No it's not.

Did you notice this in the fine print?

*For purposes of privacy, the creator of Underground Cash Secret is using the name Michael Vincent.

That means this guy really isn't Michael Vincent. I wonder whose picture it is. That means you don't know who you are really dealing with, which lowers the trust factor for me quite a bit. Apparently the CREATOR wishes to remain anonymous.

But hold on, there's a GUARANTEE!

My Guarantee To You;
I am so confident in my program that I am willing to give you a 100% no questions asked refund for any reason if you are not satisfied. Check out the testimonials on this site from other people who are making money every day now with my program.

               What does the fine print say?

Earnings Disclaimer

"We do not purport this as a "get rich scheme." … No express or implied guarantees of income are made by ucsworkfromhome.net"

              Did you not hear "Michael Vincent" guarantee you would make money? Maybe you should listen to the audio again. And what about the red Ferrari and the big house and the bathing suits, and … the other expensive stuff? No "implied guarantees of income"? Look up "implied" in the dictionary.

And …

Why is the Fine Print text in gray?

Even a newbie can figure that out.

Just make sure you read the fine print before you purchase. Then the decision is all on you and not on "Michael Vincent" or "Jason". As the Fine Print says, "Many factors will be important in determining your actual results and no guarantees are made that you will achieve results similar to ours or anybody else’s, in fact no guarantees are made that you will achieve any results from our ideas and techniques."

How Did It Work Out For YOU?

If you decide to give the Underground Cash Secret a try, be sure to let us know how it worked out for you.

Give it a try if you have the funds and 9 days to experiment. Anik Singal in the marketing pitch for this program suggest that you can get started in 3 hours. OK we all know marketing hype by now. Just don't expect to start in 3 hours if you are a newbie because …

You can't "Start within 3 Hours"

Unless you already know what you are doing, are an experienced affiliate marketer, and just need access to the niches that Income Kick Start provides for $497, you won't be up and running in 3 hours. But that's not the only thing that bugged me.

Internet Marketers think they are teachers

I know we like to say that those who can't do it, teach it. But in reality teaching is a profession and it really doesn't matter whether a great teacher can do what they teach. The only thing that matters is that the teacher teaches YOU how to do it.

Anik is not a great teacher as you will see in the videos. On the other hand, he has a tremendous amount of company from other internet marketers who think they can teach because they have made a lot of money. Sorry about that – it ain't true. Your egos are getting in the way again. So you will have to rely on getting great support to answer all the questions you will have after absorbing the material Anik presents. Now comes another problem.

Support is not as bad as Copy Paste Systems but it isn't that great either

First you have to know that in one of his videos about using Scriptlance, Anik says he won't work with a freelancer who doesn't respond to him within 24 hours. While I was trying out the first 2 weeks of the Income Kick Start system, I submitted several support tickets on February 4. Guess when I got the first response – February 9, which is 5 times longer than Anik would have waited.
But it got worse.

Does the support team understand English?

I think there is a difference between being able to read English and understanding it. Most of the responses I received were about 1 sentence long no matter what questions I had. Often they don't read the entire message that may have more than 1 question so you have to keep the ticket open and send another reply. Of course it could also be that the support team doesn't completely understand the product they are supporting.

But what really irks me is they don't seem to understand English well enough to understand the intent of the questions and give answers that would be enlightening to newbies. Chances are you will have to rephrase and resubmit your question more than once to get a satisfactory explanation.

Do you call that "support"? Maybe it gets better after they are sure they have your money. I don't know – I didn't stick around for that part. After experimenting with Income Kick Start, I think I can use the $497 more effectively elsewhere.

Anik Singal is a nice person and Affiliate Classroom is a nice website

From all the second hand information I've gathered, Anik is a really nice person. All my information is second hand because Anik has effectively insulated himself from direct contact. But so have the majority of rich internet marketers. They just want your money, not to talk to you. I was disappointed that Income Kick Start support would not tell me how to contact Anik. He really needs help with his teaching skills.

Your own experiences and comments are always welcome.

Holly Cotter’s rags to riches story is inspirational. There’s no doubt about that. But I’m sorry about this …

"Internet Profits in Your PJs – 36 Secrets to Creating Multiple Income Streams … on Autopilot"

Out of respect for Holly, I would like to put this politely, "This book is drivel."

A total waste of your time. Let’s say you value your time at minimum wage (I hope your time is worth more than that, at least to you, but let’s just say.). The 2-4 hours you might spend reading every word of this book costs you between $16 and $32 roughly speaking. That means the book is not FREE.

Out of Date and Out of Link

The book is copyright 2006. I found that most of the links don’t work and those that do are obvious shills for stuff that Holly sold off.

36 Secrets – Are You Kidding Me?

Here are some stunning samples of these amazing "Closely-Guarded Multiple Income Stream Secrets".

Secret #1 – There is a HUGE difference between “owning a business” and “being self-employed.” — Bet you didn’t know that.

Secret #5 – You must generate steady profits with one income stream before adding another income stream. — Geez, why didn’t I think of that.

SECRET #16 – It’s easier to make ONE sale than it is to make two sales. — Wow, this is almost mystical.

Secret #34 – To successfully build multiple passive streams of income, you must focus on building only one income stream at a time. — Oh wait a minute, wasn’t that Secret #5?

SECRET #35 – Patience is the key to your success. — Now that is REALLY a helpful secret – please don’t spread this around or everybody will know and we’ll lose our competitive advantage.

Sorry for the sarcastic comments, I couldn’t help it.

There’s No Substance

After you have read and absorbed every word of this book, you will know how to do … nothing! The book tells you what worked for Holly in a general sort of way, but not how any of it was actually done. There’s no step-by-step to duplicate.

Aha! That’s why all those almost functional links at the end of the book – you have to buy more stuff to make Internet Profits in Your PJs. And that’s the real point of this book. Holly sold a lot of her websites and changed her business model which you can see here.

An Impressive List of Testimonials – Huh?

When I reviewed the names of the "experts" whose testimonials appear at the front of this book, I actually learned something about internet marketers. A lot of well-known names are there, and I am having a hard time with that. Maybe they didn’t actually read the book. The alternatives are 1. they produce the same kind of internet marketing vaporware and so think this book is marvelous, or 2. they don’t actually know anything and have testified to their ignorance by giving these testimonials.

The Bottom Line

You won’t learn anything useful from this book. Let the buyer beware .

I can't tell you how many times I've been baited with that line about No Product – No Problem. Yeah, I've tried more than my share, and guess what. If you don't have a product, you don't make any sales. It's simple – You have NOTHING to sell!

Here's an example. This product is advertised with the "No list, No experience, No technical skills, No product – No problem" marketing mantra by Matt Bacak, who is by the way, a really enthusiastic marketer who talks really fast.

"This Secret Money Getting Method Is Your Shortcut To Success – It's The Only Way I Know How Anyone Can Make Sales In the Shortest Amount Of Time. Faster Than Anything I’ve Ever Seen!”

• Can you really do this without a list – Yes you can.
• Can you do this without experience? Yes it's so easy, experience comes naturally.
• Can you do this without technical skills – Yes you can.
• Can you really do this without a product – No you can't.
• Is it really no problem? No problem to list a product. Making money is another issue.

WHAT ARE PRODUCTS?

Most of the time when I see the claim that you don't need a product, it generally means the product isn't something physical. You could be selling yourself, your knowledge, your expertise. Well, those are all products in the business sense of having something to sell. But the product here is physical stuff … namely – YOUR STUFF!

MAKE YOUR FIRST SALE ONLINE

What's the "secret" Matt is selling for a measly $17? How to sell products on Amazon.com. Here's the link.

And Yes you must have a product to sell or you aren't going to make any money. Here's the funny part – I didn't know that selling products with Amazon was a secret!

Well if you just listen to Matt's marketing video, you won't know he's talking about Amazon until after you charge the $17 on your credit card and find out the secret to how his young daughter made her first sale in 24 hours and continues to make 1-3 sales almost every day. But don't worry – it's easy to get a refund. You just have to wait til your next credit card statement. The refund guarantee is good for 90 days.

THE 8th STEP

Matt gives you 7 incredibly easy steps to sell your books with Amazon. The 7th step is to click the Submit button. What that does is complete the listing process. You're not done yet, assuming someone buys the book you listed.

You are responsible for "fulfillment" – you have to package it and post it. Matt's product gives you details about how to conduct the 8th Step though his product doesn't list it as one of the steps you have to do. I guess Matt thought it was just too obvious.

THE 9th STEP

Oh yeah, you are responsible for refunds and adjustments and keeping your customers happy just as in any other business transaction.

TAXES

 Matt doesn't give any guidance about whether you have to collect taxes on your sales. Amazon's guidance – it's your problem.

DOES IT WORK?

I was not registered to sell on Amazon and I found the registration process pretty easy. The fill-in-the-blanks kind of easy. Following directions just to try out the process, I pulled "Podcasting for Dummies" from my bookshelf, entered the ISBN number and … no results. Amazon couldn't find my book. Short story – the current edition is the 2nd edition and mine is the 1st edition so Amazon didn't have it.

Second try. I grabbed "Damn! Why Didn't I Write That?" and entered the ISBN number. Amazon searched and returned … the updated 2nd edition. Amazon didn't have my 1st edition copy. Matt Bacak didn't mention this problem.

ALERT If you give selling books with Amazon a try following the directions in the Get Your First Sale Online product, be aware of the multiple editions problem.

Third try, I listed Mark Joyner's "The Irresistible Offer" and that one worked as predicted. Fortunately, Mark hasn't published an updated 2nd edition!

Passive Selling

This approach to making money online is what I call "passive selling". You list the product and then wait for someone to buy it. You don't do any marketing so don't need any marketing skills. First you list, then you wait, then if you are lucky you ship and get paid.

DID I MAKE ANY MONEY?

Not Yet —- Amazon's calculations said I could make $7.92 if someone bought Mark Joyner's book from my Amazon listing. If I could just sell one book a day for a profit of $8, I could make about $240 a month. I listed "The Irresistible Offer" on November 13. It's November 15 and the Mark Joyner book hasn't sold even though I got the green check mark for lowest price. I guess I'm not as lucky as Matt's daughter Taylor. I'll try some more books and I'll let you know what happens.

DON'T EMAIL MATT

I tried that and one of his support people sent me this message in reply.

"No problem. I have forwarded your email to
him. I won't promise he will respond becasue
he gets tons of emails every single day."
 

Recommendation - Not Recommended

I could not detect any "secrets" exposed by Matt despite his contention that his way is better than anybody else's way to sell books or whatever with Amazon. But if you need or just want hand-holding to learn this process, $17 is probably not too much to risk. Just skip the more expensive One Time Offers.

My guess is you can make the $17 back if you sell 3 or 4 books (Amazon is after all a DISCOUNT book seller). The message is, "If Matt's daughter Taylor, a 12 year old, can make money doing this, then surely you can too." It's just a question of when and how much (hope springs eternal).

If you want to sell with Amazon, go here Sell Your Stuff. You don't really need Matt's product, Amazon's instructions are easy to follow, and Matt's Tips are trivial so I don't recommend this product.

I know it’s been a long time since I mentioned Affiliate Silver Bullet – but I hope Better Late Than Never applies here.

     Here’s the previous Affiliate Silver Bullet article.

Whoever runs Affiliate Silver Bullet doesn’t seem to pay attention to the products they are selling and that is a good enough reason to avoid this program.

Reported Attack Site!

One of the products being sold as a silver bullet leads visitors to a website that Google thinks is an attack site. That by itself rules out Affiliate Silver Bullet as something you want to get involved with.

To check out the product, I followed the process to get the free email course. When the first email came, I clicked the link at the bottom of the email, something like this: Just visit adomainname.com. The web page opened in my browser and immediately changed to the Reported Attack Site! alert What’s up with that? Shoddy product management or worse.

Cry Baby?

I gave my first name and email address to one of the silver bullets to check out the customer experience. I followed the process to get the free email course. When the first email came, I clicked the link at the bottom of the email, something like this: Just visit adomainname.com. The web page opened in my browser and when it had finished loading, the sound of a baby crying played for a few seconds. What’s up with that? Shoddy product management.

It Gets Worse!

I went to the support site and made out a ticket to report the problem with the Reported Attack Site. ASB sent me an auto-response email advising me to check the faq.

"Hello Edward Rykiel,

Thank you very much for your interest in the Affiliate Silver Bullet System!

Please take a quick look at these frequently asked questions, as they will most likely cover your inquiry. If your question is not covered below, you will receive a personal response within 24 – 48 hours (usually sooner)."

No response sooner, and none within 24 hours. You would think they would want to take care of a problem like that sooner rather than later. I also reported the baby crying thing, and got the same non response.

Don’t Ruin Your Online Reputation

Especially as a newbie, you don’t want to start off by ruining your reputation by promoting not just shoddy products but actual harmful products. There are too many hidden tricks and quality issues with Affiliate Silver Bullet. Your customers should NEVER get a ‘Reported Attack Site!’ web page with a product you are marketing. END OF STORY!

Comments?

Do you have experience with Affiiliate Silver Bullet? Add your comments here.

Are you determined to be a freelance writer?

Can you make a living freelancing? Yes you can. Is it easy? No it’s not. If you were looking for something easy, keep looking.

But if you like to write and do research, you don’t mind bidding for writing assignments, and you desparately want to get paid to for what you write, this could be just what you are looking for. And, who knows, it just might get easier and more profitable for you the more you do it.

Freelance Home Writers By Any Other Name

If you’ve been looking for a home-based business that you can run via the internet, you’ve probably come across ads for Freelance Home Writers. There are several different ads that all lead you to Freelance Home Writers. For example, one ad might say you can make money typing, another might say here’s a great business you can run from home. Whichever ad you respond to, you end up there.

[Can't show you a picture because the copyright says, "This information can not be reproduced, copied, or retransmitted in anyway." And, in case you didn't know, that includes pasting a screen capture  of the web page.]

A Home Study Course with a Twist

Freelance Home Writers is basically a home study course with a twist. The twist is a program you can use to find freelance writing jobs. "Our job finding software crawls the entire internet through literally tens of thousands of job postings and filters out only the most lucrative writing jobs."

7 Day Trial for $2.95, $47/Month Thereafter

7 days should be enough time for you to decide if you want to continue. The key is, if you sign up for the 7 day trial, put all you effort into it. My experience is that you can work through all the material in less than 7 days if you focus. They will be pretty prompt in charging $47 to your credit card when the 7 days is up.

A Representative Will Call You

A day or 2 after you sign up, a representative will call to welcome you and ask if you have any questions. That’s a nice touch.

8 Week Money Back Guarantee – Cancel Anytime

"If you aren’t 100% satisfied with Freelance Home Writers, simply contact us and we’ll send you a prompt refund! And, we’ll even let you keep your membership and all the bonuses included!" You can’t beat that.

To cancel, you call an 800 number. It was easy and there were no problems.

What You Get

• Basic Training Guidebook
• Multi-Media Tutorials
• Articles Database
• Patented Job Finding Software
• Advanced Training Section
• Free Bonuses

Basic Training for Beginning Freelancers

Here’s their approach in their own words. "At Freelance Home Writers Dot Com, we have tailored our site for the beginning freelance writer.  Why?  Because yes, it can be a little overwhelming to become a freelance writer with all the information that is thrown at you:  do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that.

That’s not going to help you with your career.  Therefore, we don’t proceed that way.  What we do is show you how to write for content, where to find the jobs, and how to succeed in a variety of arenas with your writing.  And we do it in a user-friendly way."

So you want to be a Freelancer. Well, that’s great! Go for it. If you have no or very limited experience with freelancing and it’s what you really want to do, Freelance Home Writers is as good a place to start as any.

Plenty More Offers

After you sign up, you run a gauntlet of one time offers. Up to you if you want any of them. If you stick with the program past the 7 day trial, you might be offered the opportunity to lower your monthly membership fee to $9.97.

Have you seen this ad lounging around the internet? It comes and goes. Now it’s baaack …

If you are thinking of buying in, you might want to consider these points.

Is It a Scam?

It all depends on your point of view I guess. Actually I think it all depends on whether or not you make more money than it costs you.

MLM

MLM is multi-level marketing, which is short for "you are probably not going to be a millionaire any time soon so make sure you get a comfortable lawn chair." You make money by recruiting new members to your "downline". You won’t know the details of the commission plan until you pay the joining fees.

What Are the PRODUCTS?

Did you notice that the ad doesn’t describe any actual product and just implies that you will make money with little or no effort?

I submitted a support question to find out what the products are and was told that they are ebooks. You have to pay the fees to join before you will find out what the products are so LCM will make at least $49.99 before you find out what the products are because the setup fee is not refundable. Clever huh?

You Pay

You pay a subscription/membership price of $29.99/month. The setup fee of $49.99 is non-refundable. You have to buy an ATM card to get paid. etc.

How Do You Make Money

1. Hope somebody finds your website and buys something.
2. Sell (i.e., Market) the products yourself
3. Recruit new members

It’s your responsibility to recruit new members and to provide support to them if they ask for it. In other words, you become their sponsor.

Refund Policy

Cancellation Policy

If you cancel your membership, you’re website is still live, you just won’t get any benefit from it.

ProMessenger

You will also have the opportunity to subscribe to ProMessenger for 14.95/month, which is presumably some kind of autoresponder/emailing program. LCM says you really need this if you are going to make the big bucks.

Is This Opportunity for YOU?

If you enjoy MLM, this might be the opportunity you are looking for. Your membership fee will be at least $45/month including the ProMessenger.

Good Luck!

Ed

Grain of Salt: I am not fond of MLM programs and I am not a member of Lawn Chair Millionaire. If you have experience with the Lawn Chair Millionaire program, please submit your comments.

I haven’t completed the work yet, but I have looked over the entire program, and here’s my recommendation.

Recommended - If you are an internet marketing beginner (otherwise known as a newbie), the Automatic Income System has all the information you need to get your feet wet. Given that you have 60 days to ask all the questions you can think of, Michael Cheney’s program is as complete as any I’ve seen, and with a money-back guarantee, you can’t really go wrong.

If you are more experienced, and you just want to be able to sell the 4 products to get 100% of the income, you might want to give this a try.

Not Recommended – If you already know how to set up a website and a WordPress blog and have already sold something on the internet, you will be annoyed by the handholding that is appropriate for newbies (scrolls, messengers, and castles, oh my!), but doesn’t add anything to what you already know. If you know how to find products at ClickBank and you want to promote Michael Cheney’s products, you don’t need the Automatic Income System to do that.

Caveat emptor: Some of the components of the Automatic Income System are Windows-only (actually the entire program is Windows-oriented). So if you are a Mac person, be prepared for that.

If you purchased the Automatic Income System, please share your experiences with it here.

NEWS FLASH !!!

You’ll notice below that I felt that the sales letters could use some editing so I opened a ticket at Automatic Income System.

Michael Cheney responded to let me know that you are free to do whatever editing you wish on the 4 products that you get in the Automatic Income System, and I wanted to pass that on to you. You don’t have to do any more editing then the videos require so I’ll leave it up to you how much editing you want to do.

PS I’ve found that his support system is responsive and has answered all the questions I’ve asked thus far.

OK, I’ve got the "money" websites online now. Took me a little longer than I expected. You can see them here:

1. MichaelCheneyRevealsAffiliateMillions.com
2. WebmasterTrafficTactics.com
3. ClickBankCashExplosion.com
4. MichaelCheneysInternetMarketingSecrets.com

Please let me know if you notice any problems with these websites (and remember if you buy any of these products, you are buying them from me.). I might make more changes to them, but for now I’m moving on to the blog part.

Here’s a few issues I came across getting the websites set up.

What I Liked

1. The videos guide you along quite well. I advise that you watch the videos before you actually try to get things set up, and watch them again as you are working on the project so you can refer to them as often as you need. Michael Cheney does a good job of explaining just what you have to do, although I don’t think it is "brain-dead simple".

2. The explanations apply to any website hosting that uses cPanel so you understand what to do even if you are not using Kiosk.ws.

3. The pricing of the money products is reasonable in comparison to similar products.

4. The sales letters are attractive, although sometimes challenged by verb tenses and subject-verb number relation.

What I Didn’t Like

Traffic Tactics

1. Traffic Tactics salesletter is written as if I developed all these tactics. The ethics of passing off someone else’s work as your own is a subject for another day. Suffice it to say that I would prefer to edit the sales letter to say something like "I had these developed and thought they were good enough to pass on to you" (or words to that effect).

2. This product was apparently developed by Edmund Loh who is selling the PLR  (private  label  rights) and  Michael  Cheney has  resold  this  product to me. If you know something about PLR, you’ll realize that this is a common practice for internet marketers. No telling how much money has been made this way, but it’s a lot. In any case, I would have liked to know up front that I was getting a PLR  product.

3. In the members folder, which is where a buyer will go to download their purchase, there is an index.html file that has no support information. If a person bought the product and had a problem, they would have to go back to the sales page for contact information, and they would probably be really annoyed at that point. I suppose you can edit the html code to add whatever contact info you want to provide, and I recommend that you do that if you can.

Cash Creators

1. These are email text messages meant to be used in an autoresponder. The text messages pitch ClickBank products in the Business- to-Business and Health-Fitness categories. It’s not clear if you can use the text in other ways if you don’t have an email list.

2. This is also a PLR product.

3. The members folder has an index.html file with no support information.

Fortune with 500

1. I had some trouble figuring out what this product is. The sales letter just says that Michael Cheney is going tell you something important if you buy it.

2. This is a Windows-only product (a .exe file) and will not work on a Mac (unless you running Windows on your Mac), but that is not mentioned in the sales letter.

3. The members folder has an index.html file which you should edit because it has placeholders for your name and contact info. I don’t remember that being mentioned in the video (but I could be wrong about that).

What I Did Differently

 1. I edited the index files in the members folders to add my name and/or contact info for support purposes.

2. I bought all 5 domain names at GoDaddy. The total cost was $49.95. My hosting at HostGator cost $9.95 (I’m on a monthly basis because I didn’t want to buy a year’s worth of hosting to evaluate a new product that I might not stick with.). So I have spent an additional $59.90 so far.

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What’s Next? – I’m plugging ahead to the blog videos. There are 9 of them.

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