Scott Alan Smith is a Crook!
Edit: Screen shots and proof/explanation of the cookie stuffing Scott has used in the past are present at the bottom of the post.
I have a very strong warning to give to anyone looking for information on Mysterious Fortune Cards through a certain Scott of Cold's Gold Factory. Call it a public service announcement. Yeah, that sounds like it's not a personal vendetta and more like I am trying to protect you. Needless to say, Cold has been on a crusade, no, more like a tirade of late, accusing Mageshadow of stealing content and myself of trying to steal his money. Neither of which are true, but his challenging of the moral direction of the blog has left me with a handful of choices:
1. Work things out with him privately (failed miserably a dozen times).
2. Ignore him completely (tried that already for two months).
3. Expose him for the self centered crook that he is (sounds like fun let's do it).
In all sincerity, I don't enjoy doing this. To attack another person is not something that comes naturally to me and I hope that you see the satirical parallels between this post and the one that Cold put out a few weeks ago. Without his egregious attacks, both in private and public, I would not be going to the extremes of writing this post. In fact, if not for the public ones, you wouldn't even be aware of the situation. Out of self defense against a person who seems intent on attacking not just the site, Mageshadow and myself, but also you, the "Lemmings" as he calls you, I feel that it's in the best interest of JMTC to expose Scott Smith for who he really is.
Scott Smith's Strange Personality
Scott is the very thing he claims others to be. He's a self-centered liar, a person who looks out for no one but himself. One minute you're his best friend and the next his greatest enemy once he has no more use for you.
Money is his only concern. These are steep claims so allow me to elaborate for you.
Scott once asked me why I ran my blogging carnivals and I told him that it was because I wanted to create a community here where all the people interested in gold writing could collaborate, including new and old bloggers alike. I told him that newer bloggers tended to fail before the carnivals because they had trouble being heard and thus they'd quit after a few months. He himself went from 20 subscribers to 500 in just a handful of blog carnival submissions. His response? "That's a load of crap, you're doing it for the money, you want to create sites that can sell your guide." I was shocked by this and the way he said it. First off, on another site he came to my defense and stated that he felt the blogging carnivals were an amazing thing for new blogs such as his own. Back then he made it seem that he felt I was doing it to help new bloggers, but now I realize that he always saw it as a money grab. A money grab that he wanted to participate in.
Later on Scott created his own Carnival, but the goal here was to get himself links and money, not bolster the community. He made it a rule that you had to link to him in your submission, something I never did because I wanted anyone to participate without feeling there was something in it for me. I don't think Scott could create anything without there being something in it for him, which seems to be the case with everything he works on.
Another example of Scott's strange personality, he had a fight with the admins at the JMTC forums because he was spamming his site and putting lots of links in his signature file. He was fighting with Whitewolf because the admins were asking him to stop spamming and he came crying to me in emails that my forum admins were attacking him. He was so angry that he called them quite a few nasty things and blamed them for his actions. "What's the point of talking on this forum if I can't advertise my site?" He asked, and I told him to take it up with them and obey the rules of the forum, so he left and never came back.
Origins of the Card Guide
When Scott asked me for help with getting more subscribers, I told him that he should try Aweber. He said he would do it in exchange for two tweets per week as well as links each month to his blog. I was sort of taken aback. Scott was trying to 'cut a deal' with me, "make money off me making money" as he put it to me in the email. I really didn't know how to respond, other than, no thanks. He did end up getting the Aweber account in the end, though not through me.
Then came the mysterious fortune card guide, the thing I actually told him to make in conjunction with Aweber, but which he took in the complete opposite direction of where I suggested originally. I told him that he should create a free fortune card guide in order to get people to sign up for his email list. I explicitly said that he should make it free, because he had already covered all the content on his site regarding the guide and to charge for it would be a mistake. He didn't take my advice, and literally copied the sections sometimes word for word into the guide. He added a sentence or two, and sometimes even rephrased a few areas, but the hard data was all taken straight from previous posts.
The card guide itself is nothing more than the free information he posted (he even links to the information in the screenshot above, entitled "The Mysterious Fortune Cards Mega Compilation") along with links advertising his site and links to various affiliate programs, including my own. Money is all Scott cares about. He doesn't think I'm a crook, well if he does, it seems strange that he sells my product on both his main site and inside the product itself. What person would sell the product of someone else even after they go public and attempt to paint the seller as a crook? A person fueled by greed and nothing else.
His guide is basically a handful of posts pasted into a single document, which is mostly white space and images, as well as advertisements for posts he has written. The guide tells you to buy herbs, craft cards and then shows you some of the typical ah addons and how they can help you "bark" the cards in trade. It takes 2 minutes in the JMTC forums to get this information, and you can read it on his site as well for free. To charge people for this is basically a scheme of epic proportions.
Here's something funny for you to think about. When Scott first sold his card guide, he screwed up the price and sold a few for $1. He then spent a week harassing these buyers and telling them that they had stolen the guide from him; that they actually owed him $9. This is his mindset, that the world is out to get him and that his mistakes are someone else's fault.
More Examples of Crookedness
I warned Scott repeatedly about his google adsense practices and only recently he was finally penalized (his ad privileges were revoked) for his misuse of google adsense. He blames it on his girlfriend, but I warned him several times that he needed to make changes because they negatively effected both his site and those sites he linked to. I would not have cared if he didn't have links to my site on his, and I asked him repeatedly to stop asking people to click on his ads. Since he refused to implement changes (such as stop asking his audience to click on the ads) google ended up banning him. Once again, all Scott cared about was the money and he blamed his girlfriend when he knew darned well (google should have emailed him) why his advertising rights were revoked. You get warnings if it's for clicking on your own ads, and since he didn't receive those (so he says) then it was for asking people to click on his ads.
There was also the case of Scott putting up bad ads with project wonderful, which were actually an attempt by him to stuff cookies on his site, that ended up getting my paypal account hacked. I lost $1200 that day in $200 increments and although I was mad on twitter, I gave Scott the benefit of the doubt and I worked with him to resolve the issue. I didn't go crying to the world and trying to paint Scott as a crook for attempting to stuff cookies (which he was, there's no doubt in my mind). Now recently, Scott accused me of stealing his money with the coaching program...
The coaching program was actually making Scott $5 per month, not taking $10 from him, as he lied about recently. You see, Scott had two referred coaches, so that covered his $10 each month and he signed up as his own affiliate under me, so he only had to pay $5 each month instead of $10 like a normal coach would. So there you have it, Scott was making money, not losing money with the program and for the record, I payed him back $40 for 4 months, which I did not have to do since he was well beyond the refund period for the first 2 months.
I handled the coaching program mischanges as best as I could and I've cancelled the program until I can get everything working properly for the coaches. All the other coaches that had issues came to me and resolved the issue one on one, but Scott felt that this was a great opportunity for traffic, so he "blew the whistle." In his post, he talked about how he contacted the BBB in my area and Clickbank as well. Since my butt was on the line here I decided to immediately call both organizations and explain the situation. To my surprise, a week later both contacted me back to let me know that no accusations were ever levied against my site. So once again Scott completely lied in order to make the situation seem more grave than it was. What a load of garbage! What's more, he even used the step by step guide I gave him to getting the transactions cancelled and labelled it as something he figured out!
Don't Buy From This Crook!
Scott you may turn things around one day and fix your motives, but you will be black listed permanently for your actions against both this site and the community here. Out of concern for all those involved I am showing the world who you really are and that your guide is a scam. Also, since I know money is all you care about, I figured I'd hit you where you might actually register some pain and therefore leave JMTC alone forever.
In conclusion, everything in Scott's guide can be found within his site for free, he even put it all in the same place for those interested. Do not waste $10 to only find out that he even links to the place where you could have gotten the information for free.
To those who feel I should ignore this bastard, every once in a while, regardless of how small the gnat is that's biting you, you need to give it a hard whack. "Oh Markco, you're the bigger man, don't do this." That's nice and all, but my business is tied to my integrity and when someone attacks it directly I'd be a fool to not punch back. Nobody hits a rattlesnake because they know they'll get bit bad and it's high time I became offensive instead of defensive all the time. You want to fight with JMTC? Well prepare for a bloody nose.
Honor is a hard thing to come by these days. People like Scott lie because they don't feel that they are accountable. They play games behind the scenes and try to pit people against each other. You're accountable now Scott and I hope for your sake that this is the last time you decide to attack JMTC.
As for the rest of you bloggers out there, many of you warned me that Scott's guide was garbage but you've done nothing to protect your own audiences. Some of the people who blew the whistle on this still promote it. Why aren't you guys and girls putting in the effort to create really great products, as well as avoid the sale of garbage ones such as these? Where's your honor? Just food for thought.
EDIT: Proof is in the Pudding; Yes Cold Was Failing at Cookie Stuffing
"Cookie stuffing (also cookie dropping) is a blackhat online marketing technique used to generate illegitimate affiliate sales. Cookie stuffing occurs when a user visits a website, and as a result of that visit receives a third-party cookie from an entirely different website (the target affiliate website), usually without the user being aware of it.[1] When (if) the user visits the target website and completes a qualifying transaction, the cookie stuffer is paid a commission. Depending on the terms of the affiliate agreement a qualifying transaction may refer to creating an account, making a purchase, completing an application (loan, credit, etc), or subscribing to a newsletter."
There are two very popular and basic ways to perform cookie stuffing. Again I shall use Wikipedia for this:
"Frames and Iframes
Iframes are a way of embedding a page within a page. A webmaster embeds a web page with one simple line of code. The affiliate embeds an I-Frame onto their page that loads their affiliate URL. Frames work in a similar fashion.
ImagesThe "IMG" HTML tag forces a browser to attempt to retrieve an image at any URL. It doesn’t matter if the URL supplied doesn't have an extension like ".jpg", ".gif", or ".png" at the end. For instance, "img src=http://google.com" would actually get anyone that visits that page to send a visit to Google. Affiliate links can be put in directly or by creating a redirect in their .htaccess. This is how affiliates cookie stuff user content sites like forums."
"The most basic method ever..
The most basic way of stuffing a cookie would to use a html img tag which references the affiliate page which drops the cookie. The visitors web browser will goto this page, even though its not an image and will accept the cookies returned.
Iframe cookie stuffingDescription: This is one of the oldest and most simplest methods out there. Most people who cookie stuff have started out using this method. Basically you put a 1 pixel iframe on your existing website and everytime someone visits your site, the affiliate page is loaded within the iframe and the cookies are dropped onto the visitors system."
Now for the nitty gritty stuff.
(note the white square block at the end of the affiliate link - this is the failed cookie stuffing)
Right click the white square block and say Image Properties (or similar for what ever web browser you use):
Here you can see that it is a 1x1 pixel image, typical description of basic cookie stuffing.
You can also see that the image now has the affiliate link "https://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=coldsgolworla-20&l=ur2&o=1" attached to it, which is the affiliate link that the image was supposed to stuff your web browser cookies with.
In most web browsers (I'm using Opera here) I can also right click and say Inspect Element:
Now as if that isn't enough, he is using iframe stuffing AS WELL (I'm using Google Chrome here for these inspection options).
When about 4 different people called him out about it on his blog he deleted all the comments after trying to explain some of it.
After deleting all the comments he then commented:
Then more people commented and he deleted everything + disabled comments for that blog post (the blog post is still there so you can check, but of course he has removed the cookie stuffing and all the comments). This is not something you can make up, there were plenty of witnesses to this.
The next bit is screenshots from his Twitter while he was blasting you, you can check out all the profanities etc and it's what got him ultimately removed from being a Wind Trader.
(remember on Twitter you need to read from the bottom up, so start at the bottom of the bottom image)
