Genesis Consulting Group Suspect website building company is tampering with affiliate link HTML codes on my web site. Tempe , Arizona

Follow-up Report

On Friday, December 10th I called Genesis Consulting and a man who answered the phone told me that the woman I asked for (who I agreed to pay $1,995 on September 29th) handles advertising and I should speak to my coach. I told him that my coach already mentioned to me that she doesn't handle business matters for the company.

On December 11th, I emailed my coach the following:

I called Genesis Consulting Group today to try to speak to Patricia Fields who sold me the training package and Jason said she handles advertising and probably was not the person I should be speaking to. He suggested I speak to my coach and I told him I felt I should be speaking to the business office. What I'm concerned about is that I've only had one sale on my site and it was from a friend of mine who has her own website. She commented that my site looked professional. I read some blogs this week and learned about link tampering and using affiliate link cloaking software to try to eliminate the problem. I ran a PRWeb news release on November 2nd and personally delivered 500 flyers to homes in suburban neighborhoods in my area. I Tweeted new posts and the morning of Cyber Monday, joined some forums (and would like to spend more time with them), and do facebook. My Home page indicates I've had over 1,300 visitors. So I should have had some sales by now. I have another 500 flyers to distribute but feel it's a waste of time because I suspect there's a security problem on the site. I'll be talking to my other coach at Prospering.com Monday afternoon and he said he would look at the site. If I need to use the affiliate link cloaking software, it will take me awhile to re-do everything. I would like to talk to someone at Genesis to get their input on why I have no sales when there have been over 1,000 visitors. Is there any advice you could give me?

I didn't receive a reply from the coach until Thursday, December 16th:

Its hard to pin point why 1300 visitors did not spend money on your website. All of them have their reasons but it take a bit of research to find out exactly what they are looking for. I took a glance at your website and I see the title of Garden Tripper but I see jewelery and Center Pieces and a number of different kinds of products on the gifts page. As a consumer, I'm a bit confused as to what your website's focus is. You will find that if you try to appease as many markets as you can, it spreads your options thin because you are competing with bigger companies that are one stop shops. If you were to specialize your website, you would have a sharper edge to slice through competition in the search engines. You can easily organize products that fall under the same niche to allow for ease of navigation of your website. The blogger button that is on your gifts page is talking about gardening as well. Maybe if we can find a focused niche and concentrate on that, we can watch what the numbers do. Let me know what you think...

I have to agree with my coach's comment about specializing my website, but I don't believe that's the reason why my Commission Junction, LinkShare and ShareASale accounts reflect no sales. Why did it take so long--5 days--for my coach to reply to my email. I think I know why.......I called Genesis earlier this week and spoke to a fast talking man who told me that my web site looked great, but that the Home page was too long and I should try to stay within my niche (gardening products & outdoor decor) or maybe consider changing my domain name. I took his advice and over the next day and a half I limited my Home page to online florists, outdoor & indoor fireplaces, fruit gift baskets, and Christmas trees and wreaths. Since I distributed a flyer featuring gifts, I moved the items to a separate Holiday Gifts page.

But I left out the most important fact....All day last Sunday and up until about 1:30 pm EST this past Monday, December 13th my website was down. I kept on checking back and the site was consistently down. I should have mentioned this to the man from Genesis I spoke to this week, but I bet he would have said they were experiencing server problems, which would be doubtful for that length of time. My theory is that someone at Genesis was tampering with my affiliate link HTML codes. I believe they changed my affiliate ID account number in the HTML code and earnings for any sales would then be reflected in someone else's account. I think the reason my site was down for so long is that Genesis needed time to change the HTML codes back to what I had originally set up. I filed a complaint with ic3.gov on Monday, November 22nd, filed a report with ripoffreport.com on December 3rd, so maybe they were contacted by some investigative agency or found out I filed a report on this site. It is highly doubtful that there were no sales if there were 1,300 visitors (assuming this number from Genesis is accurate), a PRWeb news release on 11/2, and 500 flyers were distributed in suburbia, along with Tweeting and other social media.

Today, Friday December 17th I went out on foot again and distributed 100 flyers in a suburban neighborhood I hadn't visited yet, and over the weekend and on Monday I'll be delivering another 400 in a new territory. I'll also be doing another post and Tweeting it. I certainly hope that the company isn't ripping me off. I still haven't paid the $1,995.00, but the man at Genesis quipped that it only cost $2,000.00. At that point in our conversation I hadn't brought up the cost of the training package, and his matter of fact mention of my spending a mere $2,000.00 bothered me.

Let's see if my accounts reflect any earnings in the next week. Even if I earn some money now, I'll never know how much I earned from my efforts in the last 6 weeks. (Unless no link tampering was occurring and someone clicked a banner on my website, didn't make the purchase and returns to the site in 30 to 45 days to make the purchase.) It takes all the fun out of working and I love the creative aspects of running a website business. If I am being ripped off, it isn't only the earnings from sales I lost. I spent hours setting up the site, preparing the graphics for 3 flyers, and writing blogs, and spent $100 for the PRWeb news release and $120 in photocopying. If I'm being taken advantage of, I shouldn't have to pay the $1,995.00 on my VISA bill.

I know this follow-up report is long-winded. However, I would like to know if any other website owners have ever had problems with website building companies. My next website will be built from scratch using WordPress and I wish I would have done this in the first place. That way I only have to work with the web hosting company.