I recently came across a site which is ruthlessly advertised via Google AdWords. Danny’s Scam Review professes to tell you which “work at home” schemes actually work.

The advert is:

I was scammed 37 times
These websites are absolute scams I will
show you the ones that work

So, you click on the link and get taken to dannys-scam-review.com.

Apparently, this “Danny” has gone from earning $70,000 a year to becoming redundant from his 9-5 job.

What he decided to do was try and make money via the web. He bought 37 programs and found that all but 2 were scams (I’d say he’s pretty stupid to get scammed 35 times – or he’s lying…).

Anyway, on his site he shows you 2 programs which are apparently “not scams”. If you pay the money to join these programs, Danny says that you will make money.

He even says about his “No 1 BEST PRODUCT” (ultimatewealthpackage.com):

“The purchase price is a little high at $299 dollars, but look out for the occasional special offer. I bought the package for $299 and the very next day it was being sold for only $99! I didn’t mind because I made it all back anyway! A full refund is also offered if you are not happy with the product which is extremely reassuring”

The truth is that the Ultimate Wealth Package was first launched on or around the 4th March 2006. Back then it was only $46, not the $299 that Danny claims.

In fact, it has never been priced at more than $50.

Danny’s Scam Review website is a complete con. He has taken probably the worst advice from the Rich Jerk eBook and tried to build a business around it.

I signed up for his “newsletter” to find out what his opinion of the top 3 scams was. He said that they were:

“Scam #1 – High Yield Investment Programs
Scam #2 – Envelope Stuffing
Scam #3 – Free Magazine Advertising”

And he’s probably right. The problem is that Danny says:

“Yesterday I made $493.98 with Ultimate Wealth Package…”

However, I signed up for his email newsletter with two different email addresses, a week apart and he said he made the same amount yesterday in both emails.

Danny’s Scam Review is a site which lies.

Whoever is behind it has built it anonymously because they are not willing to admit who they are.

Sign up for his newsletter and you will find that he promotes all kinds of rubbish to try and make a quick buck.

Two he has tried to palm off include “Paid Surveys” and “Type at Home” which is a useless data entry scheme.

Danny even goes so far as to claim in an email:

“… last week I e-mailed you about Paid Survey Program and how my friend Kev James was making a load of cash just filling in surveys on line!

Since I sent out the e-mail telling you about the program over 3,000 of you joined the program. That was a lot, I was impressed! I contact the Survey Company to see how many of you were actually making. In the last 7 days since I sent out the e-mail, Paid Survey Program have paid out OVER $242,000 to us, which is crazy! I PERSONALLY only made $3,000, so the other $239,000 has been made by you! CONGRATULATIONS! (Yes I am a little jealous, but there 1,000 of you, only 1 of me!) “

Don’t believe a word that Danny’s Scam Review tells you, it’s complete rubbish.

Type At Home and Paid Surveys are complete fallacies. Check the index of this blog and you will find posts about these types of schemes. They are all very dubious, certainly not schemes which will make you any money.

I mentioned recently that I had managed to pick up some second-hand material that had been originally issued by Darren Winters’ WIN Investing company.

The package was called “The Path to Financial Freedom” and contained 3 VHS videos and a printed A4 manual of almost 200 pages.

I’ve no idea how the person who sold me these products came across them – they could’ve bought them from WIN Investing or received them after attending a seminar.

I’m going to assume that these materials were given to seminar attendees because the manual is full of hand-written notes.

The 1st video is called “The 5 Steps to Outstanding Investment Success” and runs for about 37 minutes.

It seems to contain footage from one of Darren Winters’ sales pitches – the “free 2.5 hour tutorial” sessions that he runs frequently across the UK.

Darren Winters says:

“I decided I was going to become outstanding in the field of investing… I went to all of the main UK investment seminars… I then went to all the main US investment seminars… In time and money I spent about £100,000… I then tracked down the greatest living investors in the world and I persuaded them to teach me what they knew… Some of my best friends are some of the best traders in the world… “

This video has a copyright date of 2002 on it which would suggest that the footage is from around 2001/2002. Back then, Darren did actually give the tutorials himself but nowadays he employs other people to sell the courses for him.

My own experience of the WIN Investing “free tutorial” is available to read on the main site:

Darren Winters, WIN Investing and the Winters Investment Network

Back to the video, Darren goes through looking at sectors to trade. He calls this section “Understanding the Big Picture”. There are shots of the audience as well as Mr Winters, with around 100 or so attendees in the picture.

After around 15 minutes the video shifts to some footage from a smaller WIN Investing gathering. This appears to be a in a hotel and is probably a 2 day training seminar. There are about 20 attendees and Darren Winters is doing all the teaching.

Darren shows his seminar attendees various graphs which represent his theories on the Economic Cycle. “This doesn’t exist anywhere… I produced it for me…” he tells the ticket holders. Basically, he is showing them his theories concerning the relationship between interest rates, inflation and industrial production.

He then explains how to use free resources on the web for charting individual equities and sectors.

It’s useful information but it isn’t anything ground-breaking.

He then goes on to briefly cover expansion and contraction in financial markets because these can apparently tell you which stocks are going to go up or down. I didn’t understand why all this was important as he didn’t really explain anything.

The video continues for another 20 minutes or so but there isn’t any real sequence to follow. Darren skips from one website to the next showing you where to find EPS values and such but doesn’t explain why you would want to know these values. Perhaps he explains more when you are there, in the room, but the editing is terrible and it’s hard to figure out what conclusion he wants you to take away from the footage.

So, what are the 5 steps to outstanding investment success?

Sorry but after watching this video, I am none the wiser!

Back in September I attended Robert Puddy’s Focus 4 the Future seminar in Birmingham. I keep on mentioning it because it was an excellent weekend and I learnt a whole host of extremely valuable tips and tricks on internet marketing. More importantly perhaps, I also met a lot of people who are in the same boat as me – doing all this part-time.

Networking works though, it really does. Just one JV from this seminar earnt me back four times the ticket cost. Perhaps this is a story for another time…

Today I wanted to talk about internet business mentoring, specifically an offer I have just received in my email inbox. Basically this email offered me a 9 month 1-on-1 internet mentoring program for £2k.

The problem is that the person who is offering to mentor me for this money is someone who I have never heard of – nor can I find any information about him on the internet or by asking around.

He’s an internet marketing nobody…

If I Google his name, he does not appear on the first page. The only sites I can find of his are the ones he sends me links to via email. In fact, the only information I can find about him is that he seems to have been online for just less than a year and once went to a seminar featuring Frank Garon.

This, it seems, makes him an “internet guru” who is qualified to mentor me to internet success! It’s ridiculous.

Compare this with the mentoring program which Mike Filsaime offered to the attendees of the seminar in Birmingham:

Mike’s offer was a 12 month, double-your-money mentoring program called “I5“.

You got his entire Butterfly Marketing package, all of his personal products, membership to all his sites, 2 tickets to his seminar, 10 tickets for his seminar which you could resell for $797 and keep 100% of the profits…

… you also got coaching from a proven successful internet marketing expert.

The offer I received today had precisely zero proof that it would help me in the slightest. The person who offered me mentoring can’t even offer any proof that he is a success, but he wants £2k to “mentor” me.

For an extra £1k I can get a whole load of material which has been proven to work over and over again as well as 1-on-1 mentoring from a successful (and well-known) group of marketers.

There’s really no competition, is there?

I suppose the moral of the story is to make sure that the person you pay for “mentoring” actually does have the right to call himself a success. If he or she can’t, don’t pay them a penny.

Other info:

Robert Puddy’s Focus 4 the Future UK and US Seminars

Mike Filsaime and the Butterfly Marketing Manuscript

Over the last couple of years, Sally Nicoll has documented her spread betting experiences via a blog on Finspreads’ main site.

Sally has always had an interest in gambling which, according to her, is a family trait. As a writer “between jobs” she used £5,000 to start her trading career, depositing it into her Finspreads account.

Every-so-often she would write up her latest spread betting triumphs or disasters on the site and built up quite a following amongst spread betters across the UK.

After a couple of years and 20 posts it seems that Sally was contacted by a publishing house to write a book. Just last month this book was released.

It was called:

“Bets and the City – Sally Nicoll’s spread betting diary”

I’ve just read it in less than a day and found it an excellent, funny and familiar story. Sally made all the mistakes a novice trader always makes and manages to turn her £5,000 into less than £2,000!

If you are even slightly interested in spread betting then I highly recommend Sally’s book:

Recently I picked up a copy of a manual called AutoProfits which is offered through Nick Laight’s Canonbury Publishing company.

AutoProfits is written by Mark Hempshell, a used car trader who sells cars through eBay for profit.

The manual promises to reveal “How to Pocket £14,000 – £130,0000 a year selling just 1 used car per week on eBay”

I really liked the manual, this is a system which can be very profitable and Mark has laid it out in an easy-to-understand format. In the new year, a friend and I will be starting a little side business following the ideas put forward in this system (more to follow).

Yesterday a subscriber of the Free Business Opportunities Email Newsletter sent me an email to let me know that he had bought the manual and was also impressed:

Hi Ben

You mention Cannonbury Publishing now and again in your blog.

I have bought one or two things from them – mostly Avril Harper manuals.

One that I did get recently was “Autoprofits! – How to Pocket £14,000 – £130,000 a year selling just 1 used car per week on ebay.”

I don’t know if you have come across this at all, but I was impressed.

The manual is spiral bound A4 format with 71 pages of close type.

The guy who has written it (Mark Hempshell) is obviously “in the business” and appears to really know what he is talking about. The impressive part is not so much the ebay selling information – although that’s in depth – but his insight into the second hand car market and the tricks and know-how that he is willing to give away in the manual. Also he goes into detail about what you should be buying, and what to avoid.

Selling second hand cars is not going to be for everyone but you can’t argue with a couple of hundred, up to a couple of thousand pounds, in profit every time you sell on ebay!

He even gives you an email address to contact him for ongoing support if required. (I haven’t tried to contact him yet so I have no idea if he will respond.)

Will I try selling cars on ebay? Well, that remains to be seen but if I do then I certainly will be doing it with this manual by my side!

I think Cannonbury have really scored here, if you think you might like to be the next Arfur Daily! (Giving away my age now.)

Regards

Ian

You can read more about AutoProfits by clicking on the following link:

AutoProfits – £130k per year selling used cars on eBay