02

Mar

Daily Junk: Generous Offers to Save You Time and Money by Automating Your Web Marketing

Posted by: Jeremy Reither

The latest offender in our Daily Junk series comes from a scammer who is proposing to let you in on a few search engine optimization “insider *secrets*” – lucky you. One way that people sometimes market their websites is by submitting them for inclusion in various related internet directories. This scammer proposes to be offering some software that does directory submission en mass, at the flick of your wrist. I don’t buy it. Below is a line-by-line analysis of this impeccably written piece of marketing material.

From: Directory Submitter [mailto: globalbox02urtqu@yahoo.com ]
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 10:21 PM
To: Reither, Jeremy
Subject: Forget Asking For A Link Exchange?

I guess I should remind everyone that if you’re receiving emails like these from a yahoo.com email address, that should be your first tip that this is junk. But if the first part of the email address is total gibberish, as this one is (i.e.: globalbox02urtqu), then that’s a double whammy. You could just delete this email right away and feel good about it – but let’s dive deeper.

Dear Fellow Internet Marketer / Website Owner,

Do you really know what it takes to quickly generate high-quality traffic to your Web Site?
Listen up… I must let you in on a few insider *secrets*:

Boy, do I want to know. Please enlighten me. I’m listening up.

Instead of waiting months to generate sales on your site, you can start gaining the hits you want right now.

You mean you’ve found the secret to instant and painless results? Sounds suspiciously like an Ab Roller infomercial, but I’m all ears.

So how does this new software work? Link Directory Submitter is the perfect solution for sending your sites to a multitude of pre-configured online directories. Link Directory Submitter comes with 2700+ link directories to submit to, more than half ranging from PR4 to PR7.

Here’s another tip off that this email is complete BS. The writer asks a question “So how does this new software work?” and then proceeds to strategically not answer the question. Instead he bogs you down with numbers like “2700+” and short-hand rankings (that most people don’t recognize) like PR4 and PR7. The steps below don’t tell us much about how the software supposedly works, either.

There are only 3 easy steps required:

• Create a profile (That is, the common data you usually have to repeatedly type by hand: your site address, link title, description, keywords, etc). This is a one-time process.
• Select up to 10 directories at a time that you want to submit to from the list of over 2700+ directories along with a category/subcategory for your site. Link Directory Submitter will fill in all the other details.
  NEW FEATURE: Link Directory Submitter will now auto select the catagory for your website you are trying to submit if you have included them in your website profile.
• Now Press Submit.
• You’re all done.

“Just set it and forget it” - you’ve heard that before. It’s so easy it basically does all the work for you. Step two is great – “select up to 10 directories at a time” – so in other words to submit my website to all these directories I’d have to run this tool about 270 times. I bet they charge per use. Hmm, maybe not such a great deal after all. By the way, if you are doing any directory submission to promote your site, it doesn’t much matter how many directories you’re submitted to if none of them are relevant to the content of your site. And that’s the key bit of information they leave out in their marketing pitch here. For example if you submit your Cupcake website to a Legal directory, that’s not going to do you any good. Directory submissions are only beneficial if they’re relevant – and even then there are other criteria to consider. This scammer clearly doesn’t get that.

I also like how there are 3 steps, but 4 bullets…an extra bullet for “you’re all done.” Nice.

For Full Details please read the attached html file

To Unsubscribe please read the attached Unsubscribe.txt file

If you’re looking for another dead giveaway, look no further. In order to proceed with this offer you have to open an email attachment – RED FLAG. Oh yeah, and in order to unsubscribe from future emails, you have to open an attachment – RED FLAG. Why doesn’t this guy just use an ‘unsubscribe’ link like everyone else? And how about if I wanted to buy this wonderful product? What should I do? There’s no contact information, now website, nothing. Why’s that – because he’s a scammer.

Yet another scam / spam email you can painlessly delete and move on…if you just know what to look for.