Sphinn - Rich Schefren’s Attention Age Sphinners of Spam

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Rich Schefren’s Attention Age Sphinners of Spam

Posted By: seanmag 341 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://seoroi.com)
Category: Other Online Marketing

Could this guy possibly think that by enlisting 7 or 8 of his lackeys, it's going to go unnoticed by a saavy community of marketers? Note to Mr. Schefren - stick to the cheeseball landing pages buddy. Your gimmicks won't fly here.

15 Comments

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from 5ubliminal 341 days ago #

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I was thinking ... Sphinn this ... do not Sphinn this. I chose not to as I see it's the poster's first submit and I have a funny feeling.
There's a saying: no such thing as bad publicity and this submitter might also be A Friend of Richy Rich submitting an 'against' story. It's like that guys comment that made other hunderds of lamers post on this fraud's page strike back in defense of their GURU!

The problem is, Rich, you can 'spam' me with as many free writings as you wish. I'll never buy your sheet ... even if it's free!

from Gab 341 days ago #

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Uhh, Sean's legit. We know each other from SEOmoz's community. Or perhaps you're one of Rich's lackeys trying to avoid him getting bad press? lol jkjk

Look at Sean's profile, and my own. See what he's commented on and written, and what I've written and commented on.

Sean's profile there is:
http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/51055

My profile there is:
http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/17249

Neither Sean nor I have anything to hide (ask the people at my bank who have access to my balance, for instance - quite the nothingness there! )

Thanks for submitting this Sean! Also, kudos to Michael Gray who quickly emailed me and Sphinn's other staff, then promptly deleted the junk.

from seanmag 341 days ago #

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5ubliminal -

Your comment is awesome! That's just my point. The marketers on Spihnn are way too saavy to pull this kind of crap! I mean, who in the general public would have the foresight to quickly jump to the possible conclusion you did?!

Gab, I'm not sure how you spotted this lame attempt at Spam, but I'm glad you did. I'm also glad the Sphinn folks jumped on it.

from AndyBeard 341 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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I must be some kind of lowlife scum that I wrote a post about Rich's ebook a couple of weeks ago.

Dan Theis who I happen to respect a huge amount must be mad thinking to get an assistant to package up all of Rich's marketing materials for the current launch as a case study for future reference, but as he noted in Rich's comments recently, Rich saved him the job and provided it as a PDF.

Rich might have introduced a lot of new people to Sphinn over tha last 2 weeks because he does have the buttons very prominently on his blog, but there is nothing wrong in cultivating an audience for a social media site.

There are some aspects to Rich's material which might be very familiar to people on Sphinn, but you will definitely benefit from his older material.

I certainly wouldn't say it is Rich's fault that new members tend to submit everything they write, in the same way John Reese could hardy be blamed for there being Blogrush posts written.

As you mentioned SEOmoz, just think, Rich didn't have to take on VC funding to make $8M in sales in the last year selling premium membership content.
People on Sphinn can learn even if it is just the marketing process.

from seanmag 341 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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@ Andy - What the hell does this article have to do with you writing an article? Are you really that self-centered?

I don't recall disparaging either you or Dan Thies - nor does the article do so. Did you even read it?

I often wonder why a person jumps to conclusions that have zero relevance to the topic at hand - which is - a guy that had 8 of his own people register on Sphinn, all linking back to his site, all pushing his material, each with the same title "Business Coaching For Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs".

I think it's great the guy has built a solid business without VC money and I think it would also make a great case study, but I'll stick to my statement that what he was doing here is creating a bunch of Sphinners of Spam. That's his prerogative, but my general sense is that that is not what this site is about, nor is it what the general community wants. It seems the folks at Sphinn agree, as they've removed the offenders.

from seanmag 341 days ago #

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@ Andy - I didn't realize you were a Rich Schefren affilitate before I responded to your comment. Now I understand why you responded the way you did.

from 5ubliminal 341 days ago #

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@Seanmag:
Thanks Sean! I'm INTP (Architect). It's my job to notice :)
I first looked at your submit count and saw just one and that triggered my comment.

I don't like magical money making gurus. It's all about hard work and those who say different lie to you and are after your money giving nothing in return. It's all work and no hype. But the sad thing is this Guru's have so many followers ... it's amazing and unpexplainable to me!

from Jill 341 days ago #

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For the record, if you ever think anyone or bunches of people are sphamming sphinn, if you use the contact form linked from the bottom of every page, they are very quick to evaluate the submissions and remove if they agree it is indeed spham. :) It's actually a lot better than writing about the sphammers and calling more attention to them, imo.

(I didn't see these original ones being discussed so I have no idea if they were legit or not.)

from AndyBeard 341 days ago #

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Sean I wrote an article and someone submitted it to Sphinn - it didn't make the front page, and I didn't really want it to, but it didn't get deleted.
There is no specific reason why my article might remain on Sphinn other than it might have been the first on the launch of the latest ebook, or prior contributions, or because it highlighted something that is a problem with RSS subscribers that is rarely discussed.

Yes I am an affiliate of Rich's, but I don't expect to make any money from it - blog audiences are not as responsive as opt-in, or preferably customer lists from high ticket items. The information ultimately being promoted is valuable, I received it first hand at the conference, but that doesn't necessarily mean the majority of my readers are potential customers.

That doesn't mean they can't benefit from the free information.

Jill I didn't see the original ones either, but just because a particular launch causes a flood of new members to Sphinn, who happen to be excited about a book they read doesn't necessarily mean that it is Rich Schefren somehow ochestrating it.

I actually suggested to him by email a few weeks ago that it would be better to have his content submitted by someone with a more prominent account here on Sphinn because it might take a while to break the ice.

Unfortunately I have been offline for 2 weeks so couldn't help.

Yesterday I discovered that for some reason his domain is blocked, when I went to submit what I feel is very useful information.

Subliminal, nothing Rich teaches suggests that making money doesn't take work. He concentrates on teaching people how to make the best use of their time, organise their businesses etc
If you are making money, he can help you make more
.

from onreact 340 days ago #

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Not sure what to think of it. It's best to concentrate on positive aspects I guess. The bad apples are sorted out by itself sooner or later, esepcially here where basicaly everybody is a pro who isn't easily tricked.

from Gab 340 days ago #

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Andy, you're missing the point. This isn't about people being affiliates, and posting reviews or the like on their site (though a flood of Rich Schefren reviews at this point would have me pretty weary). What happened was that in no time at all, there were a whole bunch of identical submissions, like:

Random GUy | Internet Business and Marketing Coaching

link to strategicprofits.com/randomguy

Random Girl | Internet Business and yada yada
link to strategicprofits.com/randomgirl

@Sean: Good points, but no need to get heated with Andy; he's just making the point Schefren himself may not have orchestrated it (though that's kinda hard to defend when all the links go to your site). I don't think he expressed it clearly though, so I don't blame you... just a miscommunication.

@Jill: Usually, I'd agree. When it comes to a guy like this with plenty of people drinking the kool-aid, I think it's worthwhile to try and rank for his name to try and give people pause if they consider buying his material.

from 5ubliminal 340 days ago #

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@Gab: If you receive his emails (I read a lot of hype emails for entertainment purposes from all the 'GURUs') you will notice that, yes, it's a 99% probability for him to be the one behind this. If you read between the lines you will notice this kind of thinking on his behalf.
Like the guy who posted against him on his blog few days back and everyone charged to defend him, It's hype and I'm not sure that guy is not one of his also just to create the Buzz he needed even if his message was right on.

This guy is like the young businessmen teaching us about business but whose empires were built by their parents or back in the days when there was no competition and now their employees do everything and they preach!

These are the kind of guyz that would go any length to trick people into buying. It's all mind games Gab and always hope for the best but prepare for the worst!

Do not overrate the Sphinn community. I'm no KA (Kiss A$$) and I will go ahead saying some here won't fall for these tricks but most will especially when these cons are endorsed by some high end bloggers (they know who they are) :) And if all his documents are on time management you could buy a book from Amazon... better written and cheaper.

PS: I also don't like that guy's sales-agent-like cunning superior smile saying: I feel you little one but I will make you big! Pay me!.
It's enough to show me his photo to get a strong feeling of rejection towards his persona.

from dannysullivan 340 days ago #

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I won't jump into the reputation debate. I will say that we blocked submissions from the site because we were getting overwhelmed. Apparently, the site had decided it would be cool to use Sphinn as a way for people to vote on 80 different videos, with each video submitted individually. We're not Digg -- that many submissions would have drowned out the variety we think people on Sphinn want. Plus, no one asked us about this beforehand. If there had been one single page where people could vote on the videos, that would have been a non-issue to submit.

from AndyBeard 340 days ago # - show/hide this comment

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From what I can see it is 87 pieces of content created by individual people, and readers to a high traffic blog were asked to vote on the videos they thought were best.

No rules were broken (well unless they were all submitted by the same person), though if asked I might have suggested warning or asking the Sphinn admin in advance.

"Do you want to be promoted to 100,000+ highly targetted online marketers and business people interested in SEO and SEM for free? (note many of these are affluent warm prospects for high end services)"

Sure it is a few more pieces of content than get submitted from multi-author SEO news blogs on a daily basis. In addition there was an incentive to join Digg and Sphinn to vote, but no incentive to vote on specific content, or to submit all of it.
The content could easily have just been removed from the "What's new listings"

I am disappointed that Sphinn is rejecting a surge in popularity and the possibility to broaden its reach to other areas of online marketing.

We discussed market segmentation back in July - Sphinn no longer has a beta badge, and has an online marketing category.

from 5ubliminal 340 days ago #

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If he wants to vote for videos he should have his followers vote on his site. His people can code a voting script ... huh? I'll give him one free if he can't afford it!
You don't use the neighbour's cr4pper if you feel you got a big one coming so you don't block yours. Well done Danny. Hit'em hard :) To vote for videos I go to UTube.

@Andy: You sold your soul to that guy completely? You two related? He gives you special commisions. We're not blind, we're not stupid ... lay back, lay low and save face!

Cheers!