The Science of Getting Rich

Well, I was definitely hoping to find some good dirt on The Science of Getting Rich program, but so far no luck. Everyone who has taken the time to put comments or reviews of this system online seems very happy with what they received for the extremely hefty $1,995 purchase price. Of course, these are all affiliate marketers so why would they say anything negative?

It started with a book by a man named Wallace D. Wattles entitled The Science of Getting Rich. This book was published in 1923 and is now in the public domain. That means, among other things, that you can read it for free on Wikipedia. The book takes a philosophical approach to obtaining wealth -- mind over matter; change your thought patterns, change your life. Then in 2006, Rhonda Byrne produced a film based on the principles in the book called The Secret. This film can be purchased on Amazon starting at $19.99. The film features presentations by Michael Beckwith, Bob Proctor, and most notably Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup for the Soul. After the film's success, Rhonda partnered with Bob Proctor who had already expanded The Science of Getting Rich into a series of seminars and audio lessons.

You can obtain the information in this program for $19.99 by purchasing The Secret DVD on Amazon and reading the book on which all of this is based for free on Wikipedia. Or, you can pay $1,995 for a leather briefcase, an mp3 player preloaded with Bob's audio lessons, and a packet of instructional material based on the information in the original The Science of Getting Rich book. Also, you get tickets to Bob's seminars.

If you join the affiliate program to market this product, your level 1 payout will be $500. Your level 2 payout will be $250. If you are a good enough affiliate to sell a product worth $19.99 for $1,995, I highly recommend this product. If you don't think you will be able to sell a product at a cost that is $1,975.01 more than it is worth, then I recommend avoiding this program.

p.s. If you had a bad experience with this program, I'd love to hear about it.

Suckered.org

Suckered.org isn't a work at home opportunity, just an affiliate site with a unique gimmick. I stumbled across this site researching my last post and I thought it was a great idea. Suckered.org hosts a vast array of affiliate products and offers to refund your purchase if you are not satisfied with the product after 8 weeks. It's totally free, no registration is required. What a great idea!

Then I read the fine print. The refund only applies if you purchase the product through ClickBank. Which means, they are not offering any additional service that ClickBank does not already offer. From ClickBank's return policy:

Our official return policy for all ClickBank products is as follows:

ClickBank will, at its discretion, allow for the return or replacement of any defective product within 8 weeks from the date of purchase. For recurring billing products, returns for more than one payment may be provided if requested within the standard 8 week return period. After 8 weeks all sales are final.

So, suckered.org is not adding any value that is not already present in ClickBank. But, it would be a great idea for an affiliate site to really offer a full refund if buyers were unsatisfied, out of pocket. That would definitely be something to give customers some incentive to buy products through your affiliate site over another.

The other service offered by Suckered.org is "real reviews." The site indicates they use independent order verification technology to ensure only a customer who has purchased the product being reviewed can post their opinion. This is a good idea, but after clicking through twenty or so products, I'd only seen three reviews total. Two of them literally said, "Good product. Very good."

My opinion on this is that while Suckered.org has certainly come up with a clever gimmick, you might as well make your purchase through ClickBank directly.

Unparalleled Marketing LLC

Unparalleled Marketing LLC owns and operates a few work from home websites, the most prominent being http://home-survey-workers.com, but also http://www.freelance-home-writers.com, and http://www.easyjobsfromhome.com. A few other sites they own redirect to one of these sites such as http://www.top10-work-at-home-jobs.com. They offer work from home opportunities filling out surveys. Their product is a database of companies looking for survey takers and a software suite that will fill your demographic data into surveys automatically. The cost is $2.95 up front, followed by a $39.95 fee charged after a 7-day grace period during which you are allowed to evaluate the product.

Unparalleled Marketing LLC also has a company site at http://unparalleledmarketing.com. This is a nice flash site with some vague descriptions of their business and the same e-mail and contact number they give out in the contact section of all the product sites above.

I had some difficulty finding out who owns this company because all their domains are registered with WhoIs Guard and there are multiple Better Business Bureau records. One record gives the company an F rating, and the other gives them a C. The company is owned and operated by three individuals -- Michael Samson, Jeremiah Patton, and Michael Strathmore.

Jeremiah Patton has some experience marketing work from home products, with his previous attempts at http://www.jeremiahpatton.com and http://2ndincome4u.com. He has quite a few articles posted at Ezine Articles. I'm only mentioning this in order to clearly point out just how long and hard these gentlemen have been working to build their online business. Many failed attempts later, including the now defunct http://workathomeprofessor.com, they are attempting to legitimize their business using this umbrella company, Unparalleled Marketing.

The product they are offering is not something you can hope to make a living using, though the copy on the Home Survey Workers site suggests you can make up to $423 a day completing surveys. The problem is the companies that are looking for people to take surveys are looking for a certain type of person. In most cases, you won't match what they need. Irrespective of that, you can find many free survey databases online so paying for this product is not a good investment.

I don't consider this a scam. Although I found numerous complaints about the $39.95 charge following the trial period, the copy on the site is clear that this will happen. I found a few complaints indicating the charge was assessed before the grace period had expired or after requesting cancellation via e-mail, which is definitely a little shady. That said, I have no doubt a direct phone call to the company, or failing that your credit card or bank, could resolve an issue like that easily. The main problem I have with Unparalleled Marketing LLC is how long and hard they have been working to make an online living selling junk e-books and software products. It's obvious they are not committed to a product or trying to sell anything they actually think is worthwhile. They are just trying to make as much money off a few suckers as possible.

Market Health formerly Joe Bucks and HerbalBiz

Market Health at www.markethealth.com used to be known as Joe Bucks, still accessible at www.joebucks.com. They offer an affiliate program selling natural health products for a wide spectrum of concerns ranging from diet pills to erectile dysfunction cures. The affiliate payout is 50% which applies to online orders, phone, and mail orders. It also applies to re-orders which is rare in the world of affiliate marketing. The second tier payout is 5%. Affiliates who make 20 or more sales a month can negotiate their rate. The affiliate program is free to join; you can also sign up for a newbie affiliate program if you do not have a web site already or know how to create one. This option is provided by HerbalBiz at www.herbalbiz.com and costs either $1.95 or $49.95. The $1.95 option buys you a turnkey web site pre-loaded with Market Health products, marketing templates for flyers, business cards, and banners, and an e-book on internet marketing. The $49.95 option buys the same as well as a year of hosting and an 800# with customer support that can be used to take phone orders. This sounds like a great affiliate opportunity with easy start-up and awesome returns.

However, several complaints have emerged about affiliate ID hijacking. Many affiliates complained their affiliate ID was replaced with a common ID -- #680256. Market Health's FAQ section addresses this issue, indicating an affiliate cookie is placed on your computer upon visiting a Market Health or Joe Bucks web site. #680256 is the default affiliate ID (or Market Health's own ID). This is certainly a simple enough solution if your problem is as simple as seeing the wrong ID on your own browser. Many affiliates complained their ID was not persisting for customer sessions as well, though, and the default ID was replacing it. Complaints indicated this occurred most frequently on the most popular products.

  The director of Market Health is Gary McNelly. Gary regularly contributes on forums related to Market Health or Joe Bucks, answering questions and attempting to resolve issues, which I think is a mark in his favor, though his tone sometimes rings a little snide. Gary says the affiliate ID hijacking issue is a cookie problem. Affiliates say this is ridiculous as the problem persists across multiple browsers and computers. Personally, I think the blame should fall at the feet of Herbalbiz.com, responsible for providing the turnkey web sites the majority of these affiliates were using to sell Market Health products. This is probably a bug in the Herbalbiz.com sites where the default affiliate ID is not being updated properly for all products when the affiliate customizes the site. If anyone out there has a turnkey Herbalbiz.com site where this issue is suspected, send me the link! It would be my pleasure to track this issue further.

Market Health is a good affiliate program, but plagued with affiliate complaints due to the weak link in the chain - HerbalBiz. My recommendation is to set up your own site if you want to market Market Health products and avoid the turnkey sites provided by HerbalBiz.

UPDATE - I found an HerbalBiz turnkey affiliate site to check out. Basically, the issue is the implementation of the hidden affiliate ID, ironically meant to prevent affiliate ID hijacking. When you load the main store page, code on the site tries to set an aid cookie on the root domain for each advertised product on that main page. This happens when you click through to products not offered on the main page as well -- the store code attempts to write an aid cookie containing your affiliate ID on the product domain. Depending on the privacy settings on the browser, this may not be allowed. For instance, Safari browser's default settings do not allow sites to write cookies on third party domains. So none of these aid cookies will be written. In this case, the default aid (680256) is written upon direct navigation to the product site. This is a poor implementation that should be corrected to ensure affiliates receive credit for all their sales.