Is GrassRoots Advertising and gr-ads.com a scam or not? Here’s my experience.

A month or so ago somebody who says her name is Kristen Romero contacted me saying she’s from a company called GrassRoots Advertising at gr-ads.com, and that she wanted to do some sponsored links on old posts of mine.

What she offered was generous for a small-time blogger like myself, so I looked into it.

After investigating a little bit, things seemed seriously fishy:

• Their website is very old-looking, which is very odd for an Internet advertising company;
• They seem to only employ good looking people, except for the CEO and web designer. The web designer seems to be a 70 year old, which is quite odd too;
• If you download the employee pictures, right-click and look at the properties, the Meta data on the pictures indicate that they are stock photos;
• The company has no contact details listed on their website, other than an email link to the CEO, but it doesn’t give a hint as to where they’re located;
• Something really odd was that they claim to have enough business for 2008 and can’t take on anymore;
• From domaintools.com I learned that their domain has been in existence for 6 years, although the company was established in 2004.  This could mean something or it could mean nothing;
• I also saw their company details were hidden by a proxy service, which, I guess is not all that uncommon (Spam is problem for us all), so this was inconclusive;
• So then I looked at the headers of the email she sent me, and the domain groundupadvertising.com was revealed – registered in April 2008, it’s likely in reaction to the bad rep they’re fast gaining for gr-ads.com.  The website looks similar, but is a wee bit more realistic.  It looks like this site incorporates things to counter what people says make gr-ads.com look like a scam (the staff of this company is not SO good looking – although it still looks like stock photos);
• If you ping either domain, you get the IP Address – 69.72.214.98 – a host in the US.
• Both domains have robots.txt with only - user-agent: * – and – disallow: / – in it, which to search engines means “To all search robots, index nothing on this entire site”.  Again, for an Internet advertising agency, this is super odd as it means nothing on these websites will show up in searches.

Aside from a lot of odd tidbits, amplified by a suspicious mind, there’s nothing conclusive to say that these people were trying to scam me.

As I also use the email address she contacted me on for PayPal, I thought I’d give them a go (I didn’t have to expose info she didn’t already have).

I posted the text she gave me and a few days later the payment came in PayPal (from Find Your Dreams, Inc. – no info on that either), as agreed.

End of that story.

Bad Mouthing

Two days ago Kristen again contacted me and said a blogger she couldn’t negotiate a rate with had put up an unfavourable post about her and it was attracting bad comments.  She asked if I would put in a good word for her, and as I had no problems with my experience, I was willing to give an honest opinion.

I read the post and contact Kristen again about the issues raised in the post and in my own mind.  I told her, I could give an honest opinion, but my honest opinion is that I too thought that they were scammers, but tried them anyway and my suspicions were proven false.

In another email to Kristen I asked her to explain a few things to me so that I could comment on that post and put her in a better light, because my honest opinion alone will not.  Here’s what I said:

The woman wanted x amount for her website and that wasn’t what you offered – you negotiated, she declined – I honestly don’t see the big deal.

But I can see your dilemma with the negative post and you did good by me so I don’t mind to put an honest opinion up there for you.

But here’s my honest opinion and maybe you can shed some light on it so that I can understand: Your website does come across as a scam website, and as the only contact with you it makes your business seem shady as well. Here’s why:

a) it’s like a 1990’s-style website, (quite out of step for a Internet advertising company)
b) your domain details (and registration address) are hidden,
c) there’s no actual company information on your site,
d) there’s no contact details of any kind,
e) you claim to have enough business for 2008 (wow!),
f) your employees are ALL unbelievably good looking, and
g) the meta data on your employee pictures DOES indicate that they are stock photos.

The only reason I gave you a try is because you offered a good rate, and you only need my email address for Paypal, which is pretty difficult to use in a scam by itself, as it’s virtually in the public domain anyway.

Obviously not many people make these deductions and are still willing to take the risk.

Yet you did what you said you would and in good time too, so I don’t really understand – why the masquerade and the dodgy website when you do legitimate work?

But alas, the only reply I got from Kristen was to say “you’re right i think its ridiculous and i just don’t know or care anymore..“.

Epilogue

So I’m now no closer to knowing than I was before.  All I know is that Kristen contacted me with an offer, we negotiated, I did my part, and she paid as promised.

Is this company dodgy as hell? Sure. Is there at least a ton of fish around gr-ads.com? There certainly is.  Are they scammers? Well, I wasn’t scammed and I didn’t actually read about anybody that was scammed – just those who say they look like scammers.

So the question remains, and more importantly is there any proof either way: Is GrassRoots Advertising and gr-ads.com a scam or not?

Update 080715 – Just picked up a comment from Rose Desrochers, somebody reported that a rep from bridgeofknowledge.org contacted them for something that sounds like our friends at gr-ads.com / groundupadvertising.com.  Surfed on over and wouldn’t you know it, my friend Kristen Romero is employee No.1.

Other employees include Lauren Keidis, Amy Callahan, Sean Callahan (Yay! They finally got a male employee that isn’t the CEO or an octogenarian web designer – he was a famous television blurb writer in the 90’s) and Melinda Hathaway.

The non-scam (or scam, depends on your school of thought) is evolving, as now they include a contact page, they don’t brag about how they don’t need any more business and they don’t have stock-photo employee mug-shots anymore.  But the temptation to carry on with the employee profiles are just too strong…

Bridgeofknowledge.org is a more noble enterprise. They are a bunch of students who got together to provide links, or a bridge, to useful knowledge, which is where the paid-for-links come in.  Obviously Sean Callahan didn’t write the copy for the front page, because he has a keen eye for detail and there are various typos on the front page. (Please note, I make no such claims, therefore typos on my pages are perfectly acceptable).

A quick whois on bridgeofknowledge.org reveals that the domain was registered on 8 July.  I bet right now they’re hating the Internet community. It’s not so hard to carry on legitimate business on the Internet, why not try to not be one of those shady advertiser they talk about on their front-page blurb.

The gr-ads.com /  groundupadvertising.com / bridgeofknowledge.org saga continues…

Update 080724 – Through links from the other blogs that have posted about this company, there are at least four related domains. They are:

• gr-ads.com
• groundupadvertising.com
• bridgeofknowledge.org
• firstdayads.org

The design of these websites are quite similar. I was contacted by gr-ads.com, some other people from bridgeofknowledge.org, and yet other by firstdayads.org.  Both my and other people’s emails had groundupadvertising.com in the email headers, and this is how we know they are related.

I’ve established that they’re not scammers.  They offered me money to place links, I did it, they paid me. No scam.

But I still had this question: Why if your company is legit do you choose such unorthodox methods that puts your company in bad light?

Apart from what I’ve listed above, here’s some other things that doesn’t make sense. 

• On Rose DesRochers, ‘Kristen’ posted this photo saying “Here’s another cute one with me sarah and jen“.  Below, in that order, you will see the picture from that link vs. the gr-ads.com employee profile pics.
  
  
• Arguably the third addition below to Sarah Raymond’s pictures are the same person as at least the middle picture above.  The middle picture above was found on Sarah Raymond’s gr-ads.com employee profile picture, and the third one is Kayla Milledge from bridgeofknowledge.org (employee pofiles have been removed since this post).
  
• Next is Amy Calahan who works or worked for gr-ads.com, but also works for bridgeofknowledge.org (but they’ve removed their employee profiles). Could just be a namesake, of course.
  Info she gave to the two companies are a little different although she admits on both to growing up in the mountains of Vermont.  On her gr-ads.com resume she said she graduated from SUNY New Paltz with a degree in Communications, but to bridgeofknowledge.org she said she has a degree in Information Science from SUNY Oswego. Both Amy’s personalities enjoy the park and building web pages.
  
• Luaren Kiedis also works two jobs at gr-ads.com and bridgeofknowledge.org. She replaced her stock-photo gr-ads employee pic taken by Jim Jurica, with another (on the right) at bridgeofknowledge.At gr-ads.com Lauren said she “has a degree from Ohio State in communication“, whilst over at bridgeofknowledge.com she graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts from Ohio State. At both jobs she said she likes being on top of water, snowboarding, softball and going for long runs in the woods with her dog named Dylan.
  

More absurd than the time that I’ve spent on this article (you’re right David Salsberger, I need another hobby), is this company that seems to be going out of its way to look illegitimate, when they actually do pay people money like they say they do.

Why?

Update 080822: Because it’s informative, and because people tell me about it, webmatchers.net is the newly discovered addition to the websites associated with gr-ads.com.

Big up to geekhideout.com for linking the latest in a slew of domains to these guys.

Why do they insist on the corny profiles?  We now have the following websites in our non-scam scam scheme, with the latest one in red:

• gr-ads.com
• groundupadvertising.com
• bridgeofknowledge.org
• firstdayads.org
• webmatchers.net

Jen Keenan, now with her 3rd company, is the common denominator here.  Although both her profiles claim she graduated with a BS in Marketing and Minors in Theater and Computer Science, the institution changed from SUNY Plattsburgh at gr-ads.com to SUNY Brockport over at WebMatchers.com.

Does the BS here refer to bull shit?

Anyway, you can’t cross reference many of the sources anymore, because over at bridgeofknowledge.org they’ve taken down employee profiles all together, and at groundupadvertising.com Jen Keenan’s profile is no longer a link, and it looks like they’ve change employee pics for many of the other profiles too.

Think they’re paying attention to Blogs?

Update 080824: Well, if you’ve been following this saga and haven’t discovered this gem of an information source yet, then head on over to miqel.com where not only has Miqel done some serious investigation into this scam (no more no-scam, it IS a scam), he’s laid it out bare for everyone to see.  Good work Miqel.

Miqel also implicated a few new domains in this scam, not to mention SEO Guru Jim Boykin, bringing the list down to this:

• gr-ads.com
• groundupadvertising.com
• bridgeofknowledge.org
• firstdayads.org
• webmatchers.net
• smallstepsbigleaps.org (the page design we all know and … well, it’s familiar)
• www.webuildpages.com (this Jim Boykin is apparently an SEO guru, oops!)

Anyway, he also notice that bridgeofknowledge.org is “experiencing difficulties” with their hosting account and is asked to contact their hosts… hmmm.  As for this moment the other websites are all still intact.

So what’s the next step?  This Jim Boykin actually makes a living of claiming to be an SEO guru with seminars and the works, and I can’t help but notice that internetmarketingninjas.com, which looks like his home page, is based on the very same design as many of the other implicated domains in this scam – which is a little more than coincidence in my opinion.

If this so-called Guru really is the king pin of this scam, then surely something should be done about it?

How much money could such a scam extort from unsuspecting clients who thought they were buying legitimate services and how many blind-to-the-truth-because-we’re-slightly-greedy-for-easy-money-bloggers, such as myself, have been scorned by Google for associating with the dark under belly of the paid-for links world?

Anyway, nice scam, but now it’s out.  So the best thing to do for those looking for SEO or paid-link campaigns is to avoid scams the likes of which Jim Boykin has been associated with and front companies gr-ads.com, groundupadvertising.com, bridgeofknowledge.org, firstdayads.org, webmatchers.net, smallstepsbigleaps.org.

I guess the status of the near-urban legend of “Is gr-ads.com a scam or not” is now: TRUE

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