Key World Media - Exposing the Scam

This is a follow up to the thread Website optimisation, and is a look at the web service Key World Media who are mentioned there.

The core of what Key World Media are doing is charging their clients money for a service which by definition costs them precisely nothing, in a way where they can define their own guaranteed profit margin. Genius !

I think it works like this. They seem to rely on their "client" (i.e., victim) not knowing the ins and outs of advertising on Google and other search engines, and making a promise to appear in the top few adverts displayed next to search results while giving letting a client assume that it is in the search results themselves where their site will appear. (*)

The terms and conditions all refer to the "Online Agreement". They make only one promise (from their "Online Agreement"), and it has nothing to do with search results:

"Upon receipt of payment the buyer agrees to this contract. The buyer's adverts will be activated on the relevant search engine within 48 hours, unless otherwise specified by the buyer at the point of sale.

For the purposes of this contract KeyworldMedia Ltd will generate no less than 5 first page adverts on the relevant search engine"

The genius is that this will NEVER cost them ANYTHING, because Google and Yahoo search ads are by definition Pay Per Click, and "display" is completely free. Charges are only made for actual clicks, and clicks in non-competitive niches (such as for highly targeted local ads) cost from about 5p each.

And you can define a daily limit for how much money you spend on an advert, so you:

1 - Charge your client a cheap sounding £1 a day.

2 - Set up 3 or 5 ads (takes about 10-15 minutes using the Google ads wizard) which cost nothing to display.

3 - Limit the spend per to about 20p per day - which will deliver several clicks.

4 - Walk away with a rolling, guaranteed, continuing, 80% profit margin.

If the victim complains, the agreement actually talks about ads not search results (SERPS), so you're bulletproof.

Create a boiler room cold-calling setup to sell it, and bingo !

Other factors that should give pause for thought:

* Their website is dominated by silly and pointless flash videos, rather than useful content. Amateurs 'r' us.

* The About page on their website is flagged by Google as "hosting malware".

* Since when does a competent SEO company only have 14 Twitter followers, and Tweets going back a fortnight?

* If you search on "Key World Media" in Google, the results are full of people explaining how they have been scammed, and how the company keeps changing its name. For example, here, here, here and here.

* Their website boasts 250 employees in 3 locations, yet can only muster a single positive review - for a B&B in Llandudno. I expect that it belongs to somebody's mum, or perhaps to Mrs Trellis of North Wales.

* For an online business, it is strange that cancellation can only be in writing.

* Spellings such as "adverting on Google" and "callendar".

They have previously been "MatchMaker Marketing", amongst others. Detailed accounts are here, here and here.

(*) I've said "I think" and "seem to" because this is somebody else's forum and I don't want to land our kind host any legal.

I'll be doing my own post to land at the top of Google for "Key World Media" elsewhere.

Ferdinand

They rang me last week to try and sign up with them, they wanted £120+ vat then £20 per month. I told em where to go!

I googled them yesterday after posting on my website optimisation thread and saw all the scam complaints.Im new to all this website stuff and it sounded like a good deal(dont they always:sneaky2:)Looks like i got off lightly

They rung me saying where I was advertising didn't work, I asked him where they'd found the advert, "yer but we know where to look....."

I've got another company trying it on at the moment and the time to mess them about.........

R