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STM London & My Plans For March
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“Deeply Insolvent” Banners Broker to Surrender Assets
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FinchPremiums.com – 20% Discount & Affiliate Program

STM London & My Plans For March

In case you haven’t heard, STM Forum is holding a massive affiliate meetup in London next month.

Somebody better call 8 Northumberland Avenue ahead of time — because to the unsuspecting waiter, bar man, or miscellaneous lost Japanese tourist, it’s going to be raining vast quantities of sausage from March 9th.

That’s the opening night of a three day networking marathon that brings together some of the biggest names in our industry.

STM has slapped together a fantastic lineup of speakers, many of which you will recognise from the forum, including:

  • Lorenzo Green (Mr Green)
  • Jordan (stackman)
  • Besmir (bbrock32)
  • Caurmen
  • Dr David Savory (Zeno)
  • Josh Mayne (Maynzie)
  • CMdeal
  • Alexander Tsatkin (The Angry Russian)
  • Tim Tetra (Timtetra)
  • Benjamin Yong (Kokofai)
  • Jim Stark (Jim)
  • Charles Ngo (Dr_Ngo)
  • John Alanis (Johna5150)
  • Alex Willemsen (Scitox)
  • Lars Kroijer (Kroijer)
  • Christian Weselak (Ratalliance)
  • Robert Gryn (Zeropark)
  • Christina Szekeres (FBQueen)
  • Rohail Rizvi (Rohail)
  • Chris Hanage (Papaya Mobile sponsor speaker)
  • An Advidi sponsor speaker TBA

That is a lot of authority in the affiliate space.

Most of these speakers are closely intertwined with the daily struggles of affiliate marketers.

(Unlike some of the speaking lists you see at other conferences, where most of the ‘authorities’ wouldn’t know the language of affiliate marketers if it slapped them square in the jubblies.)

The Schedule

You can see the full schedule of events here, but I’ll summarise the best bits and some important notes:

Monday, March 9th

Monday’s shenanigans are open to everybody, both STM members and the general public. You need to register online before attending.

Registration is free.

After registering, collect your pass between 12pm-4pm on Monday from 8 Northumberland Avenue, WC2N 5BY. You’ll need it for all events.

The highlights of Monday include 3 hours of speeches from industry veterans, and an opening party hosted by AppFlood at Forge Bar near Cannon Street.

I’ll definitely be attending on Monday, so if you want to meet up for a drink (but don’t have STM membership), drop me an email or track me down at the event.

Tuesday, March 10th

Tuesday is for STM members only.

Not a member? Sign up now.

Voluum will be kicking off a networking brunch between 10am and 1pm at the Prince Albert Suite near Regent’s Park.

This sounds pretty interesting.

Attendees will be divided in to smaller groups depending on the type of traffic sources and verticals they run.

Personally, I can’t wait to see what the ‘First Free Find & Fuck’ table looks like…

In the evening, there will be more speeches at 8 Northumberland Avenue, as well as the inaugural STM Awards.

This blog has somehow wrangled a nomination in the Blog of the Year category, despite about five new posts.

There are some excellent nominees in the ‘Success Story of the Year’ category, which will go to the affiliate who has made the most emphatic progress, as seen on the STM Forum. If you need a rocket lit under your arse, I suggest you sign up and read the stories of the nominees.

They are the true stars of the STM brand.

You will find guys who have gone from zero to $XX,XXX/month in profit. And their progress can be followed, in full, on STM.

Of course, you can meet these affiliates in person.

By coming to the event.

Adsimilis will cap the Tuesday by hosting a Games Night at All Star Lanes in Bayswater.

If you are a dab hand at foosball, bowling or Xbox, you can come along and shame your fellow peers.

Wednesday, March 11th

Wednesday is also for STM members only.

The morning starts with paintball hosted by Avazu.

Just reading the description — “We have the ultimate STM twist for this paintball experience but we can’t tell you anything else” — I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds pretty bloody ominous.

  • Guns loaded with acai berries?
  • Capture the laptop (full of campaigns)?
  • Team Affiliate vs. The FTC?

The last time I indulged in paintball, I got — what’s that quaint British term? — oh yeah, absolutely fucking smashed.

I almost ended up on the motorway after attempting my best Rambo impression with less than 20/20 vision and a fundamental ignorance of the ‘Out of Bounds’ signs.

From 8pm onwards, a legion of bruised, battered and hungover affiliates will be tapping up the Core Bar on Queen Street.

Wednesday’s grand closing party is sponsored by Advidi and has an equally ominous 1990s theme.

Come on, suckers.

Who’s gonna bite the bullet and go Full Geri?

Geri 1990s

It’s your last chance to drunkenly extract campaigns network with the best in the industry.

STM is known for putting on the wildest affiliate shows in town.

If you are in London — or willing to travel — this is going to be a HUGE three days that will inspire, motivate and hopefully kickstart your campaigns to the next level.

Sign up to STM today, and register for the event!

Special kudos to the sponsors:

My Plans For March

This blog has been quiet recently. I’ve had to prioritise my business with a focus on training employees, at the expense of splurging my views to you cretins.

Life is busy.

I’m moving to Thailand with my girlfriend on March 14th.

She’s already secured a job in Thailand, and the final arrangements have been made for us to say Au Revoir to the Big Smoke.

We’re counting down the days with a combination of excitement and dread.

  • The excitement of starting a new life in Asia
  • The dread of dealing with final ‘logistics’ while the calendar closes like a spiked ceiling in the Temple of Doom.

Who am I kidding?

It’s mostly excitement.

I have a house full of belongings to shift:

Furniture, appliances, a huge pile of books… a Lazy Spa…

Is there such a thing as owning too much crap? I think so.

I was going to blow a fortune putting my stuff in storage, and shipping over my office essentials — but fuck it, why bother?

There’s a good saying: “The more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you.”

The only thing I’m taking to Thailand is my clothes — and my dogs (back to their homeland, the expensive little arseclarts).

Everything else is getting sold, donated to charity, or trashed.

Of course, ‘dealing with everything else’, as anybody who has moved house will attest, is a great aphrodisiac… for shitting your pants.

It will be worth it in about 3 weeks!

I can’t wait to touch down in Bangkok.

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“Deeply Insolvent” Banners Broker to Surrender Assets

It looks like justice is finally catching up with Chris Smith, Rajiv Dixit and the men behind Banners Broker.

Two years ago, I wrote a series of posts exposing Banners Broker, a so-called ‘online advertising broker’, as a sordid ponzi scheme.

I received all kinds of threats, smears and public verbal bashings.

You can read the 2000+ comments from these posts to see just how personal it got:

This week, liquidators obtained a court order to seize all assets owned by Banners Broker International (BBIL), and to force its owners to reveal the whereabouts of money taken from affiliates.

Court papers labelled BBIL “deeply insolvent”, but that hasn’t stopped many affiliates clinging to hope of payment on the company’s official Facebook page.

The Banners Broker website remains ‘temporarily closed’.

bb-closed

BBIL has been granted continued use of telephone numbers, facsimile numbers, Internet addresses and domain names providing all payments are made at the normal price. The website will stay physically online for now (despite being closed), but a host of other BB services including: all computer software, communication services, banking services, reservation systems, credit card processors, payroll services, and armoured car services (lol) are now restrained by the court order.

Remaining BB disciples are being coaxed in to accessing the TalkingBB forum for the ‘full story’ of what’s happening.

Yes, the TalkingBB forum.

Or as I prefer to call it: Animal Farm.

An Orwellian hideout if ever there were such a thing.

To gain access, you must register, post once in a vetted forum, wait for approval, and then swear on your dog’s life not to emit the slightest whiff of negativity or face an instant lifetime ban.

I’ve seen some ‘ignorance is bliss’ circle jerks in my time, but this one takes the biscuit.

Anyway, if you want the real story on why Banners Broker is finished, look no further than the recent court orders.

You can view them here: Banners Broker in Liquidation

They are crystal clear and devoid of ‘trolling’, as court papers tend to be.

Highlights from the Court Orders

Seeing how there are still believers who refuse to accept that Banners Broker’s demise is anything less than Chris Smith ‘making a few changes to the website’…

Feed the Trolls

court-lies

…I thought I’d post some of The Best Bits from these latest orders.

Remember B-Believers: The court is not a troll.

Banners Broker Scam

If Banners Broker was to do something shady, like, I don’t know, completely lie about its sources of revenue or the nature of its clients… then this spells trouble.

Banners Broker Scam

Shiver me timbers. Accounting records? Contracts?

I guess we’re going to find out the truth about where all those affiliate payouts came from.

Banners Broker Scam

WANTED: Video recording.

If only to answer that burning question: is the real Chris Smith black or white?

Banners Broker Scam

And here is why the Banners Broker website is offline.

It’s the last remaining artefact of a company that has, for all intensive purposes, ceased to exist.

Disclaimers

I hate to have to include this, but there is an ongoing rumour that I have somehow profited from writing negatively about Banners Broker.

Some have even claimed I’m linked to a ‘troll list’ of former BB members now trying to claim back money by dragging the company’s name through the dirt.

Troll List

Let me be clear on this:

1. I have not pocketed a single penny from Banners Broker.

I have never been a Banners Broker member, affiliate, or investor.

My first exposure to Banners Broker came through a family member investing her money in it. I was immediately suspicious over whether her earnings could be sustained, or legally explained.

So I investigated the company — the online advertising sector is how I make my living, after all. I can see bullshit for bullshit — but what I found was worse than bullshit:

A shining turd of a ponzi scheme.

A scheme so far detached from how it said it made money that I simply had to blog about it.

2. Neither do I make money by blogging about Banners Broker.

I lose money.

Yes, it’s a waste of my time to be sitting here trumpeting about a bunch of fraudsters who will soon meet their comeuppance. But I do it anyway because I’ve had my name and character slandered by them.

Call it a pastime, if you will.

The second attack against me is that in an interview two years ago, I referred to myself as an Internet scumbag, and therefore cannot be trusted.

Seriously, I shit you not.

This quote has been immortalised in the BB Handbook of Responding to Criticism.

Q: “Hi Finch, tell us a little bit about yourself, where are you from, where do you live now?”

A: “Well, I’m a 24-year-old affiliate marketer, which I guess is interchangeable with Internet Scumbag.”

Banners Broker latched on to this quote and used it as their single line of defence against my 30,000+ words of arguments dissecting their dysfunctional, fraudulent business model.

When was the last time you heard a senior director of a respectable company rebuke public criticism by insisting “it’s okay, guys, don’t listen to Finch, he called himself an Internet Scumbag in 2012.”

Well, of course I did.

I’m British.

Self-deprecation is what we do best.

What these MLM guys don’t understand, and I’m talking to the ‘Oh here I am driving nowhere in my rented Mercedes whilst recording a YouTube video about my latest whack-job investment that you should definitely sign up to under my link’ is this: the joke is on them.

I may be a self-professed Internet scumbag, but at least I’m not in the throngs of a mid-life crisis, willingly selling my friends and family down the shitter for a 20% commission.

Now that’s a scumbag.

What’s Left?

Beyond the lunacy, there is genuine tragedy to the unravelling of Banners Broker.

And that tragedy is the many real lives that it has affected, and still affects to this day.

Just last week, a post emerged on Facebook of a former affiliate who couldn’t handle the guilt of involving his family in Banners Broker.

He had encouraged them to set up accounts, with good intentions no doubt. But what are good intentions to a bunch of fraudsters riding high on those deposits? Those lifetime savings, plunged in to a program that is rigged to fail from the very beginning?

This man’s family lost all of their money, and he couldn’t live with the guilt.

Wracked with depression, he hung himself.

This is a terrible story, but a familiar ending to anybody who has witnessed the fallout of other pyramid schemes.

The lies they spread, the false hope they bring, the relentless incentives to involve your friends and family… it’s sickening. And of course, exquisitely executed. A perfect fraud.

Scams like Banners Broker ruin lives.

Even those ardently defending Banners Broker to this day… you know it. Deep down you know that as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme, it’s over.

If you have been affected by Banners Broker, I hope you do three things:

1. Check out this post on Tara Talks. A comprehensive guide to getting your money back. It’s not guaranteed to work given the “deeply insolvent” nature of what’s left of BBIL — but it’s better than nothing.

2. Learn for the future: if somebody promises you life-changing money for doing relatively little — it’s too good to be true.

3. Stop blaming others. The reason Banners Broker has failed you is because it was rigged to fail you from the very start. All ponzi schemes are. They feed the men at the top, the Chris Smiths and Raj Dixits of the world, whilst taking from the poor at the bottom.

Following the story of Banners Broker has been a real eye opener for me.

A descent in to some truly fucked-up minds, not least the havoc they can wreak on those who buy in to pipe dreams too easily.

I hope justice is served, and I’ll be following the Canadian court proceedings with interest.

FinchPremiums.com – 20% Discount & Affiliate Program

I’m happy to announce the launch of FinchPremiums.com.

No, it’s not another blog.

It’s an online store where you can buy Premium Posts, as well as a selection of other marketing products by myself and those that I trust (coming soon).

The store is currently only selling Premium Posts Volumes 1-4, but the greater flexibility means that I will be able to offer you discounts, bundle packs, and other good shit you might like.

There is also, finally, an affiliate program.

Create a user account, apply for the affiliate program, and you will get 25% of the revenue from any customers you send.

Haven’t read Premium Posts yet?

To celebrate this joyous occasion, for the next 24 hours only, you can use coupon code LAUNCHDAY to get 20% off your entire order.

This means you can steal my entire set of Premium Posts for $80. A bonafide snip, god damn it!

But only for the next 24 hours.

Enjoy.

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