customers aren’t altogether happy with their purchases and his poor guarantee.
For example, there is this site:
According to that report Shaun is only prepared to give a refund on his “700 per day” product if the purchaser follows Shaun’s step by step instructions. Also Shaun warns that should the purchaser “miss use” (nice spelling) the system, no refund will be given.
Sounds like a great excuse to use whenever he doesn’t want to refund unhappy customers.
Onto Simon’s articles…
The first one is called “The Truth Behind The Shaun Smith Scam Issue“.
Simon says: “Shaun Smith has started in the internet marketing business sometime in 2005”
That’s probably true. From what I’ve read Shaun was in prison before that after being found guilty of fraud.
The remainder of the article is a poorly worded attempt to keyword stuff the term “Shaun Smith Scam” in as many times as possible. I guess Simon thinks that is the best way to rank high for a term – he should know, being one of the “Top UK Internet Marketing Experts”
Simon’s second article has the title “Why The Shaun Smith Scam Is A Lie“.
Apparently “a certain Shaun Smith have been accused of selling products that did not deliver what they are supposed to do“.
Simon even concedes that Shaun’s products could be considered “ineffective” and that Shaun really could be out to swindle his customers’ hard earned money. Don’t believe that Simon would say that? Here’s what he wrote:
“You see, the Shaun Smith scam issues solely revolves on the fact that a couple of clients and customers are unsatisfied with the turnouts of their ventures with the marketer’s products, claiming that the whole product is ineffective and that the man is only out to swindle other people’s hard earned money. This could be the case“.
So, is “Shaun Smith Scam” a valid term to use?
On the internet people will tend to ask a question like “is [insert marketer’s name here] a scam?”
It isn’t a valid question. A person can’t be described as a scam but their method of doing business can.
For example, let’s say someone purposely sold a poor product with inadequate advice but then refused to refund unhappy customers. Could that be considered a scam?
What about if a marketer openly promoted what is basically a thinly disguised pyramid scheme, could you legitimately call that a scam?
How about if that same marketer was caught copying proof of earnings from another marketer’s site and claiming them as his own?
What about if a marketer claimed to be “bringing in £20k a month” but was actually spending £19k on advertising to make £20k, leaving less than £1k profit?
I think you’d agree that those methods of doing business are pretty scummy and could probably be labelled as a scam.
Shaun Smith is very vocal about how much he likes YourNetBiz. That particular “opportunity” is covered on another blog post and the main website:
A Couple of Things That Worry Me About Shaun Smith and YourNetBiz
An Outsider’s Review of YourNetBiz aka MyInternetBusiness
Simon Stepsys spent a lot of time in 2006 promoting the illegal pyramid scheme “Prosperity Automated System” in the National papers (before the SEC shut it down).
I certainly can’t blame anyone for labelling what these two marketers do as a “scam” following their past behaviour.Â
And I wouldn’t EVERÂ recommend either of them, or their products.
—————–
As an amusing aside, Shaun has posted a video of himself on YouTube:
I’ve taken a copy for myself in case he tries to remove the video so I can re-upload it. Check it out around the 2:50 mark. He has one of his mentoring students, “Mick”, on the phone as he is driving:
Student: I’ve signed up for Twitter and all that now but it’s two weeks and I’ve had no-one. I’ve tried eight or nine places every morning and had no-one.
Shaun: So you’ve had no opt-ins at all or?
Student: Not a thing, not a single thing.
Shaun: Right, OK, errrrrmmmm…. OK…. we’ll have to… errrmmmm… are you doing any YouTube videos at all at the moment?
[some further conversation]Â
Student: YouTube? I haven’t done that yet Shaun, just advertising in eight or nine places every morning doing it over and over again and I’m getting nothing…
There you have it folks, Shaun Smith’s mentoring student has been following his advice for two weeks and hasn’t had a single person opt-in to his newsletter.
I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions from that…
Shaun and Simon are both [censored]. I have at some stage paid them both money and needed help and you get none of that, they don’t even answer emails or messages posted to them on Facebook. Avoid both like the plague.
Comment by Amanda — 16th May 2010 @ 6:14 pm
I am afraid I believe Shaun Smith is absolute BAD NEWS. As far as I am concerned his new system using blogs, facebook and twitter is worse than useless. His system involves Google Adwords and your blog being received by ‘supposed’ thousands of Facebook users. This simply does not work and if he wasn’t so busy fleecing people he might have done his research properly. You can send you comments and blog to as many people as you like on Facebook and only a tiny percentage will ever see your blog.
Comment by K jobling — 26th July 2010 @ 11:09 pm
I have read some people say that Shaun’s videos are clear??? They are very badly compiled and often you are instructed in a later video what should of been done in an earlier one! It is totally disjointed. It is a mess and does not work.
If it is so wonderful and easy to make £700 per day why would he from the moment you contact him spam you with at least two other ” schemes” per day – yet cannot answer emails with queries! Shaun is nothing but a pedlar of systems, one after the other. Not I, nor another person who completely dedicated themselves for weeks to this flop achieved anything. Avoid like the plague.
Comment by Dave — 12th October 2010 @ 3:11 pm
Internet marketing is one tough game, can’t really comment on whether or not shaun smith is any good or not never spoken with him. Simon is obviously very good. I guess he must be very busy as he signed me up for all my savings and as of yet I have not received any real help. Two calls which were more encouraging than anything. This is all fine. But when you 37 years and no how to encourage yourself to keep on motivational calls are pretty useless.
It is only my opinion but you would have thought that guys with multi mufti millions would quite easily be able to give away a few tricks of the trade to the guys who stick around and work things out. As yet nothingness. So all I have to say is this. I will report back. It has been six months and i have not made any money with empowernetwork or bannersbroker and I have found that I have had .1 percent of my contact attempts returned.
Its a real shame that these guys dont do what I am going to do. Once learned I will show people how to make money out of the internet without constantly being none-contactable and while not charging the, more up on more for there really not necessary products.
I think it is high time a few of us guys on the up should remember our experiences with the mentors who do not really mentor at all and do something very very different.
I hope to be one of those and one thing is for sure I am not the type to ever give up.All one needs to do is read my own about me on my page to realize this.
Comment by Andrew — 27th August 2012 @ 11:24 pm
I have only just realized that Shaun Smith really is a [edited by Ben], and a nasty one at that. Reading this forum and other posts have confirmed my suspicions. I only wish that I had seen these posts before I parted with money. His ‘700 in a day’ scheme proved useless. It is not the money that worries me though. It is the fact that it can be quite dangerous. I recently bought his ‘copy and paste’ scheme where you buy from Amazon and sell for a profit on E bay. It all seemed above board from his video tutorial. It did not take long for E bay to block indefinitely my selling account. When I contacted Shaun Smith about this he called me an incompetent prat – loser “go back to your 9 – 5 job”. What he does not realize is that I live only a mile from his office in Erdington and that I shall be paying him a visit. I suspect though, that this is just a front with a mailbox.
[Addition by Ben: Is Erdington in Birmingham? If so, that’s not where he lives and is likely just a front. Do a bit of digging and you’ll be able to find Shaun’s home address. I did.]
Comment by David Ash — 21st October 2013 @ 2:29 pm