Fake Steve Jobs is an internet phenomenen and now we have fake Jerry Yang which I am sure will be a huge success, and add valuable perspective to the internet tech news scene.
John Cow was a revelation, a wonderful parody of the (in)famous John Chow, and the legend continues with new owners of the parody site maybe providing better quality content than the original, and in a heated competition with Garry Conn.
I have known who the new “John Cow” is almost from the start, it was fairly easy for someone on a fair number of email lists to work out, and that is why they have managed to leverage so many great prizes. These are just the “top 10″.
- A FREE copy of David Cavanagh 52 Week “Getting Started On The Internet†Program – includes 52 weeks of live conference calls, 1 on 1 coaching and membership site. Also includes 4 day live workshop in Pattaya Beach Thailand ($9,997 Value)
- A FREE copy of Ultimate A-to-Z Information Marketing Brain-in-a-Box from Yanik Silver ($3,000 Value)
- A FREE copy of Dominiche (Ed Dale & StomperNet) — The Art Of Buying & Selling Websites(Electronic version) — ($1,500 value)
- A FREE copy of the StomperNet Home Study Course – 15 DVDs ($1,997 value)
- A FREE copy of Ryan Deiss’ Wholesale Traffic System ($1,997 value)
- A FREE copy of Eben Pagan’s Altitude Home Study Course ($2,497 value)
- A FREE copy of Jeff Mulligan’s QuickieProfits, one year membership ($359 value)
- A FREE copy of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 2.0 ($1,997 value)
- A FREE copy of Frank Kern’s Mass Control ($2,497 value)
- A FREE copy of Jeff Johnson’s Underground Training Lab, 60-day membership ($997+ value)
Unfortunately some internet marketers have their own “perspective” on fake, using it purely for SEO purposes.
Fake Alex Goad
I know Alex Goad, he has been a subscriber and commenter on this blog for 18 months, and whilst he teaches various methods of SEO for affiliate marketing, I don’t think anything he has taught has ever been what I would class as deliberately “deceptive”.
I can understand the incentive to optimize a site for Alex’s name as well as his product name (Four Tier Annihilation Method), you might gain a small amount of additional traffic, but doing so in a manner that might be looked on as a deliberate case of identity theft is pushing the boundaries a little too far.
Fake Craig Beckta
I am less familiar with Craig, but he is a successful affiliate marketer using many of the tactics that Alex has previously taught.
One thing that Craig on his launch did was approach affiliate partners early – weeks in advance along with plenty of product information, mail outs, and plenty of creative graphics.
This does however present a problem with so many more affiliates looking to somehow improve their search rankings for anything to do with Craig and his Secret Affiliate Code (launches June 19th at 12:00 Noon Est), and it seems the same person has decided to optimize a site for Craig’s name as well.
It looks like our Alex/Craig is using an ADSL connection with variable IP address, but I am 99.9% certain it is the same guy.
Notice that he has made 2 comments on the same post pretending to be 2 different people.
Parody is great, I don’t like identity theft
There are certainly some parallels with the shill comments in the Vlad vs ePerks lawsuit
18 Comments
There’s another fake to John Chow… It’s though themed ‘The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Entertainment Mogul’ Check out johnhow.com :)
Ajith
Here is a Funny parody of Michael Arrington aka Captain Crunch http://www.igorthetroll.com/images/michael-arrington-captain-crunch.jpg
This is just a birth of the Meme. I hope Arrington is wise enough to figure it out!
I’m afraid some people have trouble knowing the difference between a “fake” someone and identity theft.
You see a lot of obvious fakes like Fake Ballmer and Not Kevin Rose. (I’ve even seen someone call himself Andy Beal, but that’s another story)
I think there are too many “fake” someone out there already. Every 4th comment on TechCrunch is from some “fake” guy.
Identity theft is a completely different thing, but I think we people see so many “fake” ones the line between identity theft and parody becomes thinner.
Perhaps I should sign all my comments from now on with Real Dennis Bjørn Petersen or Is Dennis Bjørn Petersen.
Dennis if the person commenting had used terms such as “Alex Goad Review” or “Fake Alex Goad”, I might have still flagged it as spam based upon the lack of real content on the sites, being purely a thin affiliate presell.
In this case the name, email address and domain were all intended to deceive, as well as for SEO benefit.
These aren’t competitive terms (though some might argue they should be, they get search traffic), I used to rank near the top of the first page of Google for Alex Goad, just based on a comment he left on this blog.
Did someone say ePerks or eJerks http://www.ejerks.com/
It’s a strange day in IM when people start spamming your name…
It’s the manifestation of online anonimity and ruthlessness that is still the mark of the net. Many don’t stop to think. People become keywords, subscribers and sales numbers and collateral dammage is rarely factored into the equation.
Onward.
Andy, you are right.
It was me and I apologize deeply for it too. At first I did not think it would do any harm, but, you opened my eyes here a bit.
It put me into deep shame..
It is unethical and not asked for. I apologize to both gentleman but want to make clear it was to gain SERPs and not to be taking their identity.
Caught by the nuts so to speak.
I realize this is not done and, will refrain from such practise.
No worries
The winners are the ones who push the boundaries, but at the same time you need to be careful of which boundaries you push… and where.
The best way to grab juice from my blog is to have a personal blog which you use for links from comments, and then from there you always have the option to use a sacrificial linking structure to channel juice where you want it to go.
Hey,
This is very cool :) Guy comes back and makes good… I’m almost going to have to bump up my faith in humanity a notch :P
Hey,
Thanks for fessing up.
Craig Beckta
Andy,
This is an awesome way to get genuine SEO attention to your own blog. You now have great page one rankings for both real authors.
Good stuff!
James
I wish someone would try to become the Fake Cardiogirl. Any takers?
After a\reading all the post, i was not expecting Alex/Craig but am amazed to see their comments again here in this post. Andy you have a tight eye on comments which is a difficult task itself. Truly, on my own blogs, I don’t check comments in that way until comment would have a lot of links inside.
Very interesting situation, even more interesting that he came back to make ammeends….good stuff!!
Andy
Thanks for showing the correct way and the wrong way of riding successful coat tails of others. This was a well written display of both.
As a Player with Money member I communicate periodically with both Alex Goad and Craig Beckta and have respect for both gentlemen.
There is a tremendous style to this post displayed that ties in great information: SEO linking strategy, common internet problem of identity mis-representation (theft), tough love, respect for others, great avice and affiliate links.
I’ll have to frequent your site more often.
Cheers!
Hello Andy, Alex, And Craig…
Interesting stuff happening…
I’m not sure, but maybe his name is Alex :P
That wouldn’t be stealing. Thought that was not the case and it was clearly made for increasing rankings, it’s still funny that he could have had that name.
Like I think it’s even evil to maybe create a similar domain name, based upon this argument… Dunno.
I think it’s bad to use “Alex Goad” or “Craig Beckta”, but using “Alex” is fine since you do not know his real name…
Just my 2 cents.
/ Chris
But of course, was any of this real? Did Andy just make this all up? How can anyone other than those involved ever know?
Thanks for making my brain hurt.
People steal ideas all the time, I often wonder if I took the idea and made it better would it be as big a hit, well the problem is the superstars are branded and it’s allways tough to mimick succes, I read GarryConn daily and he does alot of work with and for me, I would love to copy his site and tactics but that would be wrong, he built it from scratch and it is his, I do take some of ideas but never will I be GaryVonn.com
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[...] been numerous rumors as to who the new John Cow is and a couple have guessed it right such as “Andy Beard†who has one of the better blogs out there in our opinion (next to Johncow.com of [...]