The Glenn Canady Gorilla Website Marketing Course Review

I’ll do a quick recap on yesterdays lengthy post. It was now nearly 3 weeks since I had signed up for Glenn Canady’s Gorilla Website Marketing Course and ABDevelopment had failed to find me a dropshipper for the products that I wanted to sell.

Having a product to sell, and the right product to sell, is probably one of the most significant parts to having a successful sales site. I’d done my research, as ABDevelopment requested, and found something I was interested in, knew a lot about, and appeared to be a fairly hot product to sell. ABDevelopment failed to find me a dropshipper for it, despite all the promises, and boasts that they could find me a dropshipper for anything I wanted to sell.

In frustration I had signed up with the Drop Ship Source Directory, (which by the way is excellent) at my own expense, and found a dropshipper for PDA’s myself. However, the company concerned had no way for anyone outside the US to sign up with them. I’d tried, but was getting nowhere. Out of desperation I suggested maybe selling Nature’s Sunshine products. It was something my wife had an account for and I could get them to deliver direct to the customer. It wasn’t something I was particularly interested in, and the product cost is low, and the margins aren’t huge, but it was SOMETHING to sell.

One of my big reservations about my ’second best’ product choice was that I could only get the stuff dropshipped to the UK and countries in Europe that accepted the Euro. OK, so thats a big market, but when you look at all the languages involved, and my site is just in English, then you are really down to just the UK. I was told by ABDevelopment this was not a problem.

If I had waited for ABDevelopment for a dropshipper then I could have been waiting a VERY long time. They were showing no inclination or sense of urgency to find me one. After all, why should they worry, it was my $8000 on the line, and not their money.

The killer blow came when Vicky announced that I should get back to ABDevelopment and ask for another mentor because she couldn’t schedule me in. So, they couldn’t get me a dropshipper and now they they couldn’t provide a mentor ! It couldn’t get any worse. Could it ?

I emailed Jason the very next day to let him know about the situation. I was getting extremely frustrated with the whole experience. I’d paid my money. Money that I simply could not afford, and I NEEDED to start earning it back ASAP. I had been led to believe that I would be getting a return on my money by the time the first credit card bill hit me. I couldn’t see how that was going to happen now.

I had forwarded Jason the emails from Vicky saying she couldn’t be my mentor as well as my last email to Vicky suggesting alternative products, seeing as they could find me a dropshipper. I said in the email that I would phone Jason, which I did. I never got to speak to him and two days later I STILL hadn’t received a reply to my email.

By this time I was getting very concerned and worries were starting to creep into my mind that maybe this was just some big scam. After all, think about it, take $8000 from someone, send them a box with a printout of a $39 ebook, and then disappear off the face of the earth. The sucker at the other end is thinking it must be legit. After all, they sent you something and you spoke to them a few times. That was what was running through my mind.

Here is the email I sent through to ABDevelopment on a different email address, as I was getting nowhere with Jason’s.

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Hi,

Here I am, over 3 weeks and $8000 later and I still have not been assigned a mentor. At least not one who has either contacted me with any mentoring, or lasted more than a week.

I have paid my money and I want to get started. When I paid my $8000 I was led to believe that I should start seeing money coming in within about 2 - 3 months. How is that going to be achieved if I can’t speak to anyone and over 3 weeks have gone by ?

I’ve tried phoning a couple of times tonight. The 888-277-1315 number goes through to an answering machine. The mailbox for this is full. I’ve tried calling 001 435 628 6473. This number is also not answered and redirects to another phone that is also not answered.

Come on guys ! I’m $8000 out of pocket. I expect better than this. Also, emails I have sent with basic questions remain unanswered.

I’ve just given up a temporary job so that I could concentrate on getting my web business up and running and recoup my money quickly andhopefully start building a web business that can make me a living. I’m desperate to get going but I can’t even get started with this if nobodywill talk to me ! It’s really not good enough.

–
Chris O’Connor

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Yes, thats right. I gave up the temporary job that I was doing. The temporary job that I’d taken on to fit around the work needed on the Gorilla Website Marketing Course. And when it appeared that the job was going to get in the way of the meetings with ABDevelopment I gave up the job. Hey, at least one of use was commited to trying to make this work !

And the reason why I was seemingly being ignored ? They said they were merging with another company and had been ‘busy’. Yeah, don’t worry about your core business, the paying customer, after all you’ve already got his money.

The very next day I got an email from a guy called Scott Dimmick. I’m not going to paste Scott’s email here because it contains a lot of personal contact details for Scott (home phone number etc.). Scott did not work for ABDevelopment and I assumed he was from the other company they were merging with. I believe it was CMGHelp.com . Although Scott may have just been recruited on a temporary basis, I don’t know for certain.

Let me make something clear. Scott was a very nice guy and very professional. Like I’ve said before, I’m an IT guy and I’ve been creating web sites for years, so the technical aspect of creating a web site was no problem whatsoever. Had it been, then I’m sure Scott would have been able to help me through it, although how far you would get with no knowledge of building a web site and only 4 sessions of 30 - 60 minutes God only knows !

My sessions with Scott were primarily about cosmetic issues. I didn’t always agree with Scott, but he was the expert and I always listened and implemented what he suggested. Lets face it, the reason I was doing this course was because the sites I was creating weren’t pulling in money. I was trying to find out what that missing something was. What would have been the point in me arguing with a guy who WAS doing well with his sites. I was there to learn from him.

I put a hell of a lot of time and effort into my site. Scott and I didn’t particularly agree on things like the colour scheme, but that was really about it. We got on well and our sessions were pleasant. What was nice was that I gave him a few tips about useful sites and how I’d done certain things on my sites, so we both learnt a bit from each other. He was a good guy, and the advice he gave me about layout made a lot of sense. It was basic common sense stuff. Nothing radical. But the important thing was that it was stuff that I should have been doing but wasn’t, and he had picked up on that. Our sessions never seemed like teacher and student sessions. It felt to me more like a couple of blokes having a friendly chat about how best to lay a page out so it looked good. There wasn’t a huge transfer of knowledge. None was needed. I was sorry when our sessions came to an end.

One point of note here that I will revisit in a future post, is that months later I started getting a few emails from people claiming that they had been scammed (yes, you can imagine who by). In all of the emails I got the one guy that emerged as clean, and liked by everyone, was Scott Dimmick.

I was still desperate to try and get to the stage where some of the money I had been told to expect would start coming in. I wanted to do anything possible to try and catch up with the time ABDevelopment had lost. I knew my upcoming sessions were going to involve using Zeus so I downloaded the free version so that I could get to grips with it and be able to hit the ground running when the marketing sessions came around.

My early experiences of Zeus were not good !

I’ve covered what was in the Gorilla Website Marketing Course package that was sent to me by ABDevelopment. However, I was still waiting to get started with my mentoring sessions. I’d been told prior to sign up not to worry about putting the $8000 on my credit card. I was told it was sound business sense and that I was doing what most businesses do. I was simply setting up a business using ‘other peoples money’. Besides, I was assured ‘I would be making money before the first credit card bill hit me’. The whole thing was supposed to be self financing, with the $8000 paid off within 6 months. This is what they led me to believe.

You know, when I look back on the claims that were made, and what they led me to believe would happen, and when it would happen, I realise that I was being told had to be impossible to achieve. I guess that at the time I had put my complete faith in them, but it makes me extremely angry to think back on it.

They must have known damned fine that there was no way I could be getting money back by the time the first credit card bill hit. It had already taken a few weeks and I hadn’t even started my first mentoring session. The mentoring was scheduled to take 8 weeks. So work it out. If 4 weeks have elapsed and I still haven’t even started the 8 week long sessions then realistically, how the hell was I going to be making money by the time my first credit card hit me !

I don’t know about you, but all the credit cards I have will have any purchases on them within 30 days. Lets be VERY generous to ABDevelopment and Glenn Canady and pretend that the timing was absolutely perfect and that I didn’t get the $8000 on the first credit card bill, but I got it on the second. That still only allows 60 days to go from sign up, to having a web site built, marketed, and pulling in money. But it was to be about 4 weeks before I started with a mentor and I then had another 8 weeks to go with the mentoring sessions. So how the hell could I be taking money from my site by the time the first credit card bill arrived ?!

The site wouldn’t even have been built by then !!! And of course it wasn’t built by the time the first bill hit me ! And by the time 6 months were up ? I hadn’t made a single sale from the site. And don’t forget Glenn Canady’s Website Marketing Course was supposed to have got my site pulling in $8000 by this time to cover the money I had paid out.

My experience of Glenn Canady’s Gorilla Website Marketing Course and ABDevelopment has been that they seem to be great at making big claims about what they can do. Closer scrutiny and personal experience have shown these to be wild claims, coupled with unrealistic timescales, that from my experience they simply cannot deliver on.

The last email that I’d had from ABDevelopment was from Vicky (Terence Davis having disappeared of the face of the Earth). Vicky was suggesting a 4pm GMT call to get me started with the web construction etc.. Here is my reply to Vicky :

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Hi Vicky,

4PM is ok with me, but what about my questions regarding my preferred choice of product (as a result of the brainstorming session) and the fact that nothing PDA related appears on the drop ship list that I was provided with ?

My understanding of the first session is that the product must be sorted out and also an idea of ‘rival’ sites, which I haven’t thoroughly researched as I was waiting for a reply on the product choice. I don’t want to waste our first session. Please can you get back to me on this.

Thanks

Chris
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In other words, they STILL hadn’t resolved the issue of finding a dropshipper for me. I had chosen my product, and here were the people that claimed they would be able to find me a dropshipper for anything I wanted, and they still hadn’t delivered on this.

Here is ABDevelopment’s response :

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Chris,

As you know the dro ship list does not have what you are looking for, PDA’s. The product is the foundation we will work from. I will be able to send you a list of wholesalers for PDA product, but not my the morning (my time) when we talk.

I recommend as you suggested in your previous email to reschedule for early next week, when are more prepared.

Tuesday @ 5:00PM your time, is my next opening.

Let me know,

Vicky @ AB DevelopmentGorillaWebMarketing

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OK, so have you spotted the problem here ? I was promised dropshippers, and what am I being offered ? Wholesalers ! Bear in mind that ABDevelopment KNOW that I am in the UK. So what the hell is the point of offering wholesalers in the US ? Absolutely useless !

Being a polite kind of guy, and not wanting to rock the boat too much at this early stage I fired off a polite reply to Vicky :

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Hi Vicky,

Thats good news that you will be able to provide a list of wholesalers for PDA products. Are these also dropshippers ?

I mentioned about my having started a temporary job which involves shiftwork. Friday (today) was my day off which is why 4pm was good for metoday (obviously no good without the product though). I am on afternoons for the next 2 weeks, which means 2pm - 10pm my time. So,realistically the earliest time I could take a call on Tuesday would be about 10.30pm my time. Is that ok with you ?

Chris
====

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I got the list from Vicky and checked it over. I’ m sort of tempted NOT to paste it here, but on balance, and for the sake of completeness I am going to do it. Lets face it, it was sent to me on the basis that it was a great list of sources for PDA dropshippers, and as such I found it completely useless. There are obviously PDA related items that can be sourced from this list, but there were NO PDA dropshippers. I wanted to sell the latest PDA’s, not some tacky old accessories for the PDA’s of yesteryear.

In fact, rather than just paste the list that I was sent I’m going to paste my reply to that list. It specifies the so-called ‘dropshippers’ and why I had an issue with them. Read it for yourself.

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Dropship companies emailed to me.

1. http://www.texas-sales-tax.com/wholesale.html

The only company they list is Tiger Direct

http://www.tigerdirect.com/ They run an affiliate program and offer 4% commission !.

2. http://www.pcs-ltd.com/

They just do Krussel cases and a limited range of them.

3. http://www.wholesaleramp.com/WholesaleRAMP/LotDetail.cfm?Lot_ID=13964

They have one ‘PDA’. It’s not a proper PDA. Nobody has ever heard of it. It looks like an overgrown calculator. Rubbish.

4. http://www.wholesale-pda-accessories.com/

Sell accessories (screen protectors, cables, stylus mainly). they will accept resellers, but NO mention of drop shipping, only bulk selling. Have emailed the following via their online form :

Do you offer drop shipping on your products. I’m in the UK and want to sell to US customers, but I don’t want the hassle of buying, getting goods sent to me in the UK, only to have to post them all the way back to the US.

thanks

Chris O’Connor

—————————–

UPDATE 17/11/2003 12:40 - message from them on wholesale411.com message board saying they sell in bulk.

5. http://www.shopping.com/xKW-PDA/kworg-PDA_WHOLESALE/linkin_id-2081916/DMT-4/GS.html

This is a shopping comparison site and seems to have nothing to do with wholesalers or drop shippers.

6. http://www.wholesale411.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi?Terms=pda

Most are not wholesalers (eg. Tucows) and no mention of any drop shippers.

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Quite frankly, at this stage of the process I was starting to get a bit concerned. ABDevelopment seemed to be completely clueless when it came to finding me a dropshipper, and obviously not the slightest bit bothered about the amount of time that was passing since I had signed up, and certainly not in the least bit concerned about meeting any targets that had been set regarding me getting my money back.

Clearly, something had to be done. I had given ABDevelopment every opportunity to provide me with the dropshipper that they promised they would find me, yet time and time again they failed. How much longer could I go on waiting ? They just weren’t delivering. I NEEDED to start getting my money back, so I made a suggestion in my covering email to them :

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Hi Vicky,

I’ve checked out the list of drop shippers that you provided me with., Unfortunately, none of them are any good, for a number of reasons. Ihave made notes on each one and attached them to this email in a Worddocument.

I was determined to try and find a drop shipper for up to date PDA’s soI paid $69 for 6 months access to The Drop Ship Source Directory at http://www.mydssd.com/ This is an excellent resource, but only had one company listed for PDA’s(http://www.dandh.com/). Their application form does not have any wayfor someone outside the US to sign up. I have sent them an email asking if it is possible and am waiting to hear back.

In the meantime I am keen to get started and feel that the product choice is becoming something of a problem. Before I signed up with youI mentioned that my wife was selling Natures Sunshine products and thatI was setting up a web site for her. It was suggested that I shouldlook at other products. I still think that these are ideal products tobe selling, and particularly so after reading the Gorilla Web SiteMarketing book.

Basically, the Natures Sunshine products are natural, herbal, and alternative health supplements. From research I have done on WordtrackerI have found that the word ‘health’ and a lot of health related phrase sare among the most searched on. People are searching for answers to problems. These products give answers to those problems. They are products that will be drop shipped for me, and, they are products that have tons of non-competing information based websites that I could belinking to. The only restrictions that would be imposed on me is thatmy sales would have to be in the UK, Eire, and countries that accept the Euro (ie. most of Europe).

I have already created a site for my wife(http://your-natural-remedies.com/) but obviously if I am working withyou guys I am happy to start with a new domain name and start from scratch on a different site. There are also lots of products that couldbe sold as niche (eg. to help with the menopause).

Please let me know what you think. PDA’s are my main interest, but Iwant to get started quickly and it is proving difficult to find a dropshipper I can use. The Natures Sunshine stuff is something I have already spent a lot of time and effort on and done a good bit ofresearch on it.

thanks

Chris O’Connor
=============

BTW - the UK site for Natures Sunshine (a US company) is http://naturessunshine.co.uk/

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OK, so what do I get back in response ? Here it is :

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Chris,

Unfortunately that time does not work. My schedule is full until after the Thanksgiving holiday we have next week.

I suggest that you email jason@abdevelopment.com for assistance with scheduling for another mentor. Typically I only focus on the marketing of your website, along with Zeus integration.

Perhaps they could get you in sooner, and my schedule should be more open around the same time your website will be up and ready.

Reply to confirm.

Vicky @ AB Development
GorillaWebMarketing

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So now Vicky only does marketing and Zeus integration. Do you remember Vicky’s earlier comments from a previous post :

My name is Vicky, and Glenn assigned me you file to work with you one on one through website construction, and intense marketing.

So how about that then ! Absolutely brilliant. I pay $8000 to do Glenn Canady’s Gorilla Website Marketing Course and they can’t find me a dropshipper, they can’t meet the simplest of deadlines, and now they can’t even do the mentoring they promised they would do ! Time is slipping on and already it was looking almost impossible that they would get me to a point where I would be making money before the first credit card bill hit. After all, could you create a web site from scratch, get it to page 1 on the search engines, and get it pulling in money in less than maybe 7 days ? ABDevelopment certainly couldn’t, as I was about to find out.

Yesterday, I had to break off covering the contents of Glenn Canady’s Gorilla Website Marketing Course package that had been sent to me by ABDevelopment. I’m going to pick up on that here.

So far I’ve covered the bound copy of Glenn Canady’s Gorilla Website Marketing Ebook (something like a $39 value, and I already owned it), the next to useless ‘Free Traffic in just 24 hours’ report (all 3 pages of it) that encouraged the use of webrings and Trafficswarm.

Also included in my binder was a ‘Getting Started’ section written by Advanced Business Development (ABDevelopment). It starts with an encouraging few sentences ‘Congratulations on your new internet business, and welcome to the fast growing world of internet entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you, as an entrepreneur, reach your financial goals, by teaching you the fundementals necessary to start and maintain your own business. We are both striving for success, and if you succeed, we have succeeded.’

That all sounds so good doesn’t it ? So promising. Unfortunately, it all ends several months later with me having followed every one of the things they asked me to do, having worked myself into the ground, having given up 2 jobs to concentrate on this, wasted $8000, incurred huge credit card debts, and ABDevelopment and Glenn Canady not even wanting to listen to me. ABDevelopment fail to reply to any emails I send (and pretend that they can’t contact me) while Glenn Canady just shrugs his shoulders and says it’s nothing to do with him !

So, ABDevelopment, if that is your way of measuring success then on the basis of your performance you can only be judged to be a complete failure.

But of course they try and cover their backsides with the following statement further down the same page, “Also, the information is proprietary and is non-recoverable, and given the nature of your internet business there are no guarantees associated with potential earnings, implied or otherwise. We want to make sure that you understand that as with all businesses and investments the income from this program is entirely based on your own personal commitment”.

Funny how they only mention all this AFTER they have got my $8000. And isn’t it funny how before I signed up the earnings potential was going to be almost whatever I wanted it to be.

Another point is that if ‘the income from this program is entirely based on your own personal commitment’, then how come I’m not a millionaire ? I was supposed to put in 15 hours a week. Sometimes I was putting that in EVERY day. Day in, day out.

As well as the waffle in the ‘Getting Started’ section there was a section on internet terminology. I’ve worked for 25 years in IT and used the internet for about 10 years, so that was a waste of paper. Some info about what the mentor will and won’t do, and what I’m supposed to do and not do. Pretty basic, but I guess necessary stuff. There was also some business related information about how to form a company, what to do regarding taxes etc. This information is 100% US related and has absolutely NO relevance to me whatsoever. I live in the UK. I’ve just spent $8000 and ABDevelopment and Glenn Canady send me me information about tax in the USA. For $8000 they can’t even be bothered either to take it out, or find something that was relevant to the UK.

Then there is the section that lists what I’m getting for my $8000. Here it is :

• 4 Weeks of basic mentoring
• 4 Weeks of Advanced Mentoring w/Glenn’s Personal Experts
• Gorilla Website Marketing
• Zeus Software
• Marketing Templates
• Web Ring w/directory
• 2 Million Email Blast Campaign
• Custom Built Website w/Drop Ship Company

Total Enrollment = $8000

Out of that lot I have had the 8 weeks of mentoring. let me make it clear, you don’t get 8 weeks of mentoring, you get 8 hours of mentoring, at best. Up to 1 hour per week. I got a copy of Gorilla Website Marketing, a $39 product that I already owned (they knew that, it’s why they contacted me !), and I got the Zeus software (approx. $195).

I have no idea what they mean by ‘marketing templates’. When you purchase Zeus at a hugely discounted price, which I’ve done, and I’m sure they must have done, you can get the Zeus people to create you a directory template for free. I don’t know if this is what ABDevelopment mean by ‘marketing templates’. I wouldn’t describe a link directory as ‘marketing templates’, so I have no idea if this is something that they failed to deliver or not. The ‘web ring w/directory’ I never got, and all attempts to quiz them about this have been ignored by ABDevelopment.

The ‘2 million email blast’ I have never had. Prior to sign up I recall being told that the difference between the basic $5000 package and the top of the range package was the email blast that it came with. If there was $3000 difference and 2 million emails difference then it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that the email blast is estimated to be worth $3000. This is something ABDevelopment now deny. I never got the email blast and I have a LOT to say about this in a future post.

And then we have the ‘Custom Built Website w/Drop Ship Company’. OK, to me that sounds like they are actually giving me something. Let me make it clear, I got nothing. I built the website myself and despite asking several times ABDevelopment did NOT find me a drop ship company for the products I wanted to sell. This I believe is one of the biggest reasons reasons for the failure of all this. Yet despite promising they could get a drop shipper for anything I wanted they were unable to find a dropshipper for fairly ordinary products that I came up with. And they couldn’t care less.

The concept of drop shipping is a very US based thing. It is almost unheard of in the UK, so I was totally reliant on ABDevelopment to find me a drop ship company, as they had promised me they would, and as they were contractually obliged to do. They failed to do it.

I also got in my package an audio cd of Glenn Canady waffling on about they same stuff that was in his book (from what I can remember). It added nothing of value. So there we have it. That was what was in the Glenn Canady Gorilla Website Marketing package that I was sent.

Tomorrow I’ll pick up on the dropshipper issue again.