Spam email hasn’t been a problem for me now for almost 3 years because I signed up with the marvelous SpamArrest back in 2006.

My inbox is always immaculately clean because the one truth about spammers is that they never use a real email address. Consequently they cannot receive the challenge email that they are auto-sent by SpamArrest and they cannot complete the whitelisting procedure.

So all spam stays in the ‘Unverified’ folder where I can occasionally check to see if any proper email has slipped through.

It was yesterday when I found what I think is the best email subject line ever used by a spammer:

“We are too lazy to change subjects every day, please buy our viagra”

Brilliant.

Not so brilliant is the news that one particularly dodgy internet marketing ‘opportunity’ has been re-released just a year after it was last unleashed on the public.

Let me ask you a question or two. If you…

• Released a product which was largely described as ‘crap’ by its buyers
• Released a product which was so falsely described in the sales video that it prompted over 200 posts full of complaints on the most popular internet marketing forum around
• Released a product with a 60 day 100% money back guarantee which you wouldn’t honour
• Told complaining customers to ‘GET A LIFE’
• Provided customers with websites and products they were supposed to sell but could end up in trouble if they did so
• Had your staff sign up to an internet forum under a variety of different usernames in order to try and argue on your behalf against your complaining customers
• Blatantly lied in emails to your customers – and were undeniably found to be doing so
• Threatended complaining customers with legal action for publishing their poor experience of purchasing from you
• Had a raft of complaints written about you and your company on RipOffReport.com because of one product

… what would you do with that product?

Let me guess – you’d either look at the sales process, the product itself and your existing customer support infrastructure and make drastic changes or you’d stop selling the product completely and try and make good with your tarnished reputation.

Personally I’d do the second – stop selling the product immediately and then try and make amends with all the customers I’d pissed off.

What I wouldn’t do, and what I imagine most reasonable human beings would not do, is re-release the same product with the same name exactly as it was the previous year with the same sales video and price.

Guess what this idiot did?

Almost three years ago I bought my first Apple product – a Macbook (the Apple equivalent of a laptop). Unfortunately the hard disk failed just last week which meant a couple of hours inserting a new hard drive and reloading the operating system.

All in all though, it’s a superb piece of kit. Well built, stylish and reliable – traits that Apple are becoming known for.

Perhaps this is why their stock is doing well at the moment.

Since October of last year the Apple share price has been in a trading range but just recently it has started to move up.

Stock market traders will now be wondering if Apple is ready for a upwards move.

And the traders over at INO have pre-empted this question by doing one of their famous free trading videos.

http://www.ino.com/info/333/CD34/&dp=0&l=0&campaignid=3

According to Adam Hewison, the President of INO:

“The world has changed, it is not a buy and hold market anymore. You need to be nimble, trade with a game plan and be disciplined. Those are the key mantras of a successful trader.”

With that in mind, check out what he currently thinks about Apple.

As always, there is no need to register or supply an email address or anything like that.

It’s just what it says, a free trading video discussing the likely direction Apple stock is going to take:

http://www.ino.com/info/333/CD34/&dp=0&l=0&campaignid=3

Enjoy!

Robert Puddy has now confirmed that he will be holding a special 3 day workshop/seminar in Bristol in May.

The seminar will run from Friday the 8th until Sunday the 10th May in a hotel close to the University of West England in Bristol.

In addition to the “workshop” portion of the event there will also be an optional VIP dinner on the Thursday night. This dinner will provide attendees with an opportunity to network with several expert internet marketers in a relaxed atmosphere.

Robert held a similar dinner at his Coventry seminar in 2007 and it was a massive hit.

From what I can gather the whole weekend will be dedicated to showing attendees how to drive traffic to their websites and also how to create successful membership sites.

In his own words Robert promises that he and his team will:

“…give you everything we can to help you drive hordes of traffic to any site you create…”

Speakers confirmed so far are Robert, Paulie Sabol, Donna Fox and Soren Jordansen.

Special room rates are available in the hotel with a bed and breakfast price from £55 per night.

Also, Robert is offering a special discount for those who act on this early – just $197 a ticket for the entire 3-day workshop.

I attended Robert’s seminars in 2006 and 2007 and they were superb networking events as well as excellent learning experiences. Unfortunately Robert did not run a UK seminar last year so I am very much looking forward to this event.

This event is highly recommended and you can find out more at:

[Link removed – site no longer live]

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about attending an internet marketing seminar and not sure whether to go or not, my advice would be to just do it.

Seriously – this is going to be an excellent learning experience PLUS you will meet people who can help you advance your business. And it’s likely you’ll meet them in the hotel bar whilst enjoying a beer. Robert always makes a point of asking every attendee and speaker to gather in the hotel bar after each day’s presentations. It means that the whole weekend turns into a non-stop networking event where lots of business deals and joint venture deals are formed.

Before I went to my first seminar I was nervous and apprehensive but as soon as I got there I knew it was going to be superb. Now I never miss these events.

Do yourself and your business a favour and seriously consider the great opportunity Robert is offering here:

[Link removed – site no longer live]

ADDITION 30/03/09: Robert has just posted a new video explaining the benefits of attending this event:

 

Sometime ago I read an article which I really wish I could find now.

If I remember correctly it was written when the FTSE was riding high at well above 6,000.

It basically said that the FTSE fell as low as 3287 in March 2003 and that, according to the writer, we were “unlikely to ever see the FTSE at those sorts of levels again” (or words to that effect).

The quote stuck in my mind as I often read stock market related books and many say the same thing – markets are never too low to go lower.

And I guess what we are seeing now is severe fear in the markets and a lot of selling.

What do you think – will the FTSE fall further than that famous March 2003 low?

I wouldn’t bet against it.

In fact, I would imagine that certain people are making a lot of money from this falling market.

I got a great offer yesterday via an affiliate promotion by a real scumbag marketer.

Why do I stay on his list when I don’t like or trust him?

Easy – he shows me what is crap.

If he promotes it then 9 out of 10 times it’s junk.

On this one occasion though, I liked what he promoted and bought it.

Of course, I didn’t buy through his link. I went straight to the sales page on purpose through a different browser so I knew he wouldn’t get any credit.

The offer is for a DVD from the two PPC experts who released PPC Classroom and it’s basically a “pay the postage and you can have all these goodies (but you’ll be enrolled on our forced continuity monthly membership)”

So for $10 ($7 if you are in the US/Canada) I get the DVD mailed to me and I also get full access to PPC Classroom (which used to sell for a lot more than $10 in its own right) and I also get 30 days trial to this special new membership they have.

To be quite honest I didn’t read much about the new membership site as I was more interested in the DVD.

They’ve got 30 days to convince me to stay a member which is what they are aiming for I guess.

The sales process was a long one with the compulsory 3 OTOs (that’s “One Time Offers” for the uninitiated) and as I was going through them all and clicking “No Thanks” on each page I had one thought in my mind;

“How is the little guy supposed to compete with this?“

These marketers – and I’ll give them a free plug here – Anik Singal and Amit Mehta – have really put some work into this offer and it looks great.

The graphics are superb, the sales pages are inviting to read and great to look at, and everything flows smoothly from initial sales page through all the various steps to finally end up at the “thank you” page.

No glitches or errors, payment was accepted immediately and I was eventually led to a confirmation page asking me to check my email.

I checked my inbox and my account for PPCClassroom.com was already activated and the details sitting in a new message – all done within a couple of minutes of the order going through.

Faultless.

So how is a one man operation, working out of a spare bedroom in the family home, supposed to compete with this kind of professionalism?

If you’ve been around the information business for even a small amount of time, you’ll know that this business is always touted as a simple way to make money but I imagine that a LOT of work went into this new promotion. Work that a one-man-band-in-a-spare-room just couldn’t get done in a reasonable amount of time.

OK, you say, maybe they couldn’t make such an elaborate offer but anyone can write an ebook and sell it on.

Of course they can. Just download OpenOffice.org, write your ebook and export to PDF.

Simple.

But even if you create that ebook, and write a wonderful sales page, and price it at a paltry $7 – are you going to be able to compete?

Anik and Amit will have lots of JV partners with big customer lists full of proven buyers.

And these JV partners aren’t just getting commission on the $7/$10 – they’ll be getting commission on each and every OTO (3, count them!) PLUS they’ll be getting commission on the monthly recurring charges – $97 per month.

In short, no big marketer is going to promote your ebook for $7 a time when they can push their list through an affiliate link to an offer like Anik and Amit have created and potentially get 100s of dollars per sale.

At the same time, why would anybody buy your little ebook when they can get access to a proven system for just a few dollars?

It seems that it is getting harder and harder for the little guy to compete with these marketers who, although they say that the business can be run from home, have large offices as well as interns, paid members of staff and teams of programmers in Eastern Europe.

I guess the only way to consider competing is to change niches.

Go elsewhere, away from the “make money online” niche.

Or I suppose you could try and target potential customers who are brand new to internet marketing. You could make them outlandish promises of instant wealth if they just buy your Clickbank product.

That method must work as I see lots of marketers doing it over and over.

Either way, it’ll be tough to target people who are a little more aware of the industry unless you have some real meat to your offer – like the one made at PPCClassroom.com.

I’m betting on the big guys – and it really doesn’t surprise me that there is such a huge failure rate in info publishing.

It would be nice to be proved wrong though.