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.

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?

A buddy of mine bought an e-book, then an e-course too. Later he bought some more. He learned that you have to give people what they are hungry and thirsty for. You have to give them what they are desperate for.

Then he learned that you have to put fear into their hearts. Into their guts. If they don't buy the latest offer the price will go up. If they don't buy it now, it will be gone forever.

He worked his fingers to the bone at the keyboard of his PC, 3 hours a night for 4 weeks. Three different niches, three different sites. He checked his PayPal account:

"My Account Overview"

"PayPal Balance"

$0.00

As he types, he has no yacht, no affiliates, no list to speak of.

As I type, there are 4 on the DOC-MS ™ list.

It is not a limited class.

We have no “downsells” or “second chance offers”.

If you want a head start come to http://www-gurus.com/blog.

Sign up for our newsletter.

Internet marketing with no money down ™.

DOC-MS ™ is already open.

It doesn't close on February 3rd.

This may be slightly outside our current remit,  but in another capacity I just bought the recently relaunched Affiliate Video Brander (Wealth Warning! - That is an affiliate link). Imagine, if you will, that our reviews are admired throughout the Internet Marketing fraternity for their honesty and thoroughness, and that we were offered a review copy free of charge by Eric Holmlund and Michael Nicholas.  Here is our verdict:

Affiliate Video Brander Sucks

We created a video to demonstrate why we say this so bluntly.  Filmed partly on location at the Traffic Heaven Secret Headquarters, and partly screen capture, here is the first rush:

I don't know about you, but for the last few days my inbox has been bombarded by people promoting Affiliate Video Brander. I wonder if any of them have actually tried using it? Now I'm also getting emails from marketers enticing me with all the wonderful extra bonuses I'll get if I buy from them, as long as I can wait until January 30th, when everyone who has bought resale rights is allowed to start selling their own version of the product. 

The resale rights licence states that "WHILE THIS SOFTWARE HAS BEEN TESTED AND PROVEN TO RUN ACCURATELY, IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT OF ANY USER OR COMPUTER INCOMPATIBILITY ISSUES, THE RESELLER ASSUMES COMPLETE LIABILITY" so I guess that means the buck doesn't stop on Eric or Michael's desk after January 29th.  It will be very interesting, not to mention entertaining, to see how this one develops over the next few days and weeks.

P.S. I clicked the "Publish" button about 10 minutes ago.  This page is currently ranked 114 in the Google natural search rankings for the keyphrase affiliate video brander and is at number 20 for affiliate video brander review.  Our new YouTube video is ranked at number 6 on a Google Video search for affiliate video brander

A big white box finally arrived on my doorstep this morning!  This contained "the complete first season" of the Next Internet Millionaire reality show including one DVD of special features.  From the subtitle maybe another season or two can be expected?

The Secret Classroom home study course itself consists of 12 additional DVDs containing the full presentations of all 12 internet marketing gurus that appeared on the show.  There is also a spiral bound book of "bullet points" from the 12 presentations. The DVDs are very professional, but some extra proof reading would have improved the book!  Nonetheless there are some great quotes to be gleaned within its pages.  Here is one from each of the gurus:

"Most people do not apply the information that they learn" - Mark Joyner

"Success leaves traces" - Armand Morin

"Prove to people that what you are selling them works" - Jeff Walker

"Attack the weakness in the leader's strength" - Marlon Sanders

"People tend to overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in 5-10 years" - Brad Fallon

"Find something that works.  Replicate it.  Scale it" - Kristopher Jones

"The second word in 'Viral Marketing' is marketing. Something can go viral and not make any money" - Mike Filsaime

"Most people are 'afraid' of making videos" - Michael Koenigs

"Bad copy kills companies" - Ray Edwards

"If you can't be found, you are dead" - Dave Taylor

"It is more important to know a market, than to know about marketing" - Perry Marshall

"You are only as good as your reputation" - Rich Schefren

A more detailed review will follow when we've had a chance to look at the course DVDs, and also at the one time offer "Closed Door Sessions".  These are interviews with 11 of the 12 gurus conducted by Heather Vale, apparently not seen or heard even by the contestants on the show (Heather didn't interview Kris Jones for some reason).  I'm particularly interested to discover what Michael Koenigs has to say about using videos to generate traffic!

We have now left a vast quantity of largely inaudible footage on our cutting room floor.  (Sign up on the right if you'd like to see some of it).  The video is now definitely entitled "Traffic Heaven", and you can see the first cut below.  One or two more edits still need to be made and we need to add music,  maybe also a few more English subtitles for the hard of hearing!  Hopefully you can now get the basic idea though.  Feel free to let us know what you think by adding your comments at the bottom of this page.

On the traffic front we are starting to get a trickle from the Google natural search results. For example somewhat unexpectedly, since we are not explicity targeting the term, we are already at number 2 in the Google rankings for the keyphrase handycam connection.  For the terms we are targeting we have now risen to 9 for traffic geyser michael koenigs (ahead of both Eric Holmlund and Joel Comm ), and 61 for just traffic geyser.  We are still at number 1 for traffic geyser heaven and after starting at 60 four days ago we are now ranked 37 for the title of the video: Traffic Heaven.  For Secret Classroom we have had a slight setback.  Google has got a bit confused and now has us ranked at 147 for a Russian translation of our blog which no longer exists!

I arrived in Amsterdam with the mini DV tape in my Sony Handycam full of exciting stuff, only to discover that I couldn't get the footage off the tape and on to a computer!  Here is a YouTube video entitled "Windmills from Amsterdam" which shows you our adventures whilst trying to get hold of the correct sort of firewire cable.

Monday dawned much brighter than the afternoon before.  Unfortunately there was no way to reshoot the "Secret Headquarters" episode of Traffic Heaven (we've decided to drop the Geyser from the title) because I had to jump on a plane to Amsterdam, the capital of Holland.  I took my trusty Sony Handycam with me, and you will find below the edited highlights of my journey from Bristol to Schiphol Airport.

Many thanks to Tom and Lauren for letting us include the conversation we had about the internet and viral marketing on the video, and to Dawn for operating the Handycam for one sequence..

Today Joel Comm has launched a new product called The Secret Classroom. It is the home study version of The Next Internet Millionaire internet reality show.

If you've been following this blog for a while you'll know that here at World Wide Web Gurus we are big fans of Mark Joyner and his simpleology courses.  You will also know that we are attempting to demonstrate how to earn money on the internet without spending any first.  This launch presents us with an opportunity to try and combine these two passions of ours.  We are affiliates of Joel, and can therefore earn money by selling his products.  In addition Mark Joyner was the first real life internet millionaire to appear on the show.  He was teaching the 12 contestants how to use the techniques he teaches in simpleology to organize their time better and so become vastly more productive.

Now normally for a big launch like this we'd buy some pay per click advertising, but that is against the rules for this project.  We'll see if we can find out what is possible without paying for any clicks, or any other form of advertising come to that.

Watch this space!