6 months ago I wrote a post on my business partner Ray Johnson’s blog.
www.ray-johnson.co.uk/internet-marketing/whats-happened-to-ray-johnson
If you weren’t aware of this please read it first, and then come back here.
I wrote that blog post in good faith assuming everything in it to be true. Unfortunately it transpires that virtually nothing in there was correct. My apologies. The information in that blog post came from Ray Johnson.
UPDATE: If you clicked the above link you will realise that as of around February 20 2013 Ray Johnson’s blog is now coming up “account suspended”. I did save a text copy which you can read here – originally posted June 20 2012.
Here’s what has happened since:
- Ray Johnson has disappeared from the online world. He has ignored all emails, telephone calls and Skype messages since September 2012.
- My last communication with him was via Skype chat on August 18th 2012. No mention of him being unhappy with our partnership, quite the opposite in fact.
- On August 16th 2012 Paul Power sent me a very strange email accusing me of “ignoring and undervaluing” him. He knows that neither of those claims are true; I have kept a full record of all our Skype chats and emails. Paul Power then stated he was having nothing further to do with the business. I sent a detailed reply, this was ignored. I have been in business for 32 years and one thing I’ve learned is, in the words of Jim Morrison from The Doors, “People are strange”. That’s what I put it down to. Until…
- In October 2012 I learned that Ray Johnson and Paul Power had set up a site together. This site was registered on September 30th 2012 by Paul Power. I guess that explains the email to me. The site is a typical video squeeze page in which Ray Johnson states on several occasions that he has earned “$150,000 in the last 3 months” (i.e. July-September 2012) and he will teach anyone else how they can do the same. The site URL is www.rayandpaulsfreecoachingcalls.com, as you can see it is now coming up “account suspended”. My commiserations with anyone who handed over any money…
- I have tried on several occasions to contact Ray Johnson, all of them unsuccessful. Indeed until recently I had to consider the sad possibility that he was no longer with us. Happily, following a recent meeting with my accountant, who is in contact with his accountant, I learned that this is not the case and Ray Johnson is, thankfully, still very much alive. As regards Paul Power, I do not know what has happened to him. His blog domain www.paul-powers-blog.com expired a few days ago, before that it too was coming up as “account suspended”.
To summarise the above points – at the time of writing my blog post of 20th June 2012 on Ray Johnson’s blog, I assumed that Ray Johnson, Paul Power and myself would be working together in a new partnership. Whereas in fact some time between the end of June 2012 and the beginning of September 2012 they actually decided between themselves to either remove me from the business, or set up a new one without me.
In principle I don’t have a huge issue with this, partnerships start and they finish, that’s life. It’s a pity but that’s the way it goes. However I consider it fundamentally dishonest, as well as somewhat cowardly, to not discuss this but to instead scheme behind your business partner’s back and ignore all their correspondence. Hardly the sign of a professional business marketer and “mentor” is it? There are also tax issues (as Ray Johnson is finding out) to deal with, amongst other things.
The above points are all factual and I have deliberately avoided any speculation. I can back up everything I have stated above. I appreciate some people who have dealt with Ray Johnson (and indeed Paul Power) may be shocked and tempted to think “how dare this Robert Black character write these things, I’ve always trusted Ray”?
I understand that viewpoint, believe me I really do. I used to share it wholeheartedly and I suspect I have had more contact with Ray Johnson than most people reading this post (and yes I have met him face to face).
It took me a long time to make the decision to write this article, what made my mind up was receiving yet another email from a customer today complaining that they couldn’t access what was in fact our most successful product – Google Affiliate X.
So what happens now?
OK let me break up this last part into different sections…
Google Affiliate X Customers
For those who purchased this product and can no longer access it – unfortunately neither can I. I strongly suspect the site has been taken down. My understanding from the emails I am getting is that Ray Johnson is not replying to support tickets; sadly I do not have access to the support tickets. I would love to help out but I have also been “locked out”. My suggestion is to contact Ray Johnson, although I suspect you may wait a long time for a reply.
Other Customers
Again I have no access to support tickets so I cannot help. I am unaware if any are being answered or not. In fact if anyone is getting any replies it would be useful to know that.
Affiliates
I have had emails from customers who have recently purchased some of Ray Johnson’s products (Google Affiliate X) asking for help so I know that they are still being promoted by affiliates. If you know of any affiliates promoting, or considering promoting this product, or indeed if you are one of Ray Johnson’s affiliates yourself please be aware that Google Affiliate X has not worked for a number of months. This is due to technical issues that are actually easily fixed but I do not have access to the site. Also please be aware that support tickets are not being answered. Therefore if you are thinking of promoting this product please be aware of the negative impact this could have with your subscriber list.
Solo Ads
I am going to choose my words very carefully here. Paypal has closed down, and is continuing to close down, accounts for selling, promoting and mailing via solo ads. I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who may have bought solo ads from Ray Johnson. If you’re considering that as a business model, unless you REALLY understand every possible ramifaction – DON’T. Run, don’t walk, away from it.
What happens now?
I want to make it absolutely clear that I have no connection or association whatsoever with Ray Johnson. As far as I am concerned my partnership with Ray Johnson ceased in June 2012 when he transferred the last payment to me. I haven’t received a dime since then.
In fact he actually owes me quite a lot of money. When we started the partnership I invested a large amount of money into the business, on the understanding that I would have access to the customer list. I don’t. Some of you have reported that you have been receiving autoresponder emails from an address [email protected]. Please be sure that despite the name, that is NOT from me. I would appreciate anyone receiving emails from that address to let me know.
I am continuing with internet marketing – real internet marketing i.e. DOING it rather than SELLING it. I have a number of projects on the go and things are growing nicely. I suspect the model of “fake it till you make it” (i.e. sell products about how you have “made $150,000 in the last 3 months” when in reality your only source of online income is selling such “how to” products to newbies when you yourself don’t have the first clue of how real money is made online) has thankfully just about come to an end.
The way forward
I don’t have a training program or “how to make $150,000 in the next 3 months” type of product to sell you. Not at the moment. However I’m doing Internet Marketing full time (as well as a couple of offline projects) and it would be nice to have a place to bounce ideas off each other, help each other out, that kind of thing. I have a few ideas but unfortunately as mentioned above I don’t have access to Ray Johnson’s email list. Therefore I can’t just fire off an email and get several hundred people viewing this post at once and starting a discussion. At the moment I have no idea how many people will even find it. Such is life.
But anyway I would like to get some kind of Mastermind group going and see where we can help each other out.
I’m happy to answer any questions you may have on Internet Marketing and help out where I can. Mail me. No, I don’t want any money. Bear in mind that when running my businesses in the offline world I have sold products to a total value of around $130,000,000 (yes that’s millions) so I think I am reasonably well qualified to offer advice.
It may also be that others have a particular expertise that they can help with. Honestly, I have no idea how this will pan out at this stage. If there is enough interest I’ll be delighted to put more useful stuff on the blog and expand it.
So here’s what I would like you to do. Fill out the optin box on the left hand side with your name and email address. That way we can keep in touch and I can let everyone know when there’s an update, a new post, or whatever. No I’m not going to spam you with affiliate offers. I genuinely don’t have the time nor do I have the financial need to do that. So do that now, you also get a pretty useful free ebook, which kind of mirrors what I did when I was getting started online. Except the offline boss I was hiding my online business from was me 🙂
Finally, comments are welcome, whether below or whether you want to send me an email via the “Contact Me” tab at the top of the page. In any case I will reply to all comments and emails.
PS I know some of you know I have been working on a major “real Internet Marketing” project for the last 12 months or so and have been asking me what it’s about. Take a look for yourself
http://www.marketerswarehouse.com/
POST UPDATE
Since I wrote this post a few days ago several people have got in touch with me, including some interesting names. So I’d like to update you with the latest developments. Rather than edit the whole post it makes more sense to add them here at the bottom.
1) As you’ll see from the comments below Paul Power has been in touch. We have had a very amicable conversation on Skype and it’s obvious that Paul has been duped by Ray Johnson as much as I, and others, were. Paul will very shortly be back in internet marketing and his blog will be back up very soon. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience and I am very much looking forward to working together again with him in the future.
2) Ray Johnson is apparently still selling solo ads. This despite the number of people who have got in touch complaining that they have paid him for this service, and received nothing in return. However it would appear that he is disguising his identity by using the name of his partner Sonya Freeman. This is Sonya Freeman’s Facebook page. This is the URL of the site he/she is using:
http://www.cash-money-marketing.com/supersoloads/
Prices range from $49 to $237. I very strongly recommend that if you have that kind of money to spare that you spend it more wisely than on that site. You may also want to let others know. By the way it may well be that Sonya Freeman doesn’t even know about the site and is unaware that her partner Ray Johnson is using her name. It is a familiar modus operandi of Ray Johnson’s to use Skype, Gmail, etc using other peoples’ logins and assuming their personas. I write from personal experience and I know this happened to others.
At the very least if you contact “her” I can guarantee that it will be Ray Johnson who replies. Ask Ray Johnson or Sonya Freeman where this list of 65,000 (or 2,000,000 depending on who you ask) names has come from. Because it would of course at the very least be extremely unethical if such a list of leads hadn’t actually come from asking visitors to your site to optin in the normal manner via a respected autoresponder service provider such as Aweber or Getresponse, wouldn’t it? And I guess it would be even more unethical if the names on that list had originally been told “we promise never to share your email with anyone else” and it materialised that actually all the names on that large list had indeed been exchanged with other marketers? Hypothetically speaking of course…
3) For anyone who has tried to contact Ray Johnson on his usual Skype and email addresses and been ignored I have some new contact details that I suggest you try:
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Skype: sonyacashmoney
Despite the names in the above details, all those accounts belong to Ray Johnson
4) After ignoring my emails, text messages and Skype messages for almost 5 months Ray Johnson has finally got in touch today. No apology, no explanation. Just a request from me. Oh, and a statement saying that due to “the state of my mind and health I am unable to continue with internet marketing”. I guess trying to persuade people to part with money for solo ads while hiding behind your partner’s name no longer counts as internet marketing. Cool. Learn something new every day.