Archive for the ‘Legal Issues’ Category

Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

And after my last post on this subject along with attorney Mike Young’s post, I’m astonished to see Ian del Carmen continuing to place YOUR business at risk!

(Go ahead and read the last post - make sure to read the comments. I’ll wait. )

All done? Great.

Now, let’s take a look at those pesky legalities associated with this kind of  franchise scam:

• The “biz flop” is being sold in “territories” (in the United States among other places). However, potential “partners” are NOT furnished with Uniform Franchise Offering Circulars (UFOCs) as required by federal and some state laws.
• There does not appear to be any attempt to qualify to do business in each state where franchises are being sold.
• Utilizing the term “partner” in the sales pitch suggests that equity may be sold as part of the deal. If so, there appears to be no effort to comply with U.S. federal and state securities laws.

How Does This Put YOU At Risk?

In the words of legendary marketer Tony Blake:

“In the United States using the words Franchise and “territory” are extremely legally problematic… they are seen one in the same… in order to sell a franchise or territories you need to register your opportunity with each independent state, post a sizeable bond and make available approved prospectus’s… plus that this opportunity is well over $499 you will also have to register it in 43 states as a business offer and post another large bond…

In other words, what you are selling in the US is highly illegal and actionable not only by the FTC but by each states individual Attorney General’s…”

Don’t Let YOUR Business Explode
Into A “Fireball”!

If you’ve been duped into buying an illegal franchise or “partnership” with “territories” in the United States, here’s what to do:

1. Demand a full refund.

2. Contact the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

3. Contact your state’s Attorney General’s office.

If you reside outside the United States, consult with your attorney about similar laws in your own country and TAKE ACTION to make sure sites like this are penalized.

I just received an email from a friend who deleted their Facebook account because they were unhappy with the way Facebook may use their personal information.

I completely disagree with this course of action – especially in business.

Instead, simply ASSUME that any information you put online (and not just on Facebook, but ANYWHERE) will find it’s way into hands you never intended.

Use common sense.

If you wouldn’t want your mother, your boss, a prospective employer, a client or your spouse to see it, don’t post it. (ie. embarrassing pictures, vulgar language, personal relationship information, etc.)

If you wouldn’t hand the information over to a stranger, don’t post it. (ie. phone number, address, social insurance number, banking info, passwords, etc.)

The annoying apps and invitations can easily be “hidden” from your feed.

If you are using Facebook primarily for personal use, then restrict access to those who are in your personal circle. Don’t accept friend requests unless you actually know the person.

If you are using Facebook for business, then simply be diligent about pruning your friend requests, “liking” pages and use the network to enhance your communications with people. Keep only public information on Facebook, never private.

ASSUME your information will be made public and act accordingly.

I am often confounded by people who become outraged when they learn the internet isn’t “secure”. And generally the reaction to this outrage is extreme – like deleting a valuable resource like your Facebook account. Cutting off your nose to spite your face isn’t usually the most prudent solution… instead, simply opt for caution in all of your online dealings.

What do YOU think?

Do you run a membership site? Then you’ll want to take notice of this message…

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Mastercard and Visa are getting ready to cancel merchant accounts engaging in repeat billing or trial offers.

Marketing models that employ “Free-Trial”, “Deferred Billing” and/or “Shipping Only” tactics must be providing customers with a tangible good or contracted service in exchange for charging of credit cards.  Incentivized discount offers are acceptable when the cardholder is receiving something in exchange for payment, however they will cancel accounts engaging in hidden or delayed charges and ‘free’ offers that are not truly “free”.

For more detailed information, check out the post made here: CLICK HERE

I was reading a rant by another blogger who was annoyed by those who were copying his content into their websites without giving him the proper accreditation. He was looking for a solution to his problem, something different than Copyscape… and boy, did he find it!

There’s a great new FREE tool called Tynt Tracer (currently in expanded beta) that covertly tracks those who copy even just a little of your content… and adds YOUR link to the copied material!

Seriously… This Is The Coolest Thing!!

Check out this short demo video:

Let me know if you find this as awesome as I do!

A few days ago, Tony Blake and I were discussing a new product launch from Ian Del Carmen. He pointed out several disturbing things about this “opportunity”, and as a result of our conversation, he contacted our favourite, brilliant attorney Mike Young.

Mike Young is a no-nonsense expert in legal business matters, and he regularly “tells it like it is” as a valued expert moderator at ABlakeForum.com.

Mike knows his stuff… and he posted an extremely informative article on his blog.

Here’s a link:

Worldwide Internet Consulting: Franchise Scam

Do your subscribers a favour… let them know that it IS POSSIBLE to make a healthy income online without resorting to tactics like this.

Let me know what you think!

These plugins are great for helping you automate and monetize your blogs! As far as I know, all these plugins are compatible with the latest WordPress version. Please feel free to suggest other great plugins below.

If you find these useful, help spread the word and STUMBLE THIS POST!

Landing Sites – When visitors is referred to your site from a search engine, it shows them related posts to their search on your blog.
http://theundersigned.net/2006/06/landing-sites-11

Maintenance Mode Plugin – Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end.
http://sw-guide.de/wordpress/plugins/maintenance-mode/

Theme Test Drive – allows you to safely test drive any theme on your blog as an administrator, while visitors continue to see the default one.
http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/theme-test-drive

Comment Relish – Sends a thank you e-mail to your first time commentators.
http://www.justinshattuck.com/2007/03/19/comment-relish-wordpress-plugin

Digital Fingerprint — useful for detecting content theft.
http://www.maxpower.ca/wordpress-plugin-digital-fingerprint-detecting-content-theft/2006/09/25/#intro

Subscribe To Comments – Allows readers to recieve notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.
http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/subscribe-to-comments/

MyAvatars – shows MyBlogLog’s avatars in your comments
http://www.napolux.com/2006/12/14/myavatars-a-wordpress-plugin-for-mybloglog/

Brian’s Threaded Comments – adds a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment. Makes it easy for people to reply to comments and discuss better.
http://meidell.dk/archives/2006/12/19/brians-threaded-comments-159/

Dofollow – lets you remove the nofollow attribute from your comments.
http://www.semiologic.com/software/wp-fixes/dofollow/

WP-Contact Form with Spam Protection – creates a contact form on your blog, through which your readers can contact you easily.
http://www.douglaskarr.com/projects/wp-contactform/

Google XML Sitemaps Generator – creates a sitemap of all articles on your WordPress blog. Helps Google and other search engines index every article you write.
http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

All in One SEO Pack – Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Enforce www. Preference – will help preserve your permalinks by enforcing your no-www or yes-www preference and will strip off index.php from the ends of URIs.
http://txfx.net/code/wordpress/enforce-www-preference/

Quick META Keywords – will automatically add META Keywords tags to every single post based on categories under which the article is categorized.
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/quick-meta-keywords-wordpress-plugin/

Related Posts – Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. Increase pageviews by providing targeted related content.
http://wasabi.pbwiki.com/Related%20Entries

Lightbox JS Plugin – used to overlay images on the current page into neat Javascript-powered overlay popups.
http://www.4mj.it/lightbox-js-v20-wordpress/

WordPress Mobile Edition – shows an interface designed for a mobile device when visitors come to your site on a mobile device.
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=wordpress-mobile-edition

Popularity Contest – keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular.
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=popularity-contest

Clean Archives – designed to display your archive listings in a clean and uniform fashion. It lists the Month / Year, the day of the month the article was published, the title of the article, and the number of comments that have been made on each article.
http://sporadicnonsense.com/index.php/2005/04/28/clean-archives-plug-in/

KB Advanced RSS Widget - a wordpress widget that gives you complete control over how RSS feeds are parsed for your sidebar.
http://adambrown.info/b/widgets/category/kb-advanced-rss/

Adhesive – lets you make the posts “sticky”, such that the posts will remain at the top of the page.
http://wp-plugins.net/plugin/Adhesive/#plugin_63

Permalinks Migration Plugin – safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website or affecting your search engine rankings.
http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/permalinks-migration-plugin/

Share This – lets your visitors to add your post to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail to a friend.
http://sharethis.com/publisher?type=wpplugin

Digg this – detects incoming links from Digg.com to your wordpress post and automatically display a link back to the digg post, for people to digg your story.
http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/digg-this-wordpress-plugin/http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/digg-this-wordpress-plugin/

WP-Notable – displays a series of icons below each post allowing your readers to easily submit you to many different social bookmarking and networking sites.
http://www.calevans.com/view.php/page/notable

WP-Email – Allows people to recommend/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.
http://www.lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-email.html

WP-PostRatings – Adds an AJAX rating system for your WordPress blog’s post/page.
http://www.lesterchan.net/wordpress/readme/wp-postratings.html

EasyTube – allows you to easily embed YouTube and Google Videos using one simple tag.
http://www.ejump.co.uk/wordpress/easytube-plugin-for-wordpress/

Twitter Updater – automatically sends a Twitter status update to your Twitter account when you create, publish, or edit your WordPress post.
http://blog.victoriac.net/blog/twitter-updater

WordPress Database Backup – On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Back up your blog today.
http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup

WP-Supercache – A modification of WP-Cache that produces static html files.
http://ocaoimh.ie/wp-super-cache/

Batch Categories – Easily manage the mass categorization of posts that match various criteria. Power edit your categories.
http://robm.me.uk/projects/plugins/wordpress/batch-categories/

PodPress – adds lots of features designed to make WordPress the ideal platform for hosting a podcast.
http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress/

TinyMCE Advanced – adds 16 plugins to TinyMCE, the WordPress wysiwyg editor. Adds over 40 new buttons to the toolbar, which is now two rows plus one hidden row.
http://www.laptoptips.ca/projects/tinymce-advanced/

Exec-PHP – allows php tags inside the content or excerpt of your posts and pages to be executed just as in usual PHP files.
http://bluesome.net/post/2005/08/18/50/

Photo Dropper – lets you add free photos (Flickr/Creative Commons) to your blog posts without leaving WordPress.
http://www.photodropper.com/

WordPress Reporter – allows you to easily view your Google Analytics and Feedburner reports in your WordPress administration area.
http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wordpress-reports/

WordPress.com Stats – Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks. Requires a WordPress.com API key.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Ad Rotator – Rotates Ads randomly from a specified text file.
http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/wordpress-plugin-adrotator-rotate-your-ads-including-adsense-dynamically/2/

AdSense-Deluxe – is a WordPress plugin offering advanced options for managing the automatic insertion of Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) ads to your WordPress posts.
http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/

Buy Me a Beer – allows your readers to donate money to you via PayPal on pretext of buying a beer.
http://www.blogclout.com/blog/goodies/buy-me-a-beer-paypal-donation-plugin/

WordPress BankRoll – offers to help you cut out the middleman by allowing advertisers to buy reviews directly on your blog.
http://www.wpbankroll.com/

Global Translator - Translate your blog into multiple languages in a search engine friendly way.
http://www.nothing2hide.net/blog/wp-plugins/wordpress-global-translator-plugin/

Feedburner Feedsmith – Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while creating a randomized feed for Feedburner to pull from.
http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/wordpress_quickstart/

Simple Feed Copyright – adds a simple copyright notice to full text wordpress feeds.
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/simple-feed-copyright-wordpress-plugin/

RSS Signature – allow the addition of a custom tagline, signature or copyright message to the wordpress generated rss feeds.
http://www.smackfoo.com/plugins/sig2feed/

Democracy – adds AJAX polling functionality to your WordPress blog.
http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/

No Self Ping – keeps your site from pinging itself.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-self-ping/

Draft Notifier – sends a notification email to your blog’s admin address when a post is written by a Contributor or when such a post is edited.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/draft-notifier/

Cap Comments – turns off comments when a post achieves a pre-set comment count.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cap-comments