There is a never-ending debate about whether long or short sales letters are best for conversions.

Copywriters that charge by the page say that long copy is best, while lazy internet marketers tell themselves that short copy is where it’s at.

It looks like Doug Champigny is one of the lazy guys, because the sales copy for his new book How To Become A Blogging PRO! is pretty short.

However, he may be starting a revolution that makes short copy as effective as long copy…

Because what his sales page lacks in text, it makes up for in a huge 3D ebook cover!

Look at this thing:

That’s crazy!

I think there is more image than text on the page!

My next ebook sales page will have a paragraph of text, a HUGE graphic, and then a “buy now” button. Then I’ll be rich just like these gurus!

P.S. While I got a good laugh at the huge ebook cover, I certainly don’t recommend buying the book. There are a million blog posts out there that tell you how to setup a great blog on Wordpress, and they are probably more useful than the book. Plus they are free to read

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For each and every “how to make money with Adsense” ebook, there is some exorbitant earnings claim. Something like “I went from pennies a day to $500 a day with Adsense.” There has to be a claim like that, because not even a gullible newbie would buy Skyrocket Your Adsense Earnings From $0.03 to $0.05 In Just Six Months!

But what kind of techniques are these “gurus” teaching you?

Are they telling you to blend your Adsense ads?

Google recommends that you make the ads look nice and fit in with your color scheme, but they explicitly state that you cannot make the ads look like the site’s navigation. You also cannot label them anything other than “Sponsors” or “Advertisements.”

So I’m going to reveal the mystery guru behind that site I talked about…

It’s none other than Joel Comm, the Adsense guru himself. And the site is DealofDay.

It seems that the author of What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense could also write What Google Never Told You About Enforcement of Adsense Policies. I guess either title makes sense, but I’ve never read the book, so I can’t say for sure.

But none of that matters, because today I’ll reveal the techniques used by this guru in real life. (Which might be the secrets that Google never told you… and chances are, Joel Comm never gave out these secrets either…)

Site 1: World Village
URL: http://worldvillage.com

(Click the image for a larger version.)

Take a look at the links in the left navigation menu. Those are navigation links. It looks like the uppermost links are actually Google ads, but they can’t be, because it’s against Google’s terms to disguise their ads as content…

Site 2: Deal of Day
URL: http://www.dealofday.com

(Click the image for a larger version.)

Again, in the left menu, I swear that is an Adsense link unit disguised as part of the navigation menu.

Even worse, that yellow arrow sure looks like an animated graphic pointing at the ads! Well, Joel actually points the arrow at a real navigation link, but that navigation link (and subsequently, the arrow) is deceptively close to the Adsense unit!

Site 3: The Map Game
URL: http://www.themapgame.com

(Click the image for a larger version.)

There’s another one from Joel Comm and Infomedia, but I don’t see anything shady though. It’s just some Adsense ads plastered across the top, with the flash game towards the bottom. Very typical for MFA sites.

So it’s really just WorldVillage and DealOfDay that really get me going.

Sure, Joel probably sends a ton of clicks to Google. But why is that an excuse for breaking the rules? I thought that these deceptive practices were banned in order to protect the advertisers?

Oh now I remember… Google wants to make money however possible. (But they do reserve the right to screw over the smaller publishers as they see fit.)

Oh well, what are we gonna do? I’m sure plenty of jealous webmasters have reported his sites to Google for breaking the terms, but like I said, Google is getting paid through all of this so they don’t care.

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Have you seen the latest publicity campaign for BlogRush?

Apparently the huge initial buzz wore off thanks to the tremendous amount of “Blogrush Sucks” posts on almost every blog out there.

So what did the marketing genious Reese do to counteract that?

He decided to ban popular blogs from BlogRush!

He knew if he did this, then all those popular blogs would create posts about getting banned… and what would that lead to? Yep, a ton of links, press, and other publicity for BlogRush.

Of course, pissed off bloggers would be one of the side effects

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What If Everything You Were Ever Taught About Internet Marketing Was A Myth?

In that case, I would say, “I told you so!”

But it’s nothing new when I say it. It is something, though, when one of the gurus says it!

And it just happens to be Russel Brunson at it again, but this time he might have a point…

His latest ebook, offered free of charge, is called The IM Myth. I couldn’t list off this dude’s history, but chances are he has pushed some sort of product about making money online. And now he is pushing a product about why making money on the internet is not a good idea.

Just take a look at the tag line:

“Showing Why Internet Marketing is Like Having a Lamborghini on a Dead End Road and what you HAVE to do today if you want to still be around tomorrow…”

I would actually agree with that statement… until I die of laughter! I still can’t get over these gurus… they release countless ebooks about making money online, then they release ebooks telling you everything you learned was a myth, and to top things off, you need to buy a new ebook now!

You still have to buy it from them, of course, because they are the gurus and know how to make money offline as well.

I have a feeling this is an attempt at publicity like The Death of Adsense was. That book was a little over the top, and they even paid 50 cents for you to promote it.

Similarly, Russel has an affiliate program with his ebook paying $1 for everyone you refer that downloads the book. Yep, a whole dollar for almost nothing! (It sure beats paid surveys.)

The money has to come from somewhere, though, right?

It does. As suspected, there is a hilarious upsell that’s in there once you sign-up for free. It’s one of those “you only see this page once” deals. I don’t want to ruin the surprise of the product, but get this - it’s still pretty cheap, just $1.

Which means there must be more to the story…

And indeed there is. It looks like the book promotes a big, upcoming product launch where Russel could pull in lots of money in expensive membership fees.

But nevertheless, the ebook is still free, so why not click here and download it?

Almost forgot to mention… Once you’re in, you learn that the affiliate program is two-tiered. Not only do you get $1 for each referral, you get 50 cents for each of their referrals!

I guess it’s time for me to sell out and recommend an ebook!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not recommending that you actually read the ebook, just that you download it

So… Download It Today for FREE!

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As I have profiled before, it’s pretty common for gurus to give out free stuff and hide “the catch.” The Rich Jerk did it, and now Russell Brunson is offering practically the same thing.

In this special offer, Mr. Brunson is offering a a free website, but he actually tells you what “the catch” is. And the catch is that if you want a free site, you have to buy the hosting from a specific place through a specific order form.

He doesn’t mention anything about getting a commission from his “extensive negotiations” with this host, but that’s a given if you know anything about internet marketing. It probably wouldn’t matter though, because he uses some slick Web 2.0 graphics on the sales page!

Uh oh! Only 27 left! I better hurry if I want to get my own money making website, my OWN cash-generating blog, and my own UNLIMITED squeeze page generator!

Hmm… how much does it cost?

Looks like I have to put in my name and email just to get the privilege of seeing the real sales page.

OK, now I have to put in a domain name choice and click the order button…

And finally, here’s the checkout page!

Now I know if I want hosting with 40 GIGS of space and 1.5 TERABYTES of bandwidth EACH MONTH!!! that I have to pay $197 for the year.

That does sound like a lot, especially considering the three exclamation points, but Dreamhost offers 145.6 GB of space and 1.456 TB of bandwidth for a mere $97 per year. And with them, your storage and bandwidth limits increase on a weekly basis!

Of course, with Dreamhost, you’ll have to build your own site, and you don’t get a free spam page generator with it…

So if Dreamhost offers the same stuff for $100 less, where oh where could that extra money be going? I wouldn’t ever suspect that the extra $100 is actually payment for the “free” script…

I better not say anything bad though, because I think Russel Brunson was a wrestler in college, and he might put me in a choke hold if I don’t keep quiet!

If you don’t want put in a choke hold, go get your free MFA site and splog, the great automated money makers of 1999!

P.S. Thanks to five4all.com for letting me know about this

P.P.S. I thought this would be fun to write about, but I had no idea I’d get a chance to plug my Dreamhost affiliate link. That made my day that I could integrate a nice internet marketing technique in here!

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Here’s what you’ve been waiting for - an example of Adsense ads that are totally blended into a website’s design!

Did I do it? Nope. I was just kidding about getting banned from Adsense. I’d prefer to keep my account.

All I did was find someone that was breaking Google Adsense TOS.

Here’s the screenshot:

(Clicking the picture brings up a larger version.)

Do you see the ads? No, not the squares in the middle. I’m talking about the ad links in the left navigation menu. You wouldn’t notice the ads at all if it weren’t for the “Ads by Google” hiding in the corner.

I blurred out the logo to protect the innocent, but I hesitate to say innocent - this site is owned by one of the popular internet “gurus.” Even better, this guy is an Adsense guru.

Is he behind the times? Does he have a special relationship with Google? Is he hoping he doesn’t get caught? Is this placement alright if it’s an ad link unit?

Whatever it is, I’m pretty sure this technique will cause visitors to click the ads thinking they are navigation links. And Google doesn’t like that.

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I remember the days of my very first personal email address. It was the only one I used, and I gave it out to all my friends and family. Then I started surfing the net… and giving out my email to any site promising a free special report that would make me lots and lots of money without any effort. It wasn’t long before I got twenty emails every day - enough to make me excited!

But the excitement wore off real fast, considering 90% of the emails were spam. As the years went by and the amount of spam increased to thousands of messages daily, I realized the importance of having a few yahoo and hotmail addresses. Those were for giving out to any websites, leaving my personal email for my personal business.

That method worked pretty well, but it was still a pain to register a bunch of @yahoo.com addresses, only to have them ruined by one spammer. But there weren’t any other options, especially when seemingly credible websites started selling out to spammers. (Add in human errors like pasting a bunch of emails into the “To” field instead of “BCC” and even good-intentioned business people could screw you over!)

But those days are slowly dissipating thanks to a new service called 10 Minute Mail. They let you sign-up for a new email address at the click of a button, and you get access to that email for 10 minutes before it self-destructs!

Why do something like that? Well, if you have been dabbling in internet marketing for a while, you know there are lots of shady characters lurking out there. If you’re still new, then just read this advice from 10 Minute Mail:

Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don’t want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists. This is nice and disposable. And it’s free.

That sounds ideal. I’ve been using their service and so far it has performed flawlessly. Check it out at 10minutemail.com.

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