Company: JLF Web Design
Website: jlfwebdesignllc.com
Ranking: 2/10 – potential scam
JLF Web Design is a company claiming to specialize in building, hosting and marketing websites that affiliate with the Amazon Associates program. Their website, jlfwebdesignllc.com, says they’re located in Phoenix, Arizona and provides a telephone, fax and contact form to reach them. While I can’t flat out call these guys at JLF Web Design a scam, I can definitely point out a few areas of concern as well as things to consider before jumping the gun with this company.
Note: These guys are NOT part of Amazon, they only claim to be. The Amazon Associates program is one of the largest affiliate networks in the world and a legitimate way to make money online.
What services do they offer?
According to their website, they offer search engine registration (which isn’t a real thing), search engine optimization, link building services (which are ineffective and sometimes harmful in today’s world of internet marketing), guaranteed visitor marketing (sounds a bit sketchy), pay per click marketing, social media marketing, Internet Radio and TV as well as targeted opt in email campaigns.
While some of those are actual things you should be doing with a website business, I can’t vouch for the quality of their services and they’re going to be charging you A LOT of money for these things, much more than you would spend elsewhere or learning how to do it yourself.
The top 5 Red Flags I see with JLF Web Design
Red Flag #1 – Takes advantage of people who don’t know anything about making money online
This company targets people by telephone, probably getting their numbers from various forms they filled out for other internet marketing related products. These people they target (and the people that would consider their services) are going to be people who have absolutely no experience with building a business online nor affiliate marketing.
They make false promises to these people, such as telling them they’ll build them a great website with Amazon and all they need to do to make money is having people visit their website. The problem is doesn’t actually work like that. The quality of the website’s content and the type of traffic that are coming to the website are HUGE factors for getting conversions.
In my opinion it’s wrong to completely take advantage of people in this situation. They charge them extreme amounts of money for either basic or unnecessary services, most likely which will lead them running around in circles or continuously searching for the perfect service that’ll make them money.
Red Flag #2 – Way overpriced services
JLF Web Design charges anywhere from $199 – $500 to build a website (from various reports within online forums), which by itself is ridiculous for the quality of site they’d provide you, but the charges won’t stop there. They’ll also charge you for hosting plus try to upsell you on all their additional services listed above, many of which are unnecessary or not worth the money in most cases.
I’m not trying to claim it doesn’t take money to make money on the internet, but you can get started for much less than the hundreds or even thousands of dollars they may try to charge you with.
You can buy a domain name for about $14 bucks a year, and hosting for less than $100 (a year). You can even build an entirely free wordpress website here.
Red Flag #3 – Horrible sales approach
The complaints on this company’s selling strategy are posted all over the internet – from the BBB, yelp, personal blogs as well as tons of scam call complaint forums.
It appears they have absolutely no respect for the people they’re trying to sell to – they’ll laugh, insult and just hang up on their customers. One lady even thought the guy was completely drunk, and another said the sales girl seemed to be a young teenager who tried to convince her that her husband was having an affair! Some people complained they’ve called multiple times a day and their calls come from many different numbers.
I wouldn’t want to invest in a service that was sold to me by a completely unprofessional sales team even if they were going to provide me with a quality product – I simply couldn’t trust they’d be there for me.
Red Flag # 4 – Leverage Amazon’s name to make their company appear more credible, but not actually associated with Amazon at all!
Like I mentioned earlier, this company is in no way part of Amazon. There are tons of companies like this that claim to be so people are less inclined to immediately think they’re a scam, but it also creates a negative reputation for the Amazon program which is unfortunate.
The Amazon Associates program is a well established online platform people can use to promote products and make money. You can even get free training (as well as a paid version) here.
The process of earning money through Amazon isn’t as easy as putting up a website with some links to Amazon, setting up cheap traffic sources and watching the money roll in. It takes strategy and planning – you need to have quality content and relevant traffic on your website – these are two things you won’t get from JLF Web Design.
Even all that aside, I would strongly advise against investing into your business with a company that feels they have to decieve their customers into trsuting them. They don’t have much crediblity and could disappear tomorrow and your “business” would go down the toilet with it.
Red Flag #5 – Use outdated and ineffective techniques
JLF Web Design offers some services that aren’t really going to benefit your business. For example, Link Building is a technique in which you’re basically paying people to build backlinks to your website. The search engines use backlinks as a ranking metric, but the problem with the types of links “link building’ generates is they’re artificial.
Search engines like NATURAL links back to your site, that is to say the kind of links your site will recieve from people sharing or mentioning your content to others because they want to. They can tell the difference between the two and investing in link building will at best do nothing for your site and could actually end up hurting it.
Conclusion – Is JLF Web Design a Total Scam?
At the end of the day, these people are taking your money to build you a crap website that won’t convert. They target people who know nothing about online marketing and provide services that aren’t necessary. It’s going to be extremely difficult for a novice to make money using their services, and considering the amount of money they charge I would stay away from this company if I were you.
I would consider learning the process yourself and becoming more informed about how online marketing works before deciding to let a company build a business for you. At least that way you’ll be less likely to be totally taken advantage of.
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