If you use or are about to use ClickBank to sell your products or to try to make a living as an affiliate you need to read this.

I’ll be upfront here … I don’t like officious organisations that are too big for their boots and I really think action needs to be taken against organisations that have unreasonable and unrealistic terms and conditions.  In this case I’m hoping that Clickbank are not too big for their boots and will be reasonable because in my opinion (and that of others ) I think they do have an unreasonable and unrealistic term and condition which they need to change in order to keep up with the times.

The article that has caused me to put this post out there is Is Clickbank Scamming Affiliate Marketers? by Len Thurmond and I urge you to read it in full to understand the full implications to your business.

The focus of the argument is that one of Clickbank’s terms says that before they will pay you any money you are owed, you must have made at least five sales from 5 different credit card numbers, and have two different payment methods (either Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal) … and multiple Paypal sales don’t count towards your 5 different credit card numbers!  – and it gets worse!!! – read Len’s article on how Clickbank can take money from your account if you fail to meet this requirement.

Years ago when I was starting out with ClickBank I struggled to get those five sales with five unique cards but I did get there … eventually.  These days it’s  not going to be that easy for those starting out as Mastercard isn’t as popular as it was and in the online world, these days PayPal is a (if not the) dominant payment force.

In the interests of fairness it has to be said that once you do meet these requirements Clickbank do pay out on a regular basis and have been more reliable than some affiliate programs I’ve used.

I also understand Clickbank’s reasoning and I quote from their Customer Distribution Requirement

This requirement is in place to help prevent Affiliates from abusing the ClickBank Affiliate program by using their accounts for the sole purpose of fraudulently collecting rebates and/or discounts on their own purchases.

But surely technology and PayPal’s own anti fraud measures mean that Clickbank can and should now review a condition that existed when they started out, has served it’s purpose and that can be improved without detriment to the company.

I may be wrong but verified PayPal accounts are tied to real people and banking accounts.  PayPal accounts are funded from unique credit and debit cards as well as banking accounts so why can’t (or won’t) Clickbank class PayPal sales as unique and allow them to count towards those five unique sales?

What do you think?

On June 7, Cisco Systems’ Web-tracking subsidiary, ScanSafe started tracking the affects of a new web attack that has been described as the “worst since a large number of Wordpress-based sites were hacked in April,” by Andre DeMino, a co-founder of the Shadowserver malware-tracking group.

Some sites are totally compromised while others only have small sections affected.

Security researchers at this point are still unsure how the attacks work, but they think that hackers are using an SQL injection attack to run database commands, which then allow the hackers to install malicious HTML which then redirects victims to another malicious Web server. This server attempts to load software on Web visitors’ computers which if successful give the criminals a way to remotely control their victims’ computers.

The team at Sucuri.net have so far found that all of the infected sites appear to be using the Microsoft Internet Information Services Web-server software running with Active Server Pages.

“The SQL injection attacks that allow the systems to be compromised are occurring due to vulnerabilities in third-party web applications and do not demonstrate vulnerabilities in Microsoft software,” said Microsoft spokesman Jerry Bryant via e-mail :  Source

The third party applications that Microsoft refer to appear to be servers running supplementary services such as advertising.  Often, hackers get limited access because they break into a partner site — an ad company, for example — that is allowed to post on certain parts of the larger company’s Web site.

HP and Microsoft have released a free tool called Scrawlr that helps users check their Web sites for SQL injection vulnerabilities.

SophosLabs is adding detection for this SCRIPT injection as Mal/Badsrc-C.

While many marketers use linux based hosting systems and are not directly affected at this time it is a timely reminder to make sure you are taking the appropriate steps to secure and back up your site files and databases on a regular basis.

Wordpress users can follow the Triple “P” Of WordPress Security advice  or Top 5 WordPress Security Tips You Most Likely Don’t Follow

It might not be your site that gets hit directly but if you are pulling content from somewhere else you may at some point be affected by attacks like this.

UPDATE:

While the post above outlines how the servers might be attacked, web users should update Adobe Flash Player ASAP and take extra care when using Reader and Acrobat.

In an advisory Adobe said “Adobe has released a product update to Adobe Flash Player to resolve the relevant security issue. For more information, please refer to Security Bulletin APSB10-14

We expect to provide an update for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.3.2 for Windows, Macintosh and UNIX by June 29, 2010.”

For more info on the vulnerability see CVE-2010-1297

If times weren’t hard enough American FTC have decided that in some cases it’s wrong to review products and to implement a fine of upto $11,000.

Until now online promotions via blogs were not covered by any guidelines and this worried some consumer groups. The issue being that the links between the products being reviewed or talked about, the publishers (companies & individuals) and the companies selling the products was not transparent. i.e. if I reviewed ‘product A’, I didn’t need to tell anyone that I was an affiliate for that product and I would get a commission if my reader bought that product through my link.

I understand that it was a 30 year old law that has been updated, in order to get in touch with the times and I can appreciate a need to protect web users but all so often laws are implemented by people who have read reports but have not a clue how the web works or how to implement the said changes.

These changes come into effect on December 1, 2009 and you can read for yourself the FTC Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials:

What struck me was that everyone in the Internet Marketing business is going to be affected when I read this.

“Under the revised Guides, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect. In contrast to the 1980 version of the Guides – which allowed advertisers to describe unusual results in a testimonial as long as they included a disclaimer such as “results not typical” – the revised Guides no longer contain this safe harbor.”

The new policy will also apply to Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and other forms of new media advertising.

Today is the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman which as we now all know was the catalyst for the world wide recession we have all had to endure.  Vast sums of money have been pumped in to support and bail out financial institutions and other big businesses which has supposedly made the effects of the financial collapse less than they could have been but at what real cost?

Last night I watched a report from the BBC’s Robert Peston where he said that level of UK support has cost each of us in the UK £43k (we’ll be paying that for years to come) and in his interview with Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday, the world-wide figure equates to $2000 for every person on the planet.  Given that huge numbers of the worlds population struggle on less than a dollar a day and we have global issues with water and climate I personally still struggle to come to terms with having had to support banks and businesses that should have known and done better.

I know in the grand shape of things I’m a no-one but I can’t help but wonder if our world leaders have missed a big opportunity to really straighten things out more effectively.

Banks have been ripping us all of for years with unreasonable charges and less than adequate services while hiding behind their terms and conditions.  And still the dinosaurs at the helm of these once respected institutions deem it appropriate to pay themselves vast bonuses.  One thing that they all seem to forget is that these days having money does not equate to having power.   The real power these days is having power or energy.  Ask yourself where these practicing dodos would be if they didn’t have electricity

I also feel that our leaders have also missed the boat by supporting car manufacturers and other ‘dirty’ industries in the way they have.  I understand that we need these companies for transport and jobs but surely …. our climate should have taken a much higher priority.

From my viewpoint rather than pander to ‘dirty’ motor manufacturers we would have all been far better off if our ‘leaders’ realised that the majority of the ‘voters’ knew how bad things were and had the balls to make the big changes needed.  Rather than heading for ‘as close to old business as usual’ why didn’t they think outside of the box.  Why didn’t they opt for something radical like saying “OK.  There’s a big problem so lets make a massive changes no we have the opportunity”?

There may be green shoots of recovery on the horizon for some but the damage for many has been done.  I sure that as time moves on and linked data technologies improve that person on the street will have the last laugh.  The internet is a wonderful thing, it’s amazing what you can find out if you look hard enough.

We are not out of the woods yet but as long as we all live within our means and plan ahead smartly things will improve.

What are your thoughts?

According to Wikipedia the world population is approximately 6.8 billion people.

According to the BBC financial bail out figures,  in the US and UK the cost of the bail out is $1,575 Billion ($700 Bn in the US and £500 Bn in the UK)  These figures do not include other countries.

Said quickly, we know it’s a lot but it doesn’t really comprehend.

However … if we divide the cost of the banking industry and money market bailouts by the world population (1575Bn / 6.8Bn) that means everyone on the planet could have been given $231Million.

Now that can’t be right.

So lets divide the world population by the cost of the bailout (6.8Bn/1575Bn)

Hey that’s much better – everyone on the planet has could have been paid $0.004Bn  (whoa – is that $4Million each)

Considering my bank has screwed me for unfair charges, fees and who knows what else for years (and got away with it so far) it makes me sick that now as a tax payer I (and probably my kids) are expected to be paying for the banks negligence.

Personally I’d rather I was given my $0.004Bn – At least I know I can be trusted to spend it wisely and contribute to the economic growth of the planet.

What about you?

Improving the effectiveness and profitability of online advertising looks set to become much easier and accurate thanks to semantic technology.

Well established Italian software company Expert System yesterday announced the launch of a new contextual advertising solution with semantic intelligence called Cogito.

In his post ‘Semantics in Advertising‘ for ZDNet, Paul Miller of Talis says “On the surface, a release phrased in that way might easily be dismissed as jumping on the ’semantic’ band-wagon, but there appears to be substance behind the sometimes over-hyped language.” and that will interest many.

In Expert System’s release we read:

The main issue limiting the online advertising market today is the disconnect between advertisement placement and the relevance of the copy. This is due to the reliance on keyword frequency without considering the meaning. Oftentimes, ads may appear on pages that have little significance to the assigned page or may produce counterproductive effects. For example, an ad for a Caribbean vacation package may inadvertently appear near an article about a massive hurricane that ripped through that region.

I can’t remember where I saw it but the best example I’ve seen to date on negative or counter productive advertising was a news item about a cruise liner (or was it a ferry?) sinking and right next to the article was an advert for Caribbean cruises.  What the ??.

That’s like saying “Hey why not come on our cruise.  If you don’t sink you’ll have a great time”.  – Not quite what the advertiser wanted I’m sure but ongoing semantic research is starting to bring about change.

Semantic technology does have the capability to make a huge impact in targeted advertising for all of us.  While it’s not all of the way there yet, I can see that in the near future I’ll be able to say “I want my ads to appear only to website visitors who are Male, aged between 40 – 55, who live within 5 miles of X and are interested in Y”

I hope to be able to add in more parameters and cover more than one ad network but for the time being I’ll have to live in the ‘here and now’ and keep an eye on the other emerging semantic research companies who are helping to shape the future of ecommerce on the web.

This is a warning for anyone who has ever bought resale and usage rights for templates, artwork or image packs. Ignore it at you peril.

I’m pretty angry right now and I can’t name names because of legal issues (mores the pity) but the bottom line is that there are some ‘marketers’ out there who are acting illegally and you and me are the ones that will end up paying.

Here’s why.

These ‘marketers’ provide you, me (and whoever else) with packages to use or resell as our own. These packages contain images that are in fact licensed by another company and these ‘marketers’ don’t actually have the right to even use them. Let alone sell them or give them away. And don’t get me started on what will happen if you actually sell a licensed image. Even by mistake.

How does it cost you money?

Apparently the laws concerning intellectual property, copyright and licensing makes NO allowance. The person who displays or uses a licensed image has to pay a fee. Even if they have paid for usage or resale ‘rights’ to anyone other than the actual license holder. Let me tell you that these fees are thousands of dollars PER image.

In my case (and many of you reading), I would NEVER knowingly use an image that belonged to someone else or I didn’t believe I have the rights to use. I thought that when you paid for something you had the rights. Well … that is wrong.

What’s worse?

I started going through some of the template, PLR and other ‘rights’ packages I’ve bought since 2002. Not many, just 14. And then I stopped because out of those 14 that I checked, 9 of them contained images or PARTS of images that I have now seen available for licensing.

I’ve seen them as individual graphics, header graphics and even in book covers. What this means is that I can’t use this artwork because if I do, I’m at risk of being asked to pay substantial sums of money and so are you.

How did it happen?

Assuming that these ‘marketers’ didn’t deliberatly or knowingly break the law, I can only imagine this problem started with people who put together ‘clipart’ packs back in 2003 and maybe even before that.

• The original sinners scraped together images from here and there, bundled the images together and offered these ‘packs’ for sale with dubious claims and copy about what they could be used for.
• Other people then bought them and created derivative products.
• Later still, other people bought the derivative products, which now had additional claimed ‘rights’ and they used them. Either selling them as is or creating even more derivative products.
• Then … other people started giving away the derivatives of the derivative containing the original images which brings us to today.

What’s The Bottom Line.

Unless you have a REAL license [from the ORIGINAL rights holder] and if you use or display any PART of of a licensed image. YOU may end up having to pay thousands of dollars.

What’s the answer?

Short of deleting every product that ‘may’ be affected, just in case (and that’s lots). I’m not 100% sure. All I know for sure is that I won’t be buying any more rights packages until the marketers prove to my satisfaction that everything is 100% legal.

What’s more, I want to start seeing the better marketers do more than give me a money back guarantee. I want to see marketers guarantee that they will pay my fees and costs if they screw up. In an ideal world a change in the law is needed to protect the end user in cases like this but I can’t see that happening.

I can’t see this problem going away either and with technological advances in scanning images and text, it is getting easier for the big companies who actually hold the rights to find the ‘end user’ (you and me) and take action against them.

Their attitude is simple:

‘All though we want to get to the root of the problem you used the image. Therefore you must pay us. It’s up to you to take action against the person you got it from and for them to take action against the people they got it from.

We don’t care (and neither it appears does the law) that you paid someone something. The fact is you don’t have a license to use it from us. Please pay us now’

If you have an answer or more information?

please make a comment.

In my last post about Tim Brocklehurst’s Freedom Class Videos I’ve been told that I should really have explained just how good the quality was. And these PM’s weren’t just talking about the quality of Tim’s training.

The videos that Tim had had produced and encoded for the web are exceptionally high quality. I can only imagine how much bandwidth is required for the viewable size and the speed at which they are streaming even with good video optimisation.

Even if you are not interested in how to build viral profits into your business, you will be very interested in the video quality. I can only urge you to see for yourself what can be achieved with online video.

As with all launches, Tim has run into a couple of teething problems which were overcome. Interestingly it seems that lack of bandwidth wasn’t the biggest issue. That happened when too many people at the same time (within the first few minutes) all clicked the buy button at the same time maxing out the server threads.

At a rough guess, the payment processor’s automated security measures assumed it was an attempted DDoS attack and promptly severed its connection to Tim’s server. I’m not sure how you overcome that one quickly but Tim did and I’ll be asking him how, soon.

I know a few of the people who attended the training weekend where the filming for the DVD’s took place and assisted learning proved a big hit. Combined with the power of Tims strategy and viral software some of the attendees saw positive results within hours. And don’t forget that Tim’s viral profit machines only take three days to implement. You can’t avoid or ignore the logic.

That’s lot’s of good reasons to click on one of the links above.

As you’ve no doubt seen yourself, video is everywhere on the internet and it’s helping the people that are using it properly to make bigger profits online. Making money and using video are what this post is about.

For the last year I’ve been researching some of the new video technologies to discover what’s needed to make and distribute great looking videos to help sell just about anything.

I’ve found free video editors, great places to upload too and places to stream your content from. I’ve discovered short cuts, monetization channels and more than a few clever (but simple) ways to make your video efforts … profitable.

Put simply, there is a video that you can have, that will improve your profits. It doesn’t matter what business you are in. Motion makes money.

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve learnt so keep your eyes peeled. If you haven’t already done it, subscribing to my feed will be the easiest way not to miss out so why not subscribe now.

So How do I Make Money Online?

As a result of work and various networking events, we are lucky enough to meet and rub shoulders with lots of very clever and interesting people. Luckily for me, some of the people who I have got to know, are respected and successful marketers who always seem to have great advice and the tools to increase profitability.

Long story short. Over the past few months I’ve been given a first hand insight into a great example of producing videos for marketing while at the same time providing powerful free training videos for people who want to improve their online profits.

When this strategy/plan was first explained to me, my initial reaction was the concept seemed like it was a rehash of tired old internet marketing techniques using tired old products. I even said as much to the guy behind these videos. That’s when he asked me to test ‘it’ out and maybe do some simple help videos.

Offers like that don’t come round every day. But life is never that simple.

You see I was in the middle of setting up a recording studio with media suite and an important deadline was looming. That meant I couldn’t get involved full time. Luckily though, like the gentleman he is, he let me have full access.

What Do I Get?

The first thing that struck me was the amount of work that had already gone into the project. This was serious stuff.

The next thing that struck me was the logical step by step blueprint followed by the amount of useful information and resources.

This was not mickey mouse.

But Will It Work?

The only way to be sure was to read the manual and do it.

That’s when it started to dawn on me how powerful this process/course could be and how much easier it would be to do what needed to be done.

But There Was Even More!

The main man has been holding a set of 3-day action workshops to set people up with their own automated online business strategy.

The participants of these classes walked away with what are effectively their own viral profit machines after 3 days of intensive training and guidance.

Literally just 3 days to create a virally explosive framework for an Internet business… imagine if you could do that or better still, use the same knowledge to improve an existing business!

These classes were conducted by a method called “Action Learning”, which meant not only did participants get to learn *how* to do it, but they also *did* it.

They created their business, there and then, in the class… and they paid a princely sum to be there, too.

Would you like to be a fly on that wall?
Pick up a few secrets that will work for you to?

OK – well the good news is, it was all filmed and there is a video you can watch right now.
The better news is that it’s free and you get to see one of the core principles of how to build a business this way. Having seen this principle in action myself and the logic behind it, it is quite compelling.

I’d been eagerly waiting to see the finished results myself and when I got finally got the heads up I was refreshingly impressed with the quality of the videos that are available for everyone online.

The more you watch, the more you see how the pieces work together.

Here’s the link to the Freedom Class

And if you like it (which I think you will), there are 8 more you can watch as well … and guess what, they won’t cost you a thing either and they will all help you sell more online:)

Go ahead, go and see who I’m talking about and see for yourself some of the useful and powerful things he says.

http://www.mutualadvantage.co.uk/freedomclass

BTW: The price of a seat at these classes was more than some people earn in six months, but it was still a great investment. Have a look and you’ll see why…

Over the past two weeks there have been some significant changes that as internet based marketers we can’t ignore.

Pulling the facts and the rumours together it would look like Google just put itself at the hub of Web 2.0 just after making some sweeping PR rank changes that will lead to quite a few website models to suffering financially.

On the flip side those web based businesses based on solid content and principles look set to prosper even more!

Here’s what I know that you need to keep an eye on. Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider reported earlier that Myspace was joining the Google OpenSocial movement. If you haven’t come across that yet read his post on how OpenSocial looks set to flatten Facebook . As it was so nicely put over at techcrunch. Checkmate? MySpace … “Suddenly, within just the last couple of days, the entire social networking world has announced that they are ganging up to take on Facebook, and Google is their Quarterback in the big game.”

This really struck me as something powerful but I didn’t twig just how important this was until a post by Seth Godin explained it. It allows users to take their social graph with them from one site to another. – Now that does open up some marketing opportunities.

So how might this relate to PR Changes.

The waters are a little muddy still and there are lots of thoughts and rumours doing the rounds. Some folk are pulling thier hair out as they have lost page rank. Wow.

With some notable exceptions, whatever changes Google made look to have been targeted at paid link sites and link farms. It’s not unexpected as far as I’m concerned as it is probably a continuation of Googles stated aim to improve search result quality.
<Side Note> I’m going to draw my line in the sand here regarding the use of duplicate content … on any type of site. While the search bots may find and list your content initially, as more data comes in and the numbers get crunched your visibility will decrease. Try thinking further ahead than 3 months.

What did catch my eye was a rumour that Google will be doing away with PR altogether at some point in November. This will of course have some SEO folks running round in circles crying blue murder but it will apparently be replaced with an alternative called VR or visitor rating. If all of this is bang on the money then your PR toolbar will be reset to zero and phased out to be replaced with a VR toolbar. (someone start writing a book on how to ).

Then as if that wasn’t enough to contend with, in the same article I find that Google are going to make sweeping changes to the adsense model that’s going to have millions of plain adsense site owners income slashed to almost nothing. Or not?

Here’s the principle (and don’t forget this is still a rumour at the moment). Instead of getting paid when your adsense ad is clicked once … now that person will have to click TWICE. {Click: – [box with message says] = HEY you’re clicking an advert! Do you really want to do that? Yes or No?}

That’s going to make people think isn’t it?

At first glance this looks like it’s going to rip the market and income will suffer and to start with some sites may see a decrease. However, people are funny creatures and we soon get used to change. The other argument is that because this will reduce click fraud the actual amount Google would be able to pay may actually go up.

By combining their dominance of Web 2 with improved adsense/adwords algorithms and introducing visitor generated page ranking in favour of link ranking. I can see you will end up paying more per valid click through from user valued sites.

The future looks very interesting for certain website income models. What do you think?