www.RedHotAutoresponders.com
jimbocurley@gmail.com
jimmy@onemanbandmarketing.com
(559) 561-3822

We are on Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero Red Hot Copy list & one day she promoted this Jimmy Curley, a guy talking about how to get your auto responder e-mails selling your products.

Since we need help in that area, I signed up for the teleseminar, but missed it, so I e-mailed to get a copy of the audio.

I ended up somehow speaking to Jimmy Curley & because I don’t wish to learn how to do copywriting (I’m an entrepreneur, NOT a copywriter) & instead wanted to hire someone to do the work, I started up a dialogue with Jimmy.

I told him we wanted to hire someone to redo our auto responder e-mails.

He went on to write something about landing pages, broadcasts, etc. He also said:

“If you’re looking for someone to write for you, John Carlton has a
“stable” of writers, including myself and Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero. You
can get an idea of what specific projects would cost by contacting
Kevin Rogers at: kevin@marketingrebel.com”

I told him I knew all about landing pages, broadcasts already, & we wouldn’t have the money do to the landing page right now. I asked him if I had to go through Keven to get his (Jimmy’s) pricing.

I also stated:

“I’m looking for a respectful copywriter who actually produces results, isn’t just in it for the money, is honest, e-mails/calls when he/she says they will & has dealt with small businesses before, so understands the differences between a small & large business as they are completely different.”

I wanted to see how he’d communicate with me.

His way of communicating was to be passive aggresive & ignore me, so a couple of days later I wrote him back & said I never got a response from him.

I felt his response was RUDE, CONDESCENDING & just plain IGNORANT:

“Hey Michelle:

Thanks for writing. I usually write for clients who are in it for the
money. They hire me because they want copy that will sell so much
product that it makes my fee look like chump change.

Like the ad I recently wrote for a golf company. They were trying to
sell a club. The owners at first tried writing their own ad. Didn’t
work. They then hired a “cheap” writer for $5K — but that ad didn’t
sell a single club. Not one.

They came to me — and were at first shocked by my $20K fee. They paid
it, and were pleased when my ad pulled in $78,400 from a single email
on the first day.

The ad went on to generate over $300,000 for my client and they
stopped running it only because they ran out of clubs.

So the question is were they better off paying the $5K for a rookie or
the $20K for a writer with a proven track record?

I always encourage bargain hunters to shop around.

Hope that helps.

–Jimmy Curley”

First he tries to sell us, then he ignores us, then he insinuates that because we are a small company we are BARGAIN HUNTERS,then says we don’t care about money, as if companies who don’t have $20,000 to throw around are worth less than large companies who do. Then he tries to make it seem like his copy is worth every penny – ALL copywriters say that, whether it’s true or not is left up to the company to determine, NOT the copywriter.

I was quite upset by his disrespectful response, so I told him:

“Companies who don’t have the money AREN’T bargain hunters & I take offense
to you labeling small companies in such a manner.

This is the type of rude attitude I don’t tolerate.”

While he wrote back & said he meant no offense, it was clear he didn’t meant it. I felt he was an arrogant show off. Everyone should know that this level of arrogance is a huge sign of insecurity. People who are secure with themselves don’t need to show off & they don’t treat people like this. He made it seem like companies who don’t have $20,000 laying around like they are beneath him.

And now that I know that this is the type of person Lorrie & John Carlton hangs around & promotes, I will be unsubscribing from their lists too. I know who John Carlton is, I’ve also been on his list for years & may have even purchased one of his products in the past.

So, unless you have $20,000 laying around to spend on copywriting of any kind, beware of how a lot of these copywriters treat people. They don’t care about you, all they care about is MONEY & while every business wants to make money, OUR company only wants to deal with people who are kind, respectful & treats all businesses with respect even if they don’t have their fee.

Many of these copywriters are quite ignorant because they end up not only losing out on a potential company’s business down the road (who knows when our company will have their large fees), they are then blogged about so the entire world can see their TRUE personality.

Michelle

Dominik Bjegovic responded to our ad on Elance looking for a business consultant.

At first I thought he was willing to work with us to meet our needs (he was willing to take 15% of the profits) because his hourly rate was just way out of our budget at $300/hr., but then when he was asked to fill out our online application, his immaturity, & distasteful ego shone through.

His erratic behavior also left me questioning who this guy really is because first he offers to take a percentage (he never gave us a quote, just his hourly rate), then he says our budget is too low & he knew full well we are a small company. He could have just left it at that, but he didn’t, he had to put me & other business consultants down.

Then he said he already gave us enough info. This is not true, he barely touched on anything that was written in the hiring ad. All he did was act like he knows it all & he tried to sell me on how great he was, but he barely touched on the 2 things we wanted done.

Turns out, on Elance he only markets himself as a copywriter, so now I even question whether he’s a true business consultant. This also explains his character traits, go see what I have said about the numerous other so called copywriters  have had the displeasure of dealing with.

Dominik Bjegovic, just so you know, Elance is a site for independent contractors. All team members get screened. Any company that just hires someone without screening them is NOT a real company in my opinion.

If you don’t like being interviewed & screened, then I feel you shouldn’t be on this bidding site in the first place.

If you are sooo great, then why in the world are you on Elance in the first place. I’m sure those 2 companies you tried to flash in front of me would only be chomping at the bit to hire you back, but I see you have enough time to respond to our ad & put us down.

Here is what he said…

“Hi Michelle,

You’re right, everyone can think they are the best, but I believe facts speak for me.

However, your budget is too small for me.

You know, you approach here like I am here at the job interview. I am independent biz consultant
who has already produced huge results to companies such as Epson, WaterWise, …

I’ve addressed more than required…

I offered you a free test-drive and told you the price.

As the price is out of your budget, then we do not have to discuss about it further. You should hire some under performing guy then.

Regards,
Dominik

P.S. And LOL, I’d charge you my hourly rate for filling out that long application form All the best to you Michelle.

——————————-

These are the screenshots mentioned in my 2nd post about Dominik Bjegovic

See how Dominik's Signatures are Exactly the same

Problems Mark Joyner Had with Him

I had decided that I wanted to find an apprentice who is nice, wants to learn, isn’t insecure (TONS OF EGO), won’t charge me a fortune, they get to learn new skills via the tools I purchase for them, and grow as an independent contractor, AND I get webcopy at a price I can live with. It’s a win win for both of us.

So I PM (private message) this jr. copywriter to offer her the position while mentioning that we’d have to discuss her rates (all apprentices are paid a lower rate) although I had no idea what her rates were, so they may have been exactly in line with what I was willing to pay.

I didn’t think much of my PM to her because I’m sooo busy as usual. I wouldn’t even have remembered I wrote her since I barely go on that copywriter’s message board unless I have a question I need help with.

But that week I did have a few questions, so I was back on there a day or two after my PM to this jr. copywriter.

For some reason I was drawn to click on a post labeled… “You won’t believe what happened!” – at least she was good with headlines.

Then next thing I know, my body is reacting to what I’m reading.

This jr. editor who clearly has issues, is freaking out because I wrote to her LOL

She’s all in a tizzy about what to do, asking the entire forum how she should handle me, being that I’m an entrepreneur and one of my businesses is in the adult entertainment industry. I think she even stated that I was trying to get her to work for us in an “adult” context, so I was shocked that she would twist my words & blatantly lie. Remember, I had done nothing to this girl, all I did was make a connection & offer her a writing job.

So here I am being nice and offering her a great copywriting opportunity, and she’s freaking out and blasting me to the entire message board.

Then I start reading the responses and I recognize one of the Avatars from one of the posters. I have been a member of that copywriter’s forum for quite a while now, and he seems like he’s always posting to any thread I happen to read.

Do I know anyone on there? Nope, not really.

From time to time I may see one of the aforementioned copywriters I just outed in my blog, but that’s about it.

So the next thing I know, it’s clear I’m being strung up and burned at the stake by people I don’t even know.

This one here Suzanne Ryan from http://www.prolificpro.com alludes that I wouldn’t dare go near her because I would already know what I’d get.

I have no clue who Suzanne from http://www.prolificpro.com is, LOL, nor do I know what I would get (she must know me from another lifetime) and if I even get a whiff that someone is a mean spirited person deep down inside, I would never hire them anyway, so she is absolutely right, I won’t be hiring her any time in this life time.

When I go post and get upset by the lies being written about me, that one copywriter who lives on the message board states that my defense just proves how guilty I am.

LOL, ummm, how does one defending oneself and getting upset about something that isn’t true prove that the person is guilty?

This guy was claiming I don’t pay my bills.

So once again, someone who doesn’t even know me, who probably listened to lies from one of the copywriters I just outed, is making false accusations about me because this “clique of copywriters” all stick together. They sit around with nothing better to do with their lives. They bash people they don’t like or who are different than they are.

I was in the middle of posting a 2nd time when the thread got deleted.

I was challenging him to prove I don’t pay my bills & the challenge is still open to him.

How can he even know this if I’ve never hired him before?

You would think people have better things to do with their time than go around witch hunting, but it’s clear this is how they get their daily entertainment.

In fact another copywriter I had talked to last year, from another business type forum, (I couldn’t afford him in the end) told me that he NEVER goes on there.

He says all they do is say one negative thing after another.

It’s a bunch of immature males (you see the odd female on there) all sticking together like a gang.

At the time I was shocked to hear a copywriter talking about his co-workers like that, but after experiencing everything I did, it’s clear he was right.

This bashing of innocent people has been going on for years now. This isn’t something I just experienced yesterday.

Finally I decided to put my foot down and yes, invest time and even money, because I feel other people starting a business online, or maybe even people new to this area of doing business online have a right to know what other people have experienced. Another person’s point of view.

If I can help one person by making them aware, perhaps they won’t go through what I went through.

Of course the choice is always yours, and not everyone will have the same experience I had because we are all different

It’s just NUTS the attitude, insecurity (that’s what I call major ego because it is), unprofessionalism and scams that are clearly going around online with these so called copywriters.

People need to be aware of what is going on here.

These copywriters charge a fortune, and in the end the guy who didn’t know anything about ARs probably did more for me at a cheaper price than any of these guys who should know more. Although, I still feel it’s his job to know about all of this (Auto responders, list building) if he is going to hang his shingle and call himself an experienced website copywriter.

Trust me, what I paid was nothing. A lot of copywriters charge $3-7k/site, but I’m not a large biz, and I don’t have that kind of money saved up for this, and after my experiences, who would trust anyone with that kind of money?

No wonder a lot of them want 100% upfront.

They don’t want you complaining later on, and then refusing to pay the balance.

So, that’s my story about copywriters, and a warning to everyone to be very very careful about these people who don’t do what they say they will, claim they are great at what they do (the proof is always in the sales), or they string you along for weeks, sometimes months while you waste your precious time.

They figure if you aren’t a HUGE corporation who’s going to pay them the HUGE bucks you aren’t worth much to them.

The arrogance and lack of customer service is disgusting.

I’m much more educated now, and I will be very blunt in my questions from now on. Question is, will they even be willing to be interviewed thinking that an interview is beneath their royalness?

Thanks for listening and if you have similar stories about scam website copywriters, please post away.

All the best

He charged me $700 each for a rewrite of 2 sites (that’s $1,400).

Then he charged me another $1,400 to edit 6 auto responder series I had written myself, and then he would write another 7 auto responders from scratch for the other site.

My copy is so long on both sites, so I never bothered to see what he changed. I just got my website coder to make the changes.

It was he who told me the changes were easy because there were hardly any of them which is when I started freaking out.

I still haven’t 100% calculated how much of the copy he did change even after paying people to compare the changes, but I think he changed maybe 2-7% of the entire copy.

So maybe he thought the copy was sooo great and if it was, then why are my conversions soooo low?

When I finally got around to inputting all the ARs into 1SC, it looked like the auto responders I had written myself had barely been changed.

Then the ones he created from scratch were very very short. I didn’t expect very long, but not 3-4 paragraphs per e-mail.

They are supposed to be free lessons of some kind that the potential customer would feel is worth something.

On top of that, his last 1-2 auto responders he had created from scratch had no content at all to them. They were just a “remember I sent you that info a few days ago, well buy now” sales pitch.

It was embarrassing.

So I told him how I felt (yup, as a client I have EVERY right to say how I feel), and what does he do, he starts giving me shit.

He says, “I’m a small business, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve been brainwashed by all these internet marketing gurus, etc.”

Then at the end of his response back he tells me (get a load of this), that he just wasted his time answering my questions (I had other questions in the e-mail I sent him, not just my complaint).

He also complained that it has taken me too long to get the new site and auto responders set up and that normally he charges $XXXX and he gave me a discount blah blah.

Once again, his decision, I never put a gun to his head. I had told him right off the bat when he quoted me that I wasn’t going to pay his rates. That is when he proposed a discount.

I wrote back and told him I won’t be talked to this way, and I haven’t heard from him since!

I never paid him the last amount thank god because for what I got, what I did pay him $1,400 it wasn’t even worth it.

Later on I went through everything with a fine tooth comb.

It took me HOURS AND HOURS wasting my time after I paid this guy.

I even made a list of all the mistakes he made because he made factual mistakes, he made promises I could never keep, or just weren’t true, he made tons of grammatical mistakes and spelling mistakes.

I also paid 2 editors to go through his work plus all the countless hours I spent editing things myself.

In the end the auto responders haven’t made me a dime.

Not the ones I wrote up and he supposedly edited, nor the ones he created from scratch.

The next copywriter – Omar Khafagy from the Toronto, Ontario area. He was to do the copy for a different site.

I was surprised at his behaviour because he was sooo happy to get work from me being a jr. copywriter.

I was trying him out on a smaller project.

We talked on the phone for a while several times.

He kept saying he’d do the work, then he got another gig with some Japanese businessman, but he still said he’d do the work as if he was doing me such a big favour.

Then he said his father came into town and I never heard from him again.

He had done one version or the rewrite, and I even e-mailed him to get it from him, but I never got it, or a response.

He like the other 2 led me on for over 3 weeks telling me he couldn’t start on it until then. Seems to be a pattern amongst these so called copywriters.

He later on e-mailed me when he saw this post & was very upset about it. He was trying to make excuses that he had been naive because he was only 19 or 20 years old, I think he said there was no Japanese businessman or whatever & he had lied to me because he listened to the lies about me from those other copywriters. He realized he had made a mistake.

That’s what happens when a group of people get together to spread lies about one person, the naive ones end up getting hurt the most in the end. It was clearly & still is, a witch hunt with one copywriter telling a lie, then the next one lying & in the meantime, not one of them even knows me, nor does even one of them who did do work for me step up to the plate & sincerely apologize for their actions.

I refused to take this down because while Omar was sort of apologizing on one hand, he was using excuses & then trying to say he did soooo much for me by talking to my son about becoming a man. He had talked to him about shaving, etc.

Omar, this has NOTHING to do with that. This has to do with the fact that you said you were going to do this job, & you practically begged me for it.

I spent a ton of time with you on the phone socializing, & in the end you did nothing for me, you disappeared, you lied & I wasted a ton of my time.

Others need to know how you treated me, it doesn’t matter if you talked to me socially or my son socially. Business is business, & you disappeared, so in the end you weren’t really my friend, you were some guy who buttered me up & then left me hanging with no webcopy & a ton of wasted time, & my time is worth money to me. Had you told me right from the beginning you didn’t want to do it, this post never would have made it to my blog.

If I really wanted to be nasty, I could detail what we talked about, but that’s NOT who I am as a person, I only talked about work, not what we talked about personally.

Keep in mind since these guys all know one another, I won’t be surprised if they start bashing & lying about me, but I don’t want you to have to go through what I went through, and like I’ve stated many times, people need to be held accountable for their actions. They can’t just get away with treating people/businesses like this just because they are only online.

I found the 2nd copywriter (Eric Louviere) from that Warrior site. He runs this copywriting business with his partner.

Right on the site they claim they give excellent customer service, so I was very happy to read this.

It’s unfortunate they don’t live up to their claims.

I spoke to Eric Louviere one night going over what I needed. He seemed okay, but I could sense that “I’m great and know it all” attitude that really irks me.

He knew I was a small business, and reworked some numbers so he came up with a price I was happy with. I was thankful.

He told me to send him a 50% deposit, and he would be starting it in 3 weeks.

I sent Eric the check the following day via Bill Payment which takes approximately 3-5 business days, but people usually get it within 3 days.

Then I didn’t hear from him, but I waited patiently. I even sent him my NDA to sign & never received that either.

I end up getting an e-mail stating he was out of town for a week or something, which he never told me about when I hired him.

I waited again until he came back.

Still no e-mail, phone call, nothing.

So I finally call him and guess what happens.

Eric Louviere claims he didn’t receive my 50% deposit until 3 weeks later, so he hadn’t even started on my work.

I was PISSED!

Then he starts trying to play games saying he told me to pay 100% upfront.

This is a total LIE.

I don’t pay anyone 100% upfront unless I know them well, and I think I would have objected had he stated this on the phone.

When I told him this, he had nothing to say about that point.

He didn’t even go out of his way to make me happy and do the work.

His way of justifying his unprofessional disrespectful behavior, was to go on and on about how he gave me a discount.

So? What does that have to do with treating your clients with respect. You give a discount to a client & then treat them like they don’t exist? Boy, you don’t know how to run a business, do you Eric.

I didn’t put a gun to his head telling him to give me a discount.

He could have quoted me full price and I would have just said it was too much and walked away.

I’m sick and tired of these independent contractors blaming me because of their actions.

They decide to give me the discount, I don’t make them.

To top it all off, I found out a day or two later he was giving a major discount to everyone who signed up for his services via that Warrrior site, but I already knew he was a liar, so this doesn’t surprise me.

I don’t need to call him names, it’s clear what kind of a person he is.

While he said he’d return the money, that wasn’t the point.

He had also just wasted a month of my precious time because I was waiting, waiting & waiting & you will see that this is what copywriters do, they make the client wait & pretty much old them by the balls because they are beholden to them since they need to make sales, & sales depend on the webcopy.

Then there was also confusion about the check; he snail mailed it to my home address in Canada, when I wanted it to go into my US account in the States.

The entire thing was a waste of my time, and stressful.

So, that was my experience with Eric Louviere.

I’ve been dealing with website copywriters for a couple of years now, and at first I was naive and didn’t know any better and hired any old copywriter who didn’t know what they were doing.

I once even hired one who 2 years later told me she really wasn’t a copywriter, marketing was really her thing.

LOL, so I paid her money and she didn’t really know what she was doing, and she finally admitted it to me when I told her why I wouldn’t hire her again.

I finally got around to hiring one that did write the long sales copy web copy.

My sales increased, but as I later learned, he still didn’t completely know what he was doing, because he had no clue about opt-in auto responders (ARs), and how they are a MUST for certain types of sites, especially mine.

So, for 4 months (as of November 2006) I was trying to find a copywriter within my budget who knows all this stuff about auto responders, including upsells.

Needless to say my experience turned into a nightmare.

I will post separately about what happened with each copywriter I came across.

The first copywriter (John Hostler) came this close to taking the project and then disappeared.

He strung me along for over a month. I was going to hire him, so in my mind I did hire him & he was just going to write something up, I can’t remember now, it was almost 2 years ago.

After waiting for for so long, I got pissed off and told people on http://www.warriorforum.com/ a message board (MB) where these mean spirited money hungry people hang out.

I was on there only because I realized it may have topics of interest on marketing and copywriting that I need to know about.

I only found out afterwards by another copywriter that it’s a hang out for all the dysfunctional egomaniacs that think they are gods gift to the Universe when it comes to making money, selling and marketing.

They tend to be mean spirited, and they all stick up for one another whether the person they stuck up for is doing something unprofessional, negative, or whatever.

It’s basically a boys club with the odd female in there.

So I complain about how John Hostel hasn’t gotten back to me in 1-2 weeks.

Of course they all stick up for him.

He comes on the board and comes up with this story that he changed his mail server & my e-mails got lost, etc. etc.

I believed him, but then later on realized that he could have easily have called me. Now that I know copywriters so well, I’m pretty sure he was lying, but of course there is no way to prove this.

After that he responds to one of my e-mails and then once again just disappeared.

He never did the work, he never even had the respect to tell me he couldn’t do the work, so I wasted over 4 weeks of my time chasing this so called copywriter John Hostel.

His post to my thread on the Warrior Forum was only to defend himself and probably ensure his buddies in arms that they would stick up for him.

I never received an apology from him, NOTHING!

Thanks John Hostel. Just because you didn’t do the work for me doesn’t mean you don’t have an ethical business responsibility to communicate with me & NOT waste my time.