Category: Time-Wasters

Any time-wasters not normally classed as scammers or spammers

June 15, 2016

SEO Pay by Performance

All businesses get endless emails offering SEO services.

SEO services is Search Engine Optimisation which just means tweaking your website to try to get a higher ranking on Google and other search engines.

At the radio station we get more than a hundred of these emails each month.

But the SEO people have a difficulty in that Google keep changing the rules for how they determine the ranking of a website and hence where it appears in the search engine results. Google do this to try to stop SEO people cheating the system. Google want the best websites to appear top of the list – not the ones that try to cheat the system.

A recent email from an American Online Marketing business says SEO is dead!

But they have a solution to that – you pay for results rather than the work involved.

At first sight, this might sound like a good deal – you only pay if they get your website high up on Google’s rankings.

But the devil is in the detail.

For example, suppose you sell sofas. If you type Buy a sofa in Google you get about 42 million results. To get to the top of that list on Google for the search phrase “buy a sofa” would cost a fortune.

But if you make your search phrase more specific then it gets easier.

Maybe your sofas are handmade and covered with leather. Now if you optimise your website to attract people searching for ‘buy a sofa handmade leather’ then Google only finds 500,000 results and that would still cost a lot to get to the top of that results set but hugely cheaper than the previous one.

And so on – the more detail in the phrases you’re trying to be the top result for – the easier and hence cheaper it becomes.

Ultimately you can find specific phrases where it is practical to get to the top of the list – but the more specific the search query the less people are going to make that search and hence the fewer actual customers you could possibly get from this.

But the point is that although the SEO business could find phrases that get you to the top of the results – you’re unlikely to get much business from it – hence you pay them for nothing.

June 11, 2016

What are those Time-Wasters Up To Now?

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

1.An email offering the chance to win £650 Tesco vouchers – although the email claims to be Clubcard Account, it’s from tjoempamail which is a lead generation company so it’s a con.

2. An official notification that our online banking service is going to be deactivated if we do not verify our profile within 24 hours – of course there is a link to click on. The email claims to be from Barclays but is from test.com so obviously a scam.

3. An email offering to improve out energy costs. Just more rubbish from a lead generation company.

4. A message from Google offering to help get us started with advertising through Google. Only the email is actually from a domain name eloc-google.com which is not part of Google, just some scammer trying to con people.

5. A message from the Abu Dhabi Investment council. Impressive. They want to collaborate with us on new investments. It’s a lengthy email setting out how they operate and doesn’t promise sky high returns. Of course it’s just another pathetic scam, although it is written better than most.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

June 4, 2016

What Are Those Time-Wasters Up To Now?

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

An email offering roof repairs – the roof isn’t our problem as we rent the place.

An email from someone wanting to partner us in making die-casting machines – not exactly our line of business. We’re a radio station.

8 very similar emails about tickets and hospitality for the Henley Regatta – but the emails are all from untappedbuyertraffic.com which means they are just lead generation rubbish. If you reply then your details are passed on to numerous people trying to sell tickets to Henley.

Yet another in the stream of emails about vehicle tracking – but it’s really just trying to find out which email addresses are valid so they can be sold to spammers.

A professional email from an IT services company about moving computer servers to the Internet Cloud – not a scam or spam really but irrelevant to us as we’re a volunteer organisation which they would know if they’d bothered to check.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

May 28, 2016

Time-Wasters Update

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

A self proclaimed ‘Digital Marketing Expert’ named Anita wants to get us on the 1^st page of Google. – But then she isn’t on the first page of Google for Search Engine Optimisation and she has a Hotmail address which means she’s just a lone worker. Waste of Time.

An email from Bryan – the mobile APP creator. He asks do we have an APP yet. If he was any good at his job he would have checked. He signs off with “A stuffing of your ideas with the salt of our expertise. Poof! Your gourmet mobile APP is ready to be served” – Amusing but pointless.

An email from ‘Breakfast Diet Foods’ titled ‘Do This Tonight To Make Fat Cells Self-Destruct”. The email is actually from search-new-deal.info so it’s just a lead generation company looking to get people to click on any rubbish so it can sell their details.

An email about pension led funding. It means raiding your own pension to fund your business. Dangerous. This is perfectly legal but high risk – if your business fails then you lose your pension as well.

Someone trying to sell access to 12,000 shed plans. Why would anyone want access to so many plans and why are there so many? – surely sheds are about the simplest buildings there are. The email is actually from got-your-details.info which tells you it’s another lead generation email. There probably are no shed plans – but if you click then they’ve got your details to sell.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

May 26, 2016

Don’t Buy a Worthless Degree

The email title is “Make it impossible for them to say no – get that degree”.

It goes on about losing out on jobs because you don’t have the right paperwork.

Then comes the pitch

“Get any degree in 5 weeks with our program. Best diplomas in every field of knowledge are now available for your order”.

And they do mean any – Bachelors, Masters or Doctorate degrees in any subject.

Then it says “Anyone with professional experience can get these degrees and there are no exams, no study required and no classes to attend”

Is such a degree going to be worth anything – No! Of course not.

It is sad that people feel they can cheat the system like this –that is the people offering these worthless degrees and no doubt some people will take up the offer with maybe good intentions or maybe just laziness.

Interestingly, there is no website to view – you have to phone their answer phone and leave details and apparently they will get back to you.

This is all a con. Worthwhile degrees take a lot of time and hard work to attain. Something so easily attained has no value.

May 25, 2016

Lead Generation Companies

One big source of spam emails is lead generation companies.

These people are paid to create leads for a business to follow-up.

For example, suppose you have a new product – “pre paid funeral plans” was one that we received a lot of emails about recently. You can try to find sales leads yourself or outsource to a specialist business that guarantees to find as many leads as you want. And it only charges per lead found.

Sounds a good deal.

Probably this works well sometimes, but often its more about the lead generation companies sending out vast amounts of emails or making huge numbers of cold calls. They don’t have a reputation with the public to bother about – so it doesn’t concern them if they annoy people or waste a lot of people’s time. If they can provide leads then they make money.

This is why high pressure sales tactics are used.

If you’re in business and you’re going to use lead generation companies – do find out who they will contact and how. Also how they incentivise their staff and what rules they have to stop contacts being pressurised into things they don’t really want.

Use lead generations companies with care !