Comment by Ross

September 16, 2006 @ 2:14 am

New York doesn’t seem to have done you any harm. Yes, I agree. What p****s me off even more are the “testimonials” these creeps give each other. Read them carefully. It would be hard to find anything more specious. As for the “customers” — well, why does one well-known “guru” give away mailing lists as bonuses? What happened to building a relationship with your customers? Seems more like “Sell ‘em and ditch ‘em” to me.

Comment by affilorama

September 16, 2006 @ 2:18 am

Very true Ross, how can someone give away a mailing list as a bonus? Sounds rediculous.

Comment by Russell

September 16, 2006 @ 2:33 am

I have now a healthy dose of sceptism of the Guru mailers

especiallly in light of the big JV push everybody seems to

be riding on

Comment by Manoj

September 16, 2006 @ 2:39 am

May be we can have a guessing game here who is that guru Mark is refering to?

Comment by kurt naulaerts

September 16, 2006 @ 2:42 am

The question is: Is there still anything left to believe in? And the ‘gurus’ know that 1000’s & 1000’s of people are looking for that one opportunity but these people are not able to see the true value of an offer when they read a SALES letter. They follow their desire (to make money) & they buy. That’s just what I have done 2 years in a row!
It’s disgusting!
But, I subscribed to Affilorama now!!

Comment by affilorama

September 16, 2006 @ 2:46 am

Hi Kurt,

Glad to have you on board at affilorama, please introduce yourself to me and others on the private members forum. Remember, I’m here to help!

Best regards,
Mark

Comment by susan oak

September 16, 2006 @ 3:30 am

Hi Mark,
Just to let you know that the c**p you’ve been telling us about is feet high. Not so long ago I received so many
emails from ‘famous’ and ‘very famous’ names about
that dammed Butterfly Marketing course I deleted myself
from most of their subscription lists.
Now about ads and the big search engines.
I have just received info called thedeathofAdsense
and again my reaction was oh yeh! But having read it
I realised what the author was trying to tell us.
The ole Internet way of advertising has changed yet again.
Just to show good faith you will notice I have not entered
my affiliate website address.
Instead check out what I have read:
http://www.thedeathofadsense.com
See what you think?
Susan

Comment by Bruce LeClerc

September 16, 2006 @ 4:10 am

Mark,

I agree with you so strongly that I was tempted to go
and pursue another line of work that did not involve interaction with people.

I think it is a real shame that people cannot “name names” and yet in the USA we have evolved from Brand X to “Pepsi vs Coke” type of advertising as well as honest consumer reviews that are not afraid of “slander” but are out to protect the people from those promoting all kinds of stuff that is basically designed to fit right in with P.T. Barnums “There is a sucker born every day” mentality.

It is interesting that an almost 2000 year old book is not afraid to name names and call a hypocrit a hypocrit* and yet today there is an incredible lack of integrity with many of these “JV Partners” that it makes me want to shout it from the housetops to run away while you can or you will get trapped into a cycle of “guru” crap emails and WWW sites.

Of course there are some like you that have a high level of integrity and it is interesting that a good number of these people are not afraid to tell their readers not to buy a certain product, but this is IMHO too rare and thus much of the stuff the “gurus” turn out daily stinks of pure greed dressed as “Hi Friend”, etc.,

*Galatians 2:14 But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why
compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?”

Bruce LeClerc

Comment by Bob

September 16, 2006 @ 4:20 am

Matthew Glanfield — I hate him he sends every day 2-3 emails its like now he says he is going to toilet and now he is going to sleep etc etc crap..

Comment by Mike Thompson Jr

September 16, 2006 @ 4:26 am

Why don’t you “name” names Mark? As customers and subscribers don’t you owe it to us to let us know who we should specifically avoid? I guess I kind of know where your coming from, I think most of us are savvy enough to sort through the crap. All I know is everyone and their mother is using the “Butterfly Marketing” technique, coupled with OTO(One Time Offers), and it’s getting a little bit redundant now. And all of the teleseminars now, with so called “Guru’s” sucking each others #!@%…gag me with a spoon!

Comment by Peter

September 16, 2006 @ 4:38 am

Hi Mark,

It’s nice to see that someone in your position writes it the way it is. You refer to just one person, or so called “Guru”, but all or most of them are at it. To be fair, you can exclude some of the “legends”, because either they are just too damn wealthy to get involved in this rip off, or perhaps getting involved is beneath them.

Occasionally, I have written to one or two of these people to ask why they recommend something they haven’t even read or used before and invariably I get deleted from the mailing list with no response. I can think of one in particular who is supposed to be an expert in copywriting -and lives in a very dry part of the USA :-), although I must admit I have never seen much of his copy - and all he does is recommend this or that, just to line his pockets. You never, ever get any copywriting tips or anything free from this man.

I think the Butterfly episode was a landmark for many reasons. Firstly, the amount of “gurus” who endorsed the product, even though they hadn’t read it or used it. I emailed another “guru”….actually a very nice guy…and he was almost apologetic and said that he had been through part of the course and mainly recommended it on the reputation of its creator! At least he was honest.

But I too am fed up with the crap being peddled on the internet. Signing up for all “guru”’s mailing lists should carry a health and finance warning - that you finances could be severely and unnecessarily dented as a result of following what they recommend and that your blood pressure will go up, once you realise how much money you have wasted to line their pockets!!

Best wishes to all.

Peter

Comment by quamrul polash

September 16, 2006 @ 8:30 am

I got recently a “give away” mailing list as a bonus for joining one program. I sent verification email first before marketing to these people. Out of 50 thousands “hot” prospects, only one accepted the verification, few (less than 0.1%) opened the email. It tells you a lot about these “gurus”. Good topic.

Comment by dan

September 16, 2006 @ 8:43 am

This week I received emails from every big name guru
promoting a special cd audio series that will make me think better. I would receive one a month for only 29.95.
I cannot believe the big name gurus would promote this
kind of garbage.

But like Mark said, its all about promoting each others
products no matter how bad they are.

Comment by splork

September 16, 2006 @ 11:23 am

Thanks for the plug Mark. I would like to think that the days of you reading about my ill-advised purchases would come to an end. I went through a massive purge of tons of opt-ins that I had subscribed to which was I believe was the crux of my malfunction. That helped alot as I stopped getting pitched, and falling for, every ebook and software product pimped by the guberus.

I still fall for the occasional stinker though. I tell you though, I am very wary of a big name marketer pimping other big name marketer’s products. There seems to be some kind of back scratching exchanges to keep the money flowing.

Yea! I saw that CD thing coming through my emails too. I think it started with Reese and I noticed it from other folks that got dropped into my Bulk folder.

It’s no wonder everyone says to build a big mailing list.

Comment by Scott

September 16, 2006 @ 3:01 pm

Hey Mark

Great thread, I think you hit a hot spot

I stay on a handful of guru lists just to keep up with whats happening. What amazes me is the influx of new kids. They take the same offers put a slightly twist on the presentation and suddenly they’re a guru. The worse part is, it wastes about an hour of my day.

What amazes me is that some of the marketers I’ve come to respect will promote these deals. It really makes me want to puke!

On the other hand, there’s a ton of free material out there for the newbie to get stared with, of course, not all of it is good but its a great way to start learning on a budget. I’ve been sick for a long time, didn’t have the money to buy anything and I could have learned more quickly with the material that’s available now. Mark, after spending some time reading your emails and watching some of the videos….I really wanted to purchase the one time fee membership….like I said, illness has left me broke so I couldn’t.

The point is, I had to invest some time reading and watching material from a guy I never heard of and at the time I think there were 2 other big affiliate marketing promotions going on. I had to use discernment to determine who and what was the best and my bet would have been on you. For the person who is new at this game I don’t think there is any other way to develop discernment than to wade thru the garbage until you find someone you can trust. Just like people who read your material, at some point they’ve screened thru the crap and now look to you for direction. The problem is that it takes a big man to stand up and say follow Mr X or I’d stay away from Mr Y.

I have a list, not a big one, my promotions are more or less reviews since I never promote anything I don’t use. I simply can’t bring myself to pimping products once or twice a week.

Oh well, in America we have the voters box, on the internet we have the “unsubscribe” button.

Thank God for the “unsubscribe” button :)) and learn how to use it.

To our Success

Scott
http://www.spGraphic.com

Comment by Mitch

September 16, 2006 @ 7:39 pm

Why bring this up unless you aree going to name names.

I will,and maybe you will leave it up, I hope so.

This is known as the guru circle jerk. It starts at the top with Filsaime, Then he has his next rung which consists of Tellmen Knudson and gary Ambrose. Then below then you have all these young kids like Wellman, and a half a dozen others who we are supposed to believe are having $100,000 weeks because of some BS “Butteryfly” website.

I am so sick of these guys I could puke. If you read their emails and sales pages, it is obvious they think that the masses are idiots. Their customers are units and percentages. They sell you some PLR pkg on a one time offer and move on the what the next guy has to peddle. It’s all orchestrated so that don’t step on each others toes.

As far as I am concerned John Reese is the real deal, and the rest of these guys are a bunch of scam artists.

Comment by Ed

September 16, 2006 @ 10:02 pm

Hi Mark;

Aman Brother!
More people should follow your example.

This letter is going to be LONG and UGLY… here it goes

I equate the internet marketing business to hard pressure used car salesmen you see in the movies.

What’s even nastier is that these guys and gals are so incestous that they couldn’t care less if you unsubscribe because they’ll come up with another “give away” and get their “JV Partners” to promote to the unsuspecting masses.

Only if NBC exposed some of these crooks like they did last night with the informercial industry. If you didn’t watch it, then I strongly recommend you watch the Dateline NBC on Informecial scams.

Years ago, when it was acceptable, tolerated and legal, I owned and operated a very large telemarketing company. I employed over 300 people and we deployed massive numbers of computers to dial people up and sell them widgets.

I hired very savvy telemarketing managers to motivate, train and produce better results from the telemarketing staff on the floor.

The type of selling, the type of “time sensative” pressure, the kind of constant follow up— are all reminiscent of the “OLD” school high pressure telemarketing techniques I have seen so many times. People got fed up with the high pressure telemarketing BS and they hopefully will get fed up with the garbage these people force down our throats as content!!!

I have a recoreding of a so called “Guru” who was conducting a teleseminar and laughing it up with his buddies that he gets upwards of $20 from each email+mailing address he sells. That he couldn’t care less if they leave the list after he gets the mailing address… WHAAAAAAAATTTTT!

I hope you guys appreciate and respect what Mark is doing here and the amount of crap that’ll rain on him because of his position. I also know for a fact that this is NOT a publicity stunt or some means to link-bait cause… no-one in their right mind will do this to get some attention.

He’s got all the attention he needs.

What I’ve done in the recent months to regain my freedom is this:

(1) I’ve unsubscribed from every moron’s email address who doesn’t offer decent content. I don’t mind if they sell me stuff. BUT do NOT shove crap down my throat that was written by a 5 year old and DO NOT sell me something on every single email.

If my own wife tried to get me to buy her something every single time we went out, we would be divorced now. So what makes these guys/gals think that I want to be sold something everytime they decide to write?

(2) I only read quality emails from quality marketers. Ken McCarthy, Mark Ling, Perry Marshall etc.

My production has gone up.
My spending has gone down.
I have made almost double the amount I was making because I am spending less time reading garbage.

I told you this was long and ugly
But I wanted to give it my all and hopefully this will help someone who is lost just like I was a few months ago.

Thanks Mark.
You DA MAN

Comment by Traderj

September 16, 2006 @ 10:12 pm

You know…. what really annoys me about all these “so called” gurus is that they rarely practice what they preach, they all talk about building relationships with your list yet they basically send out crap every other day saying I just had to let you know about his… 95% of it is crap… I could name a few lists that I have taken myself off of in the last couple of weeks, trust me taking a bunch of old free books and re-writing it and calling it a course does NOT make you a Guru, it makes you a wanker….

The other thing that is just driving me nuts lately is all these damn giveaway sites, I see stuff on them I like, a script I’ve wanted or something like that, so I pony up my name and email addy and 9 times out of 10 the darn script doesn’t work and of course it was free so there is no support, you contact the author and he either tries to sell you a “working” version or says that product was not legally in that giveaway to begin with..

Whatever happened to real products and quality????

I hate to be a brown noser Mark, but I find your membership site to be one of the very few places on the net that I actually feel like I’m getting good value, I am in the process of getting a product ready to be marketed.. and it’s NOT related to internet marketing and I am not going to plug it here I just wanted to say that a ton of what I’ve read in the back office has really helped me with getting it ready..

Keep up the great work.. oh btw my guess for the wanker marketer you were talking about.. is that guy Eric from Eric’s Tips.. talk about a total wanker.. anyone else try is BM ripoff MMS? What a bug filled piece of tripe.. you should check out their support forum hahahaha… they were deleting comments day and night from all the complaints…

Anyway as stated keep up the great work. best 30 bucks a month I’ve ever spent.

Comment by Bruce LeClerc

September 16, 2006 @ 11:35 pm

Mark ,

I am very gratified to see that there are so many others out there that are seeing how these “gurus” are actually causing nausea and more.

What the issues are here are basically a duality of greed and lack of integrity and I honestly do not know which is the most prevalent.

Anyone that has been on Mike Filsaime Instant Buzz for any time will tell you that it is one of the most biased and ostrich mentality forum on the internet. Any time one person attempts to post something that would be questioning the actions of other “guru’s” they are rejected because they want to keep the tone positive.

I imagine after this latest barrage of crap emails and “JV” WWW sites I am not alone in unsubscribing from many of these lists.

How many of these “Guru’s” would you invite to your house for dinner ? That basically is the criteria that I am using now and I will tell you that list is rather small and I can honesty say that none of them would be carrying a butterfly net.

I still say that if you really want to help people, you will name names as long as your reporting is factual and not opinion.

Necessity they say is the mother of invention and if that is the case we need inventions/products that are not simply clones of one another but are new and offer real value to both the newbie and the advanced marketers.

Bruce LeClerc

Clear Yourself of ALL Your Debt Including a 4 Day Old Mortgage and Car Loan with our 15 Yr Old Company in 30-60 Business Days. http://ourbest4u.com/loves/nomoredebt

Comment by Steve

September 17, 2006 @ 8:24 am

lol…yeah…one minute Joel Comm is pushing the “Adsense Templates”, next he’s hopping on the “Adsense is Dead” campaign. They have no shame.
BTW, just joined Affilorama. Never heard of it until I stumbled on Splork’s blog.

Comment by Ross

September 18, 2006 @ 2:35 am

Why is there always someone incapable of posting a comment without throwing in some advertising? To me it makes them as nausious as any “guru”. I hope it will be deleted soon.

Comment by Bruce LeClerc

September 18, 2006 @ 5:36 am

Hey Ross,

I have no problems if my signature file is removed but I thought participating in forums was an avenue of becoming known and how is that possible by name only. If you notice my previous post did not have any signature but I saw Scott’s so I figured (perhaps wrongly) that they were allowed. Sorry for making you sick. Pepto Bismol works wonders and the new cherry flavor is quite good

Bruce Leclerc

Comment by Steve

September 18, 2006 @ 3:08 pm

Mark,

While I cannot afford to join affilorama, I do enjoy your emails. Yes there are far too many rip offs working the internet, but it is business as usual, just now the internet is the medium to use. The one thing that I feel is funny is that all of us here are doing nothing more than preaching to the choir. We all need to go and out these rip off ‘gurus’ and expose them for the greedy and insensitive SOBs that they are.

It seems imho that the customer (as far as the internet goes) is good for only fleecing, anything else such as customer service is considered a pain in the ass and a complete waste of time and money. It’s no wonder that brick and mortar stores still exist, at least the customer can walk in and yell at somebody should somethng go wrong! LOL! But that is something that businesses on the internet must address, the customer’s need to see, touch, hear, smell and or taste the goods. Until that time comes, brick and mortar will always get the business.

Again Mark, I do appreciate your emails, and if ever I should make money doing business on the internet, you can be assured that I will become a member of affilorama.

Regards,

steve