Homer’s First Day In The Wong Fook Hing Bookstore
By TheAntiHype | October 16, 2009
Yes, he’s done it.
He’s taken over the bookstore and asked me to install a hidden camera to see if he’s doing it right.
Just so you know, Homer (AKA as Mr Roy) has somehow convinced Marge (who he calls Margaret at home) to join him for his first few days in charge. She’s not one to face the public though so she’s keeping a low profile.
I really can’t see it working out – she’s so short of patience normally but you never know with Homer – he must have something about him.
For many of you this may be the first time you’ve seen Homer in the flesh – don’t be alarmed!
Personally I thought he handled that first customer very well – but will it last?
Will Marge come out of hiding?
Will Homer make a success of the Wong Fook Hing Bookstore?
Keep tuned.
Topics: Customer service, Humour | 4 Comments »
Why I Quit Internet Marketing
By TheAntiHype | October 15, 2009
I never thought I’d hear those words “I quit internet marketing” but today I had Homer screaming that very phrase down the phone at me.
As you know he has been in big trouble of late but with some skillful negotiating we managed to get refunds on all of the internet marketing courses he recently signed up for and his credit card company are no longer hounding him. He went away, cap in hand, and promised not to spend anymore on courses and “make money” products.
And today he was excitedly telling me he’d given up internet marketing for good.
He went on to tell me he had bought a bookstore of all things from a certain Mr Wong who for some reason wasn’t doing too well. My eyebrows raised – “why oh why Homer can’t you just do something straightforward” I thought.
“It was a bargain” he told me, ” it is in the centre of town and has loads of passing trade and a website – but the last owner tells me the biggest potential is the telephone / postal service. Apparently he gets hundreds of calls a day but for some reason people keep putting the phone down as soon as he announces the name of the shop.”
“I can’t think why Mr Wong isn’t making any money from it. I know I can – I’ll even have a section where I’ll sell off all my internet ebooks. I’ll print them out and make a fortune – I have enough stock to last several years without buying anything else.”
OK, Homer I said – take me to take a look at the store.
My heart sank. Does that guy never think?
So who cares about product names!
Sometime I despair – I know Homer will be back on the internet marketing trail after he’s answered the phone a few times!
As usual Homer failed to do his research
Topics: Fun, Humour, Internet, Marketing | 5 Comments »
Internet Marketing Made Me Bankrupt
By TheAntiHype | October 6, 2009
“Internet Marketing made me bankrupt”
I could barely hear his voice. It was shaking and I could only just make it out to be Homer’s voice.
I’d not heard from him for ages and he was in fact the last person I expected to hear from – especially after his re-union with Sylvie Fortin. I expected him to be too embarrassed to get in touch – but by the sounds of things he needed real help.
“This time…” he paused “…this time, I’ve really gone and done it and Marge will kill me” he exclaimed.
Now, I thought he was referring to his, er, relationships but as the story unfolded it was clear he’d been up to his old tricks – and more!
“Let me put my cards on the table Mr Anti Hype” he continued. “I really had hoped that when Sylvie interviewed me a few days ago that it was because she still had some feelings for me after all this time.”
“Secretly, I really thought she was trying to woo me back. But as she is such a smart, successful internet marketer and I, well you know, I’ve made one or two mistakes, I decided I’d really impress her.”
He had me really worried. Nothing Homer has done since I’ve known him would impress anybody. Least of all someone as successful as Sylvie – unless she really was looking to woo Homer back! No, I really couldn’t see that, Sylvie is happily married and as far as I know in full control of her mental faculties.
He was in full flow now and the sad story continued…
“You might know there’s been a number of big product launches recently; Michael Rasmussen’s Affiliate Launch Blueprint ; Michael Cheney’s Delta Squadron & Jeff Dedrick’s Send Button Profits and I knew that armed with the knowledge from those three programs I could make my stack and finally win over Sylvie”
“The great thing about those launches is that they all offer free information so I figured it wouldn’t cost me anything to get just where I wanted and then to get Sylvie just where I wanted!”
“So I watched the videos and read in detail all of the sales pages. Oh, yes – she will be mine, I thought. With this information I cannot fail.”
Now, I was itching for Homer to get to the punchline and tell me why he was bankrupt. But in his usual style he had to lay out his failings in their full glory!
“So launch day for all three has been within the past week – in fact Jeff’s product only launched this afternoon and that was the final straw.”
I was getting impatient. How could something that happened just now have been so catastophic.
“Well, here it is Mr Anti Hype. I got taken in again. You know those free products. Well they’re not really free. I waited for the launch emails and got in to each product as soon as they launched. I filled in my details (including credit card) for the Postage Costs and the $1 “contribution” to costs. I then got taken to these great pages that were offering me stuff that I just knew I couldn’t possibly live without.”
“I was hitting my back button on the browser and my refresh button as I zipped from One Time Offer to Upgrade and back to Second Upgrade and ongoing training. I went from private mentoring back to original email and product bonuses from whoever (and that was loads of people) had told me about the launches. I even bought some stuff from the guys promoting. I don’t know how I found that!”
“It was like those TV wildlife programs – you know the sharks feeding frenzies. Mr Anti Hype, I need help. I’m an Internet Marketing product junkie. I know it now. How could I possibly expect Sylvie to be interested in me now? And as for Marge – she just pities me.”
“The only person who wants me is the debt collector set on me by the credit card company. You see I bought every upgrade, every mentoring program, every continuity membership program – and all within the last week. I had a call from the card company asking when I’d lost my card because in over 30 years they had never seen such outrageous spending activity on one card.”
“I hate to think how much money I’ve spent and it could all have been avoided if I’d just taken Sylvie up on her offer to join her at Success Chef.”
I’ve never been one for saying “I told you so” but I have to say I was so sorely tempted on this occasion – after telling Homer for years where he was going wrong I really think perhaps I should have done so.
But I couldn’t rub his nose in it!
Don’t be like Homer and let internet marketing make you bankrupt. Know what you need and buy what you need – not what somebody else convinces you you should have!
Topics: Bad Gurus, Internet, Marketing | 3 Comments »
Homer’s TV Debut Nightmare
By TheAntiHype | September 28, 2009
Yes, as I suspected Sylvie Fortin has branched into Film Producing!
Hot on the heels of my expose earlier Sylvie admitted as much in her comment left here.
She kindly gave me advance warning of the revelations made by “John” on national TV.
John (aka Homer) is seen here in his first TV interview:
Some deep, dark secrets are revealed by Homer here and I strongly recommend you don’t caught up in such a tangled web. My guess is the perpertrator of this horrendous “opportunity” was no less than the guy who wrote to me in March 2008
Here’s why Success Is Only Possible if You Take One Bite At A Time
Topics: Fun, General Guru Fodder, Humour | 1 Comment »
Homer Gets Hijacked By Sylvie Fortin
By TheAntiHype | September 28, 2009
Homer gets hijacked by Sylvie Fortin.
Well, I think it’s funny!
And I don’t mean funny – ha! ha! – I mean funny – strange!
Ever since I revealed the , er, “relationship” between Homer & Sylvie Fortin I’ve seen less and less of him. In fact he’s been so quiet of late I thought he’d left the internet scene altogether.
And today you’re about to discover the reason why…
Homer has started a new career. Now I don’t know whether Michel Fortin meant to let the cat out of the bag but his blog post today did just that!
Clearly Sylvie decided to rekindle something with Homer and offered him a part in her epic film that has just been released. You can watch the full length feature below.
Homer of course would jump at the chance to become a celebrity and of course would be taken in by the business opportunity presented as the plot of this outstanding movie.
Sylvie, if you are planning a sequel be warned that Homer will undoubtedly be immersed in a new direction – he has clearly seen that making money by using a ghost writer is the way to go!
Now it’s obvious she couldn’t use his real name and how she persuaded Marge to co-operate I haven’t yet found out but anyone who knows Homer will immediately recognise him in this video.
Click here for more information and a demo video!
I’m only prepared to let this slip without asking Sylvie for my share of the Royalties for Homer’s appearance because I like her Success Chef program so much.
But if I find out Homer has been nominated for an Oscar there’ll be trouble!
Topics: Blog Videos, Fun, General Guru Fodder, Humour | 1 Comment »
Mass Control Control
By TheAntiHype | February 16, 2009
If you haven’t received an email about Mass Control over the past few days I’d love to hear from you about your email filter!
I was going to bring Homer out of hiding for this post but as he’s sulking and I’ve been so busy elsewhere of late I decided I just had to get this off my chest without him. But Derek agreed to help by adding his thoughts at the end of this post.
Someone, somewhere should set up a Control for the Mass Control epidemic that is sweeping the internet. I’m only on a few lists these days but even those that I’ve long, long forgotten about have come out of the woodwork to promote.
Now let me make this perfectly clear – I have no knowledge whatsoever of Mass Control – a number of the promotions I’ve received have been from people I respect so I’ll assume it is a really good product. But that’s not the point…
The issue is quite simply this…
How Very Dare You
I’ve been getting promotions from people who don’t know the first thing about me, about my business and what’s worse nor do they care. They are just interested in trying to get a commission by jumping on the launch frenzy bandwagon.
Maybe they’ve made assumptions that because I was interested in what they had to say once that I’m interested in every product they can make an affiliate commission from! A very bad assumption.
Not only am I not interested in their assumptions I’m now no longer interested in anything they have to say.
A few days ago I signed up for some Twitter program – it didn’t work properly and despite a Help Desk ticket being submitted there has been no response. But, for some reason the goons running the program think I’ll be interested in buying Mass Control through their affiliate links.
How Very Dare You
You guys can’t get your own product to work, you can’t or won’t provide any support yet you think I’d like to cross your palms with silver for a product that you don’t have any idea whether I’d benefit from.
Mad dear?, who dear?, me dear?, no dear…
How Very Dare You!
And as for the “my bonus is better than your bonus” brigade – get a life.
If I wanted Mass Control I’d buy is because it was good and relevant to my business not because you were offering me a pile of outdated junk that would clutter up my hard drive. I think I’d be too busy working the main program to want whatever bonus you were offering.
And if I wasn’t then the program is sadly lacking in something if I needed your bonus.
With very few exceptions, where perhaps the bonus offered is complimentary, I think you are simply being disrespectful to Frank Kern and his product. It is tantamount to suggesting that his product needs whatever it is you are offering as a bonus to somehow enhance his program – without it is is incomplete!
How very dare you!
There, I feel better for that!
To highlight the dangers of assumptions, and with a little slightly adult humour here’s Derek with his take on assumptions…
It seems embedding has been turned off by BBC – so please click here to view the video at YouTube
How very dare they!!!
Topics: Bad Gurus | 4 Comments »
The Arbitrage Conspiracy – Conspiracy
By TheAntiHype | December 10, 2008
- Image by Steffe via Flickr
Just in time for Christmas – The Arbitrage Conspiracy is top on Homer’s Santa List.
It’s hardly surprising because he has no doubt received promotion after promotion over the last week or so.
Just like the latest toy promoted and adverised everywhere you look- you can’t open your email client without someone pushing The Arbitrage Conspiracy or Report.
Just in time for Christmas – many people will be spending their hard earned cash hoping this is the one that will finally give them the breakthrough they crave. Homer certainly is.
But here’s a bit of Christmas cheer from a grumpy old AntiHype:
- How many people will buy this?
- How many of those people understand the costs involved?
- How many of those people have factored in the upfront costs of buying the traffic?
- How many of those people have factored in the time lag between paying for the traffic and getting paid by the CPA networks they are sending the traffic to?
- How many of those people can afford to be out of pocket for 1-2 months?
- How many of those people have calculated the degree of competition – particularly bearing in mind the influx of new participants? – See above!
- How many of those people have figured out that if this is working so well for others why would they reveal their own markets / products and reduce their income by adding to the competition?
- How many of those people have figured out that the higher the competition the higher the advertising costs and the higher the risks and lower the profits?
But then what do I know?
Or perhaps a little bit of deeper research and thought rather than just believing the hype might not go amiss.
Perhaps I can convince Homer to be just a little more Scrooge like.
Bah, humbug
The AntiHype
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Topics: General Guru Fodder, Internet, Sales Hype, The Anti Hype | 5 Comments »
Office of Fair Trading To Snag Bad Gurus
By TheAntiHype | November 5, 2008
In the “real world” I needed to keep up to date with some new(ish) UK legislation re dealing with customers and read a document produced by the UK’s Office of Fair Trading.
Man, I know how to party!!
This came hot on the heels of my post – internet-marketer-responsible-for-prison-sentences
Rapidly skimming through the report I arrived at the 31 big – No Nos – the banned practices. These are the ways of dealing with customers that are automatically outside of the law. These are the laws applying to the UK and also Europe.
How they apply to the rest of the world and / or trading over the internet I’m not clear BUT…
Be Warned – Your time is up
Here’s an excerpt that particularly caught my eye:
(7) Falsely stating that a product will only be available for a very limited
time, or that it will only be available on particular terms for a very limited
time, in order to elicit an immediate decision and deprive consumers of
sufficient opportunity or time to make an informed choice.
I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen a website do anything like this, have you?
I can’t remember more than 10 this week myself!
You can Download the full report – no need for email details – by Right Clicking on the link below and Save As or Save Link As to save to your local machine.
If you use this tactic perhaps you should think again!
Enjoy the reading, it may help your insomnia!
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Topics: Bad Gurus, General Guru Fodder, Working From Home | 3 Comments »
Internet Marketer Prison Sentences
By TheAntiHype | October 13, 2008
Image via Wikipedia
The headline read “Internet Marketer Responsible For Prison Sentences”
In an unprecedented move the courts today sentenced thousands of unsuspecting “would be” internet marketers to anything from a £1,000 (say $2,000) fine to 5 years in jail for deception.
Despite their pleas of “we had no idea what we were doing was wrong” the judge, looking solemn declared…
“Ignorance of the law is NO defence”
One of the defendants, who happens to be well known to readers of this blog – yes Homer – was excused punishment on the grounds of diminished responsibility (and total incompetence). He is still not over the public humiliation he received from his ex Sylvie Fortin and is clearly not in control of his faculties. Trying to rebuild his life with Marge he embarked on another spending spree that ended with his recent court appearance.
Asked what he had done Homer responded…
“All I did was to buy a really good product on the theme – how to make money online. It was being heavily promoted – in fact most of the big names seemed to love it. I just followed the advice in the product and the next thing I knew they arrived.”
“I was dragged out of bed – at least I was wearing my newest satin pajamas – to be interrogated by the newly formed Internet Police.”
“It seems I’m not allowed to put up a picture of someone else on the internet, make out that I am that person and say that a certain product has changed my life. They said that is deception. The IP actually was quite agitated and told me that I was obtaining money by deception”
“Fortunately, I hadn’t actually sold anything. Between you and me” he continued “despite trying a million different strategies I’ve never actually sold a thing online!”
Fact or Fantasy?
I really cannot say. I just feel there are some very grey areas surrounding certain online activities and posing as someone else to gain financial advantage could very easily be construed as deception.
If, for example you saw a weight loss program being promoted by a 350 lb lump, would you buy the product? If you answered yes, please leave now 
Assuming you wouldn’t – would you buy that same product from that same lump if that person had a royalty free picture of a good looking young thing, clearly no more than 150 lbs, stating how much weight she / he’d lost using product X?
If you were in the market I’m guessing you may give the product a go because you believed what had happened to the “promoter” of the product could happen to you.
Now if you knew who was behind this promotion – someone who had only put on weight from the day they were born I think you may think you had been somewhat deceived.
Maybe it’s time for the internet to be cleaned up a little.
What’s your take on this?
Am I wrong – should any amount of deception be allowed? Is this just another form of advertising? Should we as consumers be aware that all that glitters is not gold?
Tell me what you think – and in the meantime be careful what you do and say online – the headline above may one day come true!
The Anti Hype
Related information:
The Wikipedia description of deception according to English Law would worry me if I was up to these tricks!
And in New Jersey perhaps this would be of concern
Do some Google searches and you’ll find similar sites and articles everywhere.
I’m no legal expert but I’d hate to be sailing this close to the wind. I’d much rather know I was clean than rely on an assumption of some sort!
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Topics: Bad Gurus, Marketing and Advertising, Pajamas, The Anti Hype | 9 Comments »
How To Create Your Own Cash Cannons
By Mark | October 2, 2008
If you’re not among the first 500 to sign up for Michael Cheney’s Golden Thread program when it opens today then you’ll miss out! Michael is adamant that this is not a sales ploy and the membership will close as soon as that number is reached.
With just under 19,000 people already registered it looks like Michael Cheney is about to have a massive pay day!
Now, as The Anti Hype, I’m still in two minds about this launch. As you know I’m not keen on the over-hype associated with many launches. With The Golden Thread I do feel that this is a great product and will be very well received by those looking for a set-up and go solution, but I really dislike the volume of emails I’m receiving AND the offers of bonuses for using certain links – personally I’d rather have a discount!
The challenge is that although the product promises Cash Cannons for some products that are included in the package, by its very nature this means 500 people using the same system at the same time to sell the same products. Or maybe I’ve just missed something.
Anyway, I’ll let you into a little secret – I’ve been using Pre Sale Videos for about a year and to all intents and purposes these are the equivalent of cash cannons. No you don’t get the full training, personalised templates and resell rights products that are available in The Golden Thread. But, what you do get is professional pre recorded videos that promote a variety of great affiliate products.
All you do is sign up, get your links and promote or embed the code on a page of your own. The following is an example and in keeping with todays theme of video sales pages this video is for a brilliant package of products that makes adding any video to any web page a piece of cake. I bought the product myself yesterday and I’m amazed at how easy it is to use.
WATCH THE VIDEO NOW
If you have no products to sell the basic PreSale Videos system may be a perfect fit – basically it’s a video with your affiliate link embedded into the code. But if you want to take it a stage further then you may want to source your own resale rights products. If so watch the video at the following link for details of a free trial to Resale Rights Express
So, if you miss out on Michael Cheney’s product or you find the price too steep take a look at Pre Sale Videos as an alternative.
Topics: Blog Videos, General Guru Fodder, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising | No Comments »
