Donna Knight's Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews

Category: News

News items relevant to online marketers and internet marketers.

  • Internet Marketer Gary Shawkey Arrested for Premeditated Murder

    I was just checking out some of my old internet marketing bookmarks which include people whom I haven’t heard from or about recently. Upon going to all of Gary Shawkey’s old site, I found they were all down. The domains looked like they had expired and were bought by one of those companies that buys up expired domains and then puts these very generic-looking pages up with links.

    I’ve been in the internet marketing game for quite a few years now and I’ve seen “gurus” get famous and then disappear, sometimes after increasing numbers of allegations from people that they were scammed by said guru, sometimes disappearing without a whimper. This is not unexpected since some of these people made money on a gimmick that was destined to die out.

    And of course some internet marketing super stars pass away, young and older, including some good people that I’ve met in person, such as Corey Rudl and Ken Giddens.

    I did a search on Gary Shawkey to see if he was up to anything recently was shocked to find this:

    http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Self-Help-Author-Arrested-for-Murder.html

    Apparently sometime around February 2009 Gary Shawkey was suspected in the disappearance of an older man who had given him investment money in the past. Whoa! Haven’t really seen that in the internet marketing circle before. One of his claims to fame is that he is in the Guiness Book of World Records for fire walking, which was impressive to me at the time I read about it.

    This is pretty shocking because he’s not being accused of accidental death after some nasty fight or some heat of the moment crime of passion. He’s being accused of planning and committing a cold-blooded murder just to get some money. Pretty nasty stuff. He stands to go away pretty much for the rest of his life if convicted.

    Well, we’ll see what happens in this case, but either way this definitely looks like the end of his guru career.

  • Internet Marketer John Reese Buys Income.com

    John Reese, internet marketing extraordinaire, has acquired income.com. Income.com promises to teach internet marketing to newbies for free. I hate sites that start with a video but his is actually cool. This guy doesn’t do anything cheap and tacky.

    You may not know John Reese, but he is one of the most successful internet marketers around. The reason he’s not as well known is he keeps many of his secrets to himself. Plus he sells expensive products that most people probably can’t afford. He is the E.F. Hutton of internet marketers. He’s a guru’s guru. When he speaks, even the successful internet marketers listen — and with pen and paper in hand. He’s that good!

    John Reese has been around for many years, and he has lots of money to test what works and what doesn’t, so he really does know his stuff when it comes to internet marketing.

    I strongly recommend you go to http://www.income.com and sign up to get notified when this site launches. Yes, you can be sure he will try to sell you stuff, but when John Reese gives information, it will not be B.S. Can you say the same about the latest guru in the headlines? Don’t think so.

    Donna Knight
    http://www.donnaknight.com

  • DonnaKnight.com Upgrades to WordPress 2.0.2

    We’ve upgraded from WordPress 1.5 to 2.0.2. After testing the upgrade process on another blog and finding it was rather simple, I ran it on this site. I spent more time worrying than actually doing the upgrade.

    Keep in mind things can always go wrong whenever you upgrade anything, but for me it was relatively painless. Here are the steps I took:

    1. Back up your blog/site, including the MySQL database (If you’re using CPanel hosting, this is easy with the Back up feature).

    2. Deactivate all plugins.

    3. Upload the new WordPress, but do not overwrite wpconfig.php or .htaccess.

    4. Run /wp-admin/upgrade.php.

    5. Update your Permalinks. I actually did not need to do this. It saved my previous custom permalinks just fine.

    6. Reactivate plugins one by one to see if they work. Some may not be compatible with the newer version.

    Voila!

    You can find WordPress’ upgrade instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Upgrading_WordPress .

    On the outside, there is no difference. The real difference and the reason I upgraded is in the admin panel.

    • It makes adding categories very easy. It used to be that if I wanted to post something to a category that didn’t exist, I would have to leave the Write Post screen, go to the list of categories and add the category. Then go back to the Write Post screen. Now you can add a category right from the Write post screen.
    • You can password protect posts easily (if you have a membership site based on a blog. Lots of people do these days).
    • Nicer Wysiwyg editor.
    • Nicer preview

    In general, it makes the process of posting much easier, and ease of updating is the whole reason people use blogs over traditional websites.

    Donna Knight

     

  • Buy Me A Coffee Launches

    Buy-me-a-coffee.com officially launched today. This a site where you can show your appreciation for any of my articles or any articles I’ve posted that have helped you. Or learn about all the benefits of drinking coffee. I don’t know about you, but I love coffee as much as I love cake. In fact, they go great together. Thank goodness for Starbuck’s!

    While doing research on coffee, I learned about some surprising health benefits of coffee that I didn’t know about before. This is all based on medical studies. Most of the articles I had seen previously talked about negative benefits, especially in pregnant women. Now we know there are two sides to the story. Check out some of the articles here and you’ll see what I mean. Go to:

    http://www.buy-me-a-coffee.com/articles/

  • 12dailypro.com Owner Charged with Running an Internet Ponzi Scheme by the SEC

    By Donna Knight

    Last week, 12dailypro.com was shut down for running an internet Ponzi scheme. This was following a ruckus raised by hundreds of people who complained to the BBB after payments from 12dailypro.com were reversed from their StormPay and bank accounts.

    Any time you see a program promising you a “return on your investment”,
    you need to know the SEC is very likely to be keeping an eye on this company. Many MLMs with questionable legality may come and go, but the SEC takes very seriously programs that use the words “investment” and “return”, especially when the money to pay the returns comes from payments for membership.

    What amazes me is how many well-known and very respectable people promoted 12dailypro.com without ever questioning it, and how people were ready to call Stormpay.com a fraud, when it is now clear that StormPay knew something they didn’t.

    Now, don’t get me wrong. I am by no means an innocent casting the first stone. It was only a few years ago that I, myself, was involved in an MLM I believed in with all my heart, so much so that I promoted it like there was no tomorrow, only to see it shut its’ doors and never pay me my commissions, resulting in my losing the respect of the hundreds of people in my downline.

    How short our memory is on the internet. Likewise, I was also a member of 1heluva.com, a surfing program which got shut down by the government. The website owners had to shut down all their websites, including those that did not seem to be doing anything wrong. Again I lost downlines and traffic. Oh, I didn’t care about the money though. All that traffic! Sometimes traffic is more valuable than money.

    No matter how many years you are in the “making money” game, if people claim to be making money — even if you know they’re making money — if a program sells nothing more than the opportunity to make money, it is breaking the law in some state, and most likely many states. If you’re going to risk money, make sure it’s money you can afford to throw away because the FBI and SEC won’t give you your money back just because “you didn’t know any better” or because you “really believed in the program”.

    More importantly ask yourself are you willing to risk your self-respect when the people you promote the program to lose their money, as well. Is your reputation worth a few hundreds or thousands of dollars you might earn in the short term? Think about it.

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    Donna Knight is a Computer Trainer and Website Promotion Specialist. She has built over 250 websites and helps new site owners promote their site cheaply. For tips that will help you save money and save time when marketing online, visit her Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews blog at http://www.DonnaKnight.com . Copyright (C) 2006 Donna Knight.
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  • Clickbank’s Change to Refund Policy Benefits Sellers

    Clickbank has lowered it’s refund time from 12 weeks to 6 weeks. In addition, the customer requesting a refund must give a reason. This is in contrast to Paypal’s refund policy time limit which is 60 days.

    There are two ways to look at this. Marketing experts will say that increasing your money-back guarantee time limit will increase your sales. Therefore lowering your refund time limit could actually decrease your sales. However, most sellers will welcome a lower refund deadline because in their minds giving people less time to think about asking for a refund means less refunds.

    Requiring customers to give a refund makes perfect sense and should help cut down on fraudulent or frivolous refund requests.