The review of the 30 Minute Unitrader system on BizOppsUK.com provided an email address so that other people who had used the system could send in their experiences.

Below is a summary of the emails that were received.

Email contents are quoted as received although names, email address and any other pieces of identifying data have been removed.

Segments that talked about other systems or segments that were unrelated have also been removed.

Email one received 02/03/2012:

“Like you I recently purchased the 30 Minute Unitrader Method and have been struggling to make any profits at all. A few days after I received the DVD?s I received another similar circular from Tim Lowe offering what he calls the Ternary System compiled in cooperation with Matt Fyles. It seemed to be the same system in a more professional presentation but he seemed to imply that it was not necessary to trade ?in play? in matches where the non-favourite had scored. This was the major drawback for me as it was not always convenient to be present when a match was in progress.”

Email two received 08/03/2012:

“I bought the system a couple of weeks ago. Like yourself, I was quite exited about trying it having watched the cd’s and I am aware that there are people out there who make some good money doing things like this on betfair.

So far I have not had many opportunities to trade due to work and family commitments, despite monitoring it for an entire Saturday and most of a Sunday. I took two trades early on, just to test the water, for small stakes of £10. These were profitable, but then my third trade with a £50 stake took a loss of £22 when the underdog went 2-0 up and the odds changed very quickly! I have not had the opportunity to trade since.

I found that the odds did not move that significantly on the profitable trades yet they moved quite quickly on the unprofitable trade. This was my fear about the system as although I am not a betfair guru by any stretch, I know that too many people trying to do the same thing can distort the odds.

So the jury is out for me although I suspect I will be sending it back as I don’t think it fits in with family life. I think I need something I can do as and when I get the time rather than watching  the screen like a hawk all weekend!”

Email three 10/03/2012:

“I bought the system 3 weeks ago and in that time gave it a good try entering 15 trades during that period.

I was determined to make it work as it all seemed very feasible and I have some experience of Betfair, but not this particular trading method.

I decided today to return the system for a full refund.

Your review was very fair and balanced and reflected my experiences almost to the letter –

1) I agree that 30 days is not enough time to find out if it may turn around in the long run, Matt says to be patient, 30 days is not long enough to follow his advice.

2) I believe that Matt should have demonstrated more trades on his DVDs as I was presented with many scenarios where I was left scratching my head. A more in depth analysis of each trade would have been helpful, particularly when only partial trades where matched.

3) I agree that Matt’s sales letter is somewhat exaggerated. I was winning small amounts on some trades and losing more on others. My bank was diminishing over time and it gave me absolutely no incentive to carry on.”

Email four 31/03/2012:

“After reading your review on 30min trader i thought i would just drop you an e-mail. I have bean useing the system for a bit but also not much joy only managing to end up with a 0.64p profit useing £20 trades after about 4 weeks.”

Comments welcome below or at the email address given in the original 30 Minute Unitrader review:

Matt Fyles and the 30 Minute UniTrader System

*UPDATE*

Email five received 11/04/2012:

“I have just come off your page and am relieved that it ain’t just me!!

I too got this and proceeded with a positive attitude although immediately after watching the only 3 videos needed (yes same as you but I guess newbies would love the guidance) I immediately worried about the liquidity and noted that the trades he took were over a year ago!!

I had one match go two goals from underdog and I stillmanaged break even and that was encouraging BUT when I started getting ‘favourable’ results, the prices simply didn’t ‘happen’ – like you I ended up with small losses and a few small wins but the losses far outweigh the wins and I was only using £10 stakes and one of my losses was from waiting for a better price!!

I add that I noticed in your review that you kind of ‘kicked yourself’ for maybe waiting too long to get a good price but I think you are being too hard on yourself as in the supplied trade examples, Matt frequently waits a considerable time and even after not getting the high price he enters, he then enters another price which isn’t showing as available so I think this system is flawed fromt he get go as i.It was working for HIM and that was over a year ago and ii.The new system influx of users has killed the prices and iii. The Liquidity isn’t that good for many of the games any way!

All in all super-disappointing and if you go to : [removed – it was a page on Tim Lowe’s site with testimonials on it]

You’ll see a testimonial from Matt himself talking about receiving a cheque for over £400k!! from Tim for one of their joint ventures!! Oh and he goes on to say it’s totalled more than £1 million!!! so clearly he doesn’t make a tidy living from his football system does he???”

So many blogs, so little time.

Unfortunately a lot of blog posts are boring and uninformative.

Not all, of course. You just need to do some searching to find the worthwhile ones.

Here are 5 interesting reads for your next coffee break (links open in a new window):

(1) Marcus Passey – Internet Marketing – I Am Failing Fast – So How Will I succeed?

This very refreshing blog post from Marcus Passey, a UK marketer, shows that there are marketers who aren’t afraid to tell the truth when it’s warranted.

Marcus was one of those rare marketers that made money within the first few months of trying.

However, he soon got disenchanted with what he was going (essentially using ad swaps) and made this blog post to tell his readers why.

Good stuff.

(2) Erica Douglass – The Failure Manifesto

At the age of 26 Erica sold her business for $1.1 million which made a lot of people take notice of her.

I don’t know about you but I always figured that once you made a million, you were on easy street but in this blog post Erica explains why she’s spent a lot of time crying.

The million hasn’t set her up for life, anything but. In fact she notes; “sold my company for $1.1 million, and I don’t even have enough money for a house down payment.”

Another refreshing blog post that shows that even the “big winners” from the internet don’t have it easy.

(3) Jeff Wellman – Product Positioning & Differentiation Strategy! Why New Products Fail!

With more that a little help from his son, Jeff Wellman drew in six figures from his first product in 2007 – “Lay Off Your Boss“.

Sadly the money he made didn’t last long and soon he had to do another product launch. This blog post describes how the second launch wasn’t quite as successful.

Most marketers wouldn’t be as honest as Jeff is being in this post. Whilst you’re at his site read some of his other posts as he has written a lot recently about his marketing exploits over the past 4 years.

It’s all good, honest stuff and shows that even with a big leg-up you can still struggle.

(4) Bret Thomson – How To Deal With Blood-Sucking Leeches Disguised As Wanna-Be Clients

This is funny.

I read this blog post and immediately got a mental picture of the kind of person who would approach a copywriter in this way. I’ve seen them lots of times at seminars – the man with the big idea.

Oblivious to their stupidity, they think they are doing the copywriter a favour by letting them work for free.

Thankfully Bret gives this idiot his marching orders.

(5) Mark Lyford – Chris Cobb Scam

This isn’t a blog post really, more of a “name and shame” website.

The short story is that Mark paid Chris Cobb $25,000 for a service but doesn’t think he got that service so now he is asking for a refund.

Chris refuses to give a refund so Mark created a website on which he details all of their email exchanges.

An eye-opener.

It has been difficult to keep a straight face this week whilst watching the pretty ridiculous goings-on of a big, well-known business opportunity publisher.

This company – which here I’ll call “ABCD” – have built a reputation over the years of always offering a no nonsense, no questions asked money back guarantee on all of their products.

And they’ve been very successful.

Several years ago they sold a very expensive financial trading product and brought in millions of pounds in orders. It set of a bit of a trend.

There have been many other manuals, newsletters and courses over the years. Some good, some poor but each one with a solid money back guarantee.

For some reason ABCD have recently released a brand new product with one of those “mystery” opp sales letters. This is where the promotional letter gives very few details about what the opportunity involves.

The buyers still ordered- many who were probably previous customers and trusted ABCD with their money, assuming that they’d be able to get their money back without any fuss if it turned out to be a poor product.

Some found the product to be poor and sent it back to request a refund.

Here’s where it got silly.

ABCD apparently aren’t issuing refunds without a fight, claiming that the guarantee only applies if the product”doesn’t work”.

As you can imagine, this has enraged the buyers who have been refused refunds.

Of course in this day and age it is easy to find other people who aren’t happy with a product. All you need to do is go to a business opportunity forum or a review site that allows comments.

So that’s what the buyers did, congregated on forums and blogs, discussing the way they’d been treated by ABCD.

And the discussions went on with each comparing the various silly excuses they’d been given why they couldn’t have a refund.

Until…

ABCD appeared to get their lawyers involved.

Yes, ABCD have allegedly been issuing threats to the forum and blog owners about these supposed “defamatory” remarks about this new product.

The discussions have now been severely edited.

One forum owner has even stated that the forum will shortly be removed because he is tired of being threatened and of having to moderate the posts.

All in all it’s farcical.

The internet has been a blessing for consumers as it can be used to compare products and give reviews and warnings to others.

Biz opp publishers who want to write “blind” sales letters – letters where the opportunity isn’t outlined – no longer have the advantage they used to because the subject of their product is now revealed quickly.

And that’s a good thing.

10 years ago this wasn’t possible but now if you can’t figure out what a sales letter is saying you can simply wait a week or so and someone will review it online.

In this case ABCD, instead of creating a good product with a reasonable no-risk guarantee, are refusing refunds to unhappy buyers.

And they are damaging their reputation at the same time.

So instead of simply pacifying customers by giving them their money back, they appear to send legal threats to any website owners who carry unfavourable reviews of their products.

There are rumours that ABCD are having financial issues. Maybe this is true, maybe not, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence.

However, behaviour like this i.e. desperately holding on to customers’ cash when they aren’t happy, certainly makes it look like something is very wrong.

To make a change from writing blog posts about dodgy opportunities, here’s an update that is similar to the newsletters I used to send out and focuses on some good opps.

I realise that these appear to be few and far between recently.

Further down you’ll find links to some great free information from a well-known expert information publisher who has been quiet for quite some time. Evidently he’s still beavering away in the background.

But first…

The One A Day System

This opp is currently being tested and the results updated regularly on the main site:

The “One a Day” System from Clive Keeling of Canonbury Publications

Sometimes it seems that as soon as I start to test a system it goes through a big losing streak.

Remember the Lazy Lay system from a couple of years ago?

The Lazy Lay Quick Profits System by Bill Stratford

Not long after I started to use that system it began to lose money consistently.

Eventually it seems everyone gave up on it, apart from the publishers that is, who still have it up for sale online.

Clive’s system started quite badly for me, the second bet was a painful loser, as was the 5th bet but then it got interesting.

Ten winning bets over ten consecutive days brought the bank back into profit and suggested that this system has potential.

Of course, 3 losing days in a row straight after that threw a spanner in the works and even Clive admitted on the 3rd day that he should’ve declared it a “no bet” day.

19 bets so far probably isn’t a valid statistical test so I will be continuing with this one.

If you’re interested in the One A Day system, keep an eye on the results using the link above.

A 100 day test would seem to be reasonable as that would equate to 100 bets so that’s what I’ll aim for.

Making Money From Financial Spread Trading

If you’ve read through BizOppsUK.com then you’re probably aware that Vince Stanzione’s spread betting course was the first biz opp I bought back in 2004.

Since then I’ve jumped in and out of spread betting and fixed odds betting. My BetOnMarkets accounts never did very well and I can’t say I’ve ever really warmed to that site.

Spread betting, however, is a completely different story.

At the beginning I lost some money – mainly through making some silly day trades on a whim – but recently I have been quite successful trading UK shares long and short.

I’ve a load of trades open at the moment, all expiring on the 14th December and overall I am doing pretty well. Of course, this could all change by the expiry date so we will have to wait and see.

However, I am very happy with the latest version of Vince’s course which has gone through a re-vamp.

More details are available on the site, including results:

Vince Stanzione, Spread Betting and First Information

Stuart Goldsmith

Over the weekend I was looking through the manuals and folders sat on my bookshelf and found a course I hadn’t read in some time – Escape the Matrix by Stuart Goldsmith.

In the past Stuart always seemed to retire, then return, then retire again. He has been quiet for a long time now with no new products.

His site shows that he is still writing from time to time and you can read several of Stuart’s reports for free – completely free, he doesn’t even ask for an email address – on his site:

Stuart Goldsmith – Free Downloads

Have a good read through his reports, it’s well worth your time and you may well just pick up some ideas that you can use to make more money.

Random Bits

Have you used Vince Stanzione’s methods? How have you fared?

What about the One A Day System? What kind of results have you got?

Are there any other betting systems that you like the sound of but haven’t bought yet? I’m looking for other systems to test, hopefully ones from credible sources, not the junk that one Barnsley internet marketer keeps releasing under fake names!

If you’ve anything to add, feel free to add a comment to this post.

Over the last year it’s been interesting to watch the fallout from the recession, especially in the business opportunity world.

It’s a funny thing selling business opportunities – you are selling a product that is supposed to make the customer money.

Therefore if you sell products about making money, your company should be able to make money. If you can’t make money and admit you can’t then you lose all of your credibility. So it’s very important for biz opp publishers to keep up the pretence that they’re still making a lot of money.

Over the past couple of years the market for selling “make money” products has become more and more difficult. You won’t hear this from many people because they can’t admit this.

What you will hear more and more are such claims as; “it’s easier to make money in a recession because more people are looking to make money“.

Rubbish.

The usual buyers in the business opportunity market aren’t buying as much as they did two or three years ago, this is something that is being talked about in the bar at seminars, during mastermind sessions and via gossipy Skype chats.

We’re seeing some big biz opp and internet marketing people suffering in this downturn – but they’ll never admit it simply because they can’t. Their methods are supposed to work in all climates but cracks are beginning to show.

Take for example the £2,000 one-year mentoring course from a big UK publishing company that is now offered at £750. It wouldn’t usually raise any eyebrows except this is a company that never offers discounts and never reduces the price of its products.

Something’s very wrong if they’re suddenly offering huge discounts…

And there are other examples.

Take a look at the high-profile casualties of the recession:

Tim Brocklehurst – Tim closed his “MyViralSpiral” site with no warning and it later turned out that he was having financial difficulties:

What happened to Tim Brocklehurst’s MyViralSpiral?

Andy Shaw and Greg Ballard – Andy and Greg claimed to be millionaires who had made it big via property investing and information publishing. It was less than a year ago that they both were declared bankrupt in Brighton:

Andy Shaw and Greg Ballard from Passive Investments – Bankrupt?

(Greg seems to have vanished but Andy is now trying to sell a financial trading opportunity)

Pat Lovell and Sean Roach sold Rip2It as a complete business-in-a-box that anyone could use to make money, even if they’d never build a website before. Their whole business partnership collapsed late in 2009 and Pat appears to have left the internet marketing scene completely:

Pat Lovell is No Longer Associated with Rip2it

Sometimes Things Happen for a Reason

Which leads to…

The lastest offering from Streetwise Publications.

This is of lower quality than their usual offerings and certainly isn’t something they would’ve released a few years ago when they were able to sell 10 CDs for £2k (remember the Insider Signal?)

I can’t say I’m impressed with the Complete Computer Cashpoint and that should be obvious in my write-up:

The Complete Computer Cashpoint from James Walker and Streetwise Publications

When will things improve? No one can say for sure.

I’d imagine that we’ll know that the economy is improving when the quality of business opportunity products begins to increase and we see less and less “get rich quick” opps being offered.

It’ll be nice to write about some good opportunities for a change…