We all know that there are scams running around online. The question is how do you spot one? Well I’ve come up with a guide on how you can. For this, I’ve decided to use this salesletter (screenshot below) as an example.

[Disclaimer!] Now I’m not saying that this example is a sure scam because I didn’t buy the product and maybe the product is as good as the author claims. I don’t know.

What I’m saying� is that I’m going to share my personal experience and opinion as I went through the salesletter. And my opinion is those people who buy this are going to sorely disappointed.

Again, these are� guidelines (and really.. a lot of it is common sense). There may be some really reputable websites out there that make these mistakes, so� don’t fret about that.

But you can be sure that if a site makes a whole bunch, it probably smells bad. I won’t be revealing the domain name for said site, so with that let’s begin:

1. Overall Bad Design

Take a look:

The whole site just doesn’t look like it was done professionally and� the copywriting is riddled with pictures all over. A experienced marketer would know that copywriting is best without pictures distracting the reader from the message. Take a look:

No-use images all over! Overall the whole thing just doesn’t look like what a solid salesletter should look. Like having a spiffy banner on top (not a must though), “headline’ in red, a sub headline, good fonts, etc, etc so on and so forth.

Now having a bad design per se doesn’t neccessarily mean that a website is a scam. Some of Yanik Silver’s salesletters aren’t exactly pretty but we all know he’s the real deal. But most of the time, good basic design and solid copywriting are signs are of someone who knows what he’s doing. Like this:

Solid design, graphics, headline� and copy. This is the real deal.

Next…

2. Fake Clickbank Screenshots

Take a look:

How do I know it’s fake? Take a look at my real Clickbank screenshots I have on my previous blog entries and compare them. The difference is obvious.

In this example, the Clickbank stat bars are the wrong colour, the font is different and� Clickbank pay periods should� end on the 16th and on the 1st. Not 31 or 30. Also it should read Daily Sales Subtotals and not Daily Sales Subtotal. Ditto for Period Sales Subtotals.

What’s more he doesn’t blur out his clickbank id. Most maketers do that for privacy purposes and you should too. The clickbank banner on top also looks dodgy.

Anyway to fake your earnings is really, really bad.

3. Doctored Clickbank Cheques

More lies. take a look:

Again, take a look at my cheque� I posted on my previous blog post and compare it. Looks almost similar but the giveaway is that the name, dollar wording and� date are on different white backgrounds as compared to the cheque.

And for the dollar amount, the font is too big and it’s missing the *** in front of the numbers as well.

Also this is very, very� subtle. Notice that the dollar amount is $13,845.00 . So what?

How often do your Clickbank earnings end EXACTLY at xxxx.00? Highly highly improbable. Usually you will earn xxxx.26 or xxxx.74 . Something like that. You should be earning some cents if I can put it that way.

To fake cheques as well? My, my this is starting to smell fishy.

And oh yeah… If you notice that my cheque has no address on it, it’s because I covered it for privacy purposes.

Let’s continue…

4. Poor Alexa Ranking

I have the Alexa toolbar on my web browser and it measures the traffic rank of a website. Take a look at the rank on this site.

For this site, it ranks at 1,170,697. Which means that its the 1,170,697th most trafficked site on the net. Yahoo is no. 1, MSN.com no. 2 and Google no. 3� . So this means the lower your rank, the more traffic you get.

So why an Alexa rank of 1,170,697 is fishy to me?

Because if what he claims ($400-800 a day) is true, then he should know his way around on the net. But the poor traffic rank for this site just tells me that he doesn’t. Because if he really does know his stuff (like traffic generation)� and this website sells a really good product, then by right the traffic on this site should be higher. But it isn’t. So another red flag for me.

For your info, some of my ‘failure’ sites which I don’t even touch now, even rank better than this. And SSMM is already around 116,000+. And I’m not exactly a master at driving traffic yet.

I would have to highlight though that some good reputable sites have a lousy Alexa rank because they’re new. Case in point is Ewen Chia’s Super Affliate Cloning Program which is less than a month old� and has a rank of 6 million over. But we all know he’s one of the best marketers out there.

5. Stock Photos

He says he the internet has brought him these great goodies:

The problem is that all these photos are stock photos.� Stock photos are photos which are taken previously and� that can be purchased for agreed-upon usage. Usually advertising agencies buy them to use the photos for their projects and stuff. In this case, he probably copied and pasted them from the web.

Anyway, if you want to prove that you own all these, you would take a photo with you standing beside your car, house,� etc. But he doesn’t own them, you see, so he can’t.

6. Web Counter

Omigod! He has a teenage web counter!

Now is this really amateur or what? No professional marketer would ever ever put something so amateur on his salesletter!

Web counters are for teenage girls who just started their own personal blog and want to use it to see if their blog gets more hits than their rivals so they can prove they are more popular or whatever.

Anyway, big and silly red flag for me.

7. No Contact Info

Notice that you have no way to contact the owner of this website. No address, number, email or contact form. Nothing.

A real business or marketer would list their contact details because it creates trust. Also they know that some potential customers may have some questions answered before they buy and they would want to help answer those queries. I get emails all day for SSMM.

Would you trust a business which doesn’t want you to contact them? I don’t think so. Sniff* Smells like fish around here…

8. No Opt-in box

Now at first, not having an opt-in box may seem like an amateur thing to do. Fo example, Stephen Pierce didn’t have an opt-in box on his rapid swing fire trading site in the early days (he has now) because he just didn’t realise he needed one.

All real marketers will have an opt-in box. It’s a MUST. Without a list or targeted clients, you have no business. You know what Ewen Chia told me was his biggest asset? His list. If you aren’t building a list, then forget about internet marketing.

In this case though, it’s because the owner of this site doesn’t want to contact you. He doesn’t plan to follow up. All he wants is you to buy his stuff and then piss off.

The only redeeming thing is that this product is sold through Clickbank so you can get you a refund through them (within 8 weeks). Clickbank has this sort of protection for consumers. So you can feel safe getting your products through them.

So let’s wrap things up….

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Convinced? I am.

You see, some of the things I mentioned above may have been purely honest amateur mistakes like not having an opt-in box, adding a web counter, bad design, not having contact info,� etc. A marketer selling online for the first time� may make those sort of mistakes.

But to fake the Clickbank earnings and the cheque is a serious LIE. Now that’s a serious integrity breach and� that to me� is a� BIG, BIG red flag.

I have no idea how Clickbank approved this product, so maybe it’s for real. But I’m sure not gonna part with my money to find out.

And if you’re ‘Charles P Goodman’… I’m really sorry, but you’re busted.

Out.

This just arrived in the mail:

Guess what’s inside?

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An envelope! Woooo….. Let’s see what’s inside this…�

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OMIGOD! It’s a cheque from Clickbank for more than friggin’ US$5000! ahahhahaha!

Now now, before you go about thinking why in the world I’m showing this off, this post is not meant for me to brag about this precious piece of paper. I just want you to know what it looks and feels like to get PAID for your internet efforts. Especially if you’ve never had something like this before. Like me. This is my first ever cheque.

Well I had one from Google before but that one didn’t exactly set my pulse racing. So let me treat this Clickbank one as my true virgin cheque! haha!

I believe that when you get to know what it feels and looks like to have something and you constantly focus your thoughts and energies on it, it WILL manifest and become reality.

Adam Khoo used to check out and sit in BMWs in car showrooms way before he made his million and guess what? He now has his BMW. It manifested. It became reality.

He also used to dream about going back to his secondary school and giving a talk there to the students to share about his story and also to prove some of his teachers wrong and that he made it in life. And guess what? That also came true.

Your thoughts become reality. So if this representation of what it’s like to receive a 5-grand cheque can help you manifest one in your own reality, great!

Yes! The Official Launch is over (which means I can also blog about other things…), so let’s have� a final recap of the whole thing before we move on.

Cue screenshot (again!):

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As you can see the last 3-4 days, the sales picked due to two things. One is of course time’s running out, don’t need to be a marketing whiz to know that one and the other one was I sent an email broadcast informing the people on the list of the deadline.

Which was a big failure. In my opinion. You see when we first did the pre-launch way back, we had only about 500+ people on out list at that time. This time the list was grown way beyond that 500, but the response I observed was tepid at best, if I can put it that way.

I’ll have to figure out why even though list has grown tremendously, the response hasn’t followed as well. In fact, the number of sales due to broadcasts I mailed for the pre-launch and this official launch� is about the same. It’s like the list never grew at all! !@#$%� (why is that hyperlinked?)

Anyway, I’ll have to dig deep and get some answers.

Oh yea.. so let’s recap: for this Official Launch we did 117 sales for a total revenue of US$7839. All in about 21 days. Good or bad result? Well, you can have your say. All in all, I’m grateful to be a part of it. And I think you know why. haha!

Alright, it’s been about 12+ days since SSMM was launched and let’s have a look at how’s it going:

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Oh no! Not too good at all! As you can see, when compared to the hype of the pre-launch, we’re really falling behind. It just goes to show that there will be ups and downs on the internet anytime.

Now even though this isn’t as impressive as we would have expected, it’s still a decent result (who isn’t happy with US$3000 in half a month passive?) But we could really do better especially after we set the bar so high so early.

Another lesson from this is that JV partnerships are very important. I feel the difference between this launch and the pre-launch is down to the number and the quality of the affiliates of SSMM. When you have an established marketer pick up your product and decides to recommend it to his burgeoning list, you can only go on your kness and yell, ‘Hallelujah!.’ haha! I’m serious…

So keep that in mind when you are planning to market your stuff online. You can only win-win when you team up with as many JV partners and established ones at that.

Anyway, I do expect this figure to rise when the clock runs down and the sense of urgency to grab SSMM increases. I will also be sending out another email broadcast to the lists reminding them of the impending deadline to grab SSMM before the price rises indefinitely, so that will contribute as well.

All in all, pretty ok. But like I said, it feels deflationary after the europhia of the first time.

Alright, I said I’ll give you some information about the affiliate program we’re running for the Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires and so I will.

If you have no idea what being an affiliate means in the context of internet marketing, then I’ll deliver it to you in a nutshell. Basically, you get paid HALF of every sale you recommend and that’s it.

haha! I said it would be in a nutshell.

But seriously that is the gist of it because besides that we are doing everything else. We create the product, sales page, payment gateways, customer support, follow-ups, etc, yadda yadda yadda for you. You don’t have to worry about any of those things like you would have to if you decided to sell your own product on the internet.

And believe me, it’s a LOT of work to set up and run everything. That is why a lot of folks who make a living online start out with affiliate marketing. Because it’s quick, fast and hassle-free. And if you do it well you can literally make a fortune just recommending someone else’s product.

OK. I think that’s a pretty succint overview of affiliate marketing, let me give you the details. You can go to:

www.secretsofself-mademillionaires.com/affiliates.html

When you visit this page, you would see this:

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Over here you will be given step-by-step instructions on how to become an affiliate and set up your affiliate link. I won’t delve into it here because it’s all there. You will also be getting this:

Yup! Pre-written email campaigns, ads, pictures, testemonials and a whole host of information on how you can start making money as an affiliate. It’s pretty comprehensive and we do plan to add even more stuff. So if you plan to be an affiliate and start to make profits instantly, this will be heaven for you.

Alright, I wouldn’t want to waste anymore of your time, if you want to start profiting, I suggest you head on down just to check it out.

www.secretsofself-mademillionaires.com/affiliates.html

Out.

Before I start… ‘Hi Dad!’

Ok anyway, I just heard from my mum that my dad is reading my blog! Now when you read that, you may going: ‘So? What’s the big deal?’

But the thing is that my dad doesn’t really read stuff. He hardly picks up a book and let alone read it. He just makes money and plays golf. That’s what he does.

So when I heard that even my old man is reading about what I’m doing, you can say I was pretty much surprised. My dad is ‘in‘. He’s reading blogs. He’s a part of the blogsphere now. He’s cool…

I mean does your dad read blogs? Ha! Got you! See… My dad is way cooler than your dad now! haha!

You may be wondering why I’m devoting a post about my dad and the reason is this: I only see the bugger about 4 times a year. He runs a company in Bangkok and he’s been there a loooong time. So the only time I get to connect with my old man is when he’s back or when he calls back, which isn’t all that often.

And now that I know that he’s taking a solid interest to his offspring’s ramblings on the world wide web, I felt that little bit closer to my dad. As if we are connected on another level. Shucks…..

But I’m serious. I’ve always been taking the people closest to me for granted because I’d always assume that they’d be around tomorrow, but you never know. I was reading Jia Yu’s blog and she had a sad, sad post that she devoted to her late dad who just passed on recently.

You have to read that post because after going through it, you begin to realise just how important your loved ones are. That and other things happening now are making me� take a step back and start to appreciate the loved ones in my life.

Anyway, I’ll keep this short before any of you start to think that I’m a chronic softie but to my dear old man reading this: ‘Thanks Dad!’