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This week, I actually ran into two scams – one directly and one indirectly.
The first scam involves business owners. There are marketers online recommending this scam to their clients as their “money-maker”. Everyone in the internet marketing community know pretty much everything that goes on. We know Affiliate Jump is a load of crap. We know that Launch Tree was a great, immediate action that will increase sales immediately. We know that all the guru’s are teaming up with each other and scratching each other’s back and then, a week later, returning the favor. (How many emails have you received in the past two months promoting everything?) It’s out of control..
Well – there are marketers not even online (what? how… could.. this … be)
It’s true. Brick and Mortar companies – dentists, chiropractors, realtors.. to name a few. Most of these business owners have more disposable income than the average person reading this.
What do you know that these companies don’t? You know RentaCoder, Aweber, Hosting, Domain Names.. My chiropractor paid $5,000 for his “static” website last year. Did he not read my posts about starting his own blog? ($7 a month for hosting, $2.99 domain names, free Wordpress, $39 Professional Theme)
On top of this outrageous fee – he paid $97 a month for hosting and any website maintenance.
And get this:
They wanted $5,000 more a year to renew it. OMG!
This is a scam. The only way I would have paid $5,000 for a website is if:
#1) I licensed a killer product, which Gardner Marketing has paid $10K before.
#2) Maybe killer copy, which Jeff Gardner has paid up to $20K before.
And my next scam happened to me yesterday.
Have you heard of LeapFish? It’s a new search engine portal for search engines… (just that sentence alone should be enough to raise some red flags).
LeapFish.com is a nice looking site, and the functionality is kinda cool. I’m not gonna lie and say that it stinks – because I’m sorta liking the videos and the graphics on the right side and how the search results popup without pressing submit. Oooooooh.. (shiny objects..)
The sales guy was great on the phone. At the end of it, I was ready to hand over my credit card until one quick Google search..
LeapFish Complaints
And turns out – I’m glad I did. LeapFish works like this. When you type in a word, they sell 3 advertising spots “FOR LIFE!” on the site.
That means that the millions of people using Google will type in your industry and see your ad for life. There are no pay per click fees.. your ad will appear on EVERYPAGE above the search engine results for life!
Two things are wrong with this sentence:
1) For life. For life of what – the company? This reminds me of last month’s American Home Shield scam. My air conditioner went out. We cover your air conditioner for the “life” of the air conditioner. After 10 years – it’s time for a new one which we don’t cover. OR their famous – we do cover your air conditioner and I’m sorry that your air conditioner is not working but we don’t cover that part of the air conditioner that went out.
2) And the second part of that sentence: Millions of people using Google .. that’s right – millions are using Google – NOT LEAPFISH! They won’t ever see the ads..
What’s worse is that TechCrunch uncovered a click fraud story from the employees of LeapFish .. LeapFish employees used it as a scare tactic. Hey I just clicked on your ad 50 times. You should get on the pay one time platform and not Google pay per click platform.
WOW!
So my advice is stay away. RUN AWAY!
If you are building a website – start with Wordpress.. Get a Premium Theme for $39 ONE TIME FEE. Buy a domain name for less than $10 per year and grab some hosting for less than $10 per month. You’ll also need an autoresponder service for less than $20 per month. Hmmm anything else? TRAFFIC!
Grab my Traffic DVD when it comes out on the 28th. You can get a sneak peak by clicking on the keyword below:
Get More Visitors to My Website
Onwards and Upwards,
Kit
About Kit:
Six years ago, Kit Elliott was teaching 6th grade Science in South Dallas. Kit discovered the secret to online marketing (promoting products that pay a residual income) and he scaled it. He makes more in one month than in one year of teaching. Six years later, with the help of his business partner, Jeff Gardner, Kit was instrumental in opening WealthWorld in the USA! WealthWorld is a Wealth-Building MLM Company dedicated to redefining the word: "JOB!" You can immediately plugin into this system and start making a full-time income in the shortest amount of time possible (8 months or more!)
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Kit, I am surprised LeapFish did not try to recruit you into their affiliate program.
The incident reported by TechCrunch is going to haunt them for long time. What they are doing, in my opinion, is they are making Google look bad and stupid.
Also, why would you in your right mind give thousands to a website that relies 100% on APIs to aggregate their results? What would happened if Google, MSN or Yahoo would all of a sudden stop offering certain APIs?
Stick with AdWords and proven advertising venues and you will be fine.
Thanks for the heads up about the other two as well.
Hiya Vlad:
You two must have LeapFish as a Google Alert! I should start looking for more scandals because my traffic jumped 100 times since I published this story.
Of course – Wendy – responded within minutes of Google Alerts.. Very curious!
You’re right – if LeapFish relied more on their own “search engine” programming and developed their own “adsense” type of program then this might be a different story! The point to this article is due diligence. See what others are doing with the system. See if it’s working for others.
Me – I would develop a marketing pipeline for each product and stick to what works.
Thanks Vlad!
Kit,
I have my reasons to keep an eye on them
– but I am glad it lead me to your blog! You got yourself one more subscriber!
Odd I don’t see any themes for $39 Professional themes when I click on your link.
I’ve received the call from LeapFish…
Click Here for the $39 Professional Themes and don’t fall for that LeapFish Scam!
Leafish is a true scam. On top of all the other complaints, they are dishonest in the manner in which they try to attract business. They called me directly, left a message saying they were interested in my services (clearly indicating that they wanted to hire me). I called back and after a few minutes, it became clear that they were trying to sell their services to me. This was after playing phone tag for several days. What a complete waste of time! Totally unethical business practices, bait-and-switch all the way. I told the sales guy that it was a bait-and-switch and he said that no one had ever complained. Well, he can’t say that anymore…
Advice: Stay away from Leapfish.
Leapfish has called my business NO LESS THAN FIVE (5) times. Every time they’ve called, I’ve asked/demanded never to be called by them again. Sure enough, I keep getting calls from these #*#. They’ve obviously built in NO way to prevent multiple calls, and every time they promise never to call again, it’s an EMPTY PROMISE.
I say, BOYCOTT LEAPFISH IN EVERY WAY.
Leapfish is basically a simple website site where you can search the web and quickly switch between the results from Yahoo, MSN and Google. Leapfish has a cool features just like Bing that loads videos quickly but from what I can tell Bing is much better. Leapfish also pulls data from Yelp, Amazon, Ebay and a few other sites as you search. I cannot see any reason why this website is going to be popular because it just does not have much to offer. Leapfish generates money by selling advertising similar to other search sites. A telemarketer from Leapfish called me and said that Leapfish was partnered up with Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The Leapfish sales person tried to manipulate me into thinking that he could put my company on top of all the search engines. The Leapfish sales people use high pressure techniques over the phone to make you think that you have to buy specific key words before the advertising spots sell out. The sales guy I talked to on the phone claimed that he could not even tell me how many times my key word was actually searched. I looked up the company’s web traffic and quickly realized that Leapfish is a scam. If no one really uses Leapfish, then the keywords are worthless.Please beware that this company sells useless advertising to unsuspecting business owners.
Take care,
Mike
“Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give.”
W. Edwards Deming
A leapfish salesperson left a message on my answering machine stating something to the effect that they were looking for "coaches such as myself for a project." This inferred, to me, that they were looking to hire for coaching services. I called them back, and the salesperson staged his talk so as to keep me on the phone for a long time for nothing. For example, he started out with "Are you familiar with Leapfish?" I was not, and that gave him license to drone on and on about the company. I slowly realized he was just trying to sell me something. I think Leapfish uses deception in its business practices.
Does anyone know anything about a site called Traffic Resort.com?
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