Chris McNeeney, author of “Affiliate Project X” and “Day Job Killer” – both great products – has come up with a new potential bestseller called “Project Black Mask”. But I wasn’t impressed at all – I could even say that I was quite disappointed. I know, I could have made a lot of commissions by promoting this one, too. But it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. Read on to get to know why…
Before I get to that, I think, I’ll have to retract the statement about Chris McNeeney which I made yesterday by saying that:
“… And I think even without having read his ebook, I bet it’s a killer product again.”
– Not this time, sorry. I made that assumption based on the quality of his other products and without having read a single line of his actual “Project Black Mask” ebook. Now that I have finished reading it, I can’t keep this statement alive.
Let’s go into the meat of his ebook:
First of all, the author doesn’t even try to hide the fact that he’s spamming the search engines. Although, the term “Black Hat” makes it sound nicer. But within the ebook itself, several forms of spamming are mentioned. Apart from the fact that you could easily lose your Adsense account if you’re caught spamming the search engines, there are several other risks involved in this kind of “business”.
Okay, here’s what it’s all about:
Content Generators or Portal Builder software
I must confess, I have used them in the past as well. In the beginning, when they were new, I made several thousands of dollars with them, too. But soon after the search engines reacted to this and I lost the Pagerank of most of my domains and got penalized by Google, I realized that this is a fight that the normal user cannot win and I abandoned these tactics altogether.
Sidenote:
Using Traffic Equalizer, by the way, was the main reason why I’ve lost my highly successful PR6 domain Internetmarketing-success.com! By having links from my main index page to the new inner pages which were generated using Traffic Equalizer, I got pagerank for several hundreds of Internet marketing related terms easily and a lot of additional traffic. I should have stayed with my manual approach because one day that I looked at the Google Toolbar for my site, it was greyed out…
There you have it: Being “black hat” can also cost you the fruits of your labor from the past years (e.g. if you’re using existing “white hat” high PR sites to link to your bad “black hat” websites or pages…)! That was about 2 years ago.
Lesson learned… and one of the reasons why I’ve called my new beginning “Ethicalinternetmarketer.com“.
Whether they were called “Traffic Equalizer” which was the first one as far as I know or “Niche Portal Builder” , they have one fact in common: The search engines are constantly trying to delete these kind of sites. If their algorhythm’s can’t catch them, then their staff will be doing manual reviews of the top search engine results for the most searched for terms. And you can’t trick their staff. In 97% of the cases, they are doing a great job and delete these spam sites from their index.
Here’s are some more details about the content (taken from the table of contents + my comments):
1.) SEO: White hat, grey hat, black hat
What is it about: Explains the differences between these 3 SEO techniques.
2.) Black hat money
What is it about: How to make money from using unethical SEO.
3.) Site creation
What is it about: How to find niches to exploit, how to find good keywords, how to create these black hat sites, the tools used and what kind of hosting and domains you should use for it.
4.) Linking and promotion
What is it about: Blog spam, Blog and Ping, Comment- Forum- Guestbook- Spam and several more spamming methods e.g. how to abuse Web 2.0 resources…
==> And if I’m reading something like “Web 2.0 is the spammer’s best friend” – it actually makes me want to vomit…!
Moreover, even if everything were ethical: In order to put into use what he tells you to do – if you want to copy exactly what he does – , you need to buy at least 2-3 different keyword tools, you need several different reseller hosting accounts, even better VPS (Virtual Private Servers) servers and of course hundreds of domains and different IP addresses… This means expenses of several hundreds of dollars before you even get started. Some of the tools needed (e.g. for building blog farms) cost more than $250. The main Portal Builder Software called RSSGM is free, though.
I love automating website building tasks, too. Yes… But then please let the output be real content sites that visitors can actually enjoy and not total crap.
Apart from some tools for finding niches, his thoughts and explanations on doing keyword research and the valid points he mentioned about using long tail keywords (which is old hat already, anyway… ), I didn’t find the ebook very useful. If you’re into building real businesses like I am, you’ll find that the techniques used in his works are just unethical and do not contribute any value to the info already available on the Internet.
Quite on the contrary: It artificially inflates the number of pages in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) by adding irrelevant stuff and lots of link collections directly taken from search engine results + RSS feeds. Then you could better become a member of my Niche Content Websites membership site and get real article websites within hot niches but without the risk of getting whole IP blocks banned by the search engines – because that is what sooner or later will happen with that kind of sites!
My conclusion is: NOT RECOMMENDED!
What are your thoughts on this? Comments are welcome…!
Hi Detlev,
Thanks once again for your very honest and upfront review. You are beginning to become someone I always turn to and see what you say before I buy anything.
I too lost my Adsense account and ‘successful’ websites due to Traffic Equalizer and other Black Hat schemes. After I lost all those, I swore never to go Black Hat again.
Coming from a person like Chris McNeeney, I am very surprised that he has gone this direction. I loved his previous products but looks like I am going to give this a miss.
Thanks again and keep those reviews coming!
Gordon
this new book project black mask I do not make it a habit of buying overpriced items I only buy software and e-books if it will benefit my blog and websiteand has to be inexpensive. So this black mask book I would not even consider . I also did not buy Day job killer I thought that was over priced and definitely not for me. also mm3 was way overpriced I am suprised that any one bought that, that was ludicris. I am also a newbie.
Hi Detlev
Well done. I’ve not seen the product myself (I cannot, therefore, comment on the accuracy of your post) BUT this type of thing needs to be said.
There are far too many products launched with just one thing in mind – profit for the creator and anyone prepared to jump on his / her affiliate bandwagon.
Like most people I’ve bought some utter **** and some while back committed to building my business on solid foundations see 6M Business Success. I removed myself from stacks of email lists (Not Yours I Add) so as to concentrate on what needs to be done.
It’s not really difficult – find a hungry market, decide on a product (own or affiliate) get traffic. It’s a simple process BUT most people, particularly newbies get caught up in all the latest and greatest hype that promises the earth yet fails to deliver.
Keep up the “reality” check Detlev
Hi Detlev, hope you have a great holiday (lucky devil).
I was very keen to read your comments on Project Black Mask because I have been waiting for it to be available. I guessed it would be sneaky of course but hadn’t expected it to be so far below the line. I am actually not sufficiently skilled or blessed with ready cash to invest to make it worth my while anyway from how you describe its use and related costs – but anyway I do take heed of your warnings and feel that if you aren’t at all happy with it then I should steer clear! I don’t know what a PR6 domain is/was and do not yet understand what a traffic equaliser is either but I would rather learn to build a proper business than fall foul of the “Giants” in my early days online. It’s a shame as I’ve always found Chris’ work entertaining and well delivered (if a bit above my head in its speed and depth). I’ll get on with my basics, use my CMSInfusion to set up a site, and get those EBooks on EBay – you just enjoy the sun and sand mate!!!!!
John, York, UK
What you might want to add is that it’s perfectly obviously pointed out that most of this stuff IS Black Hat and not for the faint of heart. No one’s being conned into buying it under false pretenses.
The way you seem to be going about it reminds me of someone visiting a night club with lots of girlie stills featured outside and screeching “Yikes! There’s nekkid gals around here!” This is either plain dumb or simply hypocritical. (You can’t have it both ways on this score, though.)
While I’ve always found that worn old “white hat”/”black hat” dichotomy to be utterly inane, SEO being about what WORKS, not about what whichever Google gods may declare to be “ethical”, you’re perfectly free to take a different approach, of course.
Then again, it’s quite obvious that you’re not working in any truly competitive fields – guess why there’s so much BH stuff around there? Because you won’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell to make your mark if you’re trying to sell financial services, real estate or even travel (to name but some of the lesser fields – let’s not get into pharm, gambling or adult content…) with your brand of stick-to-the-search-engine-rules kind of approach.
Anyway, if your personal view of “ethical behavior” includes bashing other people’s products without having more to offer than opinionated bias, simply not being happy with going down the BH road, I for my part will be happy to remain as “unethical” as can be…
How refreshing to see that everyone isn’t jumping on this bandwagon. After reading several excerpts myself I couldn’t agree with you more and will recommend to my subscribers to stay away from it as well. I have utilized Chris’s tactics in the past (Aff X) with some success, but I’m disappointed with the approach he’s taking here.
I’ve been looking forward to PBM quite alot before I saw this.
I think the word “black hat” has been evolved into something with a “magical” touch to it, and no longer stands strictly for the unethical manipulation of search engines as it’s supposed to mean.
So when people hear “black hat”, a portion might simply think it’s just a way to make the methods seem more secret and thus desirable.
However, if the whole ebook is about using spamming tools like you mentioned, I’d agree it’s really unexpected.
But I’m sure there are other techniques/content worth a look? Maybe it’s the Chris McNeeny brand in effect.
Might still purchase it when it launches.
Hello Detlev ,
Thank you for that brief.
I actually got my copy yesterday about 24 hours before it was released.
I have also bought all of Chris’s books as I am heavily into adwords and affiliate marketing.
I read it from cover to cover last night and just like you very very displeased with the content.
What really annoyed me was some of the emails that were sent out said how one can make an huge killing without a product a website —
This was the email I received from Ben Shaffer – whom I usually read.
Thjat was total BS.
How can you even contemplate using any of these techniques even if you were to use them – without a website or such.
What I gathered from this book was that a lot of new marketers are going to get caught and get slammed against the wall – as they are not experienced enough.
The kind of stuff he is talking about is probably Serious Black Hat stuff that ordinary people like me would be seriously be advised to stay away from.
Of course these guys canmake a lot of money . but on the same token they do know how to hide their tracks. You tell me how many of us know how to hide our tracks through IP , and VPS and the likes.
I think I wll stay with affiliate marketing the taditional way.
Its just not fair that these kind of books make fairly new marketers thinjk they can go tomorrow and set up a system that will spam all those resources and make a killing on one go. Common – unless you have been at this game for a few years you’re not just not going tp pull it off , that is if you were inclined to take part in these sort of practises in the first place.
Yes I am also sissapointed with Chris for going in this direction. especially after such a good foray of books. maybe it is greediness that takes over a persons judgement.
I realised soon after buying Project X – and chatting to many marketers – how giving away a free site with the same keywords to everyone that Chris was trying to squeeze out every ounce of blood from his buyers.
Enogh of the ramblings.
Mine will be going back tomorrow.
Hamant
Hi Detlev,
Your review appears to me to be excellent, with opinion backed up by observation and experience. Fantamaster appears not to have noticed that he is reading your blog/email, which I, and I imagine the vast majority of your subscribers, read precisely because we want to hear your opinion.
However I also wonder if perhaps everyone is missing the point; imo it’s not about choosing between black hat & white hat as much as whether he should be charging anything to shove out such rehashed and outdated advice – I’d be returning it by now if I’d bought it!
Hi there,
You are a real gem. Thanks for the info/review.I was never going to buy that piece of product anyway . Kudos also to all the commentors too.
I just hope people would give quality information and products instead of just going for hard sales, which is a total use of our precious time. I opened my e-mail this morning and at least 75% of it promotes the black ‘thingy’.So sad. I have still not decided whether to pity the seller or the buyer .
I hope one day i will not end up being like them but only to promote a good legit business.
Cheers to honest business.
Thank you X 10. I have total respect for your honest review. Just for interest sakes here is a short video about project black mask. It is ment to promote the product, but it does give you some info as to what is going on www.themfmethods.com/project-black-mask/
I was a little skeptical about buying the book, but I am looking for ways to increase my traffic. and the thought of getting free traffic was very enticing. I glad I didnt waste my money on it. thanks again. I found this other review on it as well www.opoqo.com/
Hello Farid,
Thanks for the kudos…
If you’re saying you are a newbie and you haven’t even started doing something, how do you expect to generate an income then? There is no magical solution which lets you generate an income overnight if you don’t learn the basics, first.
What I recommend to newbies is that they practice putting sites up (salesletter or content sites doesn’t matter…) no matter if they have strong or weak skills in doing this.
Use a tool like Xsite Pro to build your sites – this doesn’t even require any HTML knowledge to get a site up and running.
Or use WordPress to get your sites up.
My www.wordpressprofitmachines.com site has lots of videos which show you how to do this completely from scratch. Even the traffic part is covered.
Once you start putting these basics into action, you’ll soon want to know how to be able to actually sell something from a site and then you’re learning about Paypal and Clickbank. Later on, you want to have others selling your products and you learn a little more about Clickbank and how you can get affiliates plus what their marketplace is for.
It’s a step by step process and you can’t expect to know it all. But you need to get started. The most common mistake is that people are never starting at all because they’re afraid they don’t know enough…
Let me tell you: We’ve all started as newbies in this business! You just need to continually educate yourself about the most basic foundations AND put them into practice. Once you have done that, it will get a lot easier to step up the ladder and get your first successful project online. I’m speaking from experience here. My first sites weren’t perfect, either…
My suggestion to newbies is: Practice, practice and practice some more and stop looking for push-button solutions. You’ll have to get your feet wet in this business if you want to make money online!!
Detlev
Thanks Gordon, Ellen, Wizzer (sorry, I had to remove the link from within the blog commment – your name is still linked, though) and John (yep, I guess, I’ll have a good time in Mauritius…).
I don’t know it either, why Chris has decided to go the black hat route. But it could also be the direction of his business partner, Ken. It’s not completely clear whose work it actually is.
Detlev
Hi Fantomaster,
yes, I have a completely different approach now after my bad experiences from actually using these black hat techniques.
It was not just my Internetmarketing-success.com site which got burned but in my main “black hat period”, I’ve burned dozens of domains which never got their pagerank or rankings back. And whole IP blocks from my reseller accounts were banned.
After having read several more ebooks on SEO, I am of the opinion that the best way to achieve long term success in the search engines is to play WITH them, not against them.
Using e.g. article submissions to get pagerank for white hat domains with real content works as well or maybe even better for a domain’s rank than using blog farms which will eventually get caught and destroyed.
I’ve written this review as I think that most newbies and even several more advanced Internet marketers would not even understand what “black hat seo” actually means and thus the description on the salesletter itself would not be understandable.
While I agree that SEO needs to be working, I also think that the user clicking on a search engine result needs to be provided with relevant pages and content. As a heavy search engine user myself, I know how it feels having to to wade through dozens of spam sites before getting what I want to see on the resulting page.
Ethical SEO evolves around using the most relevant keywords surrounded by similar and related search terms. This concept is called LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) and is what I recommend for long term success – not just temporary results.
Of course, not everyone has to agree on my standpoint and you’re free to do what you want. It’s my personal opinion after all these negative experiences.
Detlev
Detlev,
I enjoy your reviews, because they are honest. I aquired some of the products you have reviewed, and agreed with your review of them. So I have no problem accepting your reviews for products I have not tried myself.
This is one such product. based on your review, and a couple other reviews, not only is this unethical, but could destroy your business, as well as land you in serious legal hot water, as spammers are now prosecuted, not only email spammers, but sites such as myspace are also taking legal action against them.
fantomaster, you want to use these tactics, go ahead, it is your business. I recomend you get a lawyer on retainer. I would also like to point out, that most ISP’s have policies prohibiting you to use their service to engage in these kinds of activities, not only may you lose your business, you may not ever be able to get online again.
Great Article…finally somebody with some integrity tells the truth…
Im so glad you shared the fact that you lost your white hat sites using black hat seo…people need to here the consequences…
Every big name marketer is promoting…
PS – the newbie comment on MME3…I bought this cutting edge software and is awesome..cutting edge..thats why your a newbie…try to pay a programmer to create this…or go buy a membership site software..it will never do 1/100th of the power..did you know now the cost went from $1,000 now $4000…early bird gets the worm…
Wait until you see my new website…Top secret…
i enjoy reading all of your writings and admire your enthusiasm in helping others. quite frankly, i am a new-newbie (haven’t even started yet) and find myself confused with all this e-books and softwares etc. i have acquired some of them and found out that i can’t understand them, can’t relate to them, and what’s worst, can’t even start to generate income! so,what do you recommend people like me to start off with? a program that can help me get a few dollars instantly! my aim is to start small and build a platform before i go big. thanks for your time!
==> By the way, “Fantomaster” actually is one of the contributors to “Project Black Mask” so it’s no surprise that he’s defending the mentioned strategies.
Maybe, they even make him a lot of money – I don’t care… Fact is that for most people who have not been doing this for years, the strategies include too many risks of either getting dozens or even hundreds of domains banned or your Adsense account suspended. This is definitely not something that should go mainstream.
And if all of these techniques are so great then why are they revealing their “secrets”? Because they are noticing a trend and that is that they need to build more and more sites to have the same level of income. The $0.50 per site which you can make per day is not valid anymore. I would rather say that something like $0.10-0.20 is true now.
In other words: The techniques are getting outdated and they are using their last chance to cash in on these secrets by disclosing “how great it is and how much cash they are making”!
Detlev
He’s sales letters are crafty, how intense they are, then it ends up like this.. I knew DJK was good and affiliate project x, hes made about 3 of these books in the matter of 8 months, seems to be in it for the money, and if this book purely covers blackhat stuff then its a disappointment, the sad thing is, he will end up making thousands off this product.
Hi Detlev,
Thanks for indepth review of this product. While others were busy trying to make an affiliate commission by either endorsing the entire product or parts of it, you were the only 1 who gave this much information.
And because I want my readers to only follow good advice and marketing techniques, I’ve included a link to your review on my product review blog. Hope you don’t mind.
Thanks again for your honest review.
To Your Success,
Susan
Thanks Susan, I really appreciate your feedback and the backlink
Detlev
Bought it (because Chris recommended it and I have APX and DJK); read it (because I hoped to find more “magic” from Chris); returned it (because it is poorly written, incomplete garbage).
Call me naive, but I never equated “black mask” with “black hat.” Duh.
For the record, Chris didn’t write this ebook. Its a JV with some black hatter from Canada. I, too, am surprised that Chris would put his name and good reputation behind this project.
I expect the returns on this one to be high.
Cheers.
For anyone who’s been involved in affiliate marketing for a few years, Project Black Mask provides nothing new.
Many, if not most, of the BH tactics described in PBM are well-worn. Some are worthless. Trackback spamming and automated forum postings, so effective a few years ago, have had their day. Networks of small splog farms can still prove useful, but their productivity is falling fast. In short, PBM is a snapshot of what worked magnificently in times past (although there is no mention of redirected subdomains. Guess the guru missed out on that one), but most of it is running or has already run out of steam.
One notable exception is cloaking, which can still be devastatingly effective in the right hands. That, however, requires no little knowledge and a lot of work to get right. Anyone thinking of going down the cloaking route needs to do their research (during which you’ll find at least a couple of very effective scripts that are a whole lot cheaper than the one recommended in PBM) and be prepared to get it wrong a few times before they start making money.
For what it’s worth, my advice for anyone thinking about buying PBM is save your money. I’ll be asking for a refund before the 30 day guarantee expires. As an information product for affiliate marketers, it’s worthless.
Detlev,
I have purchase all of Chris’s books and I have enjoyed and employed tips from each of them. However, when I first heard about PBM, I was skeptical.
After reading the sales letters (he is *good* at those), I put the credit card back and started searching for reviews on the product. After muddling my way through several PBM sales letter rehash pages, I found your great review.
Thank you for your honesty and candor – I have included a mention and link to your review on my blog.
BTW – has anyone else received the calls from the telemarketing company in Utah trying to sell “guru” packages based upon Chris’ products? Just curious.
Hi Chas.
Thanks for the additional info about the original writer of PBM. I didn’t know that. But it still surprises me that he’s giving his name for a project like this. This can cost him a lot of credibility and future sales for other products of his.
Detlev
Thanks for your insights, which are truthful.
Although we are not interested in spamming the search engines or creating thousands of black hat sites, there were several sections of the ebook that were useful, including information regarding social bookmarking. In other words, it’s not a “total loss” for those of us who want to play by the rules.
We’ve posted a couple of fairly in-depth reviews of Project Black Hat, in case anyone else is interested.
Thanks!
Vincent & Jamie
CoolMarketingProducts.com
Hi Jack,
Thanks for your compliment and your backlink. It’s really appreciated ;-).
Detlev
This is great and thanks for the advice. I was amazed at one of the comments above when someone decided at the end of his comment to stay “unethical”, a comment which I find not very “smart”. I feel that the issue here is not “Ethics” at all, it is in fact simply put the “rule of the Game”. The gentleman above is insisting that he will go to play football (soccer) “unethically”, meaning I guess that he will hold the ball in his hand and throw it at the goal keeper. Well whether he likes or not, he will certainly get the Red card for not playing by the FA (Football Association) rules.
HI,
It would really hurt to loose a site like that. especially if it had years of work in it as in your PR 6 site.
It goes to show you that if you do things wrong big brother will find out, as in like google.
thanks for the info.
steve
This blog Is very informative , I am really pleased to post my comment on this blog . It helped me with ocean of knowledge so I really belive you will do much better in the future . Good job web master .
Thank you!!! I was going to buy this. I am like the guy who has bought 3 programs to learn and has gone into overload- overwhelm. Your suggestions on the free Basics of XsitePro etc. are most helpful. I am a photo stylists and originally wanted to learn how to direct traffic to my web site www.JoEllenBerryman.com to expand my client base. Then I got inspired to learn how to create income on the internet. It is all been a bit confusing. I really am a beginner at everything…. how to cut and past etc. It is a major shift from setting up shots for catalog and working with a crew on a set to sitting alone with just me and my computer. Not knowing who and what to trust, feeling like all these systems are just money makers for the sellers. I know a new career can be created on the internet but I feel like I walked into a big room with a lot of flashing lights yet which one is real???
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