Today I’d like to briefly talk about why I deleted my Warrior Forum account.
Whereas most people join Warrior Forum when they first started working online. I joined after working on the web for over ten years. It had a terrible reputation but I went there with an open mind in order to learn more about selling information products and building my newsletter.
Firstly, I would like to say that despite its bad reputation, Warrior Forum has a lot of good members. There’s a lot of honest hard working people there who actively help others out. It does have it’s fair share of problems. Here’s what I believe to be the main problems of the forum:
- Too Many Sellers Pushing Garbage Products – The offers forum is one of the most popular rooms on the forum. There are some good products being sold there but my guess is that 99% of the products being sold are garbage. Here’s what usually happens. Someone makes a few hundred dollars online. They then create a product based on what they learned and sell it to others, making sure to use the word System, Formula or Cheat in the title. The problem is, the products are about making money on the web however the only way the people selling them know how to make money is by selling informational products to others…..about making money. See the problem there!
- A Lot of Con Artists Hang Around the Forum – If you sign up, you’ll get approached frequently by private message by people with offers.
- Warrior Forum is Run by Assholes – I really can’t sugar coat this fact. The forum moderators and owners are assholes. Any thread that criticises something or warns other members about scams are deleted immediately. Not what you should expect as a paying member.
A few months ago I spoke about The Dangers of Forum Owners Not Protecting Their Members. I had written the post in response to a thread of mine which warned others about their products being stolen. Warrior Forum deleted the thread immediately.
Last month I was testing out solo ads from a number of different buyers. I had never purchased solo ads before but I put a few hundred dollars to the side to try it out and see what kind of response I got.
Unfortunately, one member from Warrior Forum ripped me off. I don’t want to go into too much detail. Essentially, they promised good traffic from native-English speaking countries but instead sent me a little traffic from countries such as Pakistan etc (clearly through a cheap PPC service such as 7Search). I cut my losses but I contacted Warrior Forum and told them about the issue. Their response was that because the seller hadn’t posted an offer they wouldn’t do anything.
A few Warrior Forum members contacted me about the seller. It turns out that after he stole money from me he added a fake testimonial from me. I warned them not to do business with them and they were appreciative of me saving them from losing cash. The seller makes money by sending messages to other members on the forum every day saying he has an email list and can sell traffic. He’s an active member on the site, which is what dupes many people into buying from him.
I made a thread warning others not to do business with the seller. You won’t be surprised to learn that Warrior Forum deleted my thread immediately. I spoke about the need for forum owners to protect members. Not only do the owners of Warrior Forum not protect their members, they seem to go to great lengths in order to allow scammers to operate there. As such, I requested my account to be deleted.
Here’s the thread they deleted:
This is a warning to other Warrior Forum members. Do not ever do business with the member known as Barry Jenkins.
He also has the account jibril2400 on Warrior Forum but that was banned.
I lost hundreds of dollars from him. He promises to send good traffic from lists. In reality, he sends junk traffic from cheap ppc sites and uses Twitter as a redirect so that you can’t see the source. For $250 I got 15 conversions from countries such as Pakistan, Egypt and Saudia Arabia…and not one person even downloaded the book they were supposedly signing up for.
Despite him ripping me off, he added a testimonial from me on his site www.soloking123.com. I do not endorse him in any shape or form. He’s a scam artist and I advise you all to avoid doing business with him.
I contacted Warrior Forum at the time but they said there was nothing they can do as it wasn’t an offer he posted. He seems to be getting around being banned again by contacting hundreds of members here directly. I’ve been emailed by a few members since he added my endorsement so he must be ripping off a lot of people.
Do not, I repeat, do not do business with his guy. All his whois information is fake so I am unable to pursue this issue legally. However, I have contacted GoDaddy so that my lawyer can get the real address and resolve this issue.
He goes by the name Gabriel Odinaka or Gabriel Jibril online. He uses these contact email address:
jibril2400 on Skype
barryjenkin111222@gmail.com
jibril2400@yahoo.comHe uses this account on Twitter to redirect links: https://twitter.com/jibril2400
Here’s the quote he added for me. For the record, I don’t sell anything so there is nothing I can convert. Also, I never use i instead of I. If he’s going to imitate me, he can at least take the time to use proper grammar.
“I am well over words man, can’t believe how well your solo ads worked, i got so many conversions on this run, over 10 sales for a high ticket item from 1k clicks, Do you have slots for three orders per week? i got some more offers i wanna run man, great results!!”
If you need any further information, please send me a message.
Kevin
To do this day the member continues to rip off people on Warrior Forum.
I’m a little embarrassed about being scammed. All businesses lost money to freelancers from time to time. Over the years I’ve paid bloggers in advance who didn’t write the article for me. I’ve paid coders to design scripts for me and they provided me with junk that couldn’t be used. It’s a risk whenever you hire someone else. However, I was a little embarrassed by the nature of this as I paid the money and got zero in return (and PayPal offers you zero support after you send money). I’ve been working online for years so I’m very annoyed that I was. It just goes to show that you should always be vigilant about who you work with online.
I’m not going to preach to you about whether you should or shouldn’t be a member on Warrior Forum. All I will say is that if you active there, be careful. Feel free to email me if you are unsure about anything.
If you want to learn more about the problems of using Warrior Forum, please check out Warrior Forum Sucks. The site list stories from others who have lost money there.
Be safe.
Thanks,
Kevin
I never have an account on Warrior Forum but a few people that I know raved about Warrior Forum. There was a time I consider registering but at the end I didn’t because no matter how active you are on the forum, it’s hard to get people noticed you and your product (assuming you’re not selling garbage). I find this fascinating because I barely hear people say nasty stuff about Warrior Forum until you talk about it. This is certainly an eye-opener for me and thanks for pointing this out.
There are a huge amount of pissed off ex-warriorforum members on the internet. I wouldn’t say I’m one of them. There are lots of great members there. I just think the people who run it are idiots.
Kevin
Dang Kevin that was a hell of article. Nice of you to take the time to share this. I empathize. Liars and cheats always bother me more than the money. There are some great people online, but alas, still too many snake oil salesmen here. We need to continue cleaning up the online marketing community. Good work. Butch
You’re 100% right. Too many sneaky marketing tactics are being used. I’d go as far as saying it’s kind of accepted by many people. I don’t agree with it.
Forgive my typo. Ticks me off that I didn’t catch it before hitting ‘send’.
Hi Kevin: I agree with you. Warrior forum is the place where many of them lost huge money. Take a look at the money invested in the warriorforum WSO ,its all waste of money.There are thousands of WSOs about making money but by far my experience i have found none of the books helped the buyers. Its full of fake promises and steals your money.You have done a good decision .instead of sending money in this forum,we can concentrate what we are doing right now .This will helps to increase the tech expertise and the income also.
I’ve never purchased a WSO. I’d be happy to spend money on a good informational product but I never saw anything there that interested me. There are some good products for sale there….but there are so many bad products that it’s difficult to find them.
Hi Kevin, talk about a a waste of money. I spent 35 usd in that forum to only find out I had to spend more to post about the blog engage site. I’ll never visit again and wish I could had gotten some return from it. Oh well I guess we learn from our mistakes! You are right it’s difficult to find the good products over the bad ones!
Yeah the setup isn’t so good. I don’t mind paying to have a WSO posted however I don’t like threads being deleted, particularly when those threads were warning others about spammers.
Kevin, I know how it feel to be taking by a someone and the people who are suppose to have your best interest at heart, don’t do anything. I had to walk away from a program myself for the same reasons.
Sad part is a handful of people hurt the Internet marketing industry as a whole.
Side Note: If someone has a http://soloking123.com and it redirect to http://soloking123.weebly.com/ thats is a really good Idea to stay away from them, because they don’t don’t get it. If you can’t pick up a dot com and create a page on your site then you don’t plan on being around long anyway.
Thanks, for the Post Kevin.
~ Willie
No problem. Yes he seems to switch between free services frequently.
Kevin
Warrior Forum sucks, no doubt. They can ban you for no reason or delete your signature.
While the paid members keep doing all the bull craps..shame on them!!
Thank you for your message. This guy added me on skype, and contacted me last night promoting his service. He offered me 500 clicks for $137 tester. To be honest I was very close to sending him the money. Thank you very much for this
Glad you never got burned mate. You need to be careful with this kind of thing. For every honest guy, there’s a few scumbags who want to rip you off
Kevin
Sorry to see you got ripped off Kevin.
But the deception, lies, and flim flam on the Warrior Forum is much bigger than one douche bag ripping you off. it is much bigger than this and practically institutionalized with particular moderators like Paul Myers, Ken Strong, and others having a massive investment in peddling the “content syndication” promotional model leading to the protection of a much more powerful and subtle scam involving “content” and related providers.
I agree Ernest. These kind of problems filter from the top down. If the owners and staff do not actively try and protect members, the members are going to be ripped off. And they are.
I hate forum owners that don’t even care when a member is being conned.
Kevin
Hello Kevin. I found your blog by using the famous search engine Google. I’m a member of WarriorForum. And these past few weeks, I question the integrity and the moral standards of that site. I’ve been a struggling IMer for years and I’ve done nothing but go in circles. I’m beginning to think it’s just another forum of GURUS. And by God I hate Gurus. I’m finding it to be very very cliquish to the point where theres only a few “Special” members on there that make the big bucks. No matter how many case studies, WSO’s guides I’ve bought and have taken action by staying up long hours trying to get methods to work, they always leave the key strategies out where most newbies haven’t made a dime.
There are some good people on there yes, but there are a alot of stuck up pricks that don’t give two-shits about you if you’re struggling. The thing that really pissed me off, I joined someone’s mini blog where you pay monthly for $10. Yeah my mistake. It had guides and downloads which I considered to be rehashed garbage. The owner of the blog, before I purchased said she would do 1 on 1 training if needed. Well, when I asked her I needed training on how to build a profitable PPC campaign etc. She said, I charge $150 for coaching. I was highly offended and pissed off big time and I cancelled my subscription.
I even PM’ed a few coaches on there to let them know I was struggling and mentioned I could use some help (Without Being Spoonfed) Never heard back from them. That tells me those “So Called” coaches are nothing but Gurus. Talk about unethical. I’m to the point where I have no trust for anyone in internet marketing anymore. All those guides,gurus, WSO’s and coaches are only there to confuse you and rip you off. Sickening!
Oh yeah, and today, a respected member who knows the IM copywriting business, cussed out Paul Myers from head to toe and rightfully deserved it. Within 3 minutes, he was banned.
Warrior Forum is classless loaded with Guru’s and garbage. Thanks for letting me vent man. You seem like a very respected IMer, which is very very rare.
I would love to hear more about your experience Kevin.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for taking the time to leave such a long detailed comment
I think it depends on what you mean by GURU. I mean, Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.net is one of the most knowledgeable people on the subject of blogging. So I guess you could see he is a Guru. However, he’s an honest ethical guy and isn’t looking to rip anyone off.
The problem with many people on WF is that they try and paint themselves as Gurus….but they are not. It’s no surprise that 90% of the WSO’s are from other WF members explaining how they made money by selling WSO’s. It’s very similar to a pyramid scheme once you take away all the bullshit.
I don’t know the full story of you and the person who offered coaching. I don’t think that $150 is anything to be disgusted by. You are paying for their time, and their years of experience (that’s assuming they are experienced and can help you etc).
I offer coaching myself…I do enjoy helping others but it is better for me to make money in other ways. Some people may consider my coaching prices high…but you need to remember, two or three hours helping someone directly, is time I could be making money in other ways; be it writing for other people, writing articles here, writing books etc.
Rather than help people directly through coaching, what I hope to do in the future is help people through my podcast. This allows me to answer questions for them for free, but everyone can listen to the advice etc I give.
If there is any specific thing you are unsure of, feel free to ask here and I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction
Kevin
Hey Kevin, thanks for responding. Didn’t expect it to be this fast lol. Yeah, tell me about the wannabe gurus. I think I’ve heard of Darren Rouse before, I like his blog, looks polished. I never mentioned it wasn’t a bad thing to charge for coaching, it’s a bad thing when someone tells you they will be glad to help you out for free, then come back and say they charge you…and for asking one specific question. It’s the unethical approach that bothers me.
I guess that’s where the Guru name get’s such a bad name from, like you said the wannabe gurus. I like to think of the good ones, as Im Pros, or IM mentors. I’m glad you let me vent. Otherwise, if I had done that on WarriorForum, the ban hammer would have hit me fast because I’m not one of the “special ones”.
There is a course one day I’m looking to get into once I’m able to afford it. I’ll leave the guy nameless, but I respect him. I watched some of his pre-videos that talks about getting traffic the right way. It’s pure gold. It’s an expensive course. but worth it. At the end of the video, he said: look, if you don’t have the money right now, then don’t spend your last dollar. To me, that was very Ethical right there the fact he wasn’t trying to “sucker” anyone in.
We need more of that in the IM world. Honest and ethical IMers like him and you. Thanks for listening to me. And if I need some questions asked, I will definitely ask you.
Peace!
Hey Patrick,
I would encourage you to take advantage of Amazon. I’ve bought courses etc in the past for some things, but Amazon is such a competitive place. There are many great internet marketing books and many are priced really cheap as authors can make money by volume. For example, at the moment my latest book is $3.99..if I sold it on ClickBank, I’d probably be selling it at $47 or $97.
It’s kind of a catch 22 thing with the “Gurus”. Those that are making a lot of money, are usually too busy making money to help others. And those that are telling people how to make money…are making a lot (if not all) of their money by telling others how to make money (the blind leading the blind).
Obviously, not everyone who sells informational products is a phoney, and those who do make good money advising others may still give good advice. I would just take what anyone is promoting to you with a pinch of salt….that applies to me too.
For example, I reviewed FeedBlitz yesterday as I think it’s a great service, but if it’s not suitable for you, don’t use it. It pays to have your bullshit radar on when looking at products etc.
There is no secret. If you want to make money online, work hard and make a website that people want to visit. Too many people are looking for the quick fix. You should be looking to build a solid sustainable business.
Kevin
Makes perfect sense Kevin. Will definitely take that into consideration. Thanks again for your help!
No problem. Best of luck
:)
Kevin
I agree totally with what you said Kevin, no accountability whatsoever…..I remember a senior warrior “Jorge” join date 2004 with several posts ran a WSO and ripped offed several warriors of $1,000′s and while buyers were screaming for a refund which was promised in the WSO, he was allowed to start another similar WSO.
I say members were scammed of $1,000′s of dollars because I knew someone who lost over $5,000.00 and I was threatened with a ban and my posts were ignored about what this guy was doing. I was even ridiculed by some for asking the owners to be responsible and check into what this senior warrior was doing to their members.
Well when he was finally banned, he left several warriors seriously out of pocket cause his WSO was building and ranking sites to $30 per month guaranteed in adsense and then handing them over to the buyer after 3 months, with 3 pages of contents etc; or maintaining them for a fee. Not one of my friends sites made a cent, not only that but some had no content or little content.
Talk about rip-off and excuses, from ” I was on vacation, to sickness…et al”. Needles to say, my friend has not recovered a cent of his money and I am annoyed that the folks at WF who made money from the WSO, were not in anyway responsible for this crime they facilitated on their members. It went on for more that 4 months.
When I hear more stories like this, it surprises me that more people haven’t sued Warrior Forum. It’s one thing to not defend members, it’s another for them to go out of their way and delete threads that warn others of known scams and untrustworthy people.
Due to this, I would advise people against using Warrior Forum……plus, 99% of WSO’s are terrible anyways.
My friend did not get all the sites he paid for (just a few) and requested a refund early in the game after he “smell a rat”. He never got it and his complaints and mine fell on deaf ears.
Yes, they are not too slow in closing ranks when any criticism is leveled. This ranges from the deletion posts to deletion of threads to outright bans.
It is too much of a cash cow to have “little people” coming and pissing on the parade..
The vast majority of WSO sellers there are fakers, barely eking out an existence.
Agreed.
Step 1: Make $10 online.
Step 2: Write a 10 page eBook explaining how you made that $10.
Step 3: Sell your eBook as a “system” and try and make thousands.
That covers the majority of WSO’s being sold.
Gabriel Jibril has surfaced at Safe-Swaps this article is being used as a reference to warn people away from him
That’s good Mark. I wouldn’t advise anyone to ever work with him. Hopefully, no one else will be conned by him.
Thanks for your post Kevin. This DB contacted me immediately once I posted a review about another solo ad service provider. I was suspicious so I Googled his name and your article popped up. Who would have thought one DB could drive so much traffic to your site! Anyway, I’m staying away from BJ thanks to your article.
No problem Mike. I’m glad you didn’t get scammed. You would have ended up with junk traffic. A few people on Safe-Swaps recently emailed me about him too. He seems to be prolific.
Lol this advice , i was going to use warrior forum but i realized that u have to be pay for membership that sucks . i’m kinda sad because when u do search on google warrior forum comes first , i wont forget this thread
I do not think there is anything wrong with paying for a forum. In theory, paid forums should be of a higher quality. However, the actions of the staff ensures that doesn’t happen.