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It seems that majority of Internet Marketers feel the need to hide or mask their affiliate links. While I can somewhat understand why they want to do this, I don’t quite buy into this as being effective. In my opinion, there really isn’t a mainstream niche audience who is aware of what affiliate links look like.

There are only a few niche audiences who know how to spot out an affiliate link. One of the most predominant niche markets that can spot out an affiliate link is the Make Money Online niche. It just so happens that publishers in the Make Money Online Niche are also the most predominant about hiding or masking affiliate links.

At any rate, for whatever the reasons may be, publishers within the Make Money Online niche are very keen on making sure that their affiliate links aren’t known and secondly they don’t want their readers or site visitors to discover that the products that they recommend are affiliate based products. People need to be aware of this and that is one of the main reasons why I am writing this article.

When there is an incentive to market or promote a product or service, there is also a natural tendency to do so in a way that doesn’t provide the best service to readers and site viewers. Flashing money in the faces of people make them dishonest. Presenting an incentive to sell a product or service can cause people to go to great lengths to mass promote and market. Any element or tool that can be used to help and aid in having higher sales conversions will be used. That includes hiding or masking affiliate links.

Internet Marketers want their readers to feel like products and services are being made off a true and genuine recommendation. Internet Marketers want to down play the fact that they are making commission or scoring an incentive for making sales. However, within the Make Money Online niche, consumers are becoming more conscious and aware of not only what an affiliate link looks like but more so, what a hidden or masked affiliate link looks like.

The Make Money Online niche is one of the most “cover your ass, dot your I’s and cross your T’s” niche I have ever seen. It has now gotten to the point where we as consumers within the Make Money Online niche are now faced with the Ultimate Hidden Affiliate Links.

The ultimate way to hide affiliate links is by not actually having an affiliate link. Instead of using affiliate links to score sales and make money online, Internet Marketers are now starting to make back end deals with product and service developers and owners on the side. There are private, offline and off the record deals that are taking place between Internet Marketers and product owners.

These private deals may actually have adverse effects on the make money online consumer. As mentioned above, money has a tendency to turn even the most honest folks into a crooked and corrupt marketers who will promote anything that scores the biggest incentive and largest profit. Recently, I had a personal dose of experiencing this first hand, as told below in a recent conversation I had with an Internet Marketer in an instant messenger conversation.

“Garry I’m affiliated with the company OIOPublisher and I will give 2 copies of it to you ($74 value). I can speak on its behalf, so we’d be happy to give you 2 copies to give away. I don’t have an official title, but I do a lot of the marketing as well as a lot of back end stuff and negotiations with certain aspects of the business.

I work on negotiations with networks, dealing with affiliates, dealing with bloggers and our public images as well as a few other marketing things and I can have this verified for you if you don’t believe me.”

- Source Asked to Remain Anonymous

For consumers who follow the advice and product and service recommendations from Internet Marketers, there is now a new element that one must consider when deciding on whether or not to make a purchase based on a recommendation. The days of stuffing affiliate links into post evolved into hiding or masking the links; however, today emerges the ultimate way to score an affiliate commission. And that is by doing back end deals and private off the record negotiations with product and server developers and owners.

So who can a consumer trust to give them a truthful guidance in the business of learning how to make money online? How do you find the right Internet Marketer to trust who isn’t infested with the evils that follow with making money online? How do you know if the products and services that are being recommended to you are genuine and not motived by a secret incentive to sell?

My advice to you when considering whether or not to purchase a product or service based off a recommendation from someone you don’t know well or completely trust, is to question them and determine what their true motives are behind why they are recommending the product.

Obviously many Internet Marketers are going to be compensated for selling products they recommend. There is nothing wrong with that. However, as a consumer, it is ultimately in your best interest to make sound and secure decisions that will help you the most in your ventures of learning how to make money online. When deciding on making that purchase, don’t hesitate to contact the person who made the recommendation.

Find out what affiliation the person has with the product or service. Find out if the person making the recommendation actually owns the product and uses it too. Most importantly, don’t allow other people to take control over your conversation and don’t allow any piece of information to be left untouched. Question anything and question everything, especially in the Make Money Online niche…. believe me folks, it’s ten times worse than being on a used car lot.

While I don’t necessarily think certain people are crooked individuals, but the conversation above does aim to raise some flags and it does unveil to me that there is a huge opportunity for Internet Marketers to develop on the side or behind the scene deals with product and service developers and owners for the purpose of bypassing the standard level affiliate programs that are in place for marketing and promoting products with an incentive for making money.

People who follow Internet Marketers are more likely to purchase a product or service based off a recommendation that doesn’t carry an affiliate link (hidden or not) compared to a product or service that does. All in all, it just goes to show you to what huge lengths Internet Marketers will take towards closing the deal and making the sale.

The majority of the money made in the Make Money Online niche is done by selling the consumers (the people who want to learn) products and services that are advertised as things that will help or aid people in learning more or expanding on their ability to find success in the business of making money online. Rarely will you find a product or service that truly will help you to the extent of what’s being advertised.

So I bet you have been wondering who is the new owner of John Cow dot Com? You may have noticed that things have started to go back in the right direction for the cow site. Quality seems to be much better with the site sporting the new Keyword Research Mini Series [Read: Part One | Part Two | Part Three]

After the release of these three posts, I discovered that the word on the street, or at least in my Google Alerts and around the blogosphere, is that people think I am the new owner of John Cow dot Com. People who don’t believe that I am the new owner at a minimum believe that I at least have been hired to write on the site. Strange vibes are in the air as people feel that I have some kind of affiliation with the site. What do you think? Do you think I am the new owner of John Cow dot Com?

If you recall, last month the owner made a press release about the listing John Cow dot com for sale in SitePoint. Naturally, this sent a shock wave through the blogosphere (well, the MMO niche corner at least) because a lot of people have come to like this blog. Back in July of 2007 the site was launched as a parody of the famous John Chow dot Com.

The above screen shot was taken July 7th 2007

Source: BloggingTips.com

It was blatantly obvious that John Cow dot Com was an entertaining copy cat of John Chow. Needless to say, thousands of people clinged on to the site and the John Mad Cow Disease started to spread like wild viral linking fire. The explosive growth of the site has even caused the famous John Chow to interact and milk the madness a few times on his own blog.

Last month John Cow dot Com inadvertently got caught in the cross fire that was initially aimed at others. As with most controversial blog posts, the article I wrote a post titled, Flipping Blog Scams and The MMO Niche is Full of Jerks, had a huge reaction among shared readers between my blog and John Cow’s. In that post I said this to the owner of John Cow dot Com,

“I have been very disappointed with you and your blog for awhile. Your blog is no different that the rest of the bullshit MMO sites that do nothing but spin off the same stupid information found on the other 100 or so other MMO blogs. Your blog doesn’t help anyone learn how to make money online, yet your blog heavily advertises the fact that it does.”

It was predictable that I would get a direct response published on John Cow dot Com. Here is what the owner had to say,

“Garry accuses us for example that we heavily advertise ourselves as a blog that teaches others how to make money online, while we don’t. Have a look at our header Garry, we’ve been “Milking the Internet since 2007“. We’re making money online with our blog, and we make no secret of it. We do sponsored reviews, like you. We sell private advertising, like you. We endorse affiliate products, like you. We’re open and honest about what we do and why we do it, unlike you.”

So there you have it in a nutshell. The owner of John Cow openly admits that he is not in the business of teaching people how to make money online. Secondly, he admits that the site is used to trick people into buying bullshit products and that their chief level of concern is for what is in your wallet and not for what is in your heart. Lastly, he attempts to throw some flame back on GCDC by stating that I published sponsored posts, promote bogus products and rob people from their money just as he does.

To top this all off, the ultimate scam is that John Cow dot Com was being offered for sale to any ignorant individual who had $50,000 USD to shell out on their next biggest error in judgment. It’s one thing to trick people into buying a bullshit eBook for $19.95, but I tend to get pissed off when I witness higher grade behaviors that involve serious money that could seriously impact the financial well being of an individual who could potentially be tricked into buying a web site at such a high expense.

But what does the owner of John Cow dot Com care? He doesn’t. We have already witnessed his true colors and character in the above statement directed to me. With having the owner of John Cow dot Com openly admit that he is honest about screwing people over leads me to believe that he too would be honest (after the fact) about screwing over the person who made the idiotic decision to invest $50,000 USD into the site.

John Cow dot Com listed for sale in SitePoint on April 14th, 2008

In my 31 years of living I have learned a quite a few things in life. One of which is the fact that history tends to repeat itself and if you cast a line into a pond, eventually a fish will bite… the more lines you cast into the pond, the more chance you have at scoring a catch. John Cow dot Com does not have a new owner because I believe that the site was never truly up for sale. Yes, the site was listed in SitePoint. Yes, there were actual bids on the domain. But, the site was never sold and eventually the listing on SitePoint was cancelled.

John Cow dot Com listed for sale in Sitepoint on August 9th, 2007

Instead, I believe that listing John Cow dot Com was purely a marketing strategy to flood traffic and gain more readers to the site. As I had said, history has a tendency to repeat itself and casting more lines in the pond will increase the odds of catching a fish. This isn’t the first time the owner of John Cow dot Com has listed his site for sale in SitePoint. It seems that back in August of 2007, just a few months after launching the site, it was listed for sale in SitePoint for $20,000 USD. The pitch to the listing was, “Own a piece of blogging history, we’ve outdone the original.”

So you see, the owner of John Cow dot Com had nothing to lose. Back in August of 2007, if some idiot had ended up buying his site for $20,000 USD, the owner of John Cow would have pulled off the ultimate dot Com blog scam of 2007. Obviously, no one took the bait and the owner was not successful in selling John Cow dot Com for the asking $20k. However, he still won as he was successful in his marketing strategy and scored tons of readers and interest in the site.

John Cow dot Com listed for sale in Sitepoint on December 20th, 2007

Amazingly enough, the owner of John Cow dot Com decided to repeat the whole process once again in Dec. of 2007 immediately after Google had updated PageRank, granted the site with a PR5.

In April of 2008, after reflecting on how successful the August 2007 and December 2007 marketing strategy was, the owner of John Cow dot Com decided to repeat the same strategy and once again, offered John Cow dot Com up for sale in SitePoint. Why not? What’s there to lose? Either some idiot will take the bait and purchase the site, this time around for $50,000 USD or the owner of John Cow dot Com walks away after having hundreds of bloggers write posts and give him free publicity.

You see, listing your blog in SitePoint is becoming a trend. It’s a win/win marketing strategy. You list your blog for sale for some ridicules amount of money, if someone is stupid enough to buy it, you win. If no one ends up buying it, you leave after having everyone and their grandmother blogging about it.

That is my thoughts on this situation. I don’t believe that John Cow dot Com was ever truly up for sale. I believe that if some idiot happened to have purchased the site for $50,000, the site would have been sold. But I don’t believe that the owner had any expectation of someone actually considering making the purchase. In my opinion, the owner of John Cow dot Com was in it for the hype and the free publicity, which as mentioned above, will continue to be used to exploit the ignorance of people who want so badly to learn how to make money online, they’ll believe in the promotion of the products and services being listed and advertised on the site, which as we all know will make the owner money and cause the readers to continue to lose money.

The part that I personally enjoy the most from this situation is the fact that when the owner of John Cow dot Com decided to make an attempt to beef up his quality in his content, people started to suspect that I either purchased the site myself or was hired to write on it.

The sad part to this story is that eventually the owner of John Cow dot Com will be successful in pulling off his lifelong dream of scamming and tricking some poor sap out of a lot of money for a blog that doesn’t make even close the the amount of money or traffic being inaccurately reported.

Listen to this:

And now read this:

A few days ago, I sent out an email to all my email subscribers and also wrote a very kind heart to heart message regarding my advertisement policy.

Long story short, my policy is that I do not accept ads that point to affiliate based products commonly found in ClickBank or other related items such as that.

The most popular rejected advertisement request is this:

Ty Coughlin’s Reverse Funnel System. Current to date, I have rejected and refunded over 100 requests to advertise this product.

I don’t know anything about this product, I’ll admit that. But I don’t care. I am not advertising it. The simple fact alone of having over 100 people bombard me requesting to advertise their affiliation with Ty Coughlin Reverse Funnel System is enough reason for me to say, “I am not interested in this product!” and, “I am sure as hell not going to contribute towards promoting it!”

Is it a scam? I don’t know… and to be honest, I don’t really care. Products like this do not interest me, and I don’t blog about products like this. In fact, it more closely resembles the type of products I don’t like.

Need Examples of What Is Acceptable?

Just in case people are still not clear on what I am looking for in an advertiser for $5.95 here are a few examples:

Example A:

Example B:

Example C:

Note: Joel Comm is actually paying me for this ad. He owns this product!

Example D:

If you’re still not sure about the kind of advertisers I am looking for, I have taken it upon myself to create really cool game called, Garry’s Advertiser Concentration. Playing this game will help people better understand the kind of advertisers I am looking for.

I am provide, what I would seriously consider, some of the best advertising solutions within my niche. You can advertise a graphic on my blog for as little as $5.95 / month, which literally saves you hundreds of dollars.

If you haven’t noticed yet, I am extremely picky with who I accept into my ad system.

I want fresh blood. I want newbie bloggers. I want product developers. I want people who have written their own ebooks. I want people who want to promote legitimate things (that they own!). I want any advertisers who wants to take advantage of my offer while not exploiting my cheap prices by requesting to advertise trashy products, Internet scams or bogus products.

It is one thing to make money online with private ad sales, but it is another thing to do so by accepting ads onto my blog that promote services that are total scams and fraud. With my private ad sales increasing as well as the requests to take full advantage of the advertisement programs being offered on my blog, I now know that I need to be very careful and selective with who I accept into my program.

Today I invested some time into following the links of all my private advertiser’s sites. There was one advertiser who caught my eye in particular. The advertiser was promoting a site called, LiveBizwebcast. This is a website that is part of Jeffrey Lant’s huge live webcast affiliate marketing scam. It is a lure to drive people into their live webcast where Jeffrey Lant and a few select people assigned to his scam team attempt to rob people out of over $1200 dollars of their hard earned money.

When I visited the site that is patched into the huge network hosted by Jeffrey Lant, I could quickly see right through him. His purpose is simple: Collect as much money for as many people as possible. Quickly after logging in, I was addressed live on the webcast by Jeffrey Lant and quickly I was pushed into his product order page. I played the game as if I were just a regular visitor and for the hell of it, I decided to let him walk me through his little scam process from start to finish.

Immediately I was asked by Jeffrey Lant, “Do you want to make money online?” Sure! I replied. “My next webcast starts in one hour, stick around and watch the entire show and you will be giving 50,000 free web site visitors to your web site of choice!”, say Lant. “All you have to do is watch my show from start to finish, you don’t even have to buy anything. This is my gift to you just for watching the show”.

Fine whatever, so as I was doing maintenance on a few of my own sites, I had the show opened up and minimized in a separate window. After 30 minutes of listening to this little pathetic looking troll with eyeglasses, he then directed everyone back to the main lobby. There was a about 60 people including myself logged in and listening to his show.

Moving back to the main lobby, quickly him and his top sales associate, Jim Carpenter, were working aggressively towards closing sales of their $1200 dollar product. The sad thing is that a few people were actually buying. I feel so terrible for those folks that wasted their money. Then Lant asked me what my intentions were. I told him that I have given him my valued time; however, at this time I am not interested in purchasing your product. I am however, still interested in the bonus you offered me for watching the show.

Immediately after that, all hell broke loose. He called me names, and told everyone in the room, “here is an example of a person who has zero skills or intelligence in the business, he’s just a guy that want to rob me and score his free gift”, said Lant. “It doesn’t work that way Garry Conn. I give out the free bonuses to the people that buy the product! These are the people that deserve my gifts!”, continued Jeffrey Lant.

He further continued with his trollish rampage by saying, “You have been very uncooperative and quite honestly a pain in my ass for the last 90 minutes you have been logged in. I am done speaking with you and as far as your time is concerned, everyone invests their time into something!”

So, you know, Jeffrey Lant is right about one thing, people do invest their time into things. I have chosen to invest my time into calling him out and placing a warning message for people who read and or will pass through my blog in the future. Do not buy anything from Jeffrey Lant. He is a scam artist, he is rude, he is a troll and he is only concerned with taking money from people who are too ignorant to see the big picture of his operation.

Here is a complete list of domain names that YOU WILL NEED to watch out for. He has an empire of domain names that all link to his main scam artists central. Here is the list below:

20IncomeStreams.com
AllAboutWebcasts.com
BoldBizBoom.com
BroadcastPlatform.com
BroadcastTutors.com
CleverWaysToProfit.com
CreativeCashOutlet.com
EasyBizCentral.com
FastFuriousFreedom.com
FunOnlineProfit.com
futureprosperityzone.com
GearUpForProfit.com
HomeBizChitChat.com
HomeBizCurrents.com
HomeBizHope.com
HomeBizInfluence.com
HomeBizInvasion.com
HomeOfficeWebcaster.com
InteractiveLearningCenter.com
InteractiveWealthMakers.com
InternetMarketWeb.com
IntrepidCash.com
LIVEGlobalBusiness.com
LiveSeminarRentals.com
LiveWebcastBiz.com
LoveThisHomeBiz.com
NavigateYourFuture.com
ProfitApproach.com
ProfitBroadcast.com
ProfitLocomotion.com
RunningForGold.com
SeminarAdvantageOnline.com
SimpleSuccessTools.com
SmartBizStars.com
SuccessBiz101.com
SureThingSuccess.com
TheBestBizVenture.com
TheLiveTalkingWebsite.com
TheSalesClosers.com
TheSmartBizPlace.com
TheSmartChoiceNow.com
TheWebcastSite.com
TrafficProfitFun.com
VastWealthSystem.com
VideoVision101.com
VirtualWebcasts.com
WealthExpressMax.com
WealthWays101.com
WealthyVoyage.com
WebcastAdvice.com
WebcastAvenue.com
WebcastBroadcast.com
WebcastCircle.com
WebcastCreations.com
WebcastForProfit.com
WebcastFortunes.com
WebcastHappiness.com
WebcastHelp.com
webcastsource.com
WellFoundedBiz.com
WiseWayToCash.com
WiseWealthFormula.com
YourCommunityChoice.com

If you see any of these web sites being advertised, back away. These sites lead to terrible things. I invested 90 minutes of my time to sit there as a John Doe undercover to witness first hand the process of Jeffrey Lant. If you buy anything from Jeffrey Lant, you are buying into a scam and you will have wasted your time and most importantly your money.