Program:

While this program by Anthony Trister has been around for a few years now, for some reason it still gets a ton of attention. The sales video is very alluring and definitely makes you feel like buying it will get you one step closer to making your first million online.

But the question on everyone’s mind remains – is Coffee Shop Millionaire a scam, or does it actually work? If you’re looking for my short answer, yes, I would call this program a scam. It is pretty much all hype and no actual substance. If you’re looking for real training to make money online, you can find it here.

However, I’m going to give you a thorough review so you can make an informed decision of whether or not it’s something you’d want to invest money in.

What is Coffee Shop Millionaire, and how does it work?

If you’ve taken the time to watch the sales video for CSM, you may be left wondering what the heck it actually is. After all, Mr. Trister spends the majority of the time selling you on the dream of making lots of money online and bragging about how much he makes, rather than taking the time to actually explain what is included within your membership and how he can teach you to have the same success he did.

Once you buy the program, you find out that it’s an online training course that essentially teaches you how to start up your own local marketing business. The training within the members area consists of 12 modules, all containing 1-2 videos that are about approximately 10 minutes long (give or take). The program provides a pretty good overview of how to start up a local marketing business, but that’s about it. It’s not nearly comprehensive enough to cover the scope of what a newbie would need to know in order to actually go into the business themselves.

I find this to be a major drawback since it is being marketed to newbies, so it should cater to their needs.

What will you learn with the training?

The modules walk you through all types of things but they aren’t very focused. For example, module 1 is just assigning your financal goals, which is totally fine and everyone needs that. The second module walks you through getting started with local marketing. More specifically, how to contact specific business local businesses and offer to help them out in terms of online local marketing offering them squeeze pages, mobile optimized websites, communicating to customers through email lists and web design.

The third module talks about setting up your own website for you local marketing business, and largely talks about outsourcing the actual tasks of website creation. It also talks about how to find clients to reach out to and offer your services.

The course then goes on to explain local SEO strategies, email marketing, video marketing and social media marketing. These are all explained how you can use them to benefit your clients local business in terms of outreach and marketing potential.

Then it focuses on taking your business and scaling it up to reach more profit potential.

Taken as a whole, the training is actually a pretty good overview of the local marketing business module. People do actually make money this way and it can be a very lucrative business to get into.

The problem is the training is not nearly comprehensive enough to cover the scope of what a newbie needs to know to start their own local marketing venture. It’s only 12 modules, each consisting of a 10-12 minute video. So you’re looking at less than 3 hours of overall training to teach you how to start a business in local marketing.

Less than 3 hours, seriously? Some of my college courses were longer than that, and I certainly didn’t learn everything about any topic in a single class hour! My favorite online training program has countless video courses on all different aspects of local marketing, and that’s only a tiny portion of what they have to offer. My point is, there’s way better options out there if you’re looking to get started out with local marketing.

It tells you what you should be doing in this business, but not really how to do it. It tells you to outsource your website creation, but then goes on to tell you about how you can offer your clients services like website design and mobile optimized sites. How are you supposed to offer potential services to your clients that you can’t even do yourself?

There’s nothing wrong with local marketing, but if you’re going to get started with it you should first know how to create a website and a thing or two about how local SEO works and how to do it – none of which you’ll really get out of Coffee Shop Millionaire.

If you want real local marketing training, click here.

Price

This is where things get confusing. You can purchase the program for $27 (after being told you can receive a special $10 discount), but you’ll be hit with massive upsells before you even find your way to the members area.

So in all honesty, the $27 doesn’t really get you anything but the training modules, which are incredibly basic and not worth the money.

Upsells

Upsell #1 – The 6 Figure Secrets Club – Initially $297, then only $147

Anthony Trister tries to get you to buy 10 done for you “money machines”, which is basically premade websites with PLR content that’ll promote various products and services. Since it’s done for you, you seemingly don’t need to do anything except buy them, set them up, then watch the money roll in.

Although the reality is very different. Done for you type sites loaded with PLR content don’t really work well in the real world, especially because the people setting them up have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. How are you going to market the site, get traffic and sales? And even if you do get traffic, the content is probably so bad it won’t even convert well. Also consider the fact every other person who buys this upsell is getting the exact same “money machines” that you are.

Upsell #2 – Direct email coaching – $197

This is where you’ll get access to Anthony’s personal email and guidance to show you his way to “the easy street”.

Upsell #3 – Website and hosting

Now as you’re finally within the members area you’ll notice a special “FREE” bonus being offered to you… which is really anything but free. This is a very common tactic done by several similar type programs. They try to get you to purchase a domain and web hosting from them for at least 2 years, totaling almost $300.

Now it’s not that this isn’t something you don’t need, because yes having a domain and hosting is a very important part to owning an online business. That being said, however, it’s the way they market it to complete newbies that’s shameful. They target people who have no clue what they’re doing and then overcharge them for something they aren’t even sure is right for them.

You can get a domain and web hosting for a lot cheaper and better quality then what they try to charge you here. You should also be very clear what direction you want to go with your business before you decide on your domain name, because you cannot change it without buying an entirely new domain.

Total cost with upsells – $816

That’s a significant chunk of money to invest, if you ask me. Especially when they throw it all at you before you’ve even gone through any of the training to know what you’re actually going to be doing yet!

My Final Opinion – Coffee Shop Millionaire does NOT live up to the hype

I would consider Coffee Shop Millionaire a scam in the sense that it’s highly misleading. This program sells itself on the dream, not the reality of what is offered nor the quality of the training. Everyone wants to make millions just from hanging around a local coffee shop with a latte every morning, but what this program offers isn’t going to make that a reality for anyone.

The $27 price tag is just a front to get you to spend hundreds more on upsells, none of which re going to be very beneficial to a beginner who is looking to make money online. This is true of so many programs like this – they lure you in with a low price tag, then get you with the upsells. And in the end they offer very little value and leave you with nothing but more questions and the need to buy another product.

If you’re a complete beginner, you’re way better off starting off with something that is going to actually teach you how to do things yourself. Understanding how everything works is going to help you tremendously in starting your own business online.

What is Traffic With Anthony?

This system claims to offer struggling interent marketers a chance to jump in front of the traffic instead of waiting for it to come to them, which will lead to massive amounts of daily traffic and sales without using Google or Facebook. Anthony spends his entire sales video talking about this amazing software he developed called Auto Traffic Accelerator which lets you leverage the power of viral YouTube videos to gain traffic and sales to your website or affiliate links.

The problem with it is (and I’ll explain in even further detail down below) these methods aren’t only against YouTube’s terms of service, they’re flat out illegal and won’t work as promised. Furthermore, this AutoTraffic Accelerator software isn’t even included in the initial purchase price – it’s an upsell! I don’t think that was mentioned anywhere in the video or on the product sales page…

But that will only be one tiny upsell amongst 1,000’s of dollars more in products and services he tries to shove in your face. This guy is no boy scout as this is pretty much the norm for his products, e.g., Success With Anthony.

Let’s Compare Traffic With Anthony to my #1 Recommended Training…

Who is Anthony Morrison? A little history…

Anthony Morrison is indeed a self made internet millionaire who has been featured in magazines, newspapers, TV programs, and even written several books on how to make money online. He definitely uses this to his advantage within his sales video and sadly it does make him appear credible to people who aren’t familiar with the type of programs he puts out there.

But the reality is he’s nothing more than a crook who doesn’t mind scamming people out of 1,000’s of their hard earned dollars.  He may have made big bucks online, but he didn’t do it using the program or the software he is trying to sell you, nor is it the reality for the average person.

RipoffReport currently reports 43 complaints on this guy, but it’s growing consistently. Mostly these are people complaining he didn’t offer what was promised, charged their credit cards for unauthorized charges or just simply didn’t honor his money back guarantee. In fact, most people say they didn’t ever get their money back when asked, and those that did had to jump through hoops, make 100 phone calls and argue with people to get it.

In fact, I’m on Anthony’s mailing list and he has an extremely spammy approach as an email marketer. He literally sends out emails promoting his Traffic With Anthony system nearly EVERY SINGLE day, sometimes multiple times a day… each with 2, 3, 4+ links to the sales page! It’s extremely spammy and calls out desperate to me.

This guy is clearly willing ot lie, cheat and decieve people in order to make a buck.

What Software/Tools are included?

You’ll initially recieve access to step by step training. But that’s just the training that teaches you how ot use the Auto Traffic Accelerator software, which isn’t included in your purchase price... it’s sold as an upsell after you already shelled out the money for Traffic With Anthony. This is not mentioned in either the sales video or the sales page at all. A little deceptive, don’t you think?

The Auto Traffic Accelerator software let’s you do a few things:

• Search by keywords to find YouTube videos that have gone viral, and then directly message the video owners asking to place your link within their video description in exchange for a monthly payment.
• Find YouTube videos that have the potential to go viral, and get alerted when they reach a minimum view amount
• Steal other member’s YouTube videos, place your own watermark on them, and re-upload as your own with your affiliate link.

Why these methods won’t work as claimed

This software may actually do these things, but it doesn’t mean that they’ll actually work as claimed or are ethical. How many YouTube video owners are actually going to respond and let you place your own website or affiliate link within ther video descriptions? I doubt hardly any, for a multitude of reasons. I know I wouldn’t!

Here’s what one member stated within RipoffReport:

“By the way, the Auto traffic Accelerator does find videos but after contacting 800 video owners, not one reply and I did things exactly what they said to do. I think that this market has been saturated and they still continue to sell people a worthless program.”

800 video owners and not one response? Yeah that doesn’t surprise me at all. These people don’t trust you, don’t want your spammy link on their videos and have probably been messaged several times by people using this same software trying to take advantage of their videos.

The second strategy and another aspect of the software, ripping people’s YouTube videos and placing your watermark on them to claim them as your own, is both against YouTube’s terms and illegal. You can’t just steal someone’s video and pretend it’s yours, you know because of copyright infringement and all that?

If you try this most likely you’ll get reported for stealing, not necessarily by YouTube, but definitely by the video owner or someone else. That’ll get your channel shut down in no time and I wouldn’t be surprised if you got slapped with a lawsuit or two!

You may be able to use this method to make some additional sales, but you’re putting yourself at risk and definitely won’t be able to make the money Anthony claims you will.

Price

This is where it’s deceptive and hard to pinpoint; there isn’t just one price that is offered. Initially you’re told you can buy it with 2 payments of $49, or 1 payment of $69. However, there’s several downsells if you try and click away, and you can actually get in for as little as $7.

Most people probably would be sold on that, but that is only the beginning of what he’ll try and sell you. Auto Traffic Accelerator, the main software that’s used in Traffic With Anthony, is a seperate upsell. You’re also pushed to buy $1,000’s more in products and services before you actually are able to find the product you just bought.

You won’t be able to use the $7 program for much and will have to buy upsells if you want to “really make it work”.

My Final Opinion – Don’t Buy Traffic With Anthony

The way this guy operates is slimy and I don’t recommend any products he puts out. He may have made millions online and been featured in magazines and newspapers, but that doesn’t make him any less of a scam artist. This program is a total front and bait for newbies to get them to buy tons of additional products they don’t need.

While experienced marketers may be able to make a few sales, this isn’t any method for newbies and it’s highly unlikely you’ll experience massive success with this. The truth is, it promotes illegal activities and will put both you and your YouTube account at risk. This is not a way to produce long term success online, but only a shortcut that won’t get you any closer to finding it.

There’s always going to be some guru or salesman trying to sell you on “the newest breakthrough” or “the next greatest thing” that’ll finally be able to make you millions online, seemingly very easily. I won’t lie, these guys are often times very good at what they do and make their product seem amazing, but they also never fail to dissappoint once the product is actually bought.

Making money on the internet is entirely possible for anybody if they start with the right training and mindset and stop chasing too good to be true products.

Build A REAL Business Online. Check Out My #1 Recommended Training Here

Have you been scammed by Anthony Morrison before? Share your experience down below!

Product:

Rank: 75/100

What is Super PinMadness? – An Overview

Super PinMadness is a 58 page PDF guide on how to leverage the power of Pinterest for affiliate marketing without dealing with setting up your own website. It was put together by well known Warrior Forum member Erica Stone. If you aren’t familiar with her this isn’t her first Pinterest marketing PDF guide; she has put together other products including PinPlosion and PinFabulous Affiliate. Each deals with their own separate realm but SuperPin Madness is the most recent of them all, just launched last week (October 2014).

What will you learn and how is it different than other how-to guides on Pinterest?

This program is unique because you don’t need a website at all to start with affiliate marketing. You’ll be walked through how to set up a new business Pinterest account and find affiliate programs that will work to direct link from Pinterest. Since most affiliate programs don’t allow direct linking via social networks, and Pinterest doesn’t like direct linking either, this is taking advantage of a loophole.

Erica talks about 2 artsy affiliate sites that let you do this, at least for now. Meaning, there’s technically nothing in their current terms of service that forbid direct social linking, but they could change the rules (either the affiliate program or Pinterest itself) whenever they feel like people are abusing them.

Amazon and other affiliate networks already have filters in place that will strip an affiliate link when posted directly from Pinterest. Just because these programs she talks about don’t do that, doesn’t mean they never will.

She also discusses another affiliate network, Share-a-Sale, that will let you direct affiliate link to Pinterest as well. Although, the majority of programs within the Share-a-Sale network actually don’t allow it, so you need to read every affiliate programs terms carefully before you sign up and start posting their links.

Do the methods actually work?

Erica claims she has self tested this method and it works for her. Now I’m sure they really do work for her and I’m sure others who follow the guide could make it work for them, too. The problem is, however, this isn’t something that will work forever and could very well come crashing down sooner rather than later. Especially now that she’s packaged and sold these methods, there’s going to be an increase of people trying to direct affiliate link from these programs (especially if people abuse the links) and it may send some red flags to the Pinterest team.

While this may work it’s only a temporary fix for the here and now.. not for next year, 6 months from now, and maybe not even for tomorrow. It  will require a lot of work to implement and I’m not sure you can really experience great results using only the methods she outlines in the Super PinMadness PDF. The “secret” to the method, using ViralWoot, is only really powerful if you have the money to throw at your promotion. She doesn’t outline a good way to gain free, solid traffic to your affilitae pins (at least not with this guide in particular).

Price + Additional expenses (buying “seeds” with ViralWoot)

Super PinMadness currently is selling for $21 as a Warrior Special Offer. There aren’t any upsells, either. You really can follow the guide all the way through and she doesn’t push any sales in your face.

However, there’s a site called ViralWoot in which you’re supposed to join in order to increase your Pinterest followers and to promote your affiliate pins. The problem is that it doesn’t work very well if you don’t pay for the promotion. Anyone can sign up for free and earn “seeds” (the Viralwoot currency) by liking pins, following other members, and repinning pins.

But as a free member those seeds don’t come easy and go very fast. If you really want your affiliate pins to get promoted and re-pinned consistently, you’ll have to have a lot of seeds in your account. But every time someone follows you, likes, or re-pins your pins, your seeds get taken away. My balance kept ending up in the negatives every hour!

It’s unrealistic to spend every hour going back earning more seeds, so that is why they offer paid packages. You can spend anywhere from $29 – $300 buying seed packages, or sign up for a monthly account with them for extra seeds and additional benefits (which is overpriced in my opinion). It’s sort of like you’re paying for advertising, but you could be throwing a lot of money away if you choose to spend your money on this. (Viralwoot is also very buggy and seems questionable, I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable giving them my credit card information).

Since this is pretty much the only traffic method discussed within the guide, you’ll need to actually pay additional expenses for advertising. Unless you already have 1,000’s of Pinterest followers on your business account, or know how to gain 1,000’s of followers, you’re going to have a hard time getting much exposure for your pins.

Pros vs. Cons

Pros:

• Don’t need a website
• Pinterest is fun and addicting so it doesn’t really feel like “work”
• You’ll learn how to grow your Pinterest traffic and exposure
• The very same methods can be used to promote your own websites or products
• Erica is very responsive to emails if you need help

Cons:

• Unstable business set up, can be taken away from you at any time
• Takes advantage of loopholes to earn money
• Can throw a lot of money away promoting your pins with getting very little in return, losing your ROI
• Recommended program for affiliate pin promotion is questionable
• The conversion rate will be relatively small, so your pins will need a A LOT of exposure to make sales

My final opinion – is Super PinMadness a viable long term business strategy 

If you plan to use this exclusively without a website and your only source of income is from direct affiliate links, you’re building a business on eggshells. You’ll also need to put a lot of time, effort and money into getting your pins the exposure they need to convert… and it’s risky to invest all of that into a business that might not work tomorrow.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to get involved with Pinterest; it can be a highly beneficial social network for blog and product exposure (and just for fun, too). But Pinterest should be used to gain traffic to your own blog, not an affiliate link. If you don’t want the rug thrown out from under you, I recommend that you use these strategies with your own website instead.

Once you quit searching for “the next best thing” and focus your energy on creating an actual sustainable online business, you’ll find yourself much ahead of the game.

Looking for a sustainable online business strategy? Let’s compare Super PinMadness to another product on the market….

This product is a a membership site geared towards newbie online writers in search of the ideal situation, i.e, getting paid tons of money for freelance writing work without ever having to leave the house!

It can seem very appealing to many because they claim you can have absolutely no experience whatsoever to earn big money writing online for large companies.

But in this Legit Writing Jobs review you will soon learn the truth about what it takes to make money writing online and that products like this (check out Real Writing Jobs) are just scams ready and willing to take your hard earned money.

What does the membership fee for LWJ give you?

Within your membership for Legit Writing Jobs, you’re given access to a job board that pulls online freelance job postings from various sources around the internet. You could find all of these postings for free though if you did your own research. There’s also no guaruntee you’ll get any of the advertised jobs, or that the posting are outdated.

A nearly $100 monthly fee for access to a questionable job posting board is NOT worth it.

There are all types of websites geared towards freelance work that you can sign up for completely free – elance.com, odesk.com, freelance.com, guru.com, craigslist, fiverr… the list goes on. If you want to search for online work, those are the places to look.

Grossly false advertising claims… A newbie will never earn $365 a day from freelance writing jobs

Most people advertising these types of jobs are small website owners looking for blog writers, content editors, proofreaders, etc (not the LARGE companies they claim will hire you). Typically they have small budgets and aren’t willing to invest a whole lot, especially if you’re an unestablished freelancer.

Because there are so many freelancers willing to write articles and blogs, the website owners can afford to be selective about who they hire, especially those with more money to invest. If you want to make any type of money writing online, you’ll need a lot of experience and a solid reputation within the online freelance world.

Those with absolutely no experience, no portfoio, no testimonials, who lack proper writing skills or don’t have a solid grasp of the English language (the people who Legit Writing Jobs seems to beckon) are not going to get hired for high paying jobs. Your best shot would be starting with $5 Fiverr gigs to gain experience and working your way up.

Price

You can get access for $4.95, however that only gives you a 3 day trial membership. If you don’t cancel soon enough, you’ll be charged an additional $17.95 per month for as long as you stay a member. But after reading through their terms of service and checking the average commission sale within Clickbank, I question whether there’s an unadvertised larger fee associated with your purchase…

A closer look at their terms of service:

Something looks a bit suspicious about this program after giving a closer look at their terms of service. They first state that if you choose to keep your membership, you’ll be charged a monthly fee of $17.95 per month; nothing unexpected considering that is the advertised monthly access fee on their sales page. However, they go on to state if you don’t cancel, you’ll be charged a $77 monthly fee as well.

The question is, is this some sort of typo within their terms or are they being sneaky with their membership fee? $77 isn’t exactly the same as $17.95 and wasn’t advertised ANYWHERE except hidden within the TOS page.

A look at the average commission earned by Clickbank affiliates leads me to believe it was no typo, and that you’re going to pay a lot more than you budgeted for.

Here you can see the average sale is $76. Affiliates earn 75% commissions, so less than $3 for the 3 day trial membership. Then you’d have to factor in monthly rebill charges, but since the advertised monthly charge is less than $18 a month, the average retention rate for Legit Writing Job customers would have to be nearly 6 months (earning $13.50 per month) for affiliates to earn that much from promoting this program.

I find that extremely hard to believe.

So let’s do some more math… what would be the commission percentage from the $4.95 trial + $17.95 monthly fee + $77 unadvertised fee?

4.95 + 17.95 + 77 = 99.9

99.9 *.75 = $74.925

The average Clickbank sale of $76 matches up pretty well when the $77 charge is taken into account….

Let’s sum up the CONS of the LWG program:

• False advertising
• Monthly fee is nearly $95, not the advertised $17.95
• Gives you access to job postings you can find for free
• Outdated, unmaintained website – trademarked from 2011

Final Opinion – Don’t waste your money with this program!

Legit Writing Jobs is nothing more than a clever scam that entices members with the promise of endless freelance work and high income. The only people recommending this program online are only trying to sell you the product and don’t provide any real feedback on what it’s really like.

The reality is it’s just pulling writing jobs from sources you can find for completely free on online job boards. Freelance writing jobs are highly competitive; as a complete newbie you’re going to have a really hard time breaking into the freelance writing scene. You’ll need to spend time working your way up to the point you can get consistent jobs, and even then you probably won’t be earning anywhere near their claims.

Stay away from this program because you’ll only be wasting your money.

If you want to earn real money online as a writer, quit outsourcing your work!

People who outsource tasks like writing blogs and articles do so because they know the investment will yield them a bigger return (if they’re smart about it). That’s because in the online world, a single blog post can hold a lot of power; it has the ability to create passive income for the owner.

Sure, you may get paid $30 to write an article or two, but the blog owner is the one that will earn residual income day after day from all YOUR hard work! That $30 investment can soon turn into 1,000’s of dollars in yearly income and you’re the one that got the raw end of the deal.

By starting your own blog and writing content for your site you can hold all the power. The ability to communicate and market online starts with writing and if you can effectively communicate, you can learn how to market online in a way that can lead you towards a lot of success.

If you’re interested in learning how to create a blog to earn passive income, check out my #1 recommendation – Wealthy Affiliate.

Product:

The Rapid Content Wizard is marketed as a miracle solution to your content creations needs. You’ll no longer have to spend all your time writing articles and you can stop spending a fortune on outsourcing the task, because RCW takes care of all of it in one amazing software program (well, so claims Sean Donahoe)…

But the reality of what this product does couldn’t be further from the truth of what they claim it does. In this Rapid Content Wizard Review, I’ll show you exactly how the software works and why it isn’t the solution to your content needs.

The reality is this product will not help you at all with your business, and will only end up hurting you.

Learn the proper way to start an online business…

So how exactly does Rapid Content Wizard Work?

RCW is software that seemingly appears to pull content out of thin air. You type in a keyword, click a button and boom… tons of content and images around that keyword is generated for you. The content is broken down by paragraphs, so you just click the ones you want, choose some headings, images (which are taken from Pixabay and Flickr) and select affiliate products to promote (Amazon, Clickbank) and voila! You’ve got yourself a “quality” article that’s ready to post on your site.

The program is set up as a word processor, so you’d have pretty much all the same editing capabilities of Microsoft Word or Google Drive. But the images provided may not actually be “free” to use, so you’d have to double check to make sure you don’t run into any

The software goes even further and can integrate with your WordPress account to post directly, without you even having to log in. You can also post your articles to Facebook from the software too.

It sounds amazing, right?

The Reality of What RCW does…

The content being created when you type in keywords isn’t just pulled out of thin air, it’s being scraped from other websites around the net. Absolutely nothing this pulls up is original content… it’s stolen.

First of all, you can’t just steal other peoples content. Not only is it unethical, you’re going to get yourself into trouble with Google. They’re really good at deciphering between original vs scraped content, so if you use this software expecting instant rankings (or any rankings at all for that matter) within the search engines, it’s not going to happen.

Search algorithms are very sophisticated these days. If copied content is ever published, they’ll realize it isn’t worth ranking, because it already exists. There’s too many people publishing content for the web on a daily basis like this so they’ve learned to recognize it and ignore it.

“Produces quality, readable content… not garbled nonsense like other similar software programs”

If you ever actually pause the video during his demonstration, you’ll notice the article he pulls together is nonsense. It’s a bunch of random paragraphs being strung together in a way that doesn’t flow, make sense or connect with the reader.

It’s horrendous. There is no way you could use this software to produce something of quality unless you spent hours editing it to flow and make sense. Even then, unless you completely rewrote it, it wouldn’t erase the fact it’s copied. And if you were going to do that, you might as well just have written the articles from scratch.

Not even the Warrior Forum  members who bought this are recommending it to others. They all requested refunds; some seemed to get them with no problem and others had difficulties. And if you’re not familiar with Warrior Forum, that place is full of people who love to buy all sorts of lower quality products. If it’s so bad that everyone within the forum agrees, you know it’s horrible.

I don’t understand how they try and make such bold claims about their product when they’re contradicting themselves right within their own demonstration.

Real people are reading your articles

You’re not publishing your content for search engines, you’re writing it for actual people. You could have a hundred thousand visitors coming to your site on a daily basis, but if your website was full of unreadable nonsense nobody is going to buy anything from you. Either way, nobody is going to read the content on your site if you use this tool because you won’t see the light of day in Google or any other search engine for that matter.

What if you really don’t have time to write your own content?

You can always outsource your writing if you really hate doing it or don’t have the time. While you may be able to find people willing to do it for $5 on Fiverr, I wouldn’t recommend it. Those are not going to be well written, researched articles and since your content is the core of your business that is one area you don’t want to cut corners. For a quality, 100% original article it’ll probably run you around $30 – $50, or even more depending on length.

While it may seem like a lot, it’s worth it if you want to be running a successful business. If you’d like to know more about how to find a quality writer for your website, take a look at this article.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

• Provides a 60 day money back guarantee (but refund experiences seem to vary between no problems and not able to get one, so not sure how reliable it is)

Cons

• Flat out copies from articles across the internet
• Generates random paragraphs of content from different sources that don’t fit together
• Your content won’t rank in Google using this tool
• You won’t make sales with this tool
• Up-sells after you buy
• Unethical and Illegal

Price

The lite version will run you $47, while the lightning edition is $97. They’re both one time fees, no monthly subscription is required. There’s also upsells once you buy, for article spinners and other unnecessary products and services.

They also offer a 60 day money back guarantee; however it’s not always honored.

My Final Opinion – Is Rapid Content Wizard a Scam?

Since this software doesn’t live up to any of its claims and is performing unethical tasks, I do believe that Rapid Content Wizard is quite the scam. Sean Donahoe is a slick salesman that lies through his teeth. You’re made to believe it’ll generate wonderful content that’ll rank you in the search engines and be an amazing solution to your article creation needs. You’re told that using this software will only take a few minutes to set up, you’ll have content for life, and that you’ll be able to generate all kinds of crazy traffic through search engines.

But using this software will not get you anywhere but sandboxed with Google. Your content is the core of your business. It’s what generates search rankings and traffic, it’s what earns trust, it’s what ultimately ends up converting your customers to sales. If you don’t have the time to write it, outsourcing it to an actual human being who will write original, quality articles is a way better solution.

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Unlike the name states, this program will not be printing you free money. This is yet another “free” system that takes advantage of these CPA referral sites. I’ve reviewed many similar systems like it before – Instant Payday Network, Online Profit for Dummies, Project Payday.. plus several more.

While it’s free to sign up and get access to their marketing system, you’re going to have to put down a credit card for the required offers to get approved and actually be able to make money with the system. I won’t go as far to say that Freebie Money Printer is a scam, but their income claims of $1,600 – $10,000/month are highly unrealistic considering their target is newbies.

Beginners don’t realize the challenges they’re going to face trying to market this system; Scott and Stefan make it seem like it’s a piece of cake to get 100’s of leads per day. It’s not – especially if you’re trying to market purely with a cookie cutter capture page and offer nothing of subsantial value.

How Freebie Money Printer Works

There’s 5 steps which you’ll be walked through via video training by both Scott and Stefan.

Step 1 - Sign up to BigKabang

This is a CPA offer referral site, much like MyCashFreebies.com and DoubleMyCashFreebies.com. All of these programs work the same way – you sign up for various trial offers, e.g., a 30 day trial to creditreport.com or a subscription to The Disney Book Club. There’s usually quite a large selection to choose from.

They claim these are all fortune 500 companies, but the majority of them are random, lesser known companies who offer services most people don’t even want.

Some of the companies offer free trials, but others you’ll need to pay for up front. Each offer is worth anywhere from .05 – 1 full credit, and in the case of BigKabang, you’ll need to complete enough to earn 1 full credit.

For example, here you could complete a free trial from creditreport.com and MyPCBackup to earn a full credit. But this is decieving, because even though it says the MyPCBackup offer is free, it’s not. While you can create an account with their company for free, you have to actually order their backup services to get the .8 credit and that’ll cost you about $7 for your first month. While it may not be much money, it’s still not free.

Creditreport.com will charge you $29.95 every month after your free trial if you do not cancel.

After you’ve completed your offers, you’ll be eligible to earn a $40 commission for each referral you bring to BigKabang who completes their 1 credit requirement.

This is where FMP comes in to play. They provide you with a system – a lead capture page, autoresponder follow ups and basic training on how to get others to join via your referral link and complete their offers so you can earn some cash.

The downside of CPA offers…

Usually there’s only a handful of truly free offers which are only worth between .1 – .2 credits each. You’ll have to sign up for possible 7 or 8 free trial offers to complete the 1 credit requirement if you want to go 100% free. Even then, you’re required to keep your trial for 85% of the period, so if you sign up for a 30 day trial you have to wait about 3 weeks to cancel if you don’t want to lose your credit from BigKaboom.

You’ll just need to be very careful and keep track of everything you sign up for and the dates you’ll need to cancel. You don’t want to risk getting your credit card charged a $59.95 monthly subcription for something you dont even want.

Cancelling these trials, however, requires calling their customer service lines, which is never fun to deal with. Their reps are usually trained to try and keep customers no matter what, so they always make cancelling as difficult as possible.

This is how all my cancellation calls seem to go down…

“Hey I’d like to canel my trial please..”
“Why? What do you not like about our company?”
“I have no interest in it, I’d just like to cancel”
“But did you know… (insert line here)… wouldn’t that benefit you?”
“No, I’d like to cancel please”
“What if we were to offer you (insert offer here), would you like to stay a member?”
“NO! I want to cancel”
“Let me transfer you to our cancellation specialist”

*on hold for 10 minutes*

“Hello, I heard you want to cancel, would you mind telling me why?”
“Um, I JUST explained that to the previous representative… please cancel my account”
“But… did you know (insert line here).. would that interest you in staying a member?”
“OMG… CANCEL MY ACCOUNT OR I’M GOING TO KILL YOU”

It’s insane… you have to be strong and say “no” sometimes literally over 10 times for them to get the point. I wouldn’t want to deal with that 8 times in a row!

It may be easier just to complete an offer where you pay up front, since those are usually worth more and you’ll have to complete less to get the full credit. Sometimes you can even find a single offer that’s worth 1 credit, although those ones usually requires a larger purchase.

Step 2 – Gives a basic overview of using their marketing system

Freebie Money Printer provides lead capture pages and autoresponder follow up messages, and this step walks you through everything provided to you with the free account. But they pretty much spend the entire video discussing what features are included in their marketing system, and there really isn’t any training on how to actually market your page to get leads.

A total newbie would be completely confused and clueless.

Step 3 – Optional – Join “team co-op”

This is one of many additional upsells these guys try to push on you. Team Co-Op is a system where they’ll do all the marketing work for you and guarantee you between 8-15 clicks every day to your capture page.

The price? $40 per week… that’s $160 every month!

On the low end, that’s 56 clicks per week. Out of those 56 weekly clicks, you’d need to get 2 referrals who not only sign up via your capture page, but go on to complete their 1 credit offer requirement in order to profit.

It may seem doable, but keep in mind clicks don’t equal money, and not all clicks are equal. Who knows exactly where these bought clicks are coming from and if they’re even quality clicks that could lead to conversions.

From my online marketing experience, I can tell you that you’re wasting your money spending $40 every week to get a measly 8 clicks a day. Capture pages, especially cookie cutter ones like this, where your leads come from places like forums, Craigslist, or social media oulets do not convert well. You’d need literally thousands of eyeballs viewing your page on a daily basis and probably hundreds of clicks to get any sort of reliable conversions from it and that kind of traffic is extremely hard to get.

Step 4 – Optional – Purchase Automatic Lead Tools

Here comes the second upsell, Automatic Lead Tools. This is software that’ll cost you a hefty $497 intial investment + $97/month in recurring charges

ALT provides data mining software that’ll allow you to scour the internet from sources such as Google, Bing, Craigslist, Monster, etc for people’s names and phone numbers using particular keywords. For example, you could search for Google for “Vemma” and it’ll give you a list of thousands of phone numbers and email addresses from people associated with Vemma. The idea is people in Vemma probably aren’t making money, want to be making money, and therefore would be interested in using the Freebie Money Printer system.

It also allows you to send out automatic broadcasts via phone so you can contact people 24/7… and you’d officially be one of those annoying telemarketer sales people everyone hates.

This software allows you to contact people for unsolicited sales; these people did not ask to be contacted about FMP and are most likely not interested. Do you really want to be that guy?

Step 5 - Optional – Ultimate Money Printer

And this is there third upsell, which will cost you $19.95/month. They provide you more training, and also give you a list of all the programs they’re associated with that you can also join to make more money. So you can pay to get referred to more programs that’ll cost you more money.

These are MLM companies, like Pure Leverage, which I also don’t recommend.

Upsell total = $497 + $277 per month in recurring charges… WOW!

These upsells are entirely optional, of course, but they really do play on people’s emotions and make them think they’re missing out on the real money if they don’t buy in to all of them.

The reality is though, this investment is more than most people can afford, and more than most would ever make using all of them combined. You’re probably going to lose money if you shell it all out into these programs.

Final Thoughts – Would I recommend Freebie Money Maker?

While you can join this program for free and earn some money if you put in the effort, I wouldn’t really recommend it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to get involved in too many of these trial offers because you could end up getting in over your head if you’re not very careful about it.There’s also way too many upsells within the Freebie Money Maker program which are a sure way to guarantee people lose money.

Furthermore, the marketing methods are not anything that is going to lead to sustainable success online. The cookie cutter capture page approach is dated and way over-used. Any beginner will be hard pressed to find consistent, converting leads and it would be more beneficial for them to join a program where they can learn ways to create long term success online.

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Introduction – What is Skillpay?

This is a newly launched (August 2014) educational community that teachers beginners and intermediates in niche marketing. From what I can tell, it’s a completely legitimate program to learn if you’re a newbie and far superior to most products that try to teach you how to make money online. I signed up as a member to provide an in depth, honest Skillpay review for anyone looking for the opportunity to make some extra money.

They encourage you to follow your passions, teach you methods that work, and their support is easily accessible. In addition, they’re upfront about additional costs associated with running a business online and the time it takes to start seeing success.

That being said, however, this is a very new program so it hasn’t been around long enough to prove itself in terms of credibility. This isn’t the first internet marketing product launched by Kevin and Darin Blue; they also created Internet Income University, which I wasn’t too impressed by.

To be fair, this program seems much improved from their last.

Skillpay vs Wealthy Affiliate

Skillypay is a pretty incredible program, but when I first saw it I couldn’t help but think it closely resembled another product – Wealthy Affiliate.

However, there are some key differences between the two programs:

Marketing Focus:

Skillypay focuses first on setting up a niche business around a Facebook fan page.  You’re taught to use Facebook paid advertising to build a following, then go on to start up a website and market it within your Facebook page, Youtube and even Google. Search engine marketing and WordPress are not the central focus of the training, although they are covered. While you may see faster results using this method, in my opinion it’s not appropriate for every niche and also requires more up front expenses.

Wealthy Affiliate’s focus is on creating a website as your business foundation, then teaching you how to create content using keywords to gain organic rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo and first leverage free methods of traffic to your business. Their training focuses heavily on using WordPress, keywords, content creation, affiliate marketing and even PPC. They do teach social media marketing as well, but it isn’t taught as the core of your business. The methods taught here take longer but will give you a solid foundation and you won’t need to pay for traffic.

Training Materials:

Skillpay’s training is entirely video based, while WA is set up as a combination of written and video tutorials. In addition, there’s no member added blogs or training within SP, while much of the material within WA is made up of member added content. This could be positive or negative, depending on your preferences.

Phone Support:

Skillpay actually has phone support which is something WA doesn’t offer. When you have any questions, you can either write a message within their support box or call their voicemail support, leaving your number and email and they claim they’ll get back to you within 24 hours, but that most of the time it’s much sooner.

However, I submitted a support request and it took 3 days for them to respond. It wouldn’t be a huge deal if they didn’t claim it would be 24 hours or less… because clearly that is not the case. They don’t seem to have a number to call to speak with them on demand either; you have to leave a message and wait for them to contact you.

What’s Included in the membership?

 Skillpay provides…

• Step by step video training – Facebook, Youtube, SEO, and WordPress set up
• Weekly video training sessions (all recorded and kept within their video library)
• Web hosting
• Email and live chat support
• Access to their private “inner circle” Facebook group for additional support
• Tools – Keyword Evolution and Niche Idea Generator

They also let anyone try out the program for 100% free, without putting down a credit card. Access is limited to a few video materials,but it still is enough to give you an idea of whether or not it is right for you.

My concern with starting a business on Facebook

Facebook can be really great exposure to an online business, but it’s not necessarily the best way to actually create a business, especially for certain niches. Some niches just seem to “click” much better with Facebook and others that may be more personal in nature wouldn’t do so well. Either way, the reality of Facebook is that it’s a lot harder to sell to your audience. People go there to snoop on other people’s lives and chat with their friends, not to buy stuff.

When you use FB as your main marketing platform, you’ll be able to get some website traffic if you’re able to build a large following (which would require investing into paid ads); however if you’re using affiliate marketing as your money maker, you’re going to have a much harder time turning those visitors from Facebook into potential buyers.

Although, if you chose to monetize your site with Google Adsense it’d probably be easier to make money this way. Since you make money per click, all you need is people visiting your site, not actually buying anything. If you were promoting affiliate offers your job will become trickier. Not impossible, just harder.

(Another concern I must throw out here is the legitimacy of FB’s paid advertising…. this video brings me to question how well it really works).

This method could be a good option for some people if they had the available resources to invest in additional start-up costs, but it isn’t the cheapest or most reliable method either.

There are way more (and better) options for affiliates than the programs recommended by Skillpay

They suggest Amazon Associates, Clickbank and Google Adsense as the three ways to monetize any website. While these are great programs widely used by online marketers, they aren’t the only options.

Clickbank has a lot of low quality products, Amazon isn’t available to everyone and Adsense has a history of banning people from the program. It’s also not the best way to monetize every website, but it definitely works.

Pros vs Cons

Pros

• Let’s you try it out for 100% free, no credit card required.
• There’s a 30 day, money back guarentee if you don’t like it after upgrading.
• An honest approach to making money online, teaches methods that can work.
• Encourage you to follow your interests, hobbies or passions when picking a niche
• Has a handy niche generator tool
• Pretty upfront about additional costs involved.
• Very clear it’s not a “get rich quick” scheme and that it takes time to see success.
• Provides phone and live chat support, so it’s easy to get help.

Cons

• Expensive, membership is $67/month or $349 for 6 months.
• Requires a higher upfront expense than just the basic membership, you’ll have to invest monthly in Facebook advertising campaigns. It also recommends outsourcing tasks, which will be another expense if you go that route.
• Doesn’t provide a whole lot of training on SEO or WordPress, focuses way more on Facebook marketing.
• It’s rather limited in suggestions of monetization options and affiliate programs.
• Relying heavily on Facebook and social media marketing isn’t the best option for every niche.
• Affiliate program is only available to paying members.

Who is it for?

Beginners who want to start earning money online by building a business around their interests, as well as intermediate marketers who are looking for additional training to build out their existing businesses.

Pricing

The pricing for Skillpay varies depending on how long you commit to the program:

Monthly membership is $67, 6 months is $349 and yearly access will cost just shy of $700.

These prices are all 50% off if you upgrade within your first 24 hours, so you could get your first month for $29 but it’d still be $67 per month every one after that.

While I think the program is useful, I don’t believe it provides enough training, resources or tools for anyone to stay a member beyond a few months yet, so I don’t know how well a deal you’re actually getting with the extended billing discounts.

My Closing Thoughts

Skillpay is a legitimate community to join and learn how to start up an online business. They let anyone join for completely free to test it out, provide training that actually works, and are very up front about the time, effort and costs involved in starting out online. That being said, the training provided is limited to mostly social media marketing with Facebook and Youtube, with less emphasis on building a website and SEO.

A major downfall is that it’s pretty expensive, as the costs involve extend far beyond the basic $67 membership fee with paid advertising campaigns. Wealthy Affiliate provides unlimited hosting, a larger community and much more extensive training for a lot less money than Skillpay. If you want to know how to market online using Facebook and Youtube, however, and have some extra money put aside to start paid advertising campaigns and want to see faster results, Skillpay could be the program for you.

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CB Passive Income – Introduction

This is yet another completely automated, “push button software” system designed for total newbies to start making their first money online. It was put together by Patric Chan as essentially a clone of his entire marketing system. Everyone who buys the package will get their own unique affiliate link to earn commissions from Patrick’s marketing efforts.

I was quite surprised to see it featured within the Yahoo! Finance section as a solution to make money online as it was basically a giant salespage for the product. The fact is, CP Passive Income isn’t a very effective program. While I haven’t personally tested it, I’ve been affiliate marketing for 2 years and am experienced enough to know what works and what doesn’t.

If you want to see it work at all, you’ll have to actually put in quite a bit of effort and even then it wouldn’t be the best or a sustainable solution to earn money online. I’ll explain why in further detail throughout this CB Passive Income review.

What is “CB”? How is this sytem passive?

The “CB” stands for Clickbank, which is a marketplace for digital products. There’s products from all different areas from health to finance to make money online and anyone can sign up as an affiliate to promote these for 50-75% commissions. However despite Chan’s claims of Clickbank consistening of purely high quality products, the good products are few and far between and most of what’s offered is rather low quility.

Basically what Chan does is provide everyone with his cloned webpage, which is basically a squeeze page to get people to opt in to his mailing list. Once people sign up, he takes care of all the marketing and selling. He promotes varies products from Clickbank in emails sent to the people who opted in, and your unique affiliate link is provided in the emails so you’ll earn commissions from the products people buy.

You have no control over what is being sold to your list, however, and it is probably a bunch of very low quality products. You also still have the challenge of actually getting people to your sales page to opt in, which is a lot of work. And then furthermore getting those people to actually buy the products being offered.

What’s included?

• A clone of Chan’s “secret webpage”
• A unique affiliate link created for you
• A free gift worth “1,500 dollars” – which is always changing
• Video training and Ebooks on how to promote your page

The Challenges You’re Going to Face…

Getting traffic to your cloned squeeze page

This is by far going to be the biggest hurdle for you to overcome. Granted, there is training provided to teach you traffic methods; however because you’re promoting a squeeze page you’re going to have a harder time finding quality, converting traffic. Getting traffic through organic search is going to be impossible (search engines won’t rank squeeze page sites) and even pay per click advertising is out of the question, at least with Google.

What you’re left with is “marketing” (spamming) your link across the internet on forums, Craigslist, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. This isn’t the most effective way to promote because hardly anybody will take you seriously and you’ll be seen as a spammer. Let me tell you a secret – people don’t like squeeze pages anymore.

You also could do solo ads or PPC with Bing or Facebook, but that requires investment and if you don’t know how to properly convert with pay per click ads, you’re going to be gambling your money away.

Converting your subscribers

If you do manage to get subscribers to the list, the second challenge is going to be getting those people to actually convert and buy the promoted products. Even though with the original CP Passive Income system this is all done for you on Chan’s part, it’s still going to have a high unsubscribe rate. People don’t like being sold to time and time again, especially if they’re low quality products.

Also, because people don’t actually know you they don’t trust you from the get go. Since you’re only using a squeeze page for promotion, your subscribers don’t know anything about you and don’t trust you. Many times with squeeze pages, especially these days in 2014, people will sign up for the free offer and immediately unsubscribe.

Because this system will have a low conversion rate, you’d need A LOT of subscribers to make just a few sales. Sadly, getting that number of subscribers takes time, effort and sadly a significant investment on your part.

The entire system is not in your control

This isn’t your list, it’s Patric’s. You’re going to be putting in a lot of effort to gather subscribers and you have absolutely no control over what is sold, said or even if he shuts down the mailing list altogether. Your entire business could be shut down at any minute and you’d have done all that work for nothing.

Pricing + Upsells

It’ll cost you a $47 one time payment for the CB passive income system by itself.  There’s also a $1, 14 day trial that is offered.

However, there’s a few upsells you’ll be directed to after your purchase:

Passive Income Pro – $97 + min $15 – $20/month for autoresponder (like Aweber or GetResponse)

This system will allow for your subscribers to be opting in to 2 lists – Chan’s list and your own list. This way you will have more control because you’ll be able to do some market yourself and choose what you promote instead of leaving all the power to Chan.

However, all the $97 payment does it allow for the double opt it. You’ll have to purchase your own autoresponder service in addition to the $97 payment, which is a minimum of around $15 – $20 every month month depending on what service you choose. Keep in mind also that the price increases as your list does, so if you have more than a few hundred subscribers, you could be paying around $3o/month and if you have a really large list, it could cost you around $100.

Fast Cash Series – $47/month or $197 for lifetime access

This is actually entirely unrelated to CP Passive Income and can be purchased seperately. You”ll recieve monthly training material that will let you “in” on a secret Patric Chan knows that you can take advantage of to make cash from from trending opportunities. While these could potentially be used for you to profit from, it isn’t a push button system and would take hard work on your part to see money.

For example, Chan provides the story of the 98 cent .me domains which were relatively new (this was back in 2008) and still had lots of hot names available to purchase. He claims you could easily snag a bunch of these and flip them for $100… but it isn’t really that easy. You still have the task of setting up the websites and getting them “flip ready” – adding some content, etc, if you want to get anywhere near $100 for it.

There’s also the risk that the domains you buy won’t sell or the .me extention would be a flop.

These aren’t going to be long term solutions for making money online and there’s no guarantee they’d even work for you. While the $197 lifetime purchase may seem like a good deal, you don’t know how long these programs will be released for and there’s the possiblity Chan could stop releasing them a year or even a month from now.

Final Opinion – Is CB Passive Income Worth It?

Honestly no, I don’t think this is worth the investment. For a system that claims to do it all for you, it isn’t telling you how much work is actually going to be involved and how much additional money you’re going to need to shell out to drive traffic to your sales page. Even then, the system is completely out of your control.

Think about it… Patric Chan tells you the system is worth thousands and thousands of dollars, yet he is going to give it to you for $47 and even offers a $1 trial. This is a trick marketers use to make you think you’re getting an amazing deal. But nobody would ever give a system away that was that valuable for that little, ever.

These “do it all for you” business in a box type products only end up hurting newbies in the long run. They buy the product, learn absolutely nothing, can’t get it to work so they go on to buy the next product they think will help them. But since these programs aren’t making them do anything themselves they don’t learn how to set up their own website, create anything original nor the process of failing and perfecting their marketing campaigns.

The truth is, you’re not going to get rich online by investing $47 into a cloned marketing campaign. The only way you’re going to learn is by doing things yourself, at least to start. If you want to create a sustainable business, one that is YOUR OWN and will give you full control, then you need to learn the right way.

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What is Freester?

Freester is a discount site that offers all sorts of perks from weekly coupons, movie/themepark/broadway discounts, roadsite assistance, medication discounts, and even a yearly subscription to your choice of magazine. I’ll admit that I thought it was cool at first. Since it was only $2 per month, I signed up thinking I could definitely get some use out of it, even if I only just used the coupons and magazine subscription.

But honestly, the reason I signed up is because I heard they offered $25 rebates to Walmart, Target and various restaurants. Basically all you have to do is post your receipt online from a shopping trip to Target or Walmart in which you spent a minimum of $25, and Freester will mail you a $25 rebate check. The best part? You could do it once per month! Pretty cool, right? Well, after signing up I find out this service is no longer available, which really makes this program way less valuable.

But are the other discounts and perks provided actually legit, or will Freester scam you out of a bunch of money? Programs like this can be notorious for putting secret charges on your credit card without your permission, or making you pay for services they told you were free. After signing up and being ever so disappointed that the rebates were no longer offered, I did quite a bit of digging to see if the rest of the membership perks were actually beneficial or just a bunch of talk.

Membership Benefits

Weekly Coupons in the Mail

This is one perk that offers some value. Yes, I know there’s tons of websites that offer coupons for completely free but the downside is you have to print them yourself. Digital coupons aren’t widely available or used yet, and printer ink is actually quite expensive and doesn’t last long. So if you think about it you’re probably spending all your “savings” on ink for the printer.

Freester will let you pick out individualized, pre-cut coupons and they’ll mail them to you at no extra cost. You are allowed to pick up to $12 worth of coupons each week, so that’s not bad as it’s a $48 monthly value. Although if you already get the Sunday paper you may have access to very similar type coupons without paying $2 extra a month.

Here’s 2 weeks worth of coupons they have sent me:

But one thing I really like is these are coupons of stuff I already buy and they’re either for individual items or on 2 purchases. That is the big thing I hate about coupons… many times they’re some random product I never would have bought in the first place, or you have to buy 4 of them to even get the deal!

I picked out coupons for stuff I need and buy on a consistent basis anyway – Tampax tampons, Secret deodorant, razors, shaving cream, Vaseline brand lotion (the good stuff), Ziploc bags, toilet paper, Listerine, Lash Blast mascara, Energizer batteries.. and even a pack of coupons for Red Lobster. Many of them are for between 1 – 2 dollars off, there are even a few for 3!

One thing that sucks about these coupons, however, is the only ones they offer have very soon approaching expiration dates. At the beginning of October, 95% of the coupons offered expired by the end of that month. Considering I have to wait about a week for the coupons to come in the mail, that only gives me a few weeks to actually use them. If you like to wait to use coupons when the item(s) are also on sale, it doesn’t give much leeway.

Roadside Assistance

All members have access to their  24/7 roadside assistance service, which covers up to 3 $100 claims per year. It provides towing to the nearest service station, jumpstarts, changing flat tires and 2 gallons of fuel delivery.  If you’re only interested in their roadside assistance, make sure you don’t already have it through another provider. Many people already have access to roadside assistance through other means like their insurance or car warranties.

Also keep in mind with someting like roadside assistance, you get what you pay for. With a $2 monthly membership fee to a service that doesn’t specialize in roadside assistance, it can’t be that great.

Yearly Magazine Subscription (your choice)

This is a pretty nice offer as the yearly price of Freester is about equivelent to a yearly magazine subscription anyway. And they don’t just offer crap; they have nearly 50 popular magazines to choose from such as Seventeen, Entrepreneur, The Atlanic, Weight Watchers, Shape, and many more.

Monthly $25 Walmart or Restaurant Rebates 

This was definitely the best perk offered so if you are interested in it strictly because of this, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Cash Surveys

They really push their members to participate in the cash for surveys program, which pays $1.30 per survey completed. But be careful with these – you are required to pay $1 PER SURVEY! That means you’re really only getting 30 cents for each one you complete. They take awhile to complete, too. As with all online surveys, you’re just going to be wasting a lot of time for barely any money (less than minimum wage). And if you really want to take surveys online, there’s entirely free programs for that.

Pharmacy Discount Card

They claim as a Freester benefit that you’ll get a membership to USA Health Alliance, but if you actually go the their website you’ll find out that this program is available to anyone for 100% free… so it’s not really a perk at all.

While it is a legitimate health discount card, you can’t use it in combination with your insurance so it’ll only be available to medications not covered with insurance. If you don’t have insurance, it can probably save you a few extra bucks.

Discount Hotels/Vacation Rentals/Movies

They provide you with “discounts” to various things like theme parks, Broadway plays and car rentals like Hertz. But if you do any sort of research online you can probably find an even better deal somewhere else, without a special membership fee.

For example, I noticed Freester had tickets for Matilda the Musical on Broadway for $90 a piece. They declare a savings of $20 per ticket, but a quick Google search for the same tickets (in the same section) led me to showtickets.com where I found them for $87… $3 CHEAPER per ticket than the “deal” you get with Freester!

… but you can get the SAME seats (same section and row) for $3 cheaper for free at an online ticket site…

You can also buy discounted tickets to theme parks at places like AAA or even Walmart for comparible savings.

This is the reality and is true for these “discount” offers with sites like this. They’re often not as good as other discounts you can get online or elsewhere for completely free.

Free Long Distance Calling

This is only usable on a home phone line. Most people don’t have home lines anymore…

Tech Support

Most people these days use Windows 7 or 8 or Mac, and it’s only offered to Windows XP or Vista users. Even if you do happen to use XP or Vista, the help offered is extremely limited and most likely wouldn’t be of much benefit.

Watch out for their Terms of Service…

There is one part of their terms that pulls out a red flag to me, and that is they state they can modify their pricing without informing members. 

Most companies will put within their terms they have the right to raise prices, but any decent one would at least inform their customers of it beforehand. It isn’t likely that any future price hike would be drastic, but you never know. It’s always good to be aware of how much you are actually being charged for any service, and any company that claims they can raise prices without warning is a red flag in my book.

Another thing that led me suspicious was the fact they state within their terms cancellation is only possible by providing 30 day prior written consent. That seems a bit ridiculous as I’ve never encountered a company that had that sort of policy before, so I called them to clarify. I was informed that it’s not necessary to provide written consent and cancellation by calling their customer service line is sufficient.

Still though, calling and canceling these types of things isn’t a piece of cake. Their reps are trained to follow script and get you to stay a member no matter what, so you have to just keep saying “no” a million times. It’s rather annoying and I hate dealing with it.

Is Freester worth it?

Since the $25 rebates to Target and Walmart were taken away, this program is no longer worth it in my opinion. The coupons and magazine subscription are cool perks, but you can find those easily without a membership fee. While Freester isn’t any sort of scam and is legit, you probably don’t need to be a member here to save money. There’s a difference between thinking you’re getting a deal and actually getting a deal. Most of the services and perks offered are available for free elswhere and you can find better deals on parks, entertainment and car rentals than the ones offered from Freester.

I would spare your credit card from another monthly fee and find these perks for free elsewhere.

If you want to make money online, you’re not going to be very successful with methods like the “paid surveys'” inside Freester. Learn the proper way to build an online business and you can set yourself up to earn sustainable, passive income for years to come.

Progam:

Survey Money Machines may look like another paid survey scam site at first glance, but it’s actually an entirely free program to join. However, it’s really nothing special or different than any other survey site.

I’m quite familiar with online survey companies such as this one, so I’m going to do a quick Survey Money Machines review. I’ll go through the process of how it works, discuss the pros and cons, and help you decide if it’d be a good fit for you.

If not, I can provide an alternative solution for those looking to make extra cash online. (See my #1 recommendation here).

How does Survey Money Macines work?

You won’t be taking surveys directly via the Survey Money Machines site; rather it’s simply a database that provides listings to a bunch of companies where you’ll be able to take surveys from. You’ll need to register seperately for each company you want to take surveys with, though, and you’ll end up giving out a lot of your personal information left and right if you aren’t careful.

Basically all these survey job board sites are all the same with only slight variations of listed companies.

SMM actually did provide a rather large database; when I signed up they gave me 45 different companies to choose from!

These are companies such as Swagbucks, Ipsos I-Say, YouGov, National Consumer Panel, Clearvoice Surveys, MintVine, Opinion Outpost, and Inbox Dollars, just to name a few. But a closer examination on my part revealed not everything listed within the database to be completely legit. Some of them weren’t even related to online surveys but were actually scams!

WARNING!!! Some of the websites listed are not survey sites at all. I ran into two completely irrelevant sites, Project Payday and Real Writing Jobs.

Project Payday is a CPA freebies site where you make money by completing CPA offers and referring others. It isn’t really a scam, but it is NOT an online survey site.

Real Writing Jobs is supposedly a membership site where inspiring writers can find legit freelance jobs, but I’ve previously joined and reviewed the program and it’s a total scam.

What survey companies should you sign up for?

All of the suggested survey websites are not created equal. Some are very professional and strictly business, while others are overly promotional and spammy (or downright scams!!!).

The ones I liked best:

• I-Say
• YouGov
• Swagbucks
• Inbox Dollars

These all offer very clean, professional and easy to take surveys that don’t send you to the moon with additional offers. All of them work by earning you points to cash out for some type of gift card (such as Amazon or Walmart)  or PayPal deposit.

I’d stay away from:

• Big Bucks Survey – VERY spammy and slaps you with an overwhelming amount of promotions while you try and take the surveys.
• Media Insiders Panel – not really a survey site at all. They pay you to install an app on your tablets and/or smartphones which allows them to spy on you!
• Project Payday – CPA freebie offer site, not related to online surveys at all
• Real Writing Jobs – total scam

I noticed the trend with some of the survey companies is to sneakily incorporate CPA offers into their questionares…

For example, you’re answering a survey regarding your tastes for restaurants. You come across a question like “Which is better – McDonald’s or Burger King?“; upon answering a new screen will pop up and take you to a form to fill that claims you’ll get a $50 gift card to your choice of McDonald’s or Burger King. After you select your choice and fill out your basic information (name, address, birth date, phone number) you’ll be redirected to a 3 step process you need to complete to get your gift card.

This is where it gets sneaky. Each of the offers you need to complete will require you to register for paid access to different services. For example, creating an account with freester.com; become a member of the disney book club; or sign up for a 30 day trial to Gamefly.

Within the terms and conditions you’re told that you must not cancel any more than 1 of the accounts before the first 30 days if you want to remain eligible to recieve the gift card. So you’ll have to stay a paying member of these sites to even qualify.

You need to be very careful when a survey redirects you to additional offers, because it happens all the time. Before you know it, you’re in over your head with accounts to 40 different companies you didn’t even want in the first place! And as for actually recieving the gift card rewards you’re promised for signing up for the offers, that’s another story…

How much money can you make with Survey Money Machines?

They claim $50 an hour or $15 – $30 per survey, but that is a load of crap. Realistically you can expect probably around $2 – $3 for every hour you put in.

While they do make it quite clear it isn’t a get rich quick program, they go on to claim you can expect to make quite a bit per every survey. They tell you that all of the companies will pay you $15 – $30 per survey, but you’ll only be able to fill out a couple surveys per week from each company.  Therefore, you must sign up to at least 10 companies to make sure you’re getting the most opportunities possible.

First of all, most of the surveys you encounter won’t pay anywhere near that amount. I’ve signed up with many different survey companies and taken lots of surveys, and the ones that do offer more are only with certain companies and usually it requires signing up for a service first to qualify (meaning you must invest some money).

It may be something like signing up for services to a particular insurance company or book club so you can provide a fair assessment. With this initial investment required, that bigger reward is much less worth it.

Let me give you a more realistic view of the type of income you’ll earn from online surveys…

I spent about 2 hours the other day taking various surveys from I-Say and ended up with 500 points. Now, the way that I-Say operates (as well as several other survey companies) is each survey earns you a certain amount of points. When you accumulate a mimimum amount, say 1,000 points, you can cash out for prizes such as gift cards or Paypal deposits.

Cashing out 2,000 points from I-Say gets you $20 PayPal funds. Seeing as it took me 2 hours to earn 500 points, I can figure it’ll take about 8 hours to earn the 2,000. Earning 20 dollars for 8 hours of work is only $2.50 per hour!

And that wasn’t the first time I’ve ever taken online surveys, either. These companies are all very simliar and you do have to put in several hours of survey work just to get a few extra bucks.

Here’s a glance at some surveys for Inbox Dollars:

As you can see, that’s only $4.75 for 1.5 hours of work!

Pros:

• Some of the survey sites recommended are completely legit and provide you with clean, professional surveys.
• You can definitely earn some extra cash by taking surveys.
• It’s relatively easy and requires no particular skills.

Cons:

• While you can earn extra money, it takes a lot of time and you end up working for just a few bucks an hour (way less than minimum wage)!
• It’s a waste of time if you don’t actually enjoy it.
• Every company has a minimum payment threshold. If you sign up for many different companies, it’ll take a lot more effort to reach the minimum payouts for each one.
• Some companies within the SMM databaseare overly promotional and really spammy. You’ll be up to your eyeballs in pop ups and offers before you can finish a simple questionnaire.
• Certain companies will make you sign up for services or buy products before you can complete a survey, which requires an initial investment.
• You’re giving out a lot of personal information, sometimes even your social security number is required
• They claim they don’t spam you, but your inbox will be filled with spam emails before you know it and your phone will be blowing up with telemarketer calls. Create a seperate email account speficially for online surveys if you want to get seriously into it. Try to avoid any offers that require a phone number as well.

My final opinion – Is it worth it?

Survey Money Machines is only a database that provides you with links to survey companies and nothing more. While some of the suggested survey sites are pretty cool and a fun way to earn some extra cash, other recommended companies are actually scams, which really makes this program lose a lot of credibility in my eyes.

Remember to be careful when it comes to giving out your personal information – create a new email address for online survey companies and try to avoid offers that require a phone number. Also, don’t go too crazy when it comes to signing up for these companies; be selective and only join the best ones. I-Say, YouGov, Inbox Dollars and Swagbucks are my personal recommendations.

If you genuinely enjoy taking online surveys, it’s a hobby that can pay a few bucks. But only you can be the judge of whether the little money is worth it or not.

If you are looking for a way to make consistent, reliable income online there’s really only one program I can truly recommend to beginners. It’ll teach you how to build a website around your passions, interests or hobbies and actually earn real money doing it.

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