[zhuuraan]

Hi all! I'm not really very happy at the moment. I found a ripoff report about PIPS and it pissed me off quite nicely because while I haven't been with PIPS long and have not yet turned a profit, I know that almost everything in this report is lies!

I signed up so that I could post a rebuttle, but I haven't gotten the verification email just yet. Just so you guys can see it, I posted my rebuttle. I won't post the report because much of it is used in my rebuttle, but here's the link to it.

Rip-off Report: Stone Evans, Pluginprofit Site BEWARE!!! pyramid scheme rip off BS!!! pluginprofitsite.com Internet

Now, here's the rebuttle I was going to post which I will do as soon as I get the email. People need to know the truth. Now I realize that anything on the internet, no matter how good, is going to get negative stuff said about it by the haters, but this guy was nothing but a slanderous windbag whose claims were all lies and clearly he didn't know what he was talking about. Ok, here it is.

"There are about a million things wrong with your report. It's almost exclusively lies and you should really get your stuff straight before you slander a good person's name who is just trying to help others succeed.

"Short Version: Stone Evans, creator of the Plug-In Profit System, promises a clone website of his own home business set up for you, but not before you complete three (actually seven) steps that all require you to sign up under his name."

First off, you do NOT sign up under Stone Evans. You sign up under whoever referred you to his site, unless of course you weren't referred, which does defer to him in that situation, but most people who join are referred by others.

Secondly, you can sign up for as many or as few programs as you choose. The site he builds promotes all of them, but if you do not wish to join one at the time, your site promotes your sponsor's user ID unless you join it later, in which case you can log in and change your user IDs, making your links and banners promote you.

"In order to get people to your website, Stone Evans and the PIPS community advocate the use of e-mail spamming. It's a sketchy 'business' that costs hundreds if not thousands of dollars to purchase e-mail ('leads') lists, and bottom-line: it's illegal and just not worth it."

WRONG!!! They do NOT at all support spamming. They highly discourage it and even set up the automailer through GetResponse and include all required information required to comply with the CAN SPAM act. They discourage spam not only because it is illegal, but because the leads are NOT targeted. In other words, they are not people who are specifically looking for the type of thing you are offering. NOBODY in PIPS promotes SPAM!

"Aside from that, nearly every link you can click on your web-site somehow will put more money in 'Stone Evans'' pocket, making him richer, and the unknowing people he scams poorer. In terms of monetary investment, 'Stone Evans' promises you to be making money for under $30 (do the math on the front page alone--it's a lie), but once you sign-up, his '30 Days to Success' requires you to sign-up (under his name OF COURSE!) for half a dozen other things that range from $19.95 a month to $75+ a month. GET A REAL JOB, 'STONE EVANS'."

Those in glass huts should NOT cast stones! You call him a liar, but this very claim is a FAT LIE! All but a few of the things he promotes is FREE! Some of them do have paid options, that is true, but you can choose whether to upgrade or not. You are NOT obligated to join all of them. For example, I am not in Empowerism or Success University since you have to pay for them. I did NOT join the Co-op because it's far to expensive and I did NOT stay with Push Button Leads after the 15 day trial because I did not find it worthwhile and did not have the money for it. All of these things are optional. However, Web Prosperity is free, with an optional paid upgrade, as is TrafficSwarm, and SFI you can buy into Executive Affiliate status or just wait til you ahve enough sales. You are by no means obligated to pay anything! Stone also discusses many free ways of getting traffic and signups in his 30 Days To Success. You see, some people have money and others have time. He is just giving you options based on whatever you have more of. Here's a direct quote from the 30 Days To Success guide itself.

"First, please know that you don't have to do everything in this guide to make money with your website."

Here's another one.

"There are some people who take just one of the marketing strategies outlined in this guide and build a full-time income with it."

And one last one.

"My goal is simply to reveal options and provide instructions that will enable you to succeed faster."

Hmmm, "reveal OPTIONS" That means NOT REQUIRED! It is things he has been successful with, and considering he now has more money than time, some of them will undoubtedly be costly, but the free options may be things he used when he first started or things other PIPS members are having success with. This doesn't sound like a guy who wants only to milk you for what you're worth.

"This plug-in profit scheme is ran by a guy who calls himself 'Stone Evans'. Essentially, this entire system is nothing more than a pyramid-type scheme. Here's how it's supposed to work: you complete the three easy steps (actually seven in total, all which need your credit card and cost anywhere from 10 to 75 bucks a month), and each of which require you to sign up under 'Stone Evans' name (which makes him money), and one that requires you to register a domain through one of his affiliates (surprise!), then 'Stone Evans' sets up the same website for you. Then that's it. You're on your own. What do you do from here? You could turn to his terrible e-Book or message board community..."

This is not a PYRAMID SCHEME! It is a genuine offer to help other affiliate marketers be successful online. Besides, a pyramid scheme is a program where there is NO product or anything of value, where you usually have to pay X amount, and then recruit others who pay X amount and you get a portion.

For example, a true pyramid scheme might be a website taht says Join now for $10 and receive $1 every time you refer someone to join. Get just 10 referrals and you make your money back. Then get $0.50 for every second level and $0.25 for every third level referral. Get the picture?

This is MLM or Multi Level Marketing, but it is NOT illegal. In fact, companies like Avon have been doing this offline for a couple of DECADES! PIPS itself has been going for 7 years! If it was illegal, you would think it'd have been taken down by now. A lot of the real scams out there get nailed within a year or two tops!

"As part of his package, he includes his '30 Days to Success' eBook (I hate that word, 'eBook'--synonym for crappy, last-minute-thrown-together, never-proofread website). All his 'eBook' is are the same seven articles for each day of the week cycled over and over for four weeks. The only other means of support is to turn towards the forun which was down 90% of the time. But when I did finally get in for a few minutes here and there, I found that this forum was a meeting grounds for absolute lunatics from all over the world who are completely blinded by the fact that if they spam enough people through e-mail, they may make a $10 or $20 profit each month. So sad."

The 30 Days to Success guide is just that, a GUIDE! It is not the HOLY BIBLE and Stone doesn't expect PIPS members to live by it to the letter. In fact, if every one of them did it probably wouldn't work because all the methods would be overused.

The forum members, as I said before, do NOT SPAM! In fact, I have found it extremely useful. They discuss good places to advertise, often free, tools for helping build your website, whether you know HTML or not, SEO optimization tips, general encouragement and inspiration, and a whole slew of other things.

As for the forum being down so much, I wasn't around during the time frame you are referring, but the Plugin Profit Site Support forum is a subdivision of a general internet marketing forum and is thus NOT under Stone's control. You cannot blame him or other PIPS members for it being down any more than you can blame your cat, if you have one, for writing this ludicrous report!

"These individuals in the forum refer to eachother as 'Warriors', and in said forum they exchange ideas for spamming, companies who will sell them e-mail lists (or as they refer to them--'leads'), and other random nonsense that one would expect from failure community college business majors and high school kids from Dublin, or wherever half of these morons come form. One idiot even spent $25,000 out of his own pocket (community college tuition?) to try and get people joining his retarded clone site."

It's not the fault of the forum members that the forum is called "Warrior Forum." We didn't come up with the name! I've said it before and I'll say it again, PIPS forum members do NOT promote spamming! As for the guy that spent $25000 trying to get people to join his site, if that's true it was his stupidity, but we can't let this one guy be the representitive of everyone else on the forum. I'm on limited income and I couldn't afford to spend that much if I wanted to. Still, he probably didn't know what he was doing and didn't ask for help, so he threw every bit of money he had into advertising methods that are not leverageable and wouldn't get him anywhere. He probably also did not track where his hits came from, which makes it even more useless. Sure there are going to be some people that are like that, but the ones who are truly intelligent and strive for success will take the extra time to figure out what works before throwing away their money. Oh yeah, and as for the clone site, it's really just a template. You can use things like Joomla, or Microsoft Frontpage if you don't know HTML or Notepad or something if you do to make changes to your site. In fact, Stone and the other PIPS members recommend that you make cosmetic changes to your site to personalize it and I've seen a few that have even been completely altered. That's up to the member to personalize their site though. Mine is relatively new, so it's almost the original site, but I've changed a couple things and am slowly working on more. It's all up to the user though.

"And let me just say something about 'leads': leads are e-mail addresses from nothing more than people who rushed through a form on some random website for whatever randomass reason and under the 'interests' column they clicked on 'business' and 10 other hobbies in order to complete the form. We've all done it. The website then sells this information, and if the website was lucky enough to get a valid phone number, the data is labeled 'double opt-in'--the heroin of the spam-universe-- and sold for a lot of money to idiots on 'leads sites'."

This is SO FALSE! While it is true that some leads do this, there are a lot of legitimate leads sites that will publish an ad about your newsletter/ezine. The users can then browse through them and subscribe if they want. Sometimes, they can join a site where they get an email if a new newsletter is added to a category they are interested, in, but they still have to subscribe themselves. Also, GetResponse, the site Stone uses for the autoresponder, uses double opt in and they set it to that when they set up your site. This means that all subscribers MUST confirm their email address and desire to be on the list before they get a single email from it. If they don't want the newsletter, they simply ignore the email. So, even if someone used one of these lead sites you are talking about, knowingly or inadvertently, the users would still need to verify. While some lead sites fall into the description you gave, they are not all created equal and some really do give you targeted leads.

"No one I talked to in this forum was able to give me a straight out, honest answer as to whether they ever made ANY money under this system."

I don't know who you have been talking to, but I know several people who have made money, and one who's made around $50k/year from SFI alone, though I don't remember if they're in PIPS but still, $50k isn't bad. Granted that's over the course of 5 years it took to build that kind of income, but still it's not bad. And everyone on the forum, as well as Stone himself, does say it will take time to build up the income. It's not going to happen overnight by any means or under any circumstances.

Your views are EXTREMELY misguided and you probably didn't even put in an inkling of effort. It's no wonder you failed. People who whine and complain instead of taking action are the kinds who will fail. I'd wager you went into it with a pessimistic attitude, and an attitude like that is doomed to fail in any venture. You need to believe in what you're doing it, set attainable goals, and then reach for them. Whether you choose to invest time, money, or both, you need to spend it wisely and not sit on your behind twiddling your thumbs. That will get you nowhere.

I hope taht anyone who reads this report is smart enough to read my rebuttle and make a decision for themselves. If you are willing to give it a little time and/or money, whichever you CHOOSE, and be optimistic and hard working, this might be the opportunity for you. However, if you are a pessimist and or lazy and unwilling to put time and effort into it, you don't belong in any work at home venture of any kind!"

I'd like to think everything I wrote here is true and honest. At least it is from my experience. This guy just doesn't know what he is talking about whatsoever and while I wouldn't normally be bothered by some person who just had a bad experience and posted about it, this is going a bit too far.

[Patrician]

We have all seen the ripoff reports and some have written rebuttals.

By the way it has been proven before that the ripoff report is a ripoff itself.

Reason being that the owner takes money to remove a negative report. This is not fair and unbiased reporting.

Further I know you have the best intentions but all you are doing by putting it here is calling attention to it. The way Stone looks at it is he doesn't give it the benefit of any attention - or put another way, he says 'don't feed negativity'.

So we appreciate your rebuttal on the site and love that you can see what BS it is, but it is creating a negative atmosphere here. I hate to delete it because you worked so hard on it, and you have such a WARRIOR spirit (yay!) but yet I wish it wasn't here because it is discouraging and not everyone sees it the way you or I for that matter see it. I am not sure what I should do...

Just a warning if it starts bringing up more negative remarks directed at the program or Stone, I will have to delete it.

Then on the other hand, it would be nice if you posted the link here so that others could go and add their rebuttals too.

[zhuuraan]

I haven't posted it yet. If you'd rather I not, then I will forego posting it.

I didn't realize that site was fraudulent.
\
Well anyway, I'll forget about posting the rebuttle then, but I still wanted to post the report here. I thought it was pretty dumb and actually got a laugh out of this guys moronic attitude toward the whole thing. It seems to me he didn't even give it a chance and was actually out to look for something just to prove it didn't work.

Well, in my mind I'll be laughing even more when I start to turn a profit.

I'll delete the rebuttle and I won't click the link in the verification email I got. I'll just delete it. I have no interest in belonging to a fraudulent website.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Patrician]

NO- you are not understanding what I said - it is good to post a rebuttal - it is just not good to bring it into this forum.

Then again, well I hope you get it - there are two sides of the coin - but definitely rebut it on the site.

I added some stuff maybe after you read my post - seems like you completely took what I said the wrong way.

I have posted rebuttals there before and will do it again for every new wierdo that goes there.

Here is what I added to my above post that you may have missed.

So we appreciate your rebuttal on the site and love that you can see what BS it is, but it is creating a negative atmosphere here. I hate to delete it because you worked so hard on it, and you have such a WARRIOR spirit (yay!) but yet I wish it wasn't here because it is discouraging and not everyone sees it the way you or I for that matter see it. I am not sure what I should do...

Just a warning if it starts bringing up more negative remarks directed at the program or Stone, I will have to delete it.

Then on the other hand, it would be nice if you posted the link here so that others could go and add their rebuttals too.

[zhuuraan]

I did post the link. I can understand your dilemma.

Well, I deleted the confirmation email but it should still be in my trash so I will go click the link in it and post the rebuttal then.

Obviously I did misunderstand you. I didn't think you wanted me to post the rebuttal.

The link to the report is at the very beginning of my post.

Hmm, maybe if it's that big of a dilemma, you should delete this one and I can repost it without my rebuttal in the post, but just discussing the report and leaving the link for people to post their own rebuttals.

Just a suggestion. Of course I'm not eager to have my post deleted, but I completely understand why you are contemplating it. I'd be happy to repost it and just mention the report and the link. If people want to then read my rebuttal on the site, they will be welcome to do so.

[Patrician]

Thanks Amanda - just leave it - I LIKE your rebuttal - the issue is the accusation and the negativity of the report toward us.

It is confusing to newbies and people who are on the fence - who aren't quite sure if this is legitimate - who see every excuse in the world not to follow through on this - looking for an excuse to fail.

There is so much scam on the internet somedays people are simply amazed that we do exactly what we say we do -

Let's just leave it and let the cards fall where they may...

Thank you.

(I see the link now, duh)

[zhuuraan]

Lol it's up to you. I think that anyone who is serious about building a good online business though will read the entire rebuttal.

If they're so quick to assume the report was true, then they shouldn't be in something like this anyway. People really should try for themselves and see, and I think it's actually good for people to see both sides.

I actually don't mind negative reports about programs, even if they are legitimate, but I can't stand people who lie and slander.

Okay so if this person had used the help desk to contact you or Stone and not heard anything for over a week and said that or something, it wouldn't be as big a deal. But to slander a good man's name with lies and falsifications is too much.

I suppose I react a little explosively to such behavior compared to a lot of people, but I don't take kindly to that sort of thing. Sometimes I do kind of overreact and I know that, but it's so darn irritating!

[Patrician]

I happen to have reacted exactly like you when I was new and you will probably see some of my rebuttals on those sites.

I do take it personally and if one of us loses a sale because of some lying creep, then I see the logic in posting a rebuttal.

However, with stuff like that the more sophisticated marketers (business owners) have shown me they just let it die down (you know how threas move down the page and then bounce up when someone posts -- in essence we are actually keeping it in the forefront when we post); they expect that there are always going to be malcontents, no matter what you do - (I still think it should be rebutted and then just let it die down)...

My issue again about this is with this forum and keeping a positive atmosphere - Stone is pretty adamant about not wanting a hostile environment and having one that is condusive to the 'support' forum it is intended to be. I like to say it is not 'group therapy' although I would probably be considered the chief psycho here.

FYI: I respond within 24 hours (36-48 if a Sunday involved when I am off) - and I am quite conscientious about this commitment - so you can assume that if you hear something different that they are either unclear on the concept of a how to use a helpdesk ticket system, are liars, or that they are not talking about Plug-In Profit Site Member Support - it is unlikely they will get a response from anywhere else however.

[zhuuraan]

Yeah, I know you are pretty quick to reply. The response time is great! When I was having issues getting my site up, you were on the ball about responding to me. That was just an example.

I can understand where you are coming from about the forum though.

Glad to know I'm not the only person who reacts the way I do to such things. I'm sure once I get used to it and all I'll eventually just let it pass too. It's just so annoying to see that type of slander.

Anyway, I'll drop the subject now. If someone wants to check out this thread and visit the site to leave their own rebuttal, they can feel free, but I've said my piece so I think I should step down from my soapbox now.