Recently, Darren Rowse, a blogger I highly respect put up a post about AdSense Secrets 4.0, a product by Joel Comm. I won’t link to his product because of reasons I will outline below.

The post talked about how great the product is and how inexpensive it is at only ten dollars and like most other Make Money Online blogs, Darren was promoting Joel’s new product and didn’t mention the incredible catch.

In what seems to me like an evil scheme, buying the book also means you sign up for a thirty dollar per month membership which after purchasing the book, you must cancel if you don’t want any further charges. Joel did this knowing that a large percentage wouldn’t see that they were subscribing to a monthly program and a small percentage would forget to cancel, as such is the case with most membership programs. It is just a huge profit grab.

Of course, just like everyone else, Darren includes his affiliate link to the product, and I think that Darren, like others, despite updating the post, deserve a huge thumbs down today for promoting such an underhanded technique.

Here’s a piece of the updated text:

3. In signing up for this product there are a few ‘catches’ that I didn’t realize. As I mentioned in the post the long page is very salesy and as I encouraged you to skip through it – I skipped through it. This was a mistake on my part and I apologize for this. Please do read the sales copy and understand that there’s a membership program/monthly report with this that costs $29.95 a month which you are subscribed to when you sign up for this. You can unsubscribe at any time if you don’t want to be in it. I’m a little surprised and disappointed to see Joel doing this to be honest but it is mentioned in the sales page (see the ‘free’ bonuses).

Mark from 45n5.com deserves huge kudos for shedding light on this atrocity, so please check out his post revealing the shady marketing tactic.

Don’t Buy AdSense Secrets

Even if the product is the greatest in the world, you shouldn’t buy it as you will only be promoting the type of marketing that surrounds it. How would you feel if every product you bought, from WordPress theme to your computer operating system came with a membership that was three times the price per month of the original purchase?

Originally posted on April 19, 2008 @ 10:51 pm