Content for our sites comes in all sorts of formats and types, often a whole folderfull at once, and all to go on a website as soon as possible.

Today I needed to import a load of articles into a site, but they had to be changed a little - 120 or so articles. The articles were all HTML pages, I needed to insert some non standard characters and then remove all the HTML tags and save as text files. The very thought of doing this by hand gave me a cold sweat!

I had no tools for the job, but I was lucky, Google led me to NoteTab a text editor that is almost as useful in its free version as its not very expensive paid for version. With NoteTab I was able to open all 120 files in the folder at one go, strip out all the HTML tags, but keep all the URLs intact and insert my special characters. All the tags were stripped in a couple of seconds and the documents saved as text files in the same folder as they had come from. Once I had discovered how to do the job it took perhaps a minute from start to finish to do what would have taken perhaps a couple of hours or more by hand.

This is a very useful tool, for free and just $19.95 to upgrade. Bargain!

I was thinking about my previous post about a recent internet market announcement.
A picture came to my mind of people sitting round a table, they have been having a friendly game of poker and the mood seems to have stuck. One guy says ‘betcha I can get $400 for a pile of Cd’s of my old internet marketing courses’

Another says ‘betcha I can do better and get $800 for a pile of Cd’s of somebody else’s list business building and self affirmation courses and a forum that I’ll turn into an add-on subscription‘

That gets them quiet for a few minutes, then another one says - ‘Top this. I’ll get $800 for some old courses about Adwords arbitrage and membership to a PPA network that I get 5% overrides on AND I’ll get $300 a month for a forum run by somebody else and to cap it all - there will be no affiliates!’

Well, that gets a thoughtful silence. Until one man, the quiet one, says with calm assurance ‘I can get two thousand dollars for an old course about building an on-line business and some freeware AND, I’ll get $300 extra for split payments and call it a discount’.

Low whistles and respectful nods from the table. Nobody could think of a way to get more money for a bigger pile of crap than that!

A few seconds later the first of the guys to have spoken asks if he can be a JV partner as he has just the list for this kind of value offer. Within minutes ALL have asked to JV on the deal that they are now calling ‘The Biggest Pile of Crap Ever -1′ - of course that is until somebody else comes up with a new and bigger tool to polish an even bigger turd and gives it the name ‘The Biggest Pile of Crap Ever -2′.

All went back to their bedrooms and using their Crackberries sent out the first message to their lists, preparing them for the scalping to come.
To the list:
…I have just finished the most exciting mastermind group session ever… We learnt so much and, of course I wanted to share it with you guys just as soon as I could. All I can say for now is get ready for something really big!

Last Tuesday the floodgates opened again today.
A man wants to sell a bunch of software utilities for, get this: $2000 with three free dollar coins.That is $54.00 each for stuff that is already available for free.

So now we have the ‘Gurus’ and other big hats writing and saying that their friend is the best ever and that he could charge much more if he had only taken their advice.

This is absolute steaming crap.

Sorry, but things are getting out of hand.

A few samples from the list of exclusive and in demand products that I am supposed to need and want to buy and sell:

Email Protector: hides your email address from spam harvesters.

Intelligent 404: redirects users to your home page if they get a 404 error.

My Ad Rotator: An ad-rotator, my oh my, what will they think of next.

Blogging Ninja: Looks like a WP Elite clone but with fewer features.

Content Maximizer: Another code rotator to include snippets of other content in a page.

…OK I am stopping here, these were from the top of the list - the stuff the mugs/marks/cons see first. So, this is the good fruit.

I have code for all bar one of those toys and I own WP Elite!

Cody Moya is giving away an electric bloody scooter as a bonus for buying this pile of trash. He has made it known that it is his intent to be the top selling affiliate (he calls it JV partner) for this and some other pile of rammel from some dood called Ken being sold at a similar price.
This is not about quality, this is not about service, this is not about value for money. This is about hoodwinking and gypping significant numbers of people.

Sorry guys, this got my dander up. I wonder how may people will buy this on the ‘3 easy payments’ and then find that there is no value here whatsoever.

To be honest, I would question the legality of offering credit without a credit licence - this would not be legal in the UK and the interest is usurious. $300 for three months.

Oh and get this - this stupid price does not even include carriage for the ‘physical product’ - does a few Cd’s justify charging carriage on a $2K sale?

I know that there will be people partying very hearty tonight, but frankly, I hope it chokes them. I REALLY hope this fails badly, but I am sure there will be plenty of sheeple who will buy this and be the poorer for it whilst some conscienceless arse buys a new car and a few lap dances.

Sorry for the rant and language.

Andrew is angry and disappointed.