Dr Don Yates’ Internet Users Handbook

Dr Don Yates

Dr Don Yates is a retired businessman who has spent several years investigating Internet business fraud. I “met” Dr Don when he became actively involved on the EvanCarmichael.com forum. One of our forum conversations was about the sales page that Dr Don has put together to promote an ebook.

After I offered a critique of the sales page, Dr Don kindly sent me a courtesy copy of his ebook and I told him I would review it on my blog.

That was a couple of weeks ago, so it is high time that I fulfilled my promise!

Here goes…

A Review of Dr Don Yates’ Internet Users Handbook

Dr Don Yates has put his accumulated knowledge and experience into a massive ebook, over 700 pages of content in my PDF file version…

The ebook is available for $24.95 at:

InternetScamsAnonymous.com

I’ve just waded through the book and it’s clear that Dr Don knows his stuff. I’ve published several articles about how to avoid Internet scams on this blog, but not in such detail as the information provided in Dr Don’s handbook.

There is information on just about every type of scam that Internet marketers, or general Internet users, can be exposed to along with information about how the scam works and how to detect when you are the target of each kind of scam.

So, in that sense, the book lives up to Dr Don’s claim on page six that the Internet Users Handbook “addresses the big picture of helping our readers identify, recognize and avoid the broad range of scams as they pursue to start or grow a business online.”

Also, Dr Don takes us through his process of establishing whether or not a specific business website is fraudulent or not with a couple of “real life case studies” – yes, he quite rightly names the scammer he is discussing. Each case study provides a very useful insight into how you can protect yourself from the baseless claims and false promises of some Internet marketers.

Want to know the difference between a genuine MLM or Network Marketing business and a fraudulent pyramid scheme?

Dr Don provides an excellent rule of thumb:

“If a plan offers to pay commissions for recruiting new distributors, watch out! Most states outlaw this practice, which is known as “pyramiding.” State laws against pyramiding say that a multilevel marketing plan should only pay commissions for retail sales of goods or services, not for recruiting new distributors.” (p. 318)

There is also an interesting chapter on Forex Trading, which, rather to my surprise, Dr Don approves of, provided that you learn how to do it properly and learn from his experience of using robots and automated systems, which never seem to produce the promised results.

If you are wondering what a chapter about Forex Trading is doing in a book about Internet scams, well there is a section in the chapter that deals with Forex Trading scams.

There is also a chapter dedicated to helping you set up a legitimate online business with a lot of information about the mindset you need to succeed and so on. This pads out the ebook considerably.

So, is it a Guide To Internet Scams, or a Comprehensive Internet Handbook?

It seems that Dr Don is in two minds as to whether he is presenting an ebook solely dedicated to uncovering and explaining Internet scams (as the sales page URL suggests), or whether he is presenting something like a general – but detailed – handbook for Internet users (as the title of the ebook suggests).

The result is that the book, while always interesting, shifts its focus backwards and forwards from various aspects of Internet scams to various ways of making money on the Internet. Someone who needs to know how to avoid ebay scams, for example, may not be so interested in how Forex robots work.

Some Room For Improvement

So, the only real problem I have with this book is that it could be a LOT shorter and really should be cut up into several more closely focused products each of which targets a specific niche market.

Actually, to be fair to Dr Don, he has told me that he has been thinking about doing that. I would suggest that the book be split up, with one ebook dedicated ONLY to online scams, one to setting up an online business, one to Forex Trading and so on.

Some material may overlap, for example a section in the Forex Trading ebook could outline Forex scams, and then refer the reader to the ebook about Internet scams and so on. That way, Dr Don would have a series of marketable ebooks, and each one could cross promote the others when touching on topics that they cover in more detail.

A smaller irritation was that at the foot of each page there is the same 80 word paragraph of info about the book, which drives you nuts as you scroll through page after page and have to keep on skipping over THAT paragraph again – 700 times! (700 x 80 = 56,000 words!) [See the comments below this article about this issue, which has been resolved. DH]

So, in terms of sheer content value, the Internet User’s Handbook is a bargain at the price. However, the product would be greatly improved if it were split up into a series of more tightly targeted ebooks. Also, the content of each ebook would need to be streamlined so that busy Internet marketers can get the info they need in as clear and as condensed a format as possible.

You may purchase a copy of Internet Users Handbook by Dr Don Yates at:

http://www.internetscamsanonymous.com/

David Hurley

 

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