Shortly after launching the Open Solar blog, I got a message from @kenoatman informing me that the ads we were serving included links to the "earth4energy scam". I checked the site out and agreed that we did not want to be associated with it. I updated our ad code to block any ads that linked to earth4energy and was quite pleased with myself. Score one for the white knights of the Internet.Well - not so much. You see, this earth4energy scam (aka homemadepowerplant aka homemadeenergy aka DIY Green Energy aka Efficient Planet) runs deep on the Interwebs. Like so many zebra mussels, it appears to have infested the solar web - to the point where it's virtually impossible to have a solar site with ads that aren't involved in the scam. Their lucrative affiliate program offers web marketeers about $34 a head for anyone they can lure into taking the bait. That's a 75% referral fee on a downloadable product that costs nothing to reproduce. Enter the piranhas...
Google "earth4energy" and you'll get about 260K results. Try "earth4energy scam" and you get almost 26K results. The particularly insidious part is that it's actually the affiliates who are targeting the "earth4energy scam" keyword phrase. Try it yourself. Many of the sponsored links are intentionally manipulative with tag lines like "Don't Be Fooled By Earth 4 Energy Check This Before You Waste Money". When I tried, all 11 sponsored links pointed to affiliate sites claiming that earth4energy actually works great - just click here to buy now! It's almost as if they're targeting the keyword "earth4energy scam" to obscure any real feedback from actual users.
Peter Parsons does an excellent job explaining the scam in detail. A little digging reveals that Earth4Energy comes to us from Brisbane, Australia and is part of a growing series of "green lifestyle products" offered by Drew aka Swerd from http://www.ezcbcash.com/ (that's EZ Clickbank cash). Check out his latest offerings or read the Earth4Energy affiliate handbook for tips on why you should hide your affiliate codes when you promote e4e! As it happens, Earth4Energy is a top grossing clickbank product, sandwiched somewhere between shady get rich quick scams and tips on how to lose weight without diet or exercise.
What's got me pissed off about this whole thing is the breadth of this scam. I feel like I'm playing Whac-A-Mole with each new affiliate that comes up trying to push this crap on my website. I personally take offense at their misleading claims and think it's shameful that they are willfully taking money from people for something that can be easily downloaded for free and does not deliver on its promise.
It is our duty, as concerned netizens to call BS when we see it and I call BS on earth4energy. Like so much greenwashing, their cynical approach (note their tag line - "We can make a difference...") only serves to obscure the reality and mislead the public (eg. "Why pay $1000's for solar or wind power when you can build your own professional system for less than $200?").
I'm not suggesting that you do this, but I imagine that if web users went to their favorite search engine, entered "earth4energy" and started clicking on all the affiliate ads en masse - the stream of ez clickbank cash would come to a crawl. Maybe then I'd start seeing ads for real solar products on my blog again.
Have you been the victim of a "green" Internet scam? Please leave a comment and share your story.
