In my inbox this morning was an email from Scott Boulch, author of "The Death of Adsense" and a number of other reports.   Scott was letting his list know that he has a brand new report out entitled "The Internet Marketing Cure".  In this report he proclaims that the "Digital Ebola Virus Strikes Internet Marketers, Business Fatality rate over 90%!"  which struck me as being a suspiciously similar metaphor to the "Diarrhoea Out of Control Marketing System" we here at the World Wide Web Gurus coined at the time of Frank Kern's Mass Control launch back in February.  You don't suppose Scott has been reading this blog do you?

Scott also pointed me in the direction of Rick Butts blog and his post "Unsubscribe From Whomever Emailed You Stompernet".There is a heated (and extremely interesting) discussion going on over there about the current state of the internet marketing industry.  In particular there is a lot of debate about the recent Stompernet relaunch.  A number of big names from the industry have commented, including Frank Kern, Nathan Anderson and Scott Boulch himself (which I guess isn't a surprise in all the circumstances).  There's been no input from Brad Fallon or Andy Jenkins yet, but Dan Thies, Stompernet's SEO guru, has put their side of the case with a number of comments.  Rick has recently added a comment of his own to the effect that "NO MORE STOMPER-BASHING" and "I will delete any further posts that take personal shots here. Let's all get back to work - and focus on the positive".

Despite this I couldn't resist the urge to make a comment of my own, which included the facts about my own experiences as a member of Stompernet, and which wasn't entirely positive.  My comment is currently visible, and it doesn't look like Rick moderates his comments before displaying them. It will be interesting to see if Rick classes my contribution as "taking personal shots".  Watch this space!

P.S.  Just over an hour has passed since I clicked the "publish" button.  According to SEO Elite this post is now ranked 10 out of 619,000 on a Google search for "digital ebola virus" (no quotes).  We were ranked number 1 for "mass control sucks" (no quotes) but at the moment Google now shows this new post at number 148.

Mark Joyner has has been releasing products thick and fast for the past few months.  As part of this series of launches Mark has also been giving away lots of great information at no cost whatsoever.   As from today you can download a copy of his best selling book The Irresistible Offer.  Just go to Mark's simpleology web site and sign up. No money down. No charge at all! 

Apparently Mark has persuaded his publisher, John Wiley & Sons, to conduct a marketing experiment.  Mark's theory is that giving away the ebook will actually boost sales of the print version of the book.  Is he right?  I guess only time will tell, but we'll conduct a little experiment of our own to try and test out this idea.  Today The Irresistible Offer is at number 4099 in the Amazon.com list of best selling books.  We'll keep track of the book's position in the Amazon charts and let you know how it fares over the next few weeks.

You may be asking yourself whether it's worth your time downloading and then reading a 200 page book.  I suggest you just do it, but if you need a bit more information here is a quote from the dust jacket to give you a flavour of what the book is all about:

For too long selling has been about manipulating a message and manipulating a consumer.  The Irresistible Offer presents a new, effective, and ethical way to sell based on what you're selling, not how you're selling it.

If that has whetted your appetite here's some praise for the book from Joe Vitale, star of "The Secret" and the author of quite a few marketing books himself:

I've read every book on marketing printed in the last 150 years. This is the first breakthrough in over fifty years. A truly brilliant, practical, and inspiring book.  Destined to be a classic and a collectible.  It's a masterpiece.

Like I said, if you're at all interested in marketing in general, or internet marketing in particular, get your copy of The Irresistible Offer now.  Just do it.

Way back in 2001 Mark Joyner, sometimes referred to as "The Godfather of Internet Marketing" published a book entitled "Mind Control Marketing - How Everyday People are Using Forbidden Mind Control Psychology and Ruthless Military Tactics to Make Millions Online".

Some well known names gave the book glowing reviews:

Joe Vitale, author of "Hypnotic Marketing" and star of "The Secret" said:
"Riveting. Mind-expanding. A by-god masterpeice."

Robert Allen, author of "Multiple Streams of Income" said:
"Just one idea in this book could make (or save) you millions."

Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of the "Illuminatus!" trilogy said:
"The best book of the new millennium!"

On February 16th 2008 Mark Joyner published a new eBook entitled "The Rise of the Author".  On page 18 of that eBook, in the section headed "Mind Control 101", he revealed his current thinking about his previous book:

I wrote a full book about all of this years ago (Mind Control Marketing) and let it go out of print because I felt it wasn’t really the right message to be sending people about business.

The print version of the book is currently still in demand, but since it has been out of print for a long time it is now rather expensive. You can pick up a used copy on Amazon.com for $198.98 as I type this.

In "The Rise of the Author" Mark also added:

Since then I’ve realized that there is no way to contain this kind of information anymore. Whether I popularize it or someone else does, it’s going to happen.

These days I’m more interested in ensuring that this information is being presented in its proper context.

Some will use this power to influence people to perform acts of great kindness and others will use it to influence them to do great evil, and some will use it for personal gain at the expense of others.

That I can’t control.

What I can do now is inform more people about these ideas so they may protect themselves.

Earlier today Mark Joyner announced that he is relaunching "Mind Control Marketing" in downloadable form on April 8th, complete with a previously unseen "missing chapter".  Personally I cannot wait to read that extra chapter.  If you would like to find out more about that missing chapter, or indeed the relaunch of the whole book, then go to MindControlMarketing.com right now.

Prepare to be shocked. Seriously.

An interesting set of circumstances came about this week, which have led to me writing this preliminary review of Conversion Prophet, and also to us here at the World Wide Web Gurus starting our first pay per click campaign with Google AdWords. I will try to explain.

I received an email from Chris McNeeny yesterday, but with the hundreds of emails I now seem to receive each day I didn't get around to reading it until this morning.  In case the name doesn't ring a bell with you, Chris (sometimes known simply as Chris X.) rose to fame as the author of the "Affiliate Project X" and "Day Job Killer" ebooks. In the email Chris recommended a new product, Conversion Prophet, which is a script that resides on a server somewhere on the internet and does tracking at the keyword level, and also something that their sales letter refers to as a "revolutionary pre-tracking method".  Basically this allows you to split test different aspects of your sales page whilst keeping tabs on the amount of time a visitor stays there before hitting the "Back" button.  The product seems reasonably priced for something that does split testing and keyword level tracking so I got a copy to try out. If the "revolutionary" pre-tracking helps that will be a big bonus too, and make the product even better value.  Having downloaded the script the initial installation onto one of our servers went very smoothly, and it certainly tracked our first few test clicks properly.

Then I went to check out how things looked on a Google search for Conversion Prophet.  If you've read some of my previous posts here on this blog you will know that it came as no surprise whatsoever to me to see a headline on the top paid search result reading "Conversion Prophet Sucks?".  What was more interesting to me though, was at the other end of the paid search results.  There was a  big empty space!  Coupled with the fact that I had got a £30 AdWords voucher from Google from a magazine which expires at the end of this month this was enough to inspire me to write our first paid advertisement.

At this moment we're just direct linking to the vendor's Clickbank sales page via our own tracking software, which is integrated into WordPress. In another hour or two we'll have a dedicated sales page up and running using the Conversion Prophet script.  Come back here over the coming days and we'll let you know how we're getting on, with both our PPC campaign as well as with Conversion Prophet.

As our regular readers will know here at the World Wide Web Gurus we are very excited about the possibilities offered by videos if you are trying to start an internet business with very little money, or indeed no money whatsoever.  Up until now we have been concentrating on video hosting services supported by TubeMogul, particularly YouTube and Revver.

However earlier this week Viddler announced the release of their WordPress video plugin .  Since Viddler also offer a revenue sharing model similar to Revver we thought we would take a much closer look at what the Viddler service has to offer.  To find out what we discovered take a look at this video: 

To summarise our first impressions are that the Viddler service is worthy of a lot of further investigation.  Since we recommend beginner internet marketers join the Amazon associate program, the fact that Viddler have partnered with Amazon to offer revenue sharing to their video publishers is of great interest to us.

As mentioned in the video, the Viddler plugin for WordPress is supposed to allow you to record a video comment to this post direct to your webcam, as long as you already have a Viddler account.  Feel free to experiment with this new service, and let us know how well it works for you.

P.S. The following day (February 29th - most auspicious) Viddler suddenly appeared on my TubeMogul dashboard.  Here is TubeMogul's take on the occasion, and here is Viddler's.  We get a bit closer to Video Heaven!

P.P.S. If you do venture over to Viddler and you're a long time follower of the Open Source movement like me you might like to check out their video conversation with Jonathan Schwartz (CEO of Sun) and Mårten Mickos (now ex CEO of MySQL) about Sun's acquisition of MySQL.

Following on from the recent announcement of the simpleology "Will You Be the World's Next Best Selling Author?" competition Mark Joyner has just released a new e-book entitled "The Rise of the Author….and the End Of Publishing As We Know It".

Whether you are currently a writer or not, Kasia and I recommend that you stop whatever you are doing, download this e-book, and read it from virtual cover to cover. If now is not a good time try and find the time to read it before you go back to work on Monday morning.  At the very least read the executive summary at the end.

In "The Rise of the Author" Mark suggests that the world is currently experiencing what he terms "The Great Nexus". (I do not know if this a reference, conscious or unconscious on Mark's part, to Henry Miller's struggle to become recognized as a "legitimate" author.)  The "Digital Age" has provided a brief window in history when "the power to publish and distribute information has recently shifted from the hands of the few to the hands of the many."

Authors currently have the power in their hands to decentralize the control of information. However "In order for a great shift toward Decentralization to occur a large number of people must have the required Knowledge, the sufficient Means, and the Will to make it happen." I suggest that everyone reading this blog post asks themselves this question. "Do I have the Knowledge, the Means, and the Will to make this happen?"  If the answer is "Not yet, but I'd like to" then go read "The Rise of the Author" as soon as you have an hour or two to spare.

On the penultimate page Mark Joyner issues a challenge of his own. "I challenge someone reading this to solve the technology challenge of Unbinding the Internet from the Medium of Transmission and the Device. Whoever does this will go down in history as one of the most important transformative figures who ever lived, and will provide one of the most profound services to humanity ever rendered. Is that you?"

Is it?

Our regular readers will know we are big fans of Mark Joyner and his free simpleology 101 online course.  In fact before I forget to mention it, this seems like a good time to remind you that the simpleology blogging course is also still available free of charge to anyone who blogs about it!

In the last two or three months simpleology has branched out from its beginnings in self development and internet marketing to embrace the arts. Initially came the simpleology Jacque Fresco Teaches Drawing course, which is purely about teaching an artistic technique. More recently two new simpleology courses have been announced, which combine the arts with internet marketing. If you can already write and/or make music, these two new courses will teach you how to promote yourself and your art. They will teach you how to turn your passion for writing or music into an income, if that is something you want to do.

If you are passionate about writing the course to look at is: Will You Be the World's Next Best Selling Author?

If you are passionate about music check out the music promotion course instead: Online Music Fame!

This is a gross generalization, but often creative people are not terribly good at promoting themselves and their work and have traditionally had to rely on (and pay handsomely!) others to do this for them. Now, however, the internet allows artists to dispense with the agents, the managers, the record companies, the publishers, the gallery owners and the media moguls. These new simpleology courses show you how to promote your art directly to lovers of that art throughout the world.

An integral part of the "art of promotion" in 2008 is the internet video. If you are a writer a simpleology competition has just started. To enter the Best Selling Author competition simply make a 2 minute video and upload it to YouTube before midnight on February 26th. Mark Joyner and Richard Webster will give live speed writing training to every entrant, and the 3 lucky competition winners get a whole bunch of goodies, including having their work promoted to Mark Joyner's 250,000 strong list!

Here at the World Wide Web Gurus we do have some experience with internet videos. Here are a couple we did for up and coming British band De Larje This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it in the simpleology Online Music Fame Competition, for example.  I suspect most writers are less comfortable with the idea of appearing in a YouTube video than musicians are with making a music video.  However, if you would like to give the simpleology Best Selling Author competition a try, but are unsure about the ins and outs of getting your video made and up on YouTube (and maybe a few other places too!), then please do get in touch with us via our contact form, and we'll help in any way we can.

P.S. For the internet marketers amongst our readers, I clicked the "Publish" button for this post at 13:00 GMT, then I went to make a sandwich and a cup of tea for lunch.  By the time I checked Google at 13:40 GMT we were already at number 6 in the natural search rankings for the keyphrase simpleology online music fame, and number 20 for simpleology best selling author.

We have now used TubeMogul to upload our "Diarrhoea Out of Control™" video to 11 different video hosting sites.  Some of our other videos are also now available on one or two other video hosts apart from YouTube. Today I'm going to go over our search engine rankings, with particular emphasis on the rankings of our videos.  I'll also update you on the fun and games we've been involved in over on the Warrior Forum.

Most exciting of all is the fact that we have at long last generated our first income!  Our PayPal account still reads $0.00, but our Revver account shows "Current Earnings $0.14" Mighty oaks from little acorns grow

If you haven't come across Revver before, it is one of the video hosting sites that TubeMogul can upload your videos to.  Unlike YouTube and most other such sites, Revver attaches advertisements to your videos.  If anyone clicks on one of your ads you get a share of the revenue; a sort of AdSense for video, if you like. Hence our extremely modest, but undoubtedly non-zero, income.

Onwards and upwards to the Warrior Forum.  Two complete topics in which I have made a number of posts are now completely invisible.  One remains, but is now locked, with no further posting possible. Since it seems as though the only way to ensure one's comments hang around for more than a few hours I have started my own topic over there, entitled "Internet Marketing With No Money Down™ ?".  Please feel free to come on over, make a post or two of your own, and join in the fun!

One commentator on the Warrior Forum opined about our "Long tail keywords… what a joke".  I was forced to agree.  It causes me much childish amusement to discover we are currently top of the Google rankings for long tail keyphrases such as Frank Kern Sucks, Mass Control Sucks, and Surfing with Frank Kern. (By and large the same applies to the other search engines too)

If the commentator meant to imply that we are unlikely to become millionaires on the basis of those rankings then I have to agree again.  What of keyphrases that might conceivably convert into income at some point in the foreseeable future?  Well , we are now on the first page of the Google rankings for Affilate Video Brander Review, and our news release to imnewswatch.com is at number 3 AND 4 for just Affilate Video Brander.  On a Google video search we are now number 3 AND 4 for affiliate video brander. Last but most certainly not least we occupy the whole of the first page and a fair chunk of the second for our new brand Diarrhoea Out of Control™!

If you examine that link carefully you will see that each of the videos we uploaded from TubeMogul are ranked seperately.  No duplicate content penalties in Video Heaven! Forget about SEO as you have known it up until now.  From this day forward Video Search Engine Optimization rules! OK?

As part of the launch of our innovative Diarrhoea Out of Control™ Marketing System, and to highlight our SEO skills, I did a "Surfing with Frank Kern" publicity stunt over on the Warrior Forum at the weekend.  It seems to have stirred up a bit of a hornets nest, and currently the entire thread is nowhere to be seen.  Now you may think that toilet humour is beneath a serious internet marketer, but there is a very serious point to this, which hopefully you can discern from some of the other posts on this blog.  Fortunately I had camtasia working when I made the first post.  The resulting, fair quality, video can be seen below: 

The link which caused me such amusement is:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=US&q=diarrhoea+out+of+control

Does it still work for you?  Is it amusing? Is it and/or the video enlightening?

P.S.  This post was first published at 09:05 GMT. It is now 10:45 GMT.  We are already at number 4 in the Google natural search rankings for the keyphrase surfing with Frank Kern and number 7 for Frank Kern Surfing.  Would you like to know how we did that?  Sign up for our newsletter!

P.P.S. As I hinted at over on the Warrior Forum yesterday, in the topic which you can no longer see, I used TubeMogul to upload several copies of the above video to different video sites last night.  Click on my "toilet humour" link again now.  Are you beginning to see any light at the end of the tunnel?

P.P.P.S It is now 15:27 GMT.  I've been trying  to get on the Warrior Forum for ages to say good morning to our fellow surfers from SoCal, but there seem to be some problems.  Earlier it said "Temporary Closed Due To A Security Issue". Now it tells me "Active Server Pages error 'ASP 0126' - Include file not found - /forum/Default.asp, line 40 - The include file 'config.asp' was not found."

In our customary fearless fashion we have performed a thorough review of Frank Kern's Mass Control System, and here is our verdict:

Frank Kern's Mass Control Sucks

Now we haven't been provided with a free review copy by Frank, in much the same way as Michael Koenigs failed to provide us with a free trial of his Traffic Geyser service, so how can we be so hasty in our judgement given that the product doesn't launch for another hour.  At least when we declared that Affiliate Video Brander sucks we had tried the product.  We even made a video demonstrating it's shortcomings.

Well, it's all down to the marketing.  We're very familiar with the way the pay per click game works, and if you've been following our progress here on our blog you'll see we learn fast.  These days we're no slouches at the natural search game either.  The fake review page, such as Frank Kern's http://www.masscontrolreview.com, is familiar territory for us.  How can we sure it  belongs to Frank you may ask.  It's got his picture on it, sure, but as we well know using an affiliate video brander is all the rage these days.  Well it's an educated guess, but Frank provides a link to the site in yesterdays press release "Mass Control Marketing Revealed By Maniac Surfer Frank Kern".

Now let's go take a look at the search listings in the run up to zero hour by first of all doing a Google search for Mass Control.  MassControlReview.com is right there on the first page at number 5.  This time let's search for Frank Kern Mass Control.  You can see at number 4 in the paid search listings an ad entitled Frank Kern Sucks?  Now this is a title we'll be going to use later on if we find a need to give our traffic an emergency boost.  The thing is though, if you clicked on our ad you'll end up on this post, which is undeniably of the opinion that Frank Kern sucks.  Now click on that other ad.  You'll end up on another fake review page that says "A brutally honest review of Frank Kern's Mass Control." However for some strange reason there is an affiliate link at the bottom saying "Click Here to Invest in Mass Control AND get your Limited Bonuses" in big blue letters.

Excuse me just a moment.  It's less than 45 minutes to launch, so I'm going to go away and click publish, and come back and finish this post after I've had a cup of coffee. Always assuming I'm not feeling too sick to drink it, of course.

P.S. I never did get to drink that cup of coffee.  Not for the reason you're thinking though.  I watched our search results for an hour or so, firing off emails with progress reports.  We got to number 1 on Google for our longest tail target keyphrase before that hour was over.

Content with that I went for a walk with Dave, the amazing guy who does the music for our internet videos.  It was good to clear the stench from our nostrils.  The sun had already gone down, so we didn't make it all the way to Traffic Heaven.  Nestled in the hills, gazing out towards the ocean with a fresh breeze in our faces, a nagging thought started at the back of my mind.  Some people might find it disturbing, but in all the circumstances I found it remarkably refreshing.

"What if the masses don't want to be controlled?"