WP Mage Review Thread

[Greg Jacobs]

Originally Posted by copywriter

Here are some suggestions:

1. Refund their purchase.

2. Release a new/updated/made-over version of the Mage that actually does work.

3. Start a weekly Mage-Only webinar and deal with people's questions live

Hi again Chris Bloor, copywriter. I will respond point in Point.

Originally Posted by copywriter

1. Refund their purchase.

If a customer requests within 30 days we issue a refund.
Someone purchases our software and evaulates whether it is useful to them for 30 days. If them deem it not useful for their needs, then they request a refund and we issue it without hassle.

Dont see the issue here?

Actually you should know that customers that write us and say something like "I just want to see if I make my money back in 30 days"

we generally reply to them with the following:

"Thank you for trying out WPMAGE. You need to understand that you have purchased Software. This software is versicle and modular and has made both Greg and many others a sustainable income through their usage of it.

However as we know results may vary and your usage of the software along with numerous other factors (some within your control and some not) will determine your success or failure.

Therefore we strongly suggest that if you NEED TO MAKE MONEY NOW. Or "waiting to see if it works" then you request your refund right now.

You have purchased software, not a miracle pill. Please determine if you find this software useful for your needs. Also if you have specific questions about usage or optimizing your experience, please let us know and we are happy to help"

The Fact is that we have created an excellent piece of software. Is it perfect? No. Not at all. It is always being improved? Yes?

Can it guarantee your success?
No Way!

Is it a damn good bet and path to follow as far as Internet Marketing Products go?
YES!!!!

I know this with conviction because I have personally seen quite a few Mages jolt up to 4 and (even) 5 figure monthly income after really digging into our software.

To address the other issues.

Do all the successes use EPN?
The big earners do yes.
(i also know there are a few that use it in their own ways to earn BIG, but aren't telling how - be creative)

Though there are people in the 4 figure range that don't use EPN

So what does that mean?

It means that you will do fine without EPN if you are a little tenacious. (though I will admit that fast earnings are not quite as turnkey)

That all being said (I never quite got this one)
If someone told me that I could be making 5 figures a month and all I needed was a frickin EPN account

then I would make DAMN sure that I went out and got some no matter what and not accept defeat under and circumstance. But then again that goes back into the issue I was discussing in my video that got you fired up so much in the first place. (so we come back full circle)

Originally Posted by copywriter

2. Release a new/updated/made-over version of the Mage that actually does work.

Mage works. Mage is updated approximately twice a month with fixes and new features. I dont quite see your point?

Originally Posted by copywriter

3. Start a weekly Mage-Only webinar and deal with people's questions live

We actually have new user welcome webinars now, which we advertise in the forums so older users can come and ask questions as well. If you keep an eye out you can jump on the next one and ask questions.

Also we answer all questions in detail that we can either on the support forum or support desk with Carol, Robert and Hodge. (yes, our support staff is US+UK and all personally use the software themselves)

You know this very well as I remember you personally thanking me for the attention I paid to some issues you were having

We at the Mage community have given you much.

Like I mentioned in my personal email that you have not responded to, I said that if you focused half as much energy in building your own businesses as complaining about mine, then you would be alot closer to reaching your goals.

Respectfully
-Greg

[Pubster]

Hello again Greg

"If someone told me that I could be making 5 figures a month and all I needed was a frickin EPN account

then I would make DAMN sure that I went out and got some no matter what and not accept defeat under and circumstance."

Well said Greg, that is exactly what I realized and am doing. Of course we know that EPN is Not a Magic Pill either....but I think along with EPN and some maneuvering it will work with hard work put into it...at least I hope so. If someone else is doing it I can too.....Secrets were made to be purchased...lol
Regards,
Pubster

[GingerColeen]

I worked with Mage for about 2 months. In addition to creating some new sites, I "pimped" 4 wordpress blogs I already owned that had been online for 1-3 yrs. Greg told us that he made more on his pimped blogs than the others. One of them was a PR3 and they all got from 40-70 hits a day before I added WP Mage.

I followed all the rules. I made a little money the first couple of months (not much). Then a couple of weeks ago it dropped off. Yesterday I checked my backlinks with Greg's tool and found that they are no longer anywhere to be found on Google. They have all been sandboxed. I had some great keyword domains too. What a shame! Now my hits are down to 2-3 a day per domain.

You should also know that these blogs were on different IPs so it wasn't a situation where Google banned all the domains on 1 IP.

Obviously there are footprints. Greg may not see them but Google does.

I still have one site that gets good traffic but $10 a month is not the type of money I was looking for and it's getting smaller, not larger!

I'll move on to something I can control better than this. I don't like to depend on Google anyway so I dropped out before the bottom fell out! I could smell it coming I think!

[caliviper]

Greg, it has been brought up several times, and it is the one thing keeping me from purchasing -- and probably others too. Can you please comment, Greg?

1) Does WP Mage leave a footprint as the last poster just mentioned? Another poster said he and others have tried to bring to light the 'footprint' issue in your wpmage forums, but you keep deleting the posts.

2) If it does leave a footprint, what is causing it, and can it be fixed?

[Greg Jacobs]

Originally Posted by caliviper

Greg, it has been brought up several times, and it is the one thing keeping me from purchasing -- and probably others too. Can you please comment, Greg?

1) Does WP Mage leave a footprint as the last poster just mentioned? Another poster said he and others have tried to bring to light the 'footprint' issue in your wpmage forums, but you keep deleting the posts.

2) If it does leave a footprint, what is causing it, and can it be fixed?

Sorry I didnt answer as it has been answered numerous of times and I really dont want to get in back and forth with people in this thread unless they directly ask for my opinion. But since you asked directly...

Originally Posted by caliviper

1) Does WP Mage leave a footprint as the last poster just mentioned? Another poster said he and others have tried to bring to light the 'footprint' issue in your wpmage forums, but you keep deleting the posts.

Keep in mind we have a wildly active forum with over 26,000 posts and hundreds of new posts daily. I really have no idea to the specific situation you are referring to. THough could look it up if you thought it was important enough. I am sure if we did do anything like you are mentioning that there was a good reason as the only reason for our forums is to help our entire user-base succeed.

But to answer your direct question. WPMAGE installs Wordpress. And it installs by default one of 35 of the most popular Wordpress themes. Meaning that there are tens of thousands of other wordpress users using these exact same themes. Meaning we blend in!

WPMAGE creates Content and mashes it up completely original depending on what sort of template you create for it. Meaning that after all is said and done you are left with...
..
..
...
.

A WORDPRESS SITE.

No Footprint here.

..
However, since if I dont mention it someone else will (and they always do) is that if for some reason our software is installed incorrectly, the plugin is deactivated or there is a server misconfiguration (noobies dont worry, this only happens if you try to run your own dedicated/VPS server - which is for advanced users) , then Mage Tags will show up in the source code. This is the perceived footprint that people sometimes talk about.

For correct and attentive usage this is not an issue.

Originally Posted by caliviper

2) If it does leave a footprint, what is causing it, and can it be fixed?

Not relevant as we have already determined that for correct usage there is no footprint.

let me know if that answers your question

-Greg

[wb]

I bought this a month ago and have invested $1500 so far in the membership and domains. I've made just over $2. Everyone says to keep building and give it time.

My initial impressions:
- 30 days is nowhere near enough time to evaluate this system.
- 90% rate of failure is pathetic for something that is advertised as a "system" and costs $1000.
- owner seems to be receiving commissions from GoDaddy (at least is using affiliate links) so has a vested interest in pushing us to buy as many domains as possible
- the system that's taught seems to be different than what he uses himself. Training materials allude to his best performers being some sort of forum site, but no demonstration of what they look like or how to replicate those uber performers.
- rather than producing new training videos or materials to boost the skills of the 90% who are failing or to teach the techniques that are actually producing the big results on his own sites, he instead uses emails and videos to pump more products on us--seolinkvine, outsourcing, etc. Kind of insulting, considering how many people are struggling with what they've already paid alot of money for.


On a positive note, customer service has been responsive, product updates seem to be relatively frequent, and there's an active member forum.

I'll give it a little more time.

[Greg Jacobs]

Originally Posted by wb

90% rate of failure is pathetic for something that is advertised as a "system" and costs $1000.

this is not relevant nor correct. The video that you are referring to was a personal development talk on my personal blog that referenced Mage as a real life example.

if you want to get into Personal Development and talk about the video, then we can, but I dont think this is the thread to do it in. The statement is not specific to my system or any system. (actually specific to all systems)

Originally Posted by wb

- rather than producing new training videos or materials to boost the skills of the 90% who are failing or to teach the techniques that are actually producing the big results on his own sites,

I show you exactly how to replicate my earnings and people do. Get an EPN account, get expired domains or existing sites and put 50-100 EPN listings per page and nothing else

rinse and repeat

it works. (I just got a PM yesterday from a user that started in November and followed this, and is due to earn xxK in May from over 300 EPN sites)

Thats how I do it personally, hard and dirty, (and 1000 objections and questions if you want to go there) so not sutiable for some peoples temperaments, but it works and earns.

Lots of different ways to Mage.

Other ways work too and that is why we recommend tools.
Mage is a toolkit that can do many things.

Ultimately we are selling software and my training on it is just how I choose to use it. It is much bigger than my thoughts on it. look at the tools and what they do and apply them according to your knowledge.

To give you example of the scope, here are 4 different user training sites that show different peoples ideas on how to use the software

http://masterthemage.com/
http://www.wpmagetips.com
http://www.magementor.com
http://www.magetracker.com

[GingerColeen]

I've spent most of the day (off and on) pondering the mage footprint issue trying to get my head around where the footprints are. I did this primarily because I read Greg's vague response and because I was asked by someone to explain footprints.

With my technical and marketing background I should have seen this before, but I have a very trusting nature and usually believe people until it's proven to me that I can't. Greg makes it very clear that there are no footprints and knowing how important that is, I thought this guy really knows what he's doing and I trusted him.

It was really blatant once I found them. So here goes the expose' to the rest of the readership on the mage footprints:

When Mage creates a new or scheduled post, it doesn't fill it with the actual post content. Instead, it puts very distinct mage tags in the post with information that will allow Mage to pull the content into the page the first time someone displays it in a browser.

These tags are very mage specific. In fact, they have the word mage all throughout the tags. Ok, so I had that piece of information but how to prove that Google sees them before the content is rendered?

Simple. Search for the tags in Google! Try it all you mage posters. You're mage tags are indexed throughout the Google search engine and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they now recognize these tags and are deindexing blogs that use them.

For those of you who don't have the Mage yet, I searched on one of the tags with quotes to get the exact phrase:

(Removed as a courtesy at Greg's Request)

and Google returned 235,000 results. So that shows that the tags are seen by Google before the pages are rendered.

These are not generic tags but, obviously, very specific to mage. And, with all the mage folks getting indexed for the same tags, it's a huge set of footprints.

[Greg Jacobs]

Originally Posted by GingerColeen

I've spent most of the day (off and on) pondering the mage footprint issue trying to get my head around where the footprints are. I did this primarily because I read Greg's vague response and because I was asked by someone to explain footprints.

With my technical and marketing background I should have seen this before, but I have a very trusting nature and usually believe people until it's proven to me that I can't. Greg makes it very clear that there are no footprints and knowing how important that is, I thought this guy really knows what he's doing and I trusted him.

It was really blatant once I found them. So here goes the expose' to the rest of the readership on the mage footprints:

When Mage creates a new or scheduled post, it doesn't fill it with the actual post content. Instead, it puts very distinct mage tags in the post with information that will allow Mage to pull the content into the page the first time someone displays it in a browser.

These tags are very mage specific. In fact, they have the word mage all throughout the tags. Ok, so I had that piece of information but how to prove that Google sees them before the content is rendered?

Simple. Search for the tags in Google! Try it all you mage posters. You're mage tags are indexed throughout the Google search engine and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that they now recognize these tags and are deindexing blogs that use them.

For those of you who don't have the Mage yet, I searched on one of the tags with quotes to get the exact phrase:

REDACTED.

and Google returned 235,000 results. So that shows that the tags are seen by Google before the pages are rendered.

These are not generic tags but, obviously, very specific to mage. And, with all the mage folks getting indexed for the same tags, it's a huge set of footprints.

Ginger, I actually already answered that exact question before in a previous reply

"However, since if I dont mention it someone else will (and they always do) is that if for some reason our software is installed incorrectly, the plugin is deactivated or there is a server misconfiguration (noobies dont worry, this only happens if you try to run your own dedicated/VPS server - which is for advanced users) , then Mage Tags will show up in the source code. This is the perceived footprint that people sometimes talk about"

When you see that, it means that someone has deactivated their plugins or any other of thousand reasons. The only real question you need to answer is it on YOUR site?

If you need clarification please do though our support desk or fourm.

And in response to someones earlier comment about a deleted thread on this subject, I just searched our forums and found a monster thread from back in February on it.

Pleae read the whole thing before you get alarmed as you will see that people go through the natural knee-jerk paranoia and then later in the thread understand what is happening more and settle down
http://www.wpmage.com/spellbook/circ...start=30#p8060

you also need to keep in mind if our software is pirated, or the customer requests a refund AND continues to use the software, it is deactivated and all the pirate gets is a bunch of pages with mage tags hence the footprint.

ADDED NOTE: We deal with these and all questions on our support desk and forums. I suggest you use those for technical questions about WPMAGE instead of the warrior forum as I dont always check here and this is not the place.

[GingerColeen]

I have removed the tag as a courtesy to Greg but I don't buy his explanation. Just look at the number of instances I found with one tag. There are more tags.

I'm not trying to get technical support Greg. Just trying to answer some of the questions from my side of the fence. They deserve to see both points of view.

[pearsonbrown]

Ginger,

As an outside observer, it seems to me that your logic is wrong.

You're looking to explain why your sites have disappeared from Google.

But your research shows that there are many sites STILL IN Google, even though they have an obvious footprint.

I think you should be looking more at some of the standard reasons why sites 'disappear'. For instance, how quickly did you add pages to your site? Did you suddenly end up with hundreds of pages? What about external links?

Goggle is certainly on the lookout for sites that are not 'natural'. People have a tendency to use these automatic tools to excess (as I have done myself in the distant past) and then Google finds them.

Pearson

[Greg Jacobs]

Originally Posted by GingerColeen

I have removed the tag as a courtesy to Greg but I don't buy his explanation. Just look at the number of instances I found with one tag. There are more tags.

I'm not trying to get technical support Greg. Just trying to answer some of the questions from my side of the fence. They deserve to see both points of view.

Ginger, I know you mean best... but bear with me here please.

The simple explanation is that YES there is a footprint, but NO its not on your site

This "footprint" appears on peoples sites that have either deactivated the plugins, misconfuigured their server or are using a broken/pirated copy

To prove,

1 -first make sure you are using the latest version of a CPMAGE installed site without any modifications. (I say this cause there are 1000 aftermarket things people could do to make a footprint of which we have no idea)

2 - Go to YOUR site and look at a page.

3 - Hit CTRL+U - this brings up the source code. this is what google sees

4 - Now hit CTRL + F in the source code and search for mage tags. Do you come up with any results? You should not and if you do, then you should ask us (privately) why it is showing up and we will tell you how to fix.

I hope you understand that simple 4 point test step.
Please do so and you will see.

-Greg

[ozduc]

I just tried to find the word mage in the source code of one of my sites and it appeared several times in the word "image". That's it No tags showing so if this is all google sees if the site is done correctly then I don't see a footprint problem.
However after googling the tags as Ginger suggested, a lot of results came up and when I clicked on some of the sites they do not have the posts where they should be but just a bunch of mage tags. So obviously what greg is saying seems to be correct in that if installed and used correctly there is no problem. The problem only occurs if pirated or incorrect installations are used.

[JBanis]

Im not sure but I can imagine Google might have better technology to discover footprints than just looking for the word Mage etc?

J