Mark Warren Websites: Part I
Based on the hits I’ve been getting on Danny’s Scam Review and comments and questions regarding the Ultimate Wealth Package I finally decided to review the product. Interesting, when I do a Google search on “ultimate wealth package” I find result after result of websites telling me how wonderful the product is. Of course none of them actually reviewed the product properly which of course led me to believe that they were essentially doing the same thing as Danny’s Scam Review – trying to make money of the affiliate links they had at the bottom of their web pages. Therefore, I decided to pay Ultimate Wealth Package a visit, however, when I got to the website I saw this box floating towards the middle of the page telling me about receiving a free money making website.
Knowing off the bat that this was a bunch of baloney, I decided to try it out. Notice in the screenshot above that it tells me to enter my name and email address to receive my free website – “You will receive your website in the next five minutes”.
If I am not mistaken, this means that they will email me the link to my free website. I am not sure how they could do this since all they have is my email address and name. How could they possible give me a website based on that information alone? Well, after clicking on the “Yes Give Me the Free…” button this came up:
The first box told me that I would receive my website in five minutes. Now after entering my information it tells me that I will “instantly receive access to claim” my free website. I know I am nitpicking but it did say that they would send me my website and now it says that I should click on the confirmation link to receive access to claim my website. Sounds exactly like one of those “You’ve won a free Ipod – click here to claim your prize” banner ad that when clicked on takes you to some sort of subscription page or something that never really gives you an Ipod in the end. This is the same idea. Here is the email I received from them with the “confirmation” link:
Notice how the confirmation link is just a link to markwarrenwebsites.com. I had to enter my name and email address just to get a link to another website. What a sham!! Where’s the confirmation link? You could go to this website without the stupid email sign up.
Just in case people don’t realize this from the beginning, if anyone lies to you in the process of “helping” you make money they are not to be trusted. Its that simple!
So I follow the link and I end up back at the beginning of the process.
Do you want a money making website but don’t know how to build one or where to start… I have a solution. My team of professional website designers will build and upload a cash pulling website worth $1097 - for free - and you can start making money in the next 3 hours …
Didn’t I just sign up for this “free” website? Yet later at the bottom of the page it again asks for my name and email address. Obviously there’s some serious scamming going on here.
As I scroll down the page I see this right away:
Notice: This is a very limited offer, I will have to pull this offer very soon as demand is very high for these websites. Please act fast if you want to get your free money making website. Let’s get started…
Special Notice: We will be ending this promotion very soon and once all the free websites are gone they’re gone for good…
This is a classic and unfortunately successful marketing tactic. Telling people that if they don’t order now they will miss out almost always gets people to make a quick decision. These special offer tactics are used by all dishonest companies when they want to sell a product faster. Robert Cialdini, in his phenomenal book titled “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” refers to this marketing technique as the “Scarcity Scam”.
He writes:
“Something that, on its own merits, held little appeal for me had become decidedly more attractive merely because it would soon become unavailable.[page 238]
“Probably the most straightforward use of the scarcity principle occurs in the “limited-number” tactic, when the customer is informed that a certain product is in short supply that cannot be guaranteed to last long” [page 239]
“Customers are often told that unless they make an immediate decision to buy, they will have to purchase the item at a higher price or they will be unable to purchase at all.[page 243] It is to keep the prospects from taking the time to think the deal over by scaring them into believing they can’t have it later, which makes them want it now.”[page 244] (1)
It is this exact tactic that markwarrenwebsites.com uses to get people to sign up for these packages. Unfortunately, people are biting.
————————–
(1) Cialdini, Robert B. “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” (New York: William Morrow, 1993) 238-244
Next in the series: Mark Warren Websites: Part II » « Read the whole series: 1,2,3,4 »
Posted: February 1st, 2007 under Waste of Time and Money.
Comments: 19
Comments
Pingback from ROMMO.net » Mark Warren Websites Review Part II
Time: February 5, 2007, 10:44 pm
[…] Mark Warren Websites Review Part I […]
Pingback from ROMMO.net » How Mark Warren and The Ultimate Wealth Package Makes Money
Time: February 8, 2007, 7:44 pm
[…] Mark Warren Websites Review Part I […]
Comment from jamesbond
Time: April 12, 2007, 7:19 pm
HI all,
This is franklin,
I gone through this website. It is dealing with how to make Business opportunities. This is very interesting and useful to the Business magnets.Can find every business opportunity which can yield benefits. Since we review business opportunities for a living which ones work and which ones don’t. We have a site which deals with the same category ultimate wealth package
Comment from someone who hates mark
Time: April 21, 2007, 1:24 pm
On October 10 of 2006, I started working for Mark Jenney doing dedicated
support for his Internet affiliate marketing program. He subsequently
hired 3 more techs to support his system. We were hired to answer
incoming phone calls and also answer email via a ticket support system
in order to keep the customers of his program happy.
How Mark Jenney Makes Money
—
The Free Website:
Mark Jenney uses the alias Mark Warren on the Internet. He has a
website at www.markwarrenwebsites.com that allows people to sign up for
a free website which allows them to advertise affiliate products and
promote the site for profit. Mark offers a Getting Started Guide which
shows his customers step-by-step how to configure their free website to
allow the pre-configured affiliate products to deposit funds into their
own account, the money of which gets sent to the customer twice a month
in the form of a check. Along with the guide, he offers our tech
support for troubles with the website the customers might have, or to
answer questions about how the system works. All of this is free when
the customer joins the promotion by paying for webhosting through
midPhase, Mark’s affiliated hosting company. When the customer signs up
for a hosting plan, midPhase sends to our support department the domain
name and FTP login information so that we can upload the website for the
them. Then we reply with an email giving them instructions on how to
log in to our Website Admin at www.youraffiliatesite.com to customize
their website and read the Getting Started Guide so they can get the
site to generate money for them.
The site poses as a review site, insisting to the visitor that the owner
has done so much research and has worked so hard to find the best
programs on the Internet, and the site displays the top 3. Mark’s
customers can choose whichever 3 products they like best to promote, so
long as they are ClickBank products.
ClickBank Products:
Mark helps people make money by involving them with a company named
ClickBank. They are a payment processor for intangible items for sale
online, and they have a referral system built into their processing
software. Their clients sign up to obtain their services as a merchant
account, so customers can enter their credit card information on a
payment page dedicated to the client. ClickBank then deposits the sale
amount, less processing fees, into their client’s account, to be paid by
check twice a month. ClickBank also allows people to sign up to become
an affiliate. This gives them the ability to direct Internet traffic to
a participating client’s sale page via a tracking system that credits
the sale as being generated by them. The participating client who made
a sale because of the affiliate has a pre-defined commission rate the
affiliate will earn from the sale. ClickBank pays affiliates in the
same time and fasion as their clients. Affiliates can choose whichever
participating clients they wish to promote. ClickBank furnishes them
with the HTML links they need to direct Web traffic to any participating
client’s sale page.
The default ClickBank sale items on the free website
(ultimatewealthpackage.com, therichjerk.com, forexenterprise.com) earn
the affiliate 75% commission. These products are ebooks detailing
methods of making money on the Internet. Costing $49.95 each, the
affiliate commission ends up being $33.90 after fees. Mark owns these
ebooks.
The Advertisement for the Free Website:
Mark advertises the free websites within these packages as a way of
putting the proposed money-making ideas to practice. Specifically, the
ideas are: referring sales to affiliate products, advertising with Yahoo
Search Marketing and Google AdWords, as well as using Google’s AdSense
campaign, plus the idea of reselling the same kind of site to another
interested person on the Web. His ebooks and guides specify links the
reader can use to get a free website and free credit toward traffic from
Yahoo and Google. These links are his affiliate links, which sign the
user up for the service but credit a portion of the money they spend to
the affiliate, in this case Mark. This gives Mark the incentive he
needs to convince his customers that they need to dump money into his
affiliated search engines in order for their free site to be successful.
He details the process step-by-step for his customers in their Getting
Started Guide, which can be viewed at www.yourgettingstartedguide.com.
The Getting Started Guide:
The guide details instructions on setting up pay-per-click ads through
Yahoo’s Search Marketing program. It gives his Yahoo affiliate link for
signup. Then it suggests to the customer that they should set their
daily advertising budget to $25 per day, which would end up charging the
customer $750 to their credit card to cover advertising for the month.
The guide says that the amount the customer spends on advertising is up
to them, but encourages high amounts, like $100 per day. It says that
you should spend $100 per day if you really want to make a lot of money,
but that statement does not insinuate any guarantee. Furthermore, the
instructions ask the customer to bid on keywords that cost more than $1
to promote with any level of success in attracting visitors. If that
amount is to paid per visitor, the customer will always be spending more
on advertising than they will be earning in affiliate sales. It would
take discernment on the part of the customer to realize this, but Mark’s
information packages sold through ClickBank are marketed to people who
have no background in computers or the Internet. If he insists that it
doesn’t take any background knowledge to use the information in his
packages to earn money, and he markets this package to people like that,
it would be generally understood that following the directions he gives
exactly as he gives them would be all that is necessary for success.
This cannot be true since at $1 per visitor, the customer would have to
have a 3% success rate to break even, and that’s not considering the
visitors who cost more than $1. The guide allows the possibility of
paying up to $2 per visitor (6% success rate required for break-even).
This shows that Mark is indeed trying to get his customers to dump money
into the search engine through his referral link knowing that their
success is not likely.
Further Shadiness:
Mark Warren hired me to support the following endeavors:
markwarrenwebsites.com
nickmarkswebsites.com
dataentrybankwebsites.com
typeathomewebsites.com
legitonlinejobswebsites.com
mintjobswebsites.com
pluginprofitsite.com
dataentrybankwebsites.com
ewenchiawebsites.com
internetprofitopportunitieswebsites.com
Each of these sites offers a free website when you purchase webhosting
through an affiliated webhost. They each have Mark’s support phone
number at the top of the page. There are 2 types of free websites: Nick
Marks style websites and Mark Warren style websites. Nick Marks’ sites
offer ebooks for sale through PayPal, and Mark Warren’s sites offer
ClickBank products. On both types there exists a banner that says “Free
$299 Money Making Website” banner which leads to the above mentioned
“websites” websites, respective of the origin of the customer who owns
the site.
Here is an example of a Nick Marks style website:
http://www.moneywhileyousleep.biz/index.php
Here’s an example of a Mark Warren style website:
http://www.affiliatesupportsite.com/index.php
Notice the “Free $299 Money Making Website” banner on the Mark Warren
style site. It looks like a Nick Marks style website in the banner.
This plus the fact that both kinds of websitesite are similar in style
and content makes it evident that Mark Warren’s websites and Nick Marks’
websites are part of the same endeavor. The websites are created by
collecting images of fancy houses, boats, cars, and stacks of cash, and
putting them all together in a package that convinces people who don’t
do their research to purhcase the ebook package, which supposedly made
the site owner very wealthy.
Each of the websites above has our support phone number at the top, so
no matter whether the customer wants to make money with Ewen Chia or
Nick Marks or Mark Warren, Mark Jenney hired me to support that
customer. These packages that advertise the free website are either
partners with Mark or Mark himself. Either way, Mark is paying for the
support, so he’s making money from each of the “Free Website” websites.
The Packages Offered:
Each of the above websites has a main page which offers a package
detailing some sort of online money making opportunity, which promises
the customer that they will either make lots of money or find a definite
way of making money online. Some of these packages give information on
how to be successful with a sales website, and others show people how to
get a job doing data entry or typing surveys for pay. Each package
delivers what it promises. The information the customers pay for is
included in the package they purchase. However, the first item that
greets the customer’s line of vision when they look at what they
purchased is an advertisement for the “Free Website” with a link to that
site’s free website signup page.
Customer Satisfaction:
Over 50% of our calls and emails are from unsatisfied customers of any
one of these endeavors. These people are either unstaisfied with the
package they bought or the free website they signed up for. Most
package customers do not realize that to get the information they were
looking for, all they needed to do was skip a few pages after the “Free
Website” advertisement. Support reps can explain this to the customer
to diffuse the situation, but more people are upset about the fact that
Mark doesn’t mention that the Free Website is optional and has nothing
to do with getting a data entry job or getting paid to fill out surveys.
Other Endeavors:
Mark has many other ways to take money from people. The Ultimate Wealth
Package has an advertisement for an Internet Guru, a mentor who will
literally force the customer to start making money online. The sales
people who contact interested customers have been known to get anywhere
from $3,000 to $7,000 from each customer. Many people call our number
because it is the only phone number they’ve been given for any of Mark’s
endeavors, and tell us they haven’t gotten any information on the
Mentoring program after making the purchase. Here’s the link:
http://www.ultimatewealthpackage.com/mentor.html
Another way people are being scammed is by Mark contacting them asking
them if they’d like to write fictitious testimonials for the Ultimate
Wealth Package. There was a specific incident where Mark called a lady
asking for $7,000 in order to join this particular program. She then
called our toll-free number and asked about our knowledge of the fake
testimonial program. While she was on the phone with us, Mark’s
associates called her more than once interrupting the call to ask for
the $7,000.
There was another incident where a Nick Marks enterprise,
www.wholesaleplaystation.com, offered customers a free virtual store
where they could sell products they purchase wholesale at retail prices,
without having any involvement with the tangible products. The site
offered an e-book that told people how to do this, and the website
itself offered the free virtual store. When a customer made this
purchase, he found that the link to get started with his free virtual
store was a broken link, as www.vstore.com is down and still is after a
few weeks. The customer and I both submitted questions to the support
department at www.marksenterprise.com but neither of us ever got a
response. Even if Mark Warren isn’t directly linked with Nick’s “Marks
Enterprise” we know they are associated and this reflects on Mark’s
credibility.
Recently, due to an error in the ticket system programming, we started
getting carbon copied every time the payment processor refunded
customers of a package at paidsurveyprogram.com. We also get a copy of
the receipts when people make that purchase, and the refund
notifications are almost as prevalent as the sales orders. The members
have access to a database of paid survey programs at
http://www.paidsurveyprogram.com/membersdatabase1.html which turns out
is simply a list of opt-in spammers. When people follow his directions
to submit their details, they sign themselves up under various marketing
campaigns, none of which pay the customer anything but flood their email
and physical mail boxes up with junk.
More On Mark’s Credibility:
The Website Admin control panel that our customers have access to
supports either Nick Marks style or Mark Warren style websites.
Customers of both endeavors call our hotline for support. Plus the
registrants for nickmarkswebsites.com and markwarrenwebsites.com and all
the domains mentioned so far are Mark Jenney or someone directly
employed by him. This shows that Mark Jenney can be held responsible
for any shadiness on the part of any one of the endeavors mentioned in
this document. The registrant information is available at
http://who.godaddy.com.
Comment from Ari
Time: June 11, 2007, 3:03 pm
someone who hates mark,
Wow! you sure wrote a lot. My goodness. This is definitely something I should feature in a post. thanks for the info.
Pingback from » Different Ways To Make Money Online : ROMMO.net
Time: June 11, 2007, 7:59 pm
[…] Examples: bogus scam reviews, “This product works!!” (Danny’s Scam Review), “How to get rich fast!”, “Sign up with this hosting provider and get product x for free (Mark Warren websites) […]
Pingback from How to make easy money - Bohemia Bunny
Time: September 11, 2007, 10:50 am
[…] Further research soon yielded the truth. This site exposes the money-making mechanism in a series of articles (first one here), and contains comments from those who have been dissatisfied with their experience. If that’s not objective enough, there’s still the Ripoff Report. While such information is subjective and not rated by a neutral third-party, the fact that such negative experiences exist is enough warning for me. […]
Comment from hiutopor
Time: September 18, 2007, 3:19 am
Hi all!
Very interesting information! Thanks!
G’night
Comment from fooled
Time: September 18, 2007, 6:51 pm
I am trying to get my refunds right now.
Here are some phone numbers for those in need.
Midphase (866)643-7427
They tell you that you may cancel online with the user ID and password they emailed you. Funny, my password didn’t work - why? Because the password they emailed me wasn’t the same as they had in customer service! What a nice trick! This way the online cancellation will never work right! Don’t let me fail to mention that the first customer service tech just plain hung up on me! Yes, they keep $21.95 of your money.
Mark Warren - Ultimate Wealth Package
(866) 375-0770
On hold for 21 minutes just to get a recording to leave a message.
ClickBank (208)427-9500
Comment from Salla
Time: September 20, 2007, 9:35 am
Thank you for providing this service. I too have just requested my first Mark Warren refund after finding that too many things just didn’t add up. I was being left high for dry so many times- I was confused about what exactly I was to do- despite promises that it was easy with no technical knowledge needed. I emailed three times and got fobbed off by a support staff who never answered my questions but just seemed to cut and paste from their webpage. I emailed them that I found it ironic that I was reading their manuals about how important it was to keep customers and always be available- and they were constantly fobbing me off. As for the dodgy upsell…well! Does anyone know about the Robert G. Allen Usana home business? I have been in the initial stage of joining (no money down yet) but after this has happened with Ultimate Wealth Package I have been feeling concerned.
Comment from Foxglove Neighbor
Time: September 21, 2007, 3:12 pm
C’mon people! This guy is just a wannabe from Barberton who used to sell fake sports memorabilia on ebay! He’s graduated to big-time scams and now lives in a million-dollar, 5100 square-foot home in my neighborhood! He’s stealing your money and you don’t even see it’s a scam!
Go to: http://www.auditor.co.stark.oh.us/AccuGlobe/iView.asp
and search using parcel #: 1617085
Click on “MAP” and you’ll see a photo of what you bought him!
I hope you enjoy your “investment” in a quick money making “opportunity”.
John
Comment from Salla
Time: September 24, 2007, 2:42 am
I got my refund from Clickbank- they were fantastic. Mark Warren hasn’t realised I have applied to them and he has finally responded to me in person when I said I wanted to leave and tried to convince me to read his manuals - all of which I had read and expressed that to him in the three emails I had sent him prior. How funny is he?
Comment from Truth B Told
Time: September 26, 2007, 2:00 am
Please tell me why you want to do “business” with a person who was convicted of:
DRUG ABUSE MARIJUANA
SPEED 80 IN 55 ZONE
OPEN CONTAINER DRIVING
SUSPENDED DL
EXPIRED DL
ASSURE CLR DIST
PLATE VIOLATIONS
DRIVE UNDER SUSPENSION
TINTED WINDOWS
NO LICENSE PLATES
LIC PLATE LIGHT MODIFIED
Plus numerous other violations. I haven’t even included the many civil suits in the thousands of dollars. One example:
Plaintiff 1: Cardservice International, Inc
Defendant 1: Jenney, Mark Warren
Filing Date: 05/19/2006
Cause of Action: MONEY
Residing Judge: MLW
Claim Amount: 5004.99
The drug user has proven that he has no character. He has developed a scheme to rip off hundreds of people and provide a fancy lifestyle for himself. I believe that what goes around - comes around. It’s time for Mark Warren Jenney’s to “come around”. Wake up people!
BTW: The above is all PUBLIC information and can be quickly and easily found here:
http://www.sccjis.co.summit.oh.us/Search.aspx
Enter last name: Jenney
Enter first name: Mark
Check box: All Agencies
Check box: All Case Types
and search…
Give yourself an hour or two to read all about Mr. Get-Rich-Quick-Scammer.
Comment from Ari
Time: October 1, 2007, 4:41 pm
Wow thats some research. I followed your link. Very interesting.
Comment from briem
Time: February 13, 2008, 4:36 am
i too have problems with mark bought it and after a week they where gone didn’t help with anything
Pingback from Are The Work At Home Millionaire and Stay Home System By Mark Warren scams? « Guru Crusher
Time: February 26, 2008, 1:59 am
[…] Well, this is starting to make me mad. I mean seriously, the only person making money is Mark Warren himself. If you don’t believe me, read this post by Rommo.net, who actually goes into depth about the whole “money making website” sham in depth. You’ll see that Mark Warren isn’t making money using his own techniques, he’s making money these 5 ways: […]
Comment from thomas
Time: March 30, 2008, 9:21 pm
I was taken in by Nick Marks and his monthly magazine.
Firstly, the material was puerile and freely available on the
internet. I tried to cancel, but my email was bounced back 14 times. The second monthly charge was made to my credit card.
The only way I was able to stop him was to cancel the credit card. My bankers considered his activity or style of business activity FRAUDELENT. I now would not buy cigarettes from Nicks Marks, Sebastian Foss or Mark Warren, even if I was an addicted smoker and they had the only supplies of cigarettes on the planet.
Remember the old dictum BUYER BEWARE
In the case of Nick marks, I do believe that he lives in an apartment in Torrance California
Comment from gwen
Time: April 17, 2008, 8:30 pm
Boy Oh Boy! I wish I had come to this website back in Sept 07 when I signed up for the “free website” offered by Mark Warren!
I got taken for $129.99 (pennys compared to others) and was not able to get it back due to time restrictions. By the time I “woke up” and realized that I’d been scammed, the time limit for a refund had expired (apprx 60dys had lapsed).
IF ONLY I had seen the posting from “someone who Hates Mark” dated April 21st, 2007, 1:24pm, I would never had gotten taken in by this evil man.
I too believe that people like Mark will eventually get what’s coming to them for having scammed so many people.
Now, what is a poor sap like me to do? I got this “One Year” subscription (sept 07 - sept 08) with MidPhase and no money to build a website. The website I had with “yoursiteadmin.com” is STILL LIVE. But, I kept emailing this site to cancel my subscription with them untill they finally did. Dummy me should have erased everything on this website before cancelling. Even though I’ve moved on in a new direction that shows lots of promise, I need to get this resolved.
I’d love to hear from the individual who posted on April 21,07 and get their suggestion. Or, from anyone else whose been in the same predicament and found a way to resolve the issue. TY.
Comment from james greenwood
Time: April 22, 2008, 12:19 pm
I dont find the service to good, if you have a better way i would be happy to hear from you
James
Write a comment