The Scarlet Pimp
Supreme Member
- Apr 2, 2008
- 1,308
- 4,293
From: The Masked Guru.
Today I'm going to have a quick look at 'Blogging to the Bank',
by 'Rob Benwell'.
Important notice: We are nothing whatsoever to do with Rob Benwell,
his products, including 'Blogging to the Bank', his websites, or
any of his businesses including 'R5 Ltd'. This review of his ebook
is an independent unbiased analysis. We in no way advocate anything
the author of the ebook claims or offers. All trademarks are hereby
acknowledged
Blogging to the Bank Exposed...
I say 'quick look' up above, because frankly, this shouldn't take
long. The first thing to notice is that Mr Benwell rather pompously
entitles his short ebook 'The Blueprint of a Blogging Millionaire'.
While it may be true that he has made money online (after all, it
isn't difficult), I seriously doubt whether he has achieved it
using the clumsy methods he advocates in this ebook. In fact, I'd
guess his income is derived primarily from selling ebooks like this
to newbies...
Let's jump to page 4 where Mr Benwell claims to have sold 20,000
copies of 'Blogging to the Bank', a respectable sum. At $37 a pop,
that's close to three quarters of a million dollars. But wait - on
his very own website, he claims to be making over $1,000,000. a year.
Which kind of begs the question, why risk diluting the
effectiveness of his methods by publicizing them for a lousy
quarter mill per edition...?
I don't know, and neither does Mr Benwell, probably. Incidentally,
he's known as 'Ben Robwell' in IM circles, and his ebook is more
usually described as 'Blagging to the bonk', indicating how
seriously he's generally taken. But why is that? Let's read a bit
of his ebook and find out.
Page 5 describes 'The 3 Big Changes in Big Money Blogging'.
According to Bendwell, these are:-
* Blog advertising is big
* Free blogs are dead
er... - that's it. There are only 2, in fact. This sloppiness is
actually endemic in Bentwell's work, and is pretty much the only
light relief in a turgid ebook that's very hard reading. As for his
'3 big changes' - blogs have carried advertising since times
immemorial, free blogs aren't dead, and I agree wholeheartedly with
his third point, whatever it is.
Page 6 takes us to Bongwell's '5 Blogging Commandments For 2009'.
These are:-
* give your blog a personality.
* make your blog sticky
* maximise (sic) your blog's revenue
* Don't give up
* Don't let your blog die.
You can probably tell already that I'm not going to bother with
Bunghole's ebook for much longer, I mean, would you really TRY to
create a bland, unsticky blog that went out of its way to minimize
revenue? As for points 4 and 5, they are essentially the same. So
there's only 4 points. A bit like his '3 big changes' earlier.
Sorry to labor this point, but that's the standard of 'advice'
Branwhale offers. If you are the kind of person that gives up
easily, has no personality, doesn't want people to visit your blog,
and has no idea about money, perhaps this book will be useful to
you, otherwise, I doubt it.
Page 7 starts to explain how important it is to do keyword
research, and heads off to Clickbank a.s.a.p because that's what
newbies will be most familiar with. Page 8 is a hilariously
amateurish screencap with some scribbles on it. If Mr Blogwell
really is making millions a year, one wonders why he doesn't cough
up the $50 or so to get some half-decent illustrations done.
Apparently, you should look for Clickbank products paying out 50%
or more, or even better 65%, with a 'ref%' (the percentage of sales
attributed to affiliates) to be '60+ or even 70+ unless its a new
product'.
So that's nice and clear then. Random advice like this isn't
actually very helpful, IMHO, but hey, what do I know. Boredwell
then goes on to advocate finding out how much traffic 'you can
drive to your blog' using the freebie page on wordtracker (you know
the one, the page that only complete and utter broke newbies use).
Oh, and use the MSN tool too, although he doesn't bother to tell
you where that is. So grab a few key phrases. Ok, I'll go for that.
Says Benworth, you need 'Main 5 Keyphrases Ad Up To At Least 300 On
Wordtracker And 500 On MSN but the more searches the better' (sic).
A multi-millionaire guru with no spell checker, or the ability to spell 'add'.
Mmmm.
Next page - check Google to make sure there are advertisers for
your keywords. And therefore 'From the 3 methods above you can
easily select a few winning markets to base your blog on and have a
few strong affiliate products to promote.'. Eh??? Call this a 'blueprint'???
GET SOME KEYWORDS, CHOOSE SOME PRODUCTS, MAKE A MILLION.
Great advice.
Next we get on to hosting advice, because 'the big dogs always host
their own blogs'. Cue affiliate link, obviously. pages 13 - 16,
'How to set up a Wordpress blog'. Last time I looked, this was a
one-click operation on Fantasico, so why he drags it over 3 pages I
have no idea.
Page 17 is how to 'optimize' your blog'. He starts with optimizing
'for the reader'. Apparently you have just 7 seconds to make a
first impression on a reader. Mr Brentwell doesn't specify how he
conducted this research, what control parameters were used or what
the sample size was, so we can assume he just 'made it up out of
his head' or perhaps 'read it somewhere'. Now THAT'S professional
quality for your $37.
He next advises adding an email capture form and an RSS button on
the blog, which is fair enough, if rather embarrassingly
commonsense. The email form necessitates an affiliate link to
aweber, of course. And several pages of excruciatingly badly
written and piss-poorly illustrated attempts to explain how you
insert HTML into a wordpress template.
By page 20, Brinesmell is onto 'search engine optimization'. Goody.
Can't wait. Here's what he says, "Now I'm not saying Black Hat SEO
is bad or anything but it does have its place and it's not on a
long term blog that you're going to put time into". Which I think
(although I'm not sure - it reads like he'd been on the Jack & diet
when he wrote it) means "don't waste a lot of time and effort on
any disposable blog that might get banned" which I have to say is
sensible advice.
Bendyball's "SEO advice", btw, seems to boil down to adding a
description in your woprdpress template, a tagline, that kind of
thing. The sort of tricks that will surely guarantee you rank
number 1 for 'credit cards'. Not.
How about 'monetization'? Does Blobwell have any advice on that? Of
course. And I quote "I recommend you use all the ways possible to
make money from your blog". No shit sherlock.
By page 26, I'm about ready to give up, to be honest. Especially
when he recommends loading your blog with PLR content from 'plrpro'
via his affiliate link. Or perhaps you could 'write your own', or
'cut and paste them from article directories', or 'outsource them'.
If you still think this joker has anything honest to say, here's
his own technique:- "I mostly use a mixture of plrpro articles
and outsourcing them but I also like to add free articles and news
clips with my opinions and maybe a few product reviews etc."
The fact that Blagwell is an affiliate for plrpro is irrelevant, of
course, just a nasty coincidence. PLRpro, btw, is a useless
'service' that ships you (and all the other suckers that subscribe
to it) 40 pre-canned articles a month for a large wodge of cash.
You've probably already spotted the flaw in Robby's master plan,
this 'blueprint to millions'. That's right. You will waste your
life pasting up the same content as everyone else. And will that
bring you traffic? Of course not. Anything else, Robbo? Anything at
all? Oh yes, article syndication. Apparently you can get "high
quality backlinks to your blog is by syndicating original articles
which can be wrote by you or outsourced".
I REALLY hope Mr Bingbong doesn't write his own content. As
for 'article syndication', you know all about that already and how
it is of limited relevance nowadays due to advances in search
engine deduping technology. And if you think a backlink from a
run-of-the-mill article scraper blog is 'high quality', remind me
never to come round to your house for dinner.
The remaining pages are full of pathetic 'advice' to 'create
squidoo lenses', 'use Digg', 'blog and ping' etc, so I'm actually
going to stop there, because there's NOTHING in this crock that can
help you make money - if Benwell makes any money by doing this, I'm
the uncle of a monkey.
OK, I'm outta here. Catch ya later, internet marketers!
The Masked Guru
Today I'm going to have a quick look at 'Blogging to the Bank',
by 'Rob Benwell'.
Important notice: We are nothing whatsoever to do with Rob Benwell,
his products, including 'Blogging to the Bank', his websites, or
any of his businesses including 'R5 Ltd'. This review of his ebook
is an independent unbiased analysis. We in no way advocate anything
the author of the ebook claims or offers. All trademarks are hereby
acknowledged
Blogging to the Bank Exposed...
I say 'quick look' up above, because frankly, this shouldn't take
long. The first thing to notice is that Mr Benwell rather pompously
entitles his short ebook 'The Blueprint of a Blogging Millionaire'.
While it may be true that he has made money online (after all, it
isn't difficult), I seriously doubt whether he has achieved it
using the clumsy methods he advocates in this ebook. In fact, I'd
guess his income is derived primarily from selling ebooks like this
to newbies...
Let's jump to page 4 where Mr Benwell claims to have sold 20,000
copies of 'Blogging to the Bank', a respectable sum. At $37 a pop,
that's close to three quarters of a million dollars. But wait - on
his very own website, he claims to be making over $1,000,000. a year.
Which kind of begs the question, why risk diluting the
effectiveness of his methods by publicizing them for a lousy
quarter mill per edition...?
I don't know, and neither does Mr Benwell, probably. Incidentally,
he's known as 'Ben Robwell' in IM circles, and his ebook is more
usually described as 'Blagging to the bonk', indicating how
seriously he's generally taken. But why is that? Let's read a bit
of his ebook and find out.
Page 5 describes 'The 3 Big Changes in Big Money Blogging'.
According to Bendwell, these are:-
* Blog advertising is big
* Free blogs are dead
er... - that's it. There are only 2, in fact. This sloppiness is
actually endemic in Bentwell's work, and is pretty much the only
light relief in a turgid ebook that's very hard reading. As for his
'3 big changes' - blogs have carried advertising since times
immemorial, free blogs aren't dead, and I agree wholeheartedly with
his third point, whatever it is.
Page 6 takes us to Bongwell's '5 Blogging Commandments For 2009'.
These are:-
* give your blog a personality.
* make your blog sticky
* maximise (sic) your blog's revenue
* Don't give up
* Don't let your blog die.
You can probably tell already that I'm not going to bother with
Bunghole's ebook for much longer, I mean, would you really TRY to
create a bland, unsticky blog that went out of its way to minimize
revenue? As for points 4 and 5, they are essentially the same. So
there's only 4 points. A bit like his '3 big changes' earlier.
Sorry to labor this point, but that's the standard of 'advice'
Branwhale offers. If you are the kind of person that gives up
easily, has no personality, doesn't want people to visit your blog,
and has no idea about money, perhaps this book will be useful to
you, otherwise, I doubt it.
Page 7 starts to explain how important it is to do keyword
research, and heads off to Clickbank a.s.a.p because that's what
newbies will be most familiar with. Page 8 is a hilariously
amateurish screencap with some scribbles on it. If Mr Blogwell
really is making millions a year, one wonders why he doesn't cough
up the $50 or so to get some half-decent illustrations done.
Apparently, you should look for Clickbank products paying out 50%
or more, or even better 65%, with a 'ref%' (the percentage of sales
attributed to affiliates) to be '60+ or even 70+ unless its a new
product'.
So that's nice and clear then. Random advice like this isn't
actually very helpful, IMHO, but hey, what do I know. Boredwell
then goes on to advocate finding out how much traffic 'you can
drive to your blog' using the freebie page on wordtracker (you know
the one, the page that only complete and utter broke newbies use).
Oh, and use the MSN tool too, although he doesn't bother to tell
you where that is. So grab a few key phrases. Ok, I'll go for that.
Says Benworth, you need 'Main 5 Keyphrases Ad Up To At Least 300 On
Wordtracker And 500 On MSN but the more searches the better' (sic).
A multi-millionaire guru with no spell checker, or the ability to spell 'add'.
Mmmm.
Next page - check Google to make sure there are advertisers for
your keywords. And therefore 'From the 3 methods above you can
easily select a few winning markets to base your blog on and have a
few strong affiliate products to promote.'. Eh??? Call this a 'blueprint'???
GET SOME KEYWORDS, CHOOSE SOME PRODUCTS, MAKE A MILLION.
Great advice.
Next we get on to hosting advice, because 'the big dogs always host
their own blogs'. Cue affiliate link, obviously. pages 13 - 16,
'How to set up a Wordpress blog'. Last time I looked, this was a
one-click operation on Fantasico, so why he drags it over 3 pages I
have no idea.
Page 17 is how to 'optimize' your blog'. He starts with optimizing
'for the reader'. Apparently you have just 7 seconds to make a
first impression on a reader. Mr Brentwell doesn't specify how he
conducted this research, what control parameters were used or what
the sample size was, so we can assume he just 'made it up out of
his head' or perhaps 'read it somewhere'. Now THAT'S professional
quality for your $37.
He next advises adding an email capture form and an RSS button on
the blog, which is fair enough, if rather embarrassingly
commonsense. The email form necessitates an affiliate link to
aweber, of course. And several pages of excruciatingly badly
written and piss-poorly illustrated attempts to explain how you
insert HTML into a wordpress template.
By page 20, Brinesmell is onto 'search engine optimization'. Goody.
Can't wait. Here's what he says, "Now I'm not saying Black Hat SEO
is bad or anything but it does have its place and it's not on a
long term blog that you're going to put time into". Which I think
(although I'm not sure - it reads like he'd been on the Jack & diet
when he wrote it) means "don't waste a lot of time and effort on
any disposable blog that might get banned" which I have to say is
sensible advice.
Bendyball's "SEO advice", btw, seems to boil down to adding a
description in your woprdpress template, a tagline, that kind of
thing. The sort of tricks that will surely guarantee you rank
number 1 for 'credit cards'. Not.
How about 'monetization'? Does Blobwell have any advice on that? Of
course. And I quote "I recommend you use all the ways possible to
make money from your blog". No shit sherlock.
By page 26, I'm about ready to give up, to be honest. Especially
when he recommends loading your blog with PLR content from 'plrpro'
via his affiliate link. Or perhaps you could 'write your own', or
'cut and paste them from article directories', or 'outsource them'.
If you still think this joker has anything honest to say, here's
his own technique:- "I mostly use a mixture of plrpro articles
and outsourcing them but I also like to add free articles and news
clips with my opinions and maybe a few product reviews etc."
The fact that Blagwell is an affiliate for plrpro is irrelevant, of
course, just a nasty coincidence. PLRpro, btw, is a useless
'service' that ships you (and all the other suckers that subscribe
to it) 40 pre-canned articles a month for a large wodge of cash.
You've probably already spotted the flaw in Robby's master plan,
this 'blueprint to millions'. That's right. You will waste your
life pasting up the same content as everyone else. And will that
bring you traffic? Of course not. Anything else, Robbo? Anything at
all? Oh yes, article syndication. Apparently you can get "high
quality backlinks to your blog is by syndicating original articles
which can be wrote by you or outsourced".
I REALLY hope Mr Bingbong doesn't write his own content. As
for 'article syndication', you know all about that already and how
it is of limited relevance nowadays due to advances in search
engine deduping technology. And if you think a backlink from a
run-of-the-mill article scraper blog is 'high quality', remind me
never to come round to your house for dinner.
The remaining pages are full of pathetic 'advice' to 'create
squidoo lenses', 'use Digg', 'blog and ping' etc, so I'm actually
going to stop there, because there's NOTHING in this crock that can
help you make money - if Benwell makes any money by doing this, I'm
the uncle of a monkey.
OK, I'm outta here. Catch ya later, internet marketers!
The Masked Guru
Does not hurt to ask . The answer can always be no