This post is a bit long, so if you don’t have a lot of spare time on your hands, feel free to not read it. However, I did feel that both points needed to be addressed, so make sure you watch out for people like these. If you have any comments, let me know below

Blog Premiere

First off, let me tell you the reason for this post. This post is thanks to Vic Franqui over at Blogger Unleashed - a top notch blog, and one that helps its readers. Blogger Unleashed posts useful content that even the biggest internet newbie can follow, and unlike other blogs out there, Vic is dedicated to helping his readers succeed - a couple questions I’ve asked through comments have been replied to; a few of his readers talk about how he has helped through Skype and personally guided them towards making their own website - would any “A-Lister” do that? Anyways, don’t worry Vic, the title of this post is not aimed at you, rather at Alan Johnson of The Rating Blog - I’d be interested in hearing what he has to say :)

I highly recommend that those of you interested in reading quality content add Vic to your readers, or check up on his blog every so often - there is excellent stuff there. Not to wax too lyrical, as I’m sounding like a bit of a groupie ( :razz: ), but seriously - I will be using his tips to get into affiliate marketing, as I feel they sound like they are actually useful (unlike the fluff you read elsewhere) and judging by the reports of some of his readers, they certainly are. For beginners, you need to check out (watch) his vlog about Making Money Blogging, which is bang on - if you blog to network, and build a community, the money will come.

Post Link: Make Money Blogging. (I have tried to embed the video below but knowing me it probably won’t work so go there and check it out. It’s a long watch, and a bit of colourful language is used, but hey, we can all handle that, especially those of you that were around TUK in the old days :razz: ).

There are two issues I will address here - firstly, that of The Rating Blog, secondly that of Caroline Middlebrook. Both of which I have only found out (in depth) about during the last week; heck, before Vic’s post today I had no idea about The Rating Blog’s issue (although I had heard of the site name in the past) - anyways, let’s go through it. For the latter, I found out about it a while ago and now that Vic has already stepped forward to release it, I will not seem like too big of an ass should I follow up :razz:

Now, time to dissect The Rating Blog, which has been called out by Vic (in the video) & Grizz (over at Make Money for Beginners, another good site with decent tips).

At the moment, The Rating Blog has about 3,000 RSS subscribers, which has been gained in just ten weeks - a phenomenal amount by all means, especially in the time frame. Alan embraced a strategy of commenting near everywhere, often being the top commentator on most “A-List” blogs (which is damned hard) and after he had established himself as a comment king, ran about a couple thousand (okay, slight exaggeration :razz: ) guest posts on the blogs he had commented on, with a contest giving away some cash to those who subscribed. The work put in was immense, and his RSS count was definitely deserved if legitimate… but was it?

One of the points mentioned in Vic’s video above was the amount of traffic received - Alexa does not lie. A few of you might remember when I looked like a bit of an idiot talking about Zapnat, but in this case The Rating Blog has been around for a good ten weeks minimum, which means that Alexa over that period can be used as a measuring tool (no social media spikes etc).

Now for me, RSS count should always been less than amount of pageviews… sometimes it isn’t, but it is usually the case, or at the very least they are close together. The reasoning behind this is that people are lazy bastards in general (apologies to all the women that read TUK :razz: ) and so out of the total, very few will subscribe to your feed - more often than not, they will read without doing so and need an incentive (contest, freebie giveaway etc) to do so. Anyways, just take a look at the RSS chart for The Rating Blog:

Two things.

First off, the traffic. There is zilch traffic relative to RSS count. THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE. People have to visit your website to subscribe to your feed, as they will not know the exact address before hand - the above chart alone makes me think that those RSS subscribers were manipulated. (Green = hits, Yellow = subscribers)

You can also take a look at the Alexa rating (link here) - The Rating Blog currently has a rating of 80,000. TUK has a rating of about 63,000, and it receives around 700 visitors daily (+ the odd spike) - according to his Advertise page, TRB is claiming over double that.

February traffic stats - 50,974 unique visits/200,762 impressions (1,757 average daily unique visits/6,922 average daily impressions)

Alexa, as well as the RSS feed count tool shows that traffic does not match up (Blog Perfume shows around 500/day on average) and as there are no Digg frontpages or anything inflating the traffic levels, I think it is fair to say that the statistics displayed on the website are way off base; this is the first big question for Alan Johnson - are you lying about traffic?

Secondly, is the RSS count. I will admit that Alan Johnson certainly has put in the amount of work required to make his RSS feed count increase - around 250 guest posts and a commenting strategy that means even had he had just 10 subscribers sign up per post, he’s be bang on. However, I will have to ask questions about those statistics too, especially as in the guest posts I checked out, there was not a direct link to the RSS feed..

RSS count is never a stable metric. By that, I mean one day your reader might show 20 readers, the next day 40; the day after that it will be back down. As RSS count is dependent on people who read your feed that specific day, it will obviously continue fluctuating, going up and down as some days people do not check in.

For the Rating Blog however, growth is always steady. As you can see, the rise in RSS count is a straight line - too straight, in fact. From what I can see, there are no decreases - it has been on a steady trend upwards since around the end of January, and I will have to call bullshit on this one (that they are all real readers).

RSS readers can be bought, although if you do so you are only cheating people - you should aim to let your RSS count grow by producing good content (which I will admit Alan has done) as well as throw in the occasional contest every so often. From that chart though, it looks like they were bought - does anyone remember the controversy that RSS Xplosion caused? They were essentially offering users a way to cheat advertisers and readers out of their hard earned money and time respectively - advertisers would think they were advertising to a community of readers which were actually bots, and readers would think they were subscribing to a feed which others had, but was actually dead. The latter point is not so important, but the former definitely is - cheating people out of their money is scamming.

The last thing that is awry about the graph is the drops - Feedburner occasionally glitches and does not count Google Reader subscribers, as I’m sure a few of you will be aware - nothing wrong with that. In the drops for The Rating Blog however, it appears that 99% of all readers have subscribed in the same way - again, IMPOSSIBLE due to the diverse methods out there. Yet another question. The biggest indicator yet that this might be a lie is that Alan Johnson removed the feed count widget during the drop.

A few of you may have remembered when Lushable.com cheated and artificially inflated their RSS count, but they were soon brought back down to earth by a couple of intelligent individuals who realised the fraud. I am not going to outright call Alan a scammer and a liar, but the evidence is there - I’d like to thank Vic for bringing it to my attention - and some of the statistics above, especially the traffic one certainly needs explaining.

Next up, is Caroline Middlebrook, a person who has scammed over $4,000 dollars from individuals over the last couple of months.

The main bone of contention here is the eBook that she wrote - some of you may not see why I’m so against it, but let me explain.

As an eBook writer in the past myself, my main ideal is that you MUST know what you are talking about if you intend to profit from it. If you are just sharing ideas with no gain to yourself so that your friends can read it, fine; if you intend to receive monetary gains, do not lie and cheat by writing about something you know nothing about.

Caroline’s eBook is titled - How To Generate Money-Making Niche Sites With Wordpress.

Now, to me, if you write a guide on generating money making sites, your niche sites sure as hell better be making money. If they are not, and you intend to profit from such a guide, you are scamming, simple as.

By writing that guide, Caroline made herself appear to be an authority on Wordpress.

Was she?

The month after Caroline finished writing that guide, she made $8.48 through Adsense. Note the decimal place. Last month, she made $32.43. Again, note the decimal place.

The blind CANNOT lead the blind. Although serious internet marketers disregarded the guide as a load of fluff, others, newbies would have read it and felt like it could be done.

The problem with this is that if you send people following a path that DOES NOT WORK (if it hasn’t worked for you, and it sure as hell hasn’t worked for Caroline as her earnings show) all they are going to face is disappointment and a loss of funds. Funds that they could well have needed.

You see, those that try online business and are not yet successful enough to do it full time usually have a dream - to go full time and work from home. I have that same dream. After that dream comes retiring as a millionaire and whatnot, but the basic dream is the same for all those that try to make a living online.

By selling newbies the dream, you are scamming people. Sure, they do not know any better, and will gladly put some money forward - the problem is, that may well be the last few funds they have, and they are putting it forward in the hope that YOUR guide will earn them money.

The sad truth is that Caroline’s guide alone is never going to earn anyone money; you cannot teach people about something you do not know. If you are clueless, why put yourself forward as an authority?

She may argue that she wasn’t, but by creating a product with “Money Making” in the title, you sure as hell better be making money (with the method you put forward).

The only reason Caroline made that report was to gain affiliate commissions.

Fine; I have no problem with that. But lying to people in order to get those affiliate commissions is simply not on.

If you offer usefulness to your readers, you deserve the affiliate commissions. I’ll give you a perfect example - Paul over at Uber Affiliate wrote a very sound guide to working Aweber - as soon as I get a credit card, he’ll be seeing an affiliate commission come in from me as I’m certainly going to signup through him for producing a guide that is so clear cut.

If you do not offer something that works, yet still aim for the affiliate commissions, you are a cheat.

You need to watch this video about Caroline shown below, and then this video about why it is so bad - Vic lived on the streets for a while and a lot of that was because of wasting money on eBooks that sold “the dream”. Like Caroline’s.

Anyways, I’ve bored you guys enough; I’d be interested to hear what you guys think. Remember to bookmark Blogger Unleashed (or RSS it) as it will help you greatly with regards to Adsense/Affiliate sites.

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