A Very Special PPC.bz Festivus

Many thanks to Pete for twittering the Festivus miracle that gave me the idea for this post.

Grab yourself a hot chocolate and a Snuggie, because this is a long one.

If you don’t know what Festivus is, let me explain. It is a very special holiday invented by the great Frank Costanza. It is celebrated on the 23rd of December. There is no need for decorated trees, because tinsel is distracting. There is no need for gift-giving – rather we air our grievances with the people who have disappointed us. There are many fine qualities to this so-called “Festivus for the rest of us,” which you may read here.

The Airing of Grievances

The Airing of Grievances is my favorite part of Festivus, and it is what this post is about. On Festivus, we gather those around us and let them know how they have disappointed us throughout the year.

Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu, you have disappointed your friends and colleagues in more ways than one could ever count. You started the year off right – getting your face and brand out there and posting on any blog that would listen. You got more exposure faster than anyone I’ve seen in this space. For a moment, people thought you were legitimate.

But then you threw it all away when you sold out affiliate marketing on TechCrunch so you could get a few clicks to your local lead gen business.

Then the truth came out. People that dealt with Dennis came out of the woodwork and aired their own grievances about him. It was a glorious onslaught of complaints from underpaid and overworked employees, comical stories from advertisers that worked with him wondering how they got into this mess, and various tales from a random slew of people that have experience with Dennis.
In a matter of weeks, Yu’s reputation fell faster than the industry’s profit margins when the Government and Google came after Biz Opps and Grants.

For Dennis Yu, we are not thankful.

Idiots and Newbies

No matter how hard we try to deter you from making monies online, you keep coming. Like a flow of puss from an infected anus, you soil the once-good name of Wickedfire with your stupid questions and pointless posting.

What’s that? You heard John Chow makes $200K a year blogging about nothing – so you thought it would be a good idea to start your own blog and promote that shit stain everywhere? Or your heard some guru thuper affiliate makes $xx,xxx in X amount of time, so you thought you’d play your hand (but you can only do it if you request everyone’s landing pages, traffic sources, how long the campaigns lasts, day parting schedule, what they eat for breakfast, how often they go to the gym, when they change their underwear….)

Everyone was a newbie at some point in time – but most kept their fucking mouth shut and learned by doing. The failures are the ones that gave up when they didn’t get a handout.

For idiots and newbies, we are not thankful.

Sell Outs

Every time some network, service, or whatever the fuck have you wants some exposure – they go to the usual suspects. You know, those popular bloggers that will post about anything to their unsuspecting readers for oh, I don’t know – $100? But do these bloggers actually test the products, or do their due-diligence on the networks they are promoting? Fuck no.

First off, no one has the time to go through all the shit that’s out there to give an honest opinion or review. The shit just takes too long, because like, real journalism and research is time-intensive. Second off, it’s more about a few hundred bucks from a blog post than actually providing real and honest information to their readers. If the blogger can make money off of it, the shit is probably going to get a favorable review.

I’ve tried so hard to sell out. Really, all year I’ve thought about how to monetize PPC.bz. But I just can’t do it. You sell out once and the product or company turns out to be shitty (which is usually the case), then your whole reputation goes down the fucking drain.

PPC.bz is a labor of love. You think these long-ass posts are delivered on a USB drive by unicorns? Fuck no, they take hours to write. Hours.

I’ve thought about charging these networks for the banner space on the right, but I’ve decided that it’s not worth the few hundred bucks a month. Those banners are up there because I like the people – not because they are the best networks (although they will say otherwise)(by the way, there is no such thing as the best network, so stop looking. It’s about what network works for you)

The only thing I’ve sold out with is Ubot, because it’s a quality product. I would’ve sold out to a few other products, like WFReview, but just couldn’t find the time. That’s it though. A few products out of the hundreds that are released all fucking year are worth writing about.

There is no point to posting a product’s sales sheet. If you can’t show how the product makes you money then what is the fucking point?

What does that say about the integrity of the other blogs out there? The sad part is, if your blog gets popular then it can still help you in this industry, no matter how shitty it is. Integrity and journalism are either dying, or were never there. We’re no New York Times (we’re not even a New York Chronicle dot org!), but if you read carefully there is usually underlying truth to the long posts on PPC.bz. Behind the laughs and rhymes, the truth will set you free.

For sell outs, we are not thankful.

Greedy Advertisers

What’s wrong with the continuity model? Nothing.

Somebody wants a product for free, they can just pay shipping. If they do not like the product, they can cancel it. Netflix does it, Gunthey Runker does it, and many companies do it well and have done it for a long time. You don’t have to be a big company to do it well either. A friend of mine slangs his product with this model in a very competitive space – but as soon as someone complains or wants to cancel they’re gone. Why bother? Just make the money off the people who want the product (whether it works or not) or are too lazy to cancel. Margins are slimmer, but it’s safer with less heat on him.

So what happens when you make it really difficult to cancel? What happens when you nick someone for $150+ with forced upsells if they don’t cancel their trial product – instead of a measly $39-50? What happens if you deliver an absolutely shitty product (i.e; nothing) that no one would ever pay for, let alone $100+. What happens when you pull this shit on millions of people? What happens when you rip-off the likeness of the biggest name in show business (Oprah), or when you rip off the name of a competing product (DazzleWhite). What the fuck did you think was going to happen?

Let’s look past the money. Let’s look past one man making $100 million plus money, and past the handful of affiliates and networks that became millionaires from the “smash and grab” model. (I call it “smash and grab” because once they have the person’s billing info on the file – they are raiding it for as much as they possibly can without getting caught)

It’s greed plain and simple. It’s on the level of Bernie Maddoff Ponzi Scheme greed. Wall Street greed. This kind of greed gets public backlash. The kind of attention we don’t need. Maybe that’s too greedy. It’s more on the level of greed when banks double-dip, when you pay the $x fee for a non-branch ATM then pay it again within your own bank. It doesn’t kill anyone, but everyone hates it and they are working on laws to prevent it.

Don’t get me wrong – most of us have benefited. But we all knew it wasn’t going to last. Let’s at least have a common enemy. The one guy who took it too far and who everyone followed because that’s where the highest payouts were.

We’ll call this man Messy Millms. Here’s a video about him. Watch it, because it’s important.

Before going any further, let’s look at this guy’s positive PR campaign. Some unsuspecting government official hears the name, looks it up in Search, and sees some positive looking results. The government official or lawyer or whatever looks for another target.

But if you look closer, you’ll see some of these search results are a little… queer. Not gay queer, but odd queer like they would say in the 19th century. They look… familiar. Flogging familiar.

http://www.truthaboutjessewillms.com/
http://www.jessewillmsscams.com/
http://www.jessewillmsethics.com/

It’s plain as day this guy took it too far. Some might respect him because of all the money he made. I disagree. There’s a certain point where the shadyiness of the scam outweighs the respect of being able to acquire great wealth. Shit, people made money off stealing gold from Jews during the Holocaust, and they’ll rot in hell. (This is an intense analogy, I know, but remember – “Behind every great fortune, is a great crime.”)

Here’s the backlash, for him and for the rest of the industry.

Oprah is going to fuck this guy. Watch the video again. Because of Willm’s resources, they will probably fight in court for months if not years. Oprah will settle and it will cost Willms millions, but he will go on, business as usual.

But add on the Dazzle White lawsuit. He straight up jacked a company’s brand. There are serious fucking charges in this lawsuit. He may survive the Oprah suit, but chances are he won’t fare so well in this one.

Let’s not forget government involvement. This is something you don’t want in your industry. But the greed got so bad they had to do something. Customers are stupid. Now we have new guidelines, rules, and all that bullshit. Is affiliate marketing dead? Absolutely not. You just have to tread more carefully.

Google is shitting on the industry just as hard as anyone else. While you can’t attribute what Google is doing directly to Willms, the “smash and grab” attitude certainly has something to do with it. Now an affiliate can’t get on Google if they were promoting clothing for nuns. (Not to mention the 50 “John Does” about to get fucked by Google)

The credit card companies are pissed too. Visa and Mastercard don’t want to deal with the millions of customers getting ripped off by the insanely greedy antics of these companies. They are going all over the world, shutting down the merchants and processors that do business with companies like Willms’. (Willms’ network of offshore and shell corporations is so thick you need some Crocodile Dundee knife to cut through it)

The problem is that so many legitimate advertisers get fucked when this happens. Mention you sell diet pills (no matter how legitimately) and you are scrutinized worse than an airport security cavity search.

Everyone is now painted with the same brush. – isn’t that ironic?

When people say this industry needs self-regulation, this is what they mean. It cannot get so fucking bad that the biggest companies in the world, biggest names in show business, the government, etc etc get involved. We can all make money but there will always be a few individuals that push the envelope until it breaks. And most are forced to follow because you can’t compete being 100% straight.

So when does the self-regulation happen? It won’t. The cycle will keep going. Greed happens, and then regulation happens. People figure out how to get around regulation, and then more greed happens. These are simply the economic forces greater than any one individual or company can ever change. Self-regulation is a pipe dream. Is it bad or good? It’s simply capitalism.

The only institution able to change market forces is Government, and look where we are heading. Wall Street fucked society 100 times worse than any affiliate could, and it needs regulation just like our industry. But Wall Street has power, connections to government, and all that jazz. Affiliate marketing is the Wild West, a bunch of cowboys that can really be wiped out with a few laws being passed.

Will Willms have to go bankrupt and end up in jail for the charges he is accused of? Who knows. But they have to make an example out of somebody. Whether its an individual or a whole industry – only time will tell.

For greedy advertisers, we are not thankful.

Don’t forget to donate to charity. I prefer this one.

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