I love WordPress blogs because they are so simple to use.

You just login, write a short message, click ‘Publish’ and it is up on the web.

An added bonus is that people can add comments to your posts to discuss what you have written.

Of course, as with anything good on the web, spammers and scumbags have to try and take advantage of it.

WordPress blogs, unfortunately, attract idiot comment spammers. These people run automated programs which visit your blog and leave comments about all kinds of unwanted subjects – porn, drugs, get rich quick schemes etc.

If you don’t moderate comments, your blog could pretty quickly get filled up with crap.

After almost a year of running this particular blog, I think I have pretty much stopped the spammers now. I get the occassional junk comment but now it is just one, rather than the 50 or so I was getting daily.

What I did was ensure that every comment had to be moderated before it could appear on the blog, EXCEPT for comments by people who had been approved before.

So, if you’ve written a comment on here which has been approved in the past and you write a new one, it should appear immediately – no moderation required.

As I was deleting all of the spam, I kept track of all the stupid words that the spammers were using.

Every time I got a new comment about a certain drug I would add that drug’s name to the Blacklist.

This means that any comments written that mention “cialis” for example, are deleted immediately so I don’t even see them.

Soon I also noticed that the spammers were using similar domain names everytime so I would add part of the domain name into the Blacklist.

Almost all spammers on this blog were using dot info domain names.

I was tempted to add “.info” to the Blacklist but I decided not to just in case someone genuine was using this kind of web address.

So far there are about 250 terms that trigger deletion of comments on this particular blog and they seem to be keeping it clear of any crap.

And good thing too.

I’ve seen blogs that are left to rot and it isn’t pretty once the comment spammers take hold so if you value your own blog, please make sure to keep your Blacklist up to date!

Thanks for reading,

Ben

P.S. If you haven’t already, make sure to check out The How To Lay Off Your Boss Home Study Course – surprisingly good!

P.P.S. By all means leave a comment on this post but please don’t use any dodgy words…

For a while I made a decent profit buying and selling business opportunities on eBay.

The process was pretty simple; I researched popular biz opps and then kept an eye on listings for those particular opps appearing on eBay. If they looked like they were going to go for a song, I would set up a sniping program to place a last minute bid.

In a lot of cases I could get a home study course which usually sold for £300+ for as little as £15!

All I would do then is list the item with a good description and title and place it on eBay with a Buy It Now (BIN) price of £100 or so – sometimes I could get at least half price on these second hand goods.

Usually it would take a few weeks to sell meaning I would have to relist it a couple of times but every package would sell eventually for a good profit.

The secret was to never drop the price.

Every time you relist the item, leave the price the same.

I guess that someone who is interested in your item will keep watching, hoping you will drop your price. After the third or fourth time seeing you list it for the same amount, they tend to lose patience and will bite.

If you weaken your stance and keep on lowering the price they will keep on watching until you lower it to a silly price.

It pays to be patient.

What happened with my little money maker is that one particular seller decided to muscle in on the territory. He bought one course and then copied it lots of times, selling the copies on for £30 or so.

He didn’t seem bothered that he was risking legal problems by selling illegal copies of the product… And, unfortunately, there’s very little you can do when somebody wants to undercut you with dodgy practises.

Although I don’t tend to sell much on eBay anymore, I do keep an eye on the courses that I used to sell. And recently, there have been a number of sellers all copying and selling DVDs of a trading seminar with a £2k+ ticket price.

They are whipping out these illegal copies for next to nothing, tempting fate and a very expensive court appearance!

It made me chuckle when I saw one particular bootlegger put the following in his “Return Policy” field on eBay:

“Due to a number of people ordering DVD’s (sic) from me, receiving them, and then immediately asking for a refund (I would suspect after copying them), I cannot continue to offer this return policy as part of the service.

I hope you understand.”

So, this fella is illegally copying someone else’s intellectual property and selling it for next to nothing.

Then, he is complaining that the people who he is selling to may well be conning him! Very sad…

You break the law and then whinge and whine when somebody asks for a refund on the dodgy goods 🙂

Moral of the story?

Well first of all, don’t sell copied material on eBay – you don’t know who is watching.

Think about this for a moment:

The copyright owner could easily have a friend buy the goods from you, pay by cheque (so they get your name and address) and then they have evidence that you are illegally copying and selling their work.

The primary evidence would be the bootlegged material that you sent to their friend!

Secondly, if you do sell copied stuff then you should expect to have lots of dodgy customers. It stands to reason. Dodgy people look for shortcuts, scams and ways to cheat people out of money. If you offer them a shortcut (cheap knock-offs) then you can’t be surprised when they shortcut you.

eBay is great for bargains, but it isn’t the place where you go to sell information products for a premium – that’s just plain common sense.

If you want to learn how to use eBay to make money (but certainly not in the way you imagined), check out Alex Jeffrey’s superb course at:

http://www.AuctionLoophole.com.

And, just one final word of advice, if you get the rights to some home study courses e.g. DVD courses from well-known UK marketers who I won’t mention here, don’t go selling them on eBay for £39.

Get a decent sales letter put together, put some work in and sell them for the high price they can achieve.

Remember, get your customers into your marketing funnel with a small product then up-sell them with a more expensive course.

This is the way it’s been done for years by the big, successful information publishers and you’ll make much more money than trying to shift volume on eBay.

On Thursday (19th July) the Dow Jones Industrial Index closed at just over 14,000 which is the highest it has ever been.

Unfortunately it didn’t hold the 14k mark and yesterday closed at about 150 points less, 13,851.

Even at the height of the dot com boom, the Dow only hit around 12,000 so hitting 14,000 is quite an achievement. It’s a historic day for the Dow Jones, that’s for sure.

Over at the Market Club, the question that they’ve been getting most is:

“Where is the Dow going?”

With such a high point recorded, everyone now wants to know where it will be 2 days or even 200 days from now…

But that’s not the best question to ask.

The question traders should be asking is not “where is the Dow Jones going” but “how is the Dow is going to get there?”.

As per usual, the Market Club has put together a free video suggesting some techniques for predicting just how the Dow is going to pan out in the short-term future:

MarketClub – Dow 14,000

They’ve picked up the tab so it will cost you nothing… not even your email address.

It’s a MUST WATCH if you have any interest in financial markets, make sure you take advantage of their generosity!

MarketClub – Dow 14,000

Got home today to find a mound of mail in the front porch. As per usual there were several biz opps sales letters in there.

The one that stuck out though was an offer I haven’t seen before from Streetwise which they have called “The Profit Portal”.

At £497 + VAT it isn’t cheap but these courses always seem to sell well and Streetwise are known for offering a robust guarantee…

I was reading through the sales letter and trying to work out what exactly it is all about.

For a change there isn’t a lift letter from John Harrison – just a “Reservation Certificate” (order form), the letter itself and an envelope (not pre-paid).

Seeing that there isn’t an introduction letter with this sales pack I am assuming that this is probably one of the first mailings that they have done for this one.

I have been monitoring Streetwise’s mailings and they do seem to test different aspects of the sales process so if this is a good seller I would expect to see further offers of this product but with a different, improved sales approach.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent there.

Reading through this offer, it seems to be about “domaining” and making money from virtual real estate.

Bob Ryan, the person who is offering this particular package, writes a good story. He asks:

“How Rich Would YOU be if Property was
FREE and Tenants were GUARANTEED?”

Immediately you find yourself imagining that this is another property investing course i.e. buying and selling bricks and mortar but it turns out that it isn’t.

He talks about an “Underground Elite” who use a secret method to make “Fast Cash and Lump Sum Pay-Outs”

What it turns out to be is an opportunity to learn how to setup a business buying and selling domain names and also “parking” these domains for a monthly income.

Parking means that you put up an advertising page on your site and earn money each time someone visits your site and clicks on an advert.

It’s nothing new or particularly secret but it’s true that it is a business that is largely run by a small number of investors. Probably because not many people understand exactly what domaining involves or how it works.

What seems to be overlooked by a lot of people is that some domain names have been sold for amazing amounts of money.

Take “dictionary.com” – this sold for $100million just a few days ago. Of course, there was a whole business behind it but it started with the purchase of one little domain name – and domain names are currently available for about $8 (4 pounds) a year.

You won’t get a domain name like “poker.com” by just visiting GoDaddy. All dictionary words with a dot com extention were registered some time ago. However, you can still find gems by doing some research, for example a domain name with three keywords. You will simply have to take the time to research what keywords are likely to attract visitors.

The package on offer here is some software that Bob Ryan has developed that will make “income-generating websites” for you at the push of a button.

That would probably be a “parking page” – which you can get for free at http://www.sedo.com

There may be more to it but there may not.

Seems like this could just be a “newbie” package to tell you how to buy a domain name and put up adverts on it. You get traffic from people typing in your domain name by mistake whilst looking for related information.

It’ll be very interesting to hear more about this one but I’m not going to bite.

The product I recommend on the subject of “domaining” is Paul Gunter’s Domain Profit Guide: http://www.DomainProfitGuide.com which is ever-so-slightly cheaper.

However, if you do buy the Profit Portal opportunity please do let me know what you think…

Hope are having a nice week and looking forward to the weekend.

First thing I want to say is that I cannot go forward with the Trader Day meet that I mentioned in an email a couple of weeks ago.

Unfortunately the interest was low and I don’t think it will be worth your time to attend.

If I can get more interest in a meet then I will sort it out but for the moment I am afraid it is “on hold”

So, apologies for that…

Pat Adams Retirement Seminar:

Got a letter from someone who had been reading an article on BizOppsUK.com and this person wanted to correct me on a few things I have said there.

Can I just say that I am always happy to correct anything that I place on the site so if you do see an error, please let me know!

Back to Mr Adams, I have posted the comment on the blog so if you have had similar experiences to the mystery writer, please let me know:

Some Controversy About Pat Adams Retirement Seminar Package

Big, big opportunity:

Back in April I went to the Entrepreneur Weekend seminar in Birmingham and met lots of property investors and internet business owners.

It was really, really good and well worth the time and money to attend.

You can read more about the seminar here:

Entrepreneur Weekend Seminar – Birmingham – April 2007

As you will see, it is a work in progress or a “whip” as they used to say in the pizza factory I worked in when I was a student.

I’m half way through the Sunday write-up so please check back in a week or so and I should be further along.

Anyway, at this particular event were two young internet entrepreneurs called Paul and Andy. Their presentation was about “domaining” i.e. buying and selling domain names for profit.

As is pretty typical of me, when I find something I am really interested in it kind of takes over my life and I do a whole load of research.

This is a booming market so make sure to read the blog post I wrote detailing what I have found about domaining as a business:

Could This Be The Next Big Money Maker?

John Cummuta:

Finally, there’s a new review on the site here:

Transforming Debt Into Wealth by John Cummuta

Have a great weekend.

Thanks,

Ben

UPDATE:

Shortly after I sent out the above email, I got another email about the Pat Adams subject:

“This may sound uncanny, but since I mentioned to you about Pat Adams not sending me all the software etc and my website being taken down, he emailed me yesterday and said he will be sending me the software and will get my website put up online again. If this happens, then I have to take back what I said, but it has gone on over a long period of time that I have been waiting for the promised software. Having seen your article about this on your site, I will be interested to see if any of the others who attended his retirement day have had the same problems as me….keep up the good work.”

Interesting…