Written on
March 6, 2009 – 9:56 am | by Keith Schilling
One the of the most annoying problems a reputable firm has to deal with is listening to the non sense that floats around in the world of ‘online marketing’. Its always hard enough to deal with the snake oil SEO scammers that are out there. They pollute potential clients with lies, unrealistic expectations, and tons more.
Well apparently theres a new breed of feeders out there as well. Its in the form of a MLM scheme. Multi Level Marketing is nothing new. The premise is to recruit someone who knows nothing and you get a cut of the profits from the person that started it.
LocalAdLink appears to be exactly that. The difference with them is their utilizing pay per click and small business owners.
I founded the Charlotte SEO Meetup Group which turned into the Search Engine Marketing Association of Charlotte over the past several months. During one of our meetups, I was approached by an individual that I never met. He shook my hand and proceeded to pitch me ‘localadlink’ in 45 seconds. He mentioned that I was “sitting on a gold mine” because what I said to my group everyone would follow me and take my advice. They would sign up under me and I’d be a millionaire.
That’s the difference where our beliefs reside. Simply because I can make hundreds or thousands of dollars off of a large group of people doesn’t make it right. Preying on the un-educated doesn’t make me sleep well at night. I told this individual that I would look into ‘localadlink’ and get back to him. I did. I researched the company and within 15 minutes I determined that you’d be wasting your time and money with them.
Here’s a recent email I received after turning him down:
Hi Keith,
I wish I could make it tonight, but I’m doing an LocalAdLink presentation. I don’t claim to know the ins and outs of the internet world even close to wat you all do, so I respect the fact of you guys not approving of the company. I thought it would have been a great addition to the services you already provide and especially in the future when it officially launches.
We’ve helped a lot of people market themselves online where they normally wouldn’t have ( including myself ) and that is the aim of the company. Please remember I gave your company the opportunity to be “on top” before other seo companies even heard of it. The CEO sold his Home Depot business plan and also sold shopping.com to Compaq for over 200 million, so I have to believe this is going to be something even greater!
This is my open response on this blog to him and any other localadlink MLM salesman in Charlotte, NC:
Hi xxxxxx,
I understand you are compensated for each individual you sign up underneath you. Thats why you’re very excited to ‘push’ this opportunity.
You state in your email: “I don’t claim to know the ins and outs of the internet world even close to what you all do”
This is precisely my point in a MLM scheme. We do this for a living. We do know the ins and outs of pay per click advertising and exactly how localadlink works. We are online marketing professionals. Why would Localadlink recruit people in the real estate industry (or any industry besides online marketing) to push a product on someone they know NOTHING about? You said it yourself in your email. The answer is simple….LocalAdLink makes a higher profit on un-educated individuals.
So while you’re presenting tonight in front of an audience a service that you are not an expert in (you said it yourself) to tens or hundreds of small business owners that are trying to keep their business from going under in todays economy, ask yourself (better yet, I hope they ask you!):
What is the avg cost per click for your keyphrase?
What is the total number of impressions?
What is the total number of clicks you recieved?
Are the keyphrases you selected exact match, broad match, or phrase match?
Are your ads set to run from 9am to 5pm everyday? Or do you not know?
How many times will my ad been seen in my preferred zip code?
Nameofindividual, your estimated number of searches presented by the Google Search Tool displays as “not enough searches“. In a nutshell that means no one is searching for your phrase. At least not enough to generate a lead off of it.
Without knowing your information above how can you budget each month for your spend? Last time we spoke you said its $50.00. Is your cost each month .25 cents from 3 clicks? My guess is yes. Because after all, LocalAdLink has to pay you a referral fee for your recruit and they still have to make a profit, which is big.
Should we talk about ad text and landing pages?
Sure, why not.
How often can you change your ads? Does your statics provide ad text click through rate? Can you setup multiple ads to test? Does Localadlink do this for you? For $50.00 a month, I’m betting no.
Landing pages…wow, I don’t even know where to begin. Lets take a look at an image I captured for “Italian restaurants” in Miami, Florida.
First off, where the hell is the business on this page? As a user clicks on an ad this is exactly what they are presented with above the fold. You have to scroll down just to see a business listing.
Why do you want to spend $50.00 per month to have your business listed with 20 others….that people have to scroll down to find?
Next, how many ads do you see for LocalAdlink promoting their own business? I count 5 above the fold. Five times!! You’re paying $50 per month for a directory to display your listing (not your actual website) where they heavily advertise THEIR services not yours.
Or, as a small business owner you can send them directly to a site that will give them information a user was looking for to begin with. Its called a “Positive” user experience. Do you think the conversion from a localadlink with no less than 5 of their own ’sign up ads’ and multiple business listings convert more than a site such as the one below? Its a huge difference. Online marketing is about converting visitors to customers.
Its time to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Stop providing a disservice to small business owners in Charlotte. Our group is free to join. We hold 4 free meetings each year. They can pick our brains as much as they like and it doesn’t cost them a dime.
Of course you don’t have to take this Certified Google Advertising Professionals advice, you can simply present a service you know nothing about to an audience that knows nothing about online marketing so it can pad your wallett.
Sincerely,
Keith Schilling
So I ask my audience, what do you think this guy will do? Will he continue to market to profit on those that don’t understand how online marketing really works or will he stop? The $50 dollar sign up is just one number I used. I’ve already seen reports as high as $250.00 to sign up for service. Ouch!
I just googled their comp plan. I figured they’d (the localadlink salesrep) would make about half. Check out their comp plan here. http://www.adlinkmanager.com/?p=199
Update Number 1: An article from rip off report: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/427/ripoff0427685.htm
Update 2: For the record, I submitted a list of these questions and never recieved a response from localadlink, go figure.
Update 3: 4/7/09 – per my comments post, heres my stats from this blog posting:
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