Category Archives: Affiliate Marketing

Third Tribe Marketing Review – Worth It?

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ThirdTribeMarketing is a collaboration of some of the bigger names in the IM world.

Darren Rowse
Brian Clark
Chris Brogan

*Aaron Wall gets mentioned on the About page, but I’m having a hard time finding him anywhere on the site and forum.

I stuck around for three months, hoping and expecting to find some good stuff – instead I just wasted $141.

Having a quick poke around, it seems the forum has or had 3472 subscribed members (that’s the last number I tried adding to the URL – /members/forums/member.php?u=3472 -, which doesn’t return an error “Invalid User specified.”

Here’s a quick guesstimate of what the owners/founders of 3rdtribe have made in the last six and a half months since people signed up at the end of February 2010.

3472 members * $47 = $163184. And that’s if they all just paid for one month. I’m pretty sure you can multiply this number at least 3 or 4 times (6 months – people canceling/subscribing ratio % blahdiblah…) to get the total income unglued media has made from this community so far.

I guesstimate +- $500.000

Not bad for a simple forum eh?

Ah, but is it worth it?

In my opinion? No. The seminars are nothing new, pretty much all that is being said is available on one forum/blog or the other. The amount of seminars is poor. There are no dates listed on the seminars page, but I’m guessing there’s roughly one or two 60 minute sessions per month.

The WOW factor which drags people over the line to subscribe for $47 is definitely the possibility to rub shoulders with the IM celebs in the forums. Nothing more.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I guess it all depends on what side of the field you’re playing. If you have the name, the credibility, and the following, why not make more money? But if you really think the 3rd tribe crew cares about educating you in the ways of IM, wake up. They hunt for profit and the weapon of choice is ignorance.

Your recipe for success; You take a handful of IM celebs, throw in a dash of “unique” content, create an “exclusive” club, and a whole bunch of gullible newbies/wanabees. Let it stew for a few months and profit.

Imran Naseem Banned – Does a BooHoo

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Honestly, I wasn’t looking for more Imran Naseem material. But I kinda stumbled across this post on the warrior forum. Amazing how Mr Naseem dodges all valid questions from someone that wants to buy his product, and simply tells them DON’T BUY. Obviously Imran cannot produce the proof that the buyer requested, and so tries to shift the attention to the potential buyer, by saying that the buyer should take action instead of complain (which he doesn’t), be productive, and not browse forums all day.

So how the hell are people supposed to buy your products Imran? If all you do is promote your WSO’s on WarriorForum? And you’re telling them not to browse the forums? And what’s this bullshit about you not browsing any other forums but WF? Oh, is that because the similar thread you opened on Digital Point Forums got you banned from there? (Imran has a cry about DP after he got banned here. (mirror).

Why don’t you prove us all wrong about you, and answer the simple questions elirainc asked you about the product you are offering for sale?

What’s kinda scary is that the original post by Elirainc was removed by a mod or admin on WF. Seemed like legitimate questions a consumer might have before buying a product to me.

And I gotta say – Love all the users with 25 posts or less bumping the thread all the time. Proxy much? Come on people on WarriorForum. Wake up and smell the coffee – the ONLY way Imran Naseem is making money is by selling bullshit WSO’s to you. He even had a WSO (mirror) about making money with WSO’s at one time. The site is offline – Imran probably figured out that some people might start connecting the dots.

Oh, and if you lookup “Ironic” in the picture dictionary, you’ll most likely see something like this screenshot:

Learning Customer Skills with Imran Naseem

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Hi kids. Today we will be learning customer skills 101 with Imran Naseem.

Lesson 1: The customer is always right, even when he’s wrong. Especially when his name is Imran Naseem.

Imran buys a domain from someone.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering why I keep posting about Imran – He keeps messaging me on gtalk about how great my posts about him are, and that I should keep it up.

Imran Naseem – You crack me up

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Please Imran Narcisist Naseem, stop digging. That hole you’ve made for yourself is only getting deeper.

Here’s a few replies to points in your blogpost (mirror, just in case you delete it again like you did with the last one), in which you try to justify your behaviour and attempt some form of damage-control.

1. I have now a “Cult Following” on several Blackhat “Scamhat” World forums.

Is that right Imran? You’re giving people on blackhat forums the name “Scamhatters”? So why have you been selling LOADS of blackhat products? (Google doesn’t lie). Does that mean you’re one of the SCAM hatters? Or are you just a two-faced hypocrite?

Here’s just a selection of blackhat sites you created and sold on flippa; blackhatgold.com – blackhatsalvation.com – blackhatcode.com – blackhattersmembership.com – blackhatcodebreaker.com

2. the link juice is excellent and my blog now has a PR of 3 :) ..thanks to a guy called “Bobby Jones” – who is a member of these “scamhat” world forums and is a professional con artist.

Oh, ok. So Google decided to give your blog a PR3 two days after I posted about you? That’s giving my blog too much credit Naseem. You really don’t know much about how SEO or Google or Pagerank works do you? Retorical question. (That means don’t answer Naseem).

And I’d love to see you give some substance to your accusation of me being a “professional con artist”. (You do know what libel is right? Ask your brother – he’s a professional qualified lawer, no?) I know you’re feeling threatened by the truth, but come-on…random name calling with not a shred of information to back-up your claims? That’s weak, even for you. Smoke and mirrors Naseem…

3. Is Frank Kern a REHASH KING?

Imran, I really don’t think you can consider yourself in the same league as Mr Kern. Oh, and did you know he has a product called Mass Control? Sounds like he’s copied the idea off your products; Mass Offline Control and Mass Cash Control. Funny that!

4. I love it when people talk about me – good or bad. In fact thanks to this “Jones” guy I had a lot of people purchase several products on my blog.

Stop lying Imran. My posts about you only had about 1000 views. Fake it until you make it comes to mind.

5. But all you do is smile and keep launching products and keep helping people make money online.

I think you made a typo there and was meaning to say; But all you do is smile and keep rehashing other people’s products and keep helping yourself to n00bies money online.

One other ‘interesting’ fact about your blog was this; You constantly seem to try and defend yourself against all the haters out there that are jealous and bitching about your online “success”. I’m starting to see a pattern Naseem. Perhaps people are bitching for a reason.

Anyway, that’s another ten back links I’ve given you. Maybe you’ll have a PR4 tomorrow?

Imran Naseem Part 3 – Cry me a river

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Dear readers, I would like to apologise for the flood of content today, but Imran Naseem won’t stop giving me more ammunition. Either way, this will be the last post I’ll dedicate to Imran. Even he gets boring after a while.

First off, here’s a picture of Imran’s “defence tactics” which he deemed necessary, following my 2 previous posts about him. I figured I’d make a screenshot of his post, just to keep him honest.

As you can see, he’s not telling the whole story truthfully. Just check my screenshots of the email thread, and you’ll notice that I never asked for any freebies. Oh – and I simply love the part where he ‘accuses’ me of wanting free information from pathetic blackhat sites to share.

We all know there is only one Rehash King Imran Naseem who does these things. Except he doesn’t share the free info. He sells it.

Anyway, here’s some more abuse I had to cop from Imran on my instant messenger. Enjoy!

Ah well. He rests his case. Hopefully he’ll keep his word this time and stop bothering me. Otherwise I’d have to sue his for cyberstalking or something funky.

Imran Naseem Part 2 – We’re going to court

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What a treat kids – not one but two blogposts by your favorite Bob this month! After Imran Naseem read my previous blogpost, in which I expressed my feeling about him, he followed up with a rather amusing conversation on my instant messenger. I’m just following up on some of his advice, and paste the chatlog on my blog.

Imran Naseem will be your friend – if you pay him for it.

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Internet Marketers about their list; “Mine’s bigger than yours!” – “Easiest money I’ve ever made” – “It’s like an online ATM” – “one email paid for my holiday”.

Most of you know will know what I mean when I talk about the “list”. It’s simply a list of email addresses obtained by an Internet Marketer over time, by getting people to sign-up to it via newsletters and/or freebies. Once a list is compiled, the marketer starts using this to contact the people on the list, trying to sell them stuff. They can say they care about you, but you’re really nothing more than a potential lead for a sale.

So what? Well…nothing. It is what it is. A list of leads. I just thought I’d explain to those of you who didn’t know yet. Anyway, back to the topic…

My email address is on loads of these lists. I’m a sucker for them. Not because I want to buy from the list owners, but because of their entertainment value. I get a chuckle every time I read about how “the doors are closing soon, buy now” – “one time only offer, price will go up tomorrow” – “Only 85 45 27 11 copies left!” – “After we sell 20 copies, we’re doubling the price!”

You get the idea. Marketers are trying to make you feel ike you will miss out on a great opportunity if you don’t act NOW. And that’s fair enough…after all – selling their products to you is their end goal, and they use every tool that they can use to get you to give them your money. They probably wouldn’t be very good marketers if they didn’t.

Once in a while, a list-owner’s behaviour stands out in my inbox. They do things slightly different, and they just kind of flag themselves. One of these guys is Imran Naseem aka Nasio987. Or as some people online like to call him:

* a.k.a. TheRehashingMachine™, MasterRehasher™, CopyPaster™, …,
TheGreatestRehasherWhoEverLived™. All items trademarked by Imran Naseem.

Imran is a product maker/website flipper. Basically what he does is get content from one place, flushes it through his secret  rehash machine, uses new wrapping paper, and puts his own stamp on it. He then sells this product on a new sales website, makes a few bucks from  buyers on forums full of aspiring and ignorant marketing newbies that are willing to pay for any new product that promises them a magic wand to get rich online. Once this stream dries up, he packs up his things, and sells the sales website and product to some other ignorant and unsuspecting newbie.

The Imran Naseem product catalogue is available on Flippa by the way. See for yourself what I’m talking about.

Say what you want, but I simply refuse to believe that someone who has offered a dozen CPA related websites for sale in the past few months, really has new and useful information on each and every one of those sites.

Well, think of this method what you want – it seems to work well for Imran. He’ll never be out of business with a new sucker born every minute.

*Disclaimer – I have not bought a single one of Imran’s products, so I could be WAY off in this post. But something about selling $5 ebooks on how to make thousands of dollars with something like CPA just doesn’t feel right to me. If your information product is that good, why on earth would you:

A: Sell it for dirtcheap ? (because the cheaper the price, the more you can flog?)

B: Sell it in the first place! (creating competition for yourself)

In case you are wondering why I’m having a whinge about Imran Naseem…Well I replied to one of his emails today, asking him if he wasn’t getting tired of emailing people on his list all day every day. As a response Imran basically told me immediately to piss off, and he kicked me from his list because I never bought anything from him, and I was accused of being a freebie seeker…

I wonder why he got all up in arms and uber-defensive right away. Makes me think he might be used to dealing with complaint emails a lot or something…Here’s the email thread, starting with me replying to a sales email for a product called CPA Relapse 2.

His final request was not to respond to him, since he didn’t have time for this. Assuming he was indeed busy doing some more rehashing and emailing people that will give him their money, I left the conversation at that. See, I’m not such a bad guy after-all. Even gave him a few free links!

Hiding Affiliate Links? You’re Doing It Wrong.

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Here’s a joke for you. Affiliate marketer X is browsing the Internet and finds a product review on your site. X loves it and wants to go and buy it. You, being the cunning affiliate marketer that you are, have very cleverly disguised you affiliate link, so that there is no other way for X but to click on your link to find the affiliate product page. Of course, X too is a cunning affiliate marketer, and figures that he’d rather get a nice discount on the product by copy and pasting his own affiliate link, instead of bringing referral money into your pocket. That’s right, X can easily do this and in the end, the joke’s on you!

Be not what you seem.

Be not what you seem to be.

Lets go over this scenario, and this time we’ll take it a little slower, so we can see where we can prevent the affiliate link hijacking.

You have signed up with an affiliate network, and are actively promoting their products. Every one of these networks provides you with your very own affiliate link. These can come in various shapes and sizes, but the general idea is that they stick a little more link after the main URL. (example – http://diythemes.com/?a_aid=mmm) As easy this is for you to copy and paste, as easy it is for X to copy, edit the part after the main URL, paste, and profit.

You affiliate link has just been hi-jacked, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Was this naughty? Yes. Does anyone besides you care? No.

Ok, so you’ve done a bit of research, and you’ve figured out how to ‘trick’ people, by cleverly disguising your affiliate link. The most common methods used today are:

Option 1. You’re so lazy that you figure a URL redirect service will fix your problem. You hit up tinyurl.com or bit.ly, create a nice short URL, and use this. Too bad we can all smell this affiliate link from a mile away.

Option 2. You create a php, or html, redirect file. Your affiliate link now looks like this: http://www.yourblog.com/go/affiliateproduct.php or http://www.yourblog.com/affiliateproductname/. Clever! I bet nobody has you figured out yet! Oh wait, they click the link, find the real URL, either open up a different browser, clear cookies, or just create their own affiliate link to overwrite your cookie, and that’s that. You just missed out on another sale, and X got a discount.

Option 3. Ok, so you’re a bit smarter by now, and you know how to work your .htaccess file and you insert a rewrite rule. You’re so leet! Too bad X will still do the same thing to you like he did in option 2. You’re just not making any sales are you?

Right, I think those three will apply to the majority of you guys. Raise your hand and leave a comment if you do it differently.

Now, here’s how I like to do it.

Let’s take DIYthemes as an example again. Those guys sell the Thesis WordPress theme, developed by Chris Pearson and Brian Clark. It is by far one of the most popular WP themes out there, and because of it’s fantastic quality, a lot of people will buy this. Lucky for us affiliate marketers – They do an affiliate program.

I bought the theme and am using it on my personal blog. I love it, its awesome, and it just works. So when I saw the affiliate program, I was more than happy to promote Thesis, knowing that 99.9% of the buyers would be satisfied with the theme (I believe that you should never promote a product you don’t like, or believe in). Now because I have been through options 1-3 myself, I knew there had to be a different way of doing this. There are certain wordpress plugins that help you cloak your affiliate links, but they usually cost a fair bit, and they essentially still do the same as options 1-3.

If I want to promote a good affiliate product, I go looking for a suitable domain. Something that has the product name in it, and whatever keywords you think would help. All I do then is create an index.php file for the root folder, and add this little bit of code:

iframe-code

All this does is bring up the original affiliate product website in a frame. The beauty of this method is -
A: You can be sure that the affiliate product owner has put in a lot of effort in order to optimize their page for sales. They will make the sale for you.
B: In the browser address bar, the domain you bought will show up. There won’t be any added bits and pieces after the link, it just shows up as an absolute URL.

Because it looks like there is no affiliate link whatsoever, your odds of actually getting the sale have just increased drastically. Obviously X could still figure out this is an affiliate link by looking at the page source, but since there’s nothing to flag him, he won’t even think about checking it.