Have you ever ventured outside the realms of Google and Yahoo in search of cheaper Pay-Per-Click (PPC) traffic?

If so, you may have used places such as 7Search, Kanoodle, and Brainfox.

I’ve used all of them, and while none will be overtaking Google anytime soon, hopefully one will get shut down. And that one is Brainfox.

I could be wrong, but I think it is a total scam. All my dealings with them have been fishy. Luckily their minimum deposit is $10, so I’ve never lost a lot, but it’s kind of annoying to say the least.

Last time I used them, after I made my deposit, I burnt through my budget of $10 overnight. How did I get 1000 clicks overnight? With the keywords and bids I entered, that should not have happened. (It never happened in AdWords or Overture and those search engines have a tad bit more traffic…)

Hmm…

So I checked my reports to see where the traffic was going. The keywords showed about 50 cents worth of clicks, yet all my money was gone! At first I thought it was a reporting glitch, but I kept checking back, and the stats were the same. It seems that the real stats don’t come till a month later. What good is that?

Still skeptical, I searched the net for some Brainfox reviews. Too bad I didn’t do this a while ago - just look at these results!

• An Epinions forum thread
• Very good thread on DP forums
• Some reviews at alexa.com
• Notice at Search Engine Forums

I think the results speak for themselves…

And did I mention they don’t have any helpful support…

AVOID Brainfox!

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For anyone new to Wordpress that isn’t using the Akismet plugin, I have some advice for you: Start using it!

When I first started with Wordpress, I didn’t know what Akismet was. I only knew that you needed an API key, and since I didn’t have one, I just ignored it. Boy was that a bad decision.

I heard about the wonders of Akismet when I was searching for ways to stop all this blog comment spam, so I bit the bullet and started using it. It was extremely easy to get started, and your blog probably has Akismet bundled with it to begin with.

First, get an API key. To do that, just head on over to www.wordpress.com and sign-up for an account. If you only want the API key, you can choose “just a username, please.” Then they will email you your account information, including the API key. (The key is near the bottom of the email.)

Then just go to the “Plugins” tab in your blog and activate Akismet. Enter your API key where necessary.

Like magic, your comment spam will disappear!

Well, it won’t really disappear, but Akismet will hide it so you never have to deal with it. It will save lots of time and will save you from the let down when you get excited about comments which just turn out to be spam

Since 95% of all blog comments are spam, I recommend installing Akismet right now!

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For the majority of internet marketers, making money online is like hunting for buried treasure. They spend a hell of a lot of time and energy searching for the one thing that will make them filthy rich. They could put that time and energy into actually working on something, but that would be like “work.”

If you aren’t ready to take action, keep searching for your buried treasure. But if you’re ready to get started (or already started) here is a treasure chest that you might like. It’s actually Jonathan Leger’s Tool Chest, but the tools are free and could very well be a treasure in disguise

Here’s a link to the Web Tools.

Here’s a sampling of what you will find:

• AdWords Keyword Generators
• Domain Name Buyers Tool
• Link Cloaker
• Misspelled Keyword Generator

And even some others. I counted a total of 10 last time I checked.

The best part is that he includes a contact form on the page and welcomes you to submit ideas. If he likes your idea, maybe he’ll make it and let you use it for free!

Now go try these tools, and if you find them useful, Jon has some donation buttons in the top right corner of his page.

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Bad news for all you comment spammers trying to increase PR for your site - comment links on myspace profiles won’t do you any good. Myspace has implemented a redirect system that takes any external link in a comment and turns it into a redirect. Without a direct link, it’s like your link doesn’t exist.

But the good news for comment spammers is that people might still click the link and end up at your site. You might not get the PR but you’ll still get the traffic (which is more important, IMHO.)

And the bad news for legitimate myspace users is that comment spam is not going to decrease. There are numerous spam comments that don’t even use live hyperlinks anymore, so I doubt that these redirects will slow them down. They will keep spamming as usual and add more obtrusive methods as they find more exploits in Myspace’s code.

I’m really getting sick of it. Lately it seems like 45 of the latest 50 comments on my profile are spam. And it’s mostly from phished accounts.

Will Myspace survive the spammers? Only time will tell.

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If you own a proxy and thought that getting a low percentage of US-based traffic was bad, think again. It seems that someone has created a bot that is blasting a lot of proxy sites with non-human hits, resulting in bans and fines from Adsense.

Some theories state that this bot is easily finding proxy sites thanks to the huge proxy directory, Proxy.org.

Whatever is going on, it’s not good. If you run a proxy, check this out before it’s too late!

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Some people got a little worked up back when I talked about John Chow’s blog and (sarcastically) stated how he was conning people into writing about his blog and offering nothing more than a link back from his high-PR, high-traffic blog.

That’s fine though because people should get worked up over this blog. And something that could get you even more worked up is this new site, http://www.johnchowsucks.com. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud about some of content!

That site deserves an ‘Internet Marketing Sucks’ round of applause!

(And while you’re at it, take a look at this first life site. It has nothing to do with internet marketing but it’s pretty funny!)

Note: JohnChowSucks.com is now just redirecting to johnchow.com

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Every so often a member of the Digitalpoint forums will make a neat new script and give it away. Thankfully this one I found is actually worthwhile - it’s an Ajax Cool Wall script. You can see an example and download the script at that site.

What this does is display a “wall” of photos on your page, and the users get to vote for the ones they like by dragging them to the “cool” category. As cool as that might be, this is Internet Marketing Sucks, so I have a better idea…

I will create a “Sucks wall” on this site where you can vote for the ebooks and special DVD packages and whatever else. But you’ll be voting for which one sucks the worst! Oh what fun is in store!

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