Bowkett: This Is Why You Should Pay For Advice
gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
And no, you often do not get what you pay for. A lot of ebook peddlers will take your money and give you some really crappy stuff. I've never bought them, but I've taken them off bittorrent and been glad I didn't buy them.
He's making money off the guys system - he has no incentive to tell us the negative stuff. The positie stuff may be true, but what has he not said because he knows it will lose him money?
I know someone who - until Google really started clamping down on it - made about $10k a month as an affiliate for a major text link ads company merely by running ads on Google Adwords for them and getting a payout when they signed up.
Back around 2003-2004, I worked alongside an affiliate marketing department at a bargain basement Web hosting company that paid $100ish per referred signup (which was amazing since their account only cost about $100 for the year anyway). Some folks (often with "web hosting review" sites) were doing hundreds of referrals for them each month. It's a big business, but people don't tend to shout about it.
The best formula I've found is to take the time to cook for yourself, and focus on physical fitness rather than weight.
I understand that we've all got to eat, but having an affiliate link in such a praiseful article kind of demolished one's credibility - even if your name is Giles Bowkett.
Considering the number of cranks and scams surrounding this topic, if you want people to take your advice on such matters seriously, at least post a plain link.
I tend to realize when something is a sunk cost, so regardless of what I've put into it, if I'm not motivated to continue, I don't.
http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2009/12/blogs-are-godless-c...
He's not concerned with credibility. He's mocking the system, mocking its methods, but using them to build his own traffic and generate money via affiliate marketing.
It's a parody. I'd say the original post and all the followups he's doing along the same lines are incredibly effective at demonstrating his point.
I thought that too at first, but he is also taking money from people. If the whole thing really is a joke, I would think one of those people would inevitably sue him (or at the very least issue a chargeback and tell the world).
Anyway, as far as your other question, there are tons of people making money hand over fist in affiliate marketing. I hate to be a dick but if you want to make money in affiliate marketing, you shouldn't just build some random complicated system in the hopes that maybe it might work, you should PAY FOR ADVICE. Just buy a couple ebooks on affiliate marketing and figure out which systems work. Even if you buy a bad book, you learn a little about how to spot bullshit. $35 or $97 on an ebook costs a lot less than several weeks or months of programmer time at a startup. I mean that's just crazy.
The main difference here (from watching the video) is that the service he's promoting is from a medical doctor and based on results published in medical journals. That's a pretty high bar of evidence, and I doubt that it would be anywhere close to a "scam".
So many forms of reviews are completely worthless because this system has got out of hand. Amateur video game reviewers get the games for free, but if they really rip a game, the publisher cuts them off in the future. Wonder why almost no game gets rated less than 70%? And on, and on, and on. If you want the worst of it, the incestuous world of affiliate marketing is where to look. Say you want to buy a program to learn how to start... ok, you heard of one, now you look it up on google to see if it's legit. EVERY SINGLE RESULT FOR 100 PAGES will be some guy pretending to review it, but really just promoting it. They even use titles like this "Affiliate marketing scam," and the article says, "Is it a scam? Let's investigate... no. Sign up here <aff link>" Basically, within that world, it is impossible for a beginner to separate the wheat from the chaff. Outside of AM, it's not as bad, but it's getting there.
I lost 80 lbs by following free, useful advice found on the internet. That does not give me any more credibility than you, nor anymore credibility than me.
And if anyone wants to know how I did it, I'll tell them for the low, low price of $19.99! ....just kidding.
Basically, he thinks that news sites like Reddit/HN/etc are doomed to become tabloids, since their author's incentives are all screwed up.
The format of the post is a trick to both get on the front page of HN, and prove his point - that you're more interested in fighting and gossip than real information.
I created this account so I could come on here and correct these comments. I had to create a new account because I threw out my HN password about a week or two ago in hopes of staying out of these kinds of discussions. I don't know which specific incident on Reddit of deleting my comments and/or my account you're referring to, because I've done that many times, but it probably involved wasted time or inadequate explanation on my part and poor logic on the part of several other people.
it's basically a failure of discipline and priority-setting on my part. I'm getting better at it, though.
Here is an example of the kind of thinking you get from him: http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-do-primitive...
He makes a sweeping conclusion using 2 ridiculous citations. One of is some random website, the other is off-topic (about modernized eskimos, not primitives).