At the end of May I heard about a new investment scheme called Fantastic Pay which sounded ridiculous and too good to be true.

Despite my complete conviction that this high yield investment program was probably a scam, I invested $25 as they promised a huge monthly payout if I kept my money invested for six months.

The deal was that if I invested $25 then they would pay me $50 a month every month forever. Surely, I thought, this is a load of crap but I figured $25 was not a great loss if it all went wrong.

I invested on the 25th May 2006 and, for a while, documented the progress on the site:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/fantastic_pay.php

As you can see, I got bored and forgot about my investment in the middle of August but this last week I got an email with the subject line:

“FantasticPay has just sent $23.66 to your SafePay Solutions account”

It turns out that the owner of this HYIP scheme has decided to rebate everyone’s investment and so I got my $25 back (minus fees which SafePay took for processing).

According to the site I am still eligible for the monthly payouts too! Lucky I had faith then!

I’m in a pickle now – I am only a few dollars down as it stands but stand to pocket just short of $50 a month for no work.

Should I reinvest the monthly payouts or just pocket it until the scheme collapses? I think the latter…

In the meantime I have been reading around and Fantastic Pay have closed the doors to new members from the 6th October 2006. Maybe they were taking on new people for a “limited time only”…

I will keep you updated

Sunday morning’s presentation was given by John Taylor on the subject of testing and tracking.

John presented a lot of information over the 90 minutes or so he spoke.

His basic idea was to create content based sites – sites containing unique information based around three specific keywords.

You let the site run for a few weeks, gathering traffic by the normal methods, and then check your stats.

If you are receiving a lot of traffic, you can test different methods of monitising your site i.e. 1,000 hits with AdSense on the site and then 1,000 promoting an affiliate program.

The aim is to see which method earns you the most money and then stick with that method.

John also suggested using a rotator program to show 3 different webpages to visitors so that you can find the best converting page and concentrate on that.

The basic message was – Analyse Everything about your site or you will never know which content makes the most money.

John’s book, “Testing and Tracking” is available with several special bonuses at the following website:

http://www.Test-and-Track.co.uk

Go back a couple of months and I seemed to be on a “scam-busting” crusade.

First I wanted to stop people from getting sucked into the incredibly poor “Data Entry” and “Type at Home” schemes which were being advertised anywhere there was an internet marketing or work from home topic printed.

In relation to Data Entry Pro, I even wrote the following in the newsletter I freelance for:

“…the instructions are so poor and the scheme so mis-sold that you may find you lose a lot more than the cost of the opportunity…”

It must have been due to the massive refund rate for Data Entry Pro and its copy-cats but Clickbank pulled the plug on all of these “products” a month or so ago. Good ridance.

Whilst on my “crusade” I also did a whole load of research on the Prosperity Automated System which was introduced to the world by Mr Bill Osterhout. Most people could see that this particular scheme was just a money-go-round Pyramid Scheme where the vast majority of participants would lose thousands of dollars.

I thought it would collapse with the heavy hitters running off to leave everyone else with a negative bank balance.

However, the SEC in the US brought a stop to this particular pyramid scheme at the end of September. Of course, Osterhout has been stopped for the moment but there are similar schemes which have risen to continue in the same vein as PAS.

Let’s see how long these ones last…

I’ve just been on a favourite forum of mine and read something I am not particularly happy about.

Basically a certain internet marketer sent out an email to his list saying:

“If you already bought [product name] go ahead to [vendor] and refund. After that buy through my link”

There have been a whole load of launches recently with every big marketer offering bonuses for anyone who buys through their affiliate link. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s health competition I suppose and I am not aware if it breaks any terms or conditions….

But, the problem comes where people start trying to steal commissions in this manner by urging customers to refund a purchase and then re-buy it through another link.

It started with the StomperNet launch and looks like it is starting to spread with others deciding to use this dodgy tactic. The person who first did it (as far as I can tell), said:

“I’d contact Stompernet IMMEDIATELY and tell them you meant to order through [certain marketer]’s link. And that if they don’t change it so that you can go to the [certain place], you are going to ask for a refund!”

Things could turn ugly with this tactic. I for one won’t buy from either of these people ever now that they have done this.

As far as the discussion thread goes, so far it has received 70 posts in just a few hours.

The person concerned has replied but his reputation hasn’t been enhanced by this very silly mistake. I’m watching for anyone else doing this – there is too much deception on the internet, making potential customers very wary of dealing with anyone.

The last thing we need is something else to add to this…

Another A4 envelope through the post today and again it is from Streetwise Publications’ John Harrison.

You can always tell before you even open it – the “if undelivered” address on the reverse gives it away…

OK, this time around it’s another offer of the Pentatrade Profit System for just £1947 + VAT (£2287.72) and the sales pack is very thorough.

First of all there is an opening letter from Mr Harrison who was says:

“Shock Confession… I Was Wrong!“.

OK, but what on earth were you wrong about?

It seems that John has known about the Pentatrade Profit System for several months but was sworn to secrecy by the creator Hugo Lawrence.

Hugo is a perfectionist and would not allow the course to be released until everything was perfect which was really frustrating for the Streetwise boss. But… he was wrong to try and rush Hugo because this new course is “worth the wait“!

Second up is the huge sales letter. It’s 20 pages long and goes into great detail about how you can use this new course to “‘Steal’ Thousands A Month From The Biggest Pile Of Money On The Planet“.

You see Hugo has developed 5 special profit alerts which, when they all line up together, give you the green light to get thousands of pounds from trading the financial markets.

Indeed, it’s a “sure-fire way of making thousands of pounds, month after month, year after year… forever!”

It’s all a very convincing sales letter until, on page 10, there is a very strange claim about other trading systems:

“…There are plenty of ‘systems’ out there and I’ve tried many of them. Most are ‘okay’ and could bring you £200 – £500 a month. But NONE are as powerful as Pentatrade!”

Now, how can a system only bring you up to £500 a month? Surely he means 200 – 500 points a month.

If a system could make you 200 – 500 points a month then if I was trading £10 a point I would make £2,000 to £5,000 a month. If I was trading £1,000 a point I would make £200,000 to £500,000 a month and so on…

It’s probably just an error in the sales copy – after all it’s very unlikely that Hugo Lawrence actually wrote it himself.

There are then 10 more pages of sales copy explaining how much money you can make and how easy it is. What it basically boils down to is that you will be day-trading all manner of financial markets in order to try and scalp some points each day.

Hugo does own up and say that sometimes you will not be trading – some days the five indicators will not match to give you the “green light” so you do not trade at all that day.

However, he also says that if the “Window of Opportunity” is open and “some alerts are there, [you] might have to wait a while to see all five line-up…”

Fair enough, at least he is honest!

Personally I don’t have the time or patience to sit watching charts all day. I get the feeling it’s probably rather boring and stressful, especially if things aren’t going your way.

Searching for information about Hugo Lawrence doesn’t actually bring much up although I did find that he placed an advertisement in the Sunday Times earlier this year promoting his spread trading seminars which were around £500 – £1000. The websites have since been taken down…

As per usual with Streetwise Publications, you get to test the course risk-free for 30 days. If you don’t like it you can return it for a full refund – as is mentioned in the sales letter and again on the third part of the sales pack, the “Risk Free Priority Reservation Certificate“.

I won’t be buying to be perfectly honest as my trading is longer term and day-trading doesn’t appeal to me…

I have been trading though, you can check out how I am doing with my little spread betting “experiment” at the other blog:

http://bizoppsuk.blogspot.com