The Long Con – A List Of Internet Marketer System Scams On Twitter
Since writing this post, Twitter has been inundated with these ‘Twitter train’ auto-follow systems, and they’re all garbage. Yes, every single one of them is a waste of your time (and, in many cases) money. Please read the article below to understand why.
There are too many to keep up with, but new additions to the list (that you should avoid at all costs are):
and dozens and dozens of others. Some are blatant phishing scams, too.
Bottom line? Don’t sign up for this junk. Do things properly.
* This one’s a real shame, as it’s by the makers of FriendOrFollow, which is a great site, and this really dilutes the brand.
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As Twitter matures and grows in size and stature, it is exponentially rewarded with the benefits of the larger network: a richer, more diverse pool of users, which equates to a broader database of news and topic discourse. Conversely, it will attract the downside, too, which includes spam, trolls, a decreasing signal-to-noise ratio, and that consumer favourite of the online world, the internet marketer.
I’ve been thinking about this article for some time now. I’ll continue to update it as and when more information becomes available. I expect something of a backlash here, but that’s less important than the message. Which is, admittedly, a long one, but worth a few minutes of your time.
Internet marketing – the sale (or acquisition, in order to mine or re-sell) of goods, advertising, sales leads and affiliate products via the online medium – dates back to the very beginning of the internet itself. It’s not all bad – in many ways, as the internet continues to reflect ‘real life’, it makes sense that all aspects of that, including commerce and advertising, are adopted. It’s probably fair to say that a lot of e-commerce is quite respectable, at least inasmuch as it’s adopting fair practice with regard to both its pitch and the quality of goods being offered.
However, where this distinction begins to blur is generally when internet marketing in and of itself becomes a profession, and gives birth to the internet marketer. This is not always the case, naturally, but often when somebody promotes themselves under that title, certainly on Twitter, their methods and intentions are not always entirely above-board, nor of any discernible value. (File alongside ‘social media guru’ and ‘SEO expert’)
The System
Internet marketing is a very popular subject on Twitter, as is promoting the concept that the internet marketer – and there are a great many – is a kind of guru or soothsayer, who will lead his followers to unimaginable riches and power, that they know something about how to sell on the internet that you do not. Often this expertise is packaged within some kind of system that, once purchased, will quickly and easily reap the same benefits for the buyer.
On Twitter, typically the promise is for thousands of ‘targeted followers’ with little to no work on your behalf. It’s an entirely automated procedure – just sit back, watch that follower number grow, and start counting the money, baby!
Often a tantalising sample of this system is available for free – despite its ‘$99 value!’ – and this draws you in, because the information within seems solid and dependable (even if it’s generally just repackaged content that is available for free elsewhere). Things look good. How could the system not work – all these other people are saying it does right there on the page – they can’t all be plants, right? Hand over your money, and away we go.
Several weeks or months later, you realise that any benefits have been, at best, negligible, and probably not much better than simply being active on Twitter. Moreover, it’s quite apparent that any followers you have picked up are not ‘targeted’ at all – how could they be, when all of these systems rely on the exact same concept?
Follow thousands of people. Wait for them to follow you back. Unfollow all those who do not. Repeat.
That’s it. That’s the system. That’s every internet market’s Twitter system. Sure, there might be some minor variations, usually around the price and promise, and some utilise different methods of determining who they follow, but this is essentially what you’re paying for, albeit in an automated fashion. You know, so you can just sit back and count the money.
The List
You’ve read this far and maybe you’ve got some idea of what I’m talking about, so let’s talk specifics. Here is a list of known internet marketing scams on Twitter.
TweeterGetter
Who’s Behind It: Gary McCaffrey
The Blurb: “Imagine you got 1 twitter follower today, and that number doubled every day for 1 month, how many followers do you think you would have? The correct answer is: Over 10 million followers!”
TweeterGetter is, I think, the granddaddy of all of these systems, which means that it’s also largely responsible for the rest. You’ve inevitably seen tweets like this pop up in your timeline:
He’s even convincing local wildlife.
What You Get: Sign up, and the system automatically sends out a recommendation from you for TweeterGetter, which links back to your own special page. When this happens, you will automatically follow the six people ahead of you in the system. As folk visit your page, and sign up, they will follow you. But wait, it gets better:
“Now when those people refer others via their link, their new followers will also follow you in position 2 and so on down 5 levels deep. By the time you reach the 5th position, you will have thousands, if not tens of thousands of new twitter followers… and it NEVER stops growing!”
Yes, that’s right, it’s a pyramid scheme.
The Cost: To be fair to McCaffrey, it’s free. Although these automated tweets are so hated that you’ll be doing well to see any kind of net benefit to your follower count. That said, McCaffrey is, in many ways, the exception that proves the rule – see below for more on this.
My Tweet Followers
Who’s Behind It: Unknown
The Blurb: “MyTweetFollowers.com is the best place for you to grow your twitter network and gain a ton of followers. We recommend giving it a shot, it’s free and will help you get the followers you need. You login and then follow people to be added to free section where people will follow you in return. The VIP riders on MyTweetFollowers.com will be getting a lot more follows than the regular ones so make sure to buy yourself VIP.”
What You Get: VIP
The Cost: Various, from $20/day to $250/30 days. You can always try the free version. Didn’t work? Wow, didn’t see that coming.
Twitter Power System
Who’s Behind It: James Rivers, Peter Francis, Stuart Laing
The Blurb: Goes on for about twenty pages – you’ll need to check the site, I’m afraid.
What You Get: ‘Harness The Power Of Twitter’ manual ($147 value!), 12-set video package ($127 value!), ‘Getting Started Quickly On Twitter’ ($77 value!), Twitter Tools Guide ($47 value!), Twitter Interviews With ‘Twitter Experts’ ($47 value!), Follow Me Button Package ($17 value!), plus a series of bonuses, all with value.
The Cost: $77. But just think of all that value.
Twitternet Marketing
Who’s Behind It: Brian Kelly
The Blurb: “I’ve been conducting an “experiment” of late with some newly acquired software in an attempt to acquire a large number of *targeted* Twitter followers (and no, I did *not* utilize TweeterGetter). The results have been nothing short of astounding.”
Click on the link, and there’s more: “How I Generated Over 10,000 *Targeted* Twitter Followers In Just Over 3-Weeks! AND earned over $1,000 in The Process.”
What You Get: ‘Hummingbird‘, a ‘professional marketing tool for Twitter’.
The Cost: $197, although you can use the word ‘RECESSION’ to get a 15% discount. So it’s not all bad.
Twitter Traffic Machine
Who’s Behind It: Bill Crosby
The Blurb: “The Completely Automated Twitter Growth & Money Making System for People That Want to Set Up A System ONCE, Forget About It, and Have it Grow and Make Money EVERY Day!”
Twitter Traffic Machine is, I suspect, the biggest/most successful of all of these scams, and while the site does have a lot of blurb for you to read, they also have this video.
I love Bill Crosby’s statement at 0:37:
“I figured out how to get 16,000 targeted followers in 90 days, and make a bunch of money from it, all on autopilot.”
He’s actually telling the truth, but some of his words are entirely superfluous. If we strip away a few of these, we can see exactly what he means.
“I figured out how to make a bunch of money all on autopilot.”
Bingo.
What You Get: An automated mass-following system.
The Cost: $27. Hey, at least it’s cheap.
TweepMe
Who’s Behind It: Bobbr
The Blurb: “TweepMe is the 100% opt-in group of Twitter users who all chose to follow each other on Twitter. When a new member joins, every other member automatically follows the new member, and the new member follows them back. The process is gradual and happens over the course of weeks or months depending on the number of TweepMe members.”
The real irony here is despite claiming “5 million connections made”, the TweepMe Twitter account only has 1,569 followers. Do they not use their own system!? Heavens, say it ain’t so. And if they do, well…
Check out the accounts under their ‘A few of our members’ section – all of them have a questionable follow/follower ratio. From what I could see they all follow more people than follow them. That said, TweepMe isn’t really promising the same ‘targeted audience’ that the other systems are. But then, if you just want more followers, why not just follow more people?
What You Get: Lifetime membership. Wonder if that’s guaranteed if the website ever closes?
The Cost: $12.95.
Twitter Follower
Who’s Behind It: John Chow
The Blurb: Twitter Follower delivers its blurb exclusively via video.
John Chow, of course, is a reknowned internet ‘dot com mogul’ with a hugely popular blog, and is one of the original probloggers. He has a loyal and pretty sizeable following, as you can tell by his article about Twitter Followers, and the comments left by his readers.
It doesn’t alter the fact that it’s junk. John Chow has done well for himself and good luck to the guy for being one of the pioneers of the ‘make money online’ obsession, but all you have to do is spend 30 seconds on his gaudy monstrosity of a website to get an idea as to how he’s done this, at least of late. His early stuff was actually pretty good. But what does he care? He’s livin’ the dream.
What You Get: Access to the Twitter Follower database. And if they somebody has the audacity to not follow you back, they get removed, keeping that database super-sweet. And just as irrelevant.
The Cost: It’s free. Although you have to hand over your email to John, which I suspect means you’ll be receiving a few other promotions from time to time, too.
TwitterTrain.Net / GetMeFollowers
Who’s Behind It: _lilmatt
The Blurb: “TwitterTrain.net is here to help you get tons of followers for your twitter. It’s simple, you just enter your login information above, then click login. After logging in you will be redirected to a page where you will need to follow the last train riders. You will need to follow all riders to join the train. After joining the train you will start seeing your follower count grow. The train will automatically reset when its full, Enjoy!”
Graham Cluley has some very interesting observations to make about the security risks involved with this service.
GetMeFollowers.com is essentially the same site/premise – indeed, both are ‘affiliates’ of each other. @_lilmatt is definitely behind GetMeFollowers, and I’ve made the assumption he is linked to both, but this may be incorrect. Either way, his bio claims he’s a “16 year old funny ass kid”.
What You Get: See my comments section for the author’s response.
The Cost: The basic service is free, but VIP clients pay anything from $5 to $160. But what price a stolen password?
TwitterTrain.com
Who’s Behind It: Chugg
The Blurb: “Join friends with similar interests!” You do this by handing over your username, password and email to an anonymous website – what more reassurance could a visitor ask for?
What You Get: The opportunity to have your account repeatedly spammed and/or phished.
The Cost: “Free during beta”. I think there’s meant to be a link on that icon, but it goes nowhere.
Why These Systems Won’t Work For You
Here’s a scoop of reality: Nobody – nobody – would choose to sell any system that makes gazillions of dollars unless that same system has stopped working, has never worked, or only works for them because they’re the ones selling it.
I don’t care what the business or model is. Currency and commodity systems don’t work, and don’t make money for anybody but the guy selling them. Horse racing and other gambling systems don’t work, and don’t make money for anybody but the guy selling them. Lottery systems don’t work, and don’t make money for anybody but the guy selling them.
Why would it be any different on Twitter?
Now, let’s clear up something here – what I’m talking about is specifically buying a system that makes a promise to make money for you. There’s a world of difference between this and a wise investment, although that margin has perhaps withered a little in the past couple of years.
Moreover, I’m not saying these are ‘bad people’. They’re not evil. They’re not out to get you, and your little dog, too. Like all of us, they’re trying to make a living. What I object to is the means in which they choose to do it.
All these ‘Twitter power systems’ are variations of the same long con, and work around similar principles (certainly in a sense of ethics) to pyramid and Ponzi schemes. Sure, most of them promise 60-day full money back guarantees, but that’s a known con/sales tactic in and of itself.
How I am so confident that this stuff doesn’t work for anybody but those at the very top of the tree? And how do I know that they all operate around the same principles? It’s very self-explanatory, to be honest – while it’s true that all of the ‘internet marketers’ in the list above have tens of thousands of followers, not one of them has a strongly positive follow-to-follower ratio. Meaning, they all have about the same, and often less, people following them than they are following themselves.
At the time of writing, Twitter Traffic Machine’s Bill Crosby has 40,048 followers, but is following 40,710 himself.
James Rivers, of Twitter Power System, has 43,486 followers, but follows 44,893 himself. Likewise, Peter Francis and Stuart Laing, also of TPS, have similar ratios (albeit with lower numbers overall).
Brian Kelly, of Twitternet Marketing, follows 44,695 to his 46,809 followers.
The Exception That Proves The Rule
Gary McCaffrey somewhat bucks this trend. McCaffrey has 40,145 followers, but only follows 194 himself. Moreover, McCaffrey’s growth on Twitter is undeniably clean:
But this isn’t actually much proof of anything. It certainly doesn’t suggest that his follower count was made possible because of his system. Moreover, if you check out the people who are signing up to TweeterGetter, few of these guys have lots of followers. Indeed, the majority have a very inversely proportionate ratio in their follow counts – our old friend MeTheSquirrel above has just 96 followers, but is following 438.
It’s All In The Numbers
Here’s a thought: if these systems were so good, why is it necessary for all these guys to be following roughly the same amount of people who are following them? You show me the fruits of a system that has a positive follower ratio – where the seller (or buyer) has 50,000 ‘targeted’ followers but only follows a few hundred himself – and I’ll gladly throw my hat in the ring. Heck, he can marry my daughter. Even I would consider investing in this system.
But it doesn’t exist. It will never exist, because these things simply do not work, at least in the way that they promise.
Now, you could fire these same accusations at somebody like Guy Kawasaki, who has 127,320 followers, but is following 122,972 himself. But Kawasaki has admitted that he uses Twitter simply as a marketing tool. Now, I’m not for a second suggesting he’s doing anything like the folk above, but in light of his purpose it’s all much of a muchness.
How do any of these accounts get so many followers? Not because of their systems, I can assure you. It’s simply because it’s a pretty established fact on any social network that if you mass-follow thousands of people a given percentage will follow you back out of courtesy. Unfollow those that do not (that’s the gist of all these systems, automated or otherwise) and repeat.
This is why you and I continue to get gamed by a lot of the same users; their ‘system’ will keep follow/unfollowing us, assuming that we’ll either eventually cave – and with such a polite approach, how could we not – or that by positioning themselves on the top of my own follower list they’ll probably get a few extra follows by proxy.
And look at it this way: even if any of these systems did work, what value is X thousand people who have only followed you because you followed them? These aren’t ‘targeted users’. Most of them – almost all of them – couldn’t care less about what you have to say or promote. They’ve only followed you because you followed them. Or rather, the system did, which makes it even less personal.
Bill Crosby makes the statement that each time he tweets a link, 2% of his followers visit it – about 400 people, he says. Is that targeted followers? The number seems disappointingly low to me. This past weekend I did an experiment when I tracked all of my links over 50 tweets, and despite only having about 2,700 followers, the average number of clicks my links received was about around the 3-4% mark. Around 80-100 clicks. Two of my links got over 500 clicks – almost 20%. (I’ll be doing an article on this project very soon.)
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying it: 10,000 people mostly looking the other way has only marginally more value than zero, but it’s completely worthless relative to 500 people who actually care what you have to say because you grew that network organically. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have if you don’t build relationships along the way.
Not that any of this matters – to get an idea of the relative worth of these systems, simply search for them on Twitter, and then check out the follower counts of people who have signed up, or are pushing the service in any way. I can assure you that in nearly all cases these individuals will have fewer followers than they are following themselves, often significantly.
Conclusion
There is, of course, a place for commerce on Twitter. It would be a very naïve assumption to assume otherwise. But scams are scams, and a con is a con. Like all of these things, if there’s ever any measurable benefit, certainly in a monetary sense, it’s only for the (very few) guys at the top.
When you check out the forums of some of these systems, it’s worth observing that a lot of the target audience is other internet marketers. I don’t really have much of an issue with this – we all take some satisfaction in seeing con artists get outwitted by others in their niche – and if that was all it was I’d have left well alone. But of course it’s a trickle-down effect – there’s only a limited pool of internet marketers, despite how it seems, and ultimately it’s naïve and gullible individuals who end up paying for all this stuff. A fool and his money might be lucky enough to get together in the first place, but that doesn’t make it right to exploit them.
The concept that we can all ‘get rich quick’ is well-established, and it’s certainly lucrative – to the planter of the seed. Couple that ideology with the equally attractive notion that it’s easy to ‘make money online’, and you have yourself a nice little nest egg.
The con is as old as man. And it’s not just this kind of internet marketing that’s an issue on Twitter. It pains me when I see A-list bloggers hooking up with ‘affiliate programs’ that promise hundreds of thousands of dollars, all of which can be easily achieved via a laptop on a beach. And some of these sell at ridiculous prices – thousands of dollars. They are all variations of the same kind of scam – that you can have something for nothing.
Well, all except the money you put down to buy the system, of course. And that’s the bottom line.
A REQUEST: If you ever see any of these systems advertising on my site, please understand that this is beyond my control as Google delivers these ads based on a keyword algorithm. I will, however, block them as soon as I’m aware. I’ve already blocked Twitter Traffic Machine and TweepMe. If any of the others appear, please let me know via email or in the comments, including a screenshot where possible. Thanks!
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Great article Sheamus. I too am tired of the “systems” and bots that are making Twitter less enjoyable than it was when I first started using it a year ago. Actually, I look at the profile pages of all of my new followers and if I see that they are promoting these tactics, I not only will not follow them, I block them.
I must however, take exception with your generalized definition of “internet marketers”, particularly your statement that “more often than not when somebody promotes themselves under that title, their methods and intentions are not always entirely above-board”.
Just like any other industry or trade, yes, there are some bad apples, but I assure you and your readers, they are the MINORITY in the internet marketing industry.
Legitimate internet marketers are as fed up with what’s happening on Twitter as you are. A couple of examples, @MichelFortin’s recent article, “Tweet Fearlessly, Block Ruthlessly” http://www.michelfortin.com/tweet-fearlessly-block-ruthlessly/ and @imsweetie’s (Alice Seba) “Internet Marketers Stinking up Twitter?” http://www.internetmarketingsweetie.com/blog/twitter-stink
If you read the comments on those 2 posts, you’ll find that the large majority the people making them, who are themselves internet marketers, want to see an end to the ‘bad apple’ Twitter tactics as much as you do.
Sharon McPherson
@SharonMcP
Fair comment, Sharon. I don’t like it when others make sweeping generalisations and try to avoid it myself – I’ve gone back and edited the prose of that paragraph. Thanks for your comment.
I really enjoyed this article and I thought you brought out good points. The connections that you make are important to keeping your following base. You’ve done that and I think it’s the only way to have success on Twitter. It’s a constant conversation where you must at least engage with those that follow you or else you will lose them.
Theo’s last blog post..Episode 11 part 2 of 2
Absolutely Theo. I think over the next year or so new technologies will assist us in seeing the relative worth of our network on Twitter, inasmuch as how often we engage with (and are engaged by) these folk, as opposed to the largely useless social media barometer of ‘those with the most followers wins’. That’s nonsense, and always has been.
Great article.
What is now happening on Twitter is they are focusing more on follower churn to flag spammers, resulting in suspended and deleted accounts. The relatively new 1,000 follower/day absolute limit makes this situation even worse as you need to pump & dump even faster. The flagged accounts are dropped and a new one is made, easily. This is why Nielson reported such low user retention rates.
Twitter is getting more aggressive to weed out spam and what used to take days to flag/suspend now takes less than 24 hrs in most cases. Twitter’s chief scientist is on top of this in a big way and that guy isn’t stupid.
This blog has become a must-read for me. Keep up the good work!
I’ll do my best, Chris – thanks for the great comment.
Twitter are definitely much better at removing spam accounts than they used to be. I get quite a few each day and as you say they’re nearly always gone within about 24 hours – sometimes faster. I also know from my own experience how many normal accounts are inactive by month’s end and it does make you wonder how many truly active users the network has – my guess is significantly less than the numbers being touted around. Possibly as low as a few million.
Shea,
Excellent! I’ve shared this with My Twitter for Internet Marketers Group on Sta.rtUp.Biz over 1000 members.
http://sta.rtup.biz/group/twitter/forum/topics/internet-marketer-system-scams
I hope you’ll have the time to read it!
Mike http://www.twitter.com/mike1mb
Thanks Mike. Much obliged, and I’ll be sure to check it out.
Do I really have to say it? Excellent, eye opening article. I loved the fact that you mentioned names and websites to simply let people know that they need to stay away from these scams.
The interesting part is that when I started using Twitter a couple of months ago, I wanted a lot of followers (for unknown reasons). I used other websites that do the same thing for free, however, I reached over 2,000 followers and could not figure out why. I did not know any of these folks, nor did I care about what they where trying to sell me. It got so annoying that I literally unfollowed every single one, then started following the ones who I hand picked and had a reason to follow.
I agree with you that these guys are trying to make money like the rest of us. However, I HATE being lied to…
Juscelino M. Acevedo’s last blog post..TwtMailer: Get Your @replies Sent Straight To Your Inbox
Indeed – that’s really what it comes down to. Nobody objects to people making money, certainly if you’re providing a good service. But a scam is a scam is a scam. The only difference nowadays is most of them seem to take place online. What’s curious to me is that so many people are really cagey and nervous about financial transactions via the internet, but at the same time loads of folk get caught up in these things, and gladly hand over their money for these ‘systems’, even though they MUST know, on some level, it’s a fantasy. I guess that underlines the true power of ‘get rich quick’.
Thanks for your comment Juscelino.
You are absolutely right and the problem is that people are desperate for fast money. Who can blame them? I’ll tell you a very short story about being scammed.
I saw an ad selling a document for $20 that will teach you how to make a bunch of money. I bought it, and basically the document showed you how to modify and sell that same document for $20 and make money. I have to admit, that is clever, but pissed me the !@#$ off. Needless to say, I did not participate in such shenanigans and took the loss.
In my defense, this was years ago before I was the internet genius that I am today…and stop laughing at me…
Juscelino M. Acevedo’s last blog post..Free WiFi Via Your High Speed Internet Provider
Great article, giving very valuable advice – have retweeted the update that led me to it.
I’ve just received a tweet from someone proudly telling me he’s used one of these systems to net himself a massive… 50 followers.
Very nice – but you can get a whole lot more than that by simply using Twitter properly.
Aislinn O’Connor’s last blog post..Anxiety Attacks: Survival Guide
Absolutely. Problem is… that takes effort.
Thanks for your comment Aislinn!
I am slightly confused about the exact details of the scam. You made valid general points but what about the details. The tools are not mentioned much. Are these tools real that they are discussing? To write this article with authority did you invest a few dollars to ensure your opinion had integrity so you could speak from experience? Don’t get me wrong I am certain that you are correct and I doubt that anyone except the person selling it will make money. And most scams have some truth in them that is what makes it an effective scam. I am just interested in understand what is true and what is false. Do the tools actually get people to follow? And if they are FREE you would think someone would just list them somewhere the second they found out it really doesn’t do what they were told. Like here you go this does not work here are the tools go prove it to yourself and keep your money.
Hi Jeff
No, I didn’t waste my money on these products – I don’t need to do this to know they do not work, much like I wouldn’t need to spend money on a psychic reading, or a system that promises success with the national lottery, or a product sold in my local newspaper that “guarantees £500-1000 per week working from home, part-time” to know that these products don’t work, either.
As I stated, the evidence is there if you wish to look – I’ve yet to find a single person who isn’t involved in some way in the promotion of these items who boasts a positive follow-to-follower ratio. It’s typically very inversely proportional. Moreover, as I wrote, even the folk behind the systems don’t have a ratio that is impressive in the least. Loads of people on Twitter have managed to recruit an army of followers by mass-following thousands of others (or did, before Twitter put a cap on it) – none of these have a ‘targeted’ audience, either. The only ones that really do are those who were followed organically – and this includes celebrities, who probably have the most targeted audience of anyone, certainly when it comes to link clicks.
Since writing this article, I’ve been approached by several people on Twitter who have stated that either they or a direct contact has used one of these systems and received negligible benefit. As Aislinn says above, one boasted they’d “gained over 50 followers”, which made me chuckle, as this is something of course that anybody who is even remotely active on the Twitter network can do with ease in a couple of days, simply by being there.
The reason why you cannot give these systems away for free is there is a tool behind them that automates the procedure and ‘does the work for you’ – that’s essentially what you’re paying for. It’s the concept behind the system where the issue lies; suggesting that mass-following on Twitter produces ‘targeted results’. It’s nonsense. Nowhere in life does massive, one-way recruitment produce a targeted audience. It produces an audience, sure, but almost all of them will be looking the other way (98%, if Bill Crosby’s stats are to be believed).
You are, of course, like anybody else, free to part with your own money and test these systems out for yourself. I’m sure if you had enormous success and could document it scientifically and without flaw, you could go on to re-sell these products and probably make a bundle of cash.
Meantime, I’d rather go with a combination of my own common sense and gut feeling – and preserve the contents of my wallet.
Cheers,
Sheamus
What I don’t get is why Bill Crosby is still allowed to be on twitter. I asked this question to @ev and @biz yesterday (no response yet). Cut the snake off at the head and the minions would quickly realize the system is a hack job!
When I was trying to figure out if the “Twitter Traffic Machine” was a full blown scam, or just an annoying marketing ploy, I spent time searching on google. All I could come up with were “reviews” that all turned into the same cookie cutter endorsement and affiliate link. I hope this article gets better page rank so people can figure it out.
I block pretty much anyone that promotes any of the above systems, pretty much without exception. I used to try to tell them why these were bad, but found myself arguing too much with idiots.
Not only do these systems not work to make money, but if they did they would be covered on all the major news sources. Why was the last time you read about one on cnn.com?
I run a parody site for internet marketing on http://www.puppypotpie.com with a corresponding newsletter. I’ve been saying a lot of the things you wrote above in the newsletter, but I am a lot more meaner. I think these people are evil. You can also check out the @SMmonkey account for near daily tips FOR social media marketers.
I’m not a fan of Guy Kawasaki on twitter, but to be even more fair to him, I don’t believe he follows anyone first. He gives back a courtesy follow. He was one of the first people I followed, and also one of the first that I unfollowed (not an alltop fan). He still follows me. I think he’s not only doing things ethically, he’s really not the annoyance. It’s all the people that “retweet” his links.
Anyway, nice article. I still don’t get why twitter hasn’t shut some of these people down. They have others.
Christopher L. Jorgensen’s last blog post..President George W. Bush
Hi Christopher
Great comment. I agree completely about Guy – he’s been very honest about his approach to Twitter and it’s hard to fault somebody who does that.
I also find it strange that Twitter leaves these system sellers alone. They suspended TweepMe for a while but then reinstated them, and seem to turn a blind eye to Twitter Traffic Machine and all that other garbage. Very strange. They’re oddly tolerant of a lot of this kind of thing. I really think by the end of this year they will need a much bigger support team – they must be getting totally overwhelmed with requests. And Lord only knows how many ‘systems’ will be in play by then.
Appreciate your thoughts,
Sheamus
I am 16, and the coder of the script. The system uses twitter’s api components, which most twitter related sites use. My system posts 1 update per login, and does get you followers. The logins are not stored, unlike mytweetfollowers.com, tweeteradder.com, and many others. Phishing is against the law, and I will not be involved in it. The system is still in beta stages, but is almost 100% complete. If you notice, they train does infact add people up-to 50 riders, then resets the train.
You can ask many users of getmefollowers.com and twittertrain.net that they do get followers, or else why would they come back?
If you’d like to contact me, please email me at contact@lil-matt.com
I think it was John Chow who eventually purged his following list pointing out the pointlessness of following 1000s of people you don’t really know or care for. Twitter is kind of fun but too many people seem to think it is something it is not.
We already have email and RSS which are fantastic tools for communicating and pulling content. The short lifespan of a tweet makes it highly ineffective compared to an email, if I want updates on train times or the latest computer deals I’ll just go to a company website that has that info, if I want to track a website I’ll subscribe to an RSS list.
I have no doubt that tools mentioned above “work” in the sense that you can increase your follower count – but if no one reads or cares about your tweets because they don’t know who you are then what is the value.
I wonder if is of no value whatsoever? And surely less value than an email list or RSS readers where some of the people you connect with might actually see your content!
We are working on a post on the topic of Twitter Scrooges that will publish soon on our site. We have long valued this work from your blog and totally agree with your messages and assessments of these tools. We’ll be linking to the post very soon. Thanks for all your good work!
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I totally agree with all you say!!! You find affiliates promoting these -get rich quick- schemes, or schemes that will get you thousands of followers, but when you check these same peoples profiles on twitter, they usually do not have thousands of followers. There are many people who are following 2000 people, while only having 200 followers!!! I shall be sharing this long article on Twitter and trying to tweet it in such a way so that people will actually READ it, and click on the link. It is a long article, but well-worth the read. Thanks a lot!!!
Hi I have recently signed up to Twitter and have a handful of followers. One guy is tweeting every hour or so and I find that irritating. He is definitely going! I personally have been bitten by a horse betting scam promising easy money for a few minutes work a day. I parted with a $100 – that was about four years ago. I was lucky I nearly got suckered into parting with a lot more and thought better of it. Since then I have been on a suckers mailing list which initially resulted in various offerings arriving on a daily basis. Now it is only every other month or so. They all send glossy brochures and they all promise you easy money following a can't lose system. That is a can't lose system for the parasites that sell these schemes. There is no such thing as a free lunch!