Well, the online marketer in question does solve a real problem for _a lot_ of companies. It's about outranking negative review websites on Google. His particular example is a travel agency (I think), and there are many similar companies. He basically claims to have a method that can be employed for free, and the companies just need to pay 49 pounds to watch that part of the video. http://www.brandcurrency.co.uk/

So then everyone pays 49 pounds and renders the said method useless?

It could be a legitimate method -- would be interesting to see that part of the video. He is taking the payment via PayPal, therefore I guess not too many of the paying customers are asking for refunds because that would trigger PayPal's fraud mechanisms.

I have paid the to see the last part of the video and it is a legitimate technique.

I'm midly intrigued given the lack of obvious astroturfing when Googling for the Brand Currency site.

usually its pretty transparent what makes self-appointed internet marketing "gurus" successful from the amount of shill blogs with affiliate links pointing to their latest eBook.

Surely the ethical way of dealing with negative reviews is to improve what you are doing, not to drown out your critics and ignore your problems?

there is a big problem with fake reviews aka ripoffreport et al.

The site has a bunch of crappy articles on the subject and probably got them to rank in Google. Hardly ethical.

500+ users? I don't believe it coming from this guy.

Development doesn't make money - choosing the right things to develop do.

I've been arriving to the conclusion that the code that gets laid down is really the last 10% of the work that needs to be done.

Development doesn't make money, selling does. Choosing the right things to develop is the first step.

I'm sure the marketers face the same probability of failure as more tech-based startups - they just tend to invest less time for probably a lower expected reward. They don't need to think about seed capital or taking on employees but not too many have >$10 million exits or grow beyond a lifestyle business either.

tl;dr: he was doing something constructive but not making money, so he's decided to emulate a guy who sells "how to paste over online criticism" videos.

If the writer is reading this thread: please don't. Your integrity and self-respect have value too.

If a good developer can't make money from their projects or applications then they are not making applications other people value enough to actually pay for! Maybe the OP should make something people want!!!

On the contrary look at Zed Shaws http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1563205 post about asking for donations... A great project with wide adoption, yet turning no profit

Umm, Mongrel2 is probably great, but it certainly doesn't have wide adoption as of yet. It was started only a few weeks ago. You may be thinking of the original Mongrel, which doesn't really have any relation to the new one except by name. (And they're both http servers.)

Because he is not selling it. How can you expect to make money on a product by giving out it for free? Google make gobs of money giving out web search for free, but Google's product is not search, it is advertising, and you pay for it.

Not necessarily: the good developer might be a rubbish marketer or sales person and cannot reach potential customers and those reached are not converted.

Once Pontins offers affiliate commissions, the marketeers will work so hard that even Pontins.com might no longer be #1.

he can't be that good of an online marketer...if he didn't leave his url in the blog post.