Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute - Discussion

Taken directly from the Higher Balance Galaxy forums. Coincidentally the very same month that a HBI staff member joins the Amazon team they publish an eight step by step guide that even includes percentages. I've contacted CEO's at Amazon and also different departments that allowing these reviews to stay up and the negative ones to be pushed down could be construed as purposely misleading consumers. In fact you can already see the negative reviews on amazon.com are claiming that the numerous five star reviews mislead them into purchasing Eric Pepin's book.

Eric Robinson Author of bending God

A Short Guide to

Promoting Higher Balance on Amazon

So, you say you love Eric’s books, you want to help share and get them out in the world, but don’t know much about Amazon or the internet?

Well, this handy guide is here to show you how, in a few simple steps, you can help get the good word out about Higher Balance. It’s simple, takes only a few clicks, and requires the least amount of effort for the biggest reward.

The journey of a thousand minds begins with a single click ;-)

1. BOOKS, BOOKS, AND BOOKS
This is really all about the books, which is the easiest and fastest way to get knowledge into peoples lives right now. There are four books on Amazon (but this applies to all future books as well).

Right now we’re going to boost the books on Amazon. It will take less than 3 minutes. Here are the links you’ll need:

Silent Awakening: http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Awakening-Telepathy-Effective-Awareness-ebook/dp/B00HBSBJQS

Igniting the Sixth Sense: http://amazon.com/Igniting-Sixth-Sense-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B00EH0RL8I/

Meditation within Eternity: http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-within-Eternity-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B00B0MPCKA

Handbook of the Navigator: http://www.amazon.com/The-Handbook-Navigator-ebook/dp/B001NEKDDG/

Bending God: http://www.amazon.com/Bending-God-A-Memoir-ebook/dp/B005E1OXEE/

2. BOOST HELPFUL REVIEWS
Right now, log into your Amazon.com account. Now go to http://amazon.com/Igniting-Sixth-Sense-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B00EH0RL8I/

Scroll down to the bottom where you see the reviews. There are two columns of reviews. The main column in the center of your screen, “Most Helpful Customer Reviews”, and on the right side, “Most Recent Customer Reviews”.

Most people scroll straight down the center to the most helpful reviews.

Notice at the top of each review is something like this, “52 of 56 people found the following review helpful”
Amazon ranks these reviews in large part based on this number. The more people find something helpful, the more Amazon pushes it to the top. The least helpful, the lower. Now scroll down to the bottom of the review. You see, “Was this review helpful to you? YES | NO”.



If you are logged into your Amazon account, click YES on Steve Pfaff’s review.

Congratulations! You just helped Igniting the Sixth Sense with a single click :-)

3. ALL THINGS IN MODERATION – BOOSTING POSITIVE REVIEWS

Here’s what you can do next: Find a few reviews that personally speak to you, or you think someone else looking for the book would find helpful. Click YES, you found it helpful.

DO NOT click YES on every single positive review. Don’t spam the system. As much as I like 4 and 5 star reviews, I read some and they don’t speak to me. As a book reader, they sound too much like a commercial or don’t speak to what I would look for in a book.

As a general rule, don’t YES more than 10% of total reviews. 5% is perfect.

If a book has 60 reviews, I would click YES on 3 reviews. It may not sound like much, but if each person does this it really adds up. Plus, it means you don’t have to put much time into it to be really helpful.

4. UNHELPFUL REVIEWS AND CLICKING ‘NO’

Here’s the thing: Amazon is trying to create a system that is as automated as possible. They want people to police the system themselves by the power of the crowd. With a small number of results, it is easy to game Amazon. The larger, more popular something is, the harder it becomes.

Relying on people to police the system is great – if everyone is completely honest without personal agendas. Unfortunately, the system can be abused by fake profiles, or competitors looking to harm your reputation, or when the number of reviews is still relatively small… even a single person with bad intention can drag a book down while it is still gaining momentum.

For the most part, the rule of the internet regarding negativity is simple: Don’t feed the trolls.

Some people feed off negativity. Ignore them, and it goes away. Put energy and attention to them, and it makes them stronger. You give them what they want – attention.

Amazon, like most search engines, rewards any kind of engagement. It doesn’t see good or bad. Energy is energy. If you comment, click, or link to a negative review or comment – even in the hopes to dispute it – all you do is give it power.

In an interview Tim Ferris (New York Times bestselling author and all-around incredible promoter and ‘messager’) said that you should ignore any reviews of 1 or 2, because people who leave reviews like that are a) generally impossible to make happy about anything, so why try b) leave 1 or 2 rating on anything they review, so are generally impossible to make happy or c) have some other issue or agenda (they are a competitor, philosophically opposed to your content, or just don’t like your face).

I’m really emphasizing this because many Higher Balance people are very passionate – which is cool. This passion often leads to seeing something negative and then pouring all this energy into trying to dispute it or argue in such a way to change the persons mind – which is bad. Because you can’t. All you do is waste your time and give more juice to the negativity.

The internet is a terrible medium for having in-depth discussions in general. Discussions that involve opposing-viewpoints is even worse.

The rule-of-thumb then is to feed the positive, ignore the negative.

5. WHEN YOU MUST DISPUTE NEGATIVE REVIEWS

There are rare cases when you need to dispute negative comments. This is when comments go beyond what could be considered someone’s opinion about a book. Everyone should be entitled to their opinion, whether it agrees or disagrees with yours. Their opinion is theirs – don’t take it personal.

Sometimes, a comment is made by someone with an agenda, who is purposely trying to harm a book and turn people away. A little research (if you want to bother) shows this pretty quickly.

Here’s an example:

Still logged into your Amazon account, let’s revisit:

http://www.amazon.com/Igniting-Sixth-Sense-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B00EH0RL8I/

Scroll down to reviews and currently, there is a recent negative review that has climbed to the top of the list.



The first thing to look at is the number of people who found the review helpful. 105! That’s quite a high number for a review made on August 31, when today is September 16th.

Scroll back to Steve Pfaff’s review, which has been at the top since the release of the book on August 12th. It has 56 votes total, versus 118 on this review. That’s double in less time.

Quickly scrolling through the list to see the total number of votes on the top reviews you see: 31, 30, 34, 22. When I look at other 1 star reviews I see totals of: 3, 2, 4.

In other words this review has an abnormally high rank above any review on the whole book – WAY above any other negative review. Right away this sends up a red flag that someone is putting a lot of energy into it and is gaming the system.

Those numbers don’t happen naturally, there is a campaign directed to get traffic to it.

Ignore the irony that someone is gaming a negative review, while the review is complaining that other reviews of the book must be fake and the author (Eric) must be gaming and cheating the system. Remember, don’t take this personal. Success breeds animosity and as Eric’s best selling book to date, it is only natural that it brings out an ugly side in competitors or organizations that might feel threatened of this. For every action an equal and opposite reaction.

Reading the review, you can tell this person spent a lot of time researching Eric Pepin, because the review is mostly an attack on Eric and trying to tear down his character than discussing the book. Someone who simply read the book and didn’t like it, even a 1, isn’t going to spend the time to do this without an agenda.

Following the Tim Ferris rule that most people who do 1 or 2 star reviews will always rate that, we can check their profile.

We find they rate “Words of Jesus Daily” a 5 star and say they use the app twice a day. Right away their strong reaction to a popular metaphysical book makes sense and we can see the picture forming already. Christianity, sadly, has its fair share of extremists and a church would have the draw to collectively campaign to game a book via a message forum or church email.

He also gives a Sylvia Browne book a 1 star. Feng Shui book – 1 star. A diet book – 5 star. So any book of any metaphysical philosophy is getting a 1 star by this person. Pattern. Agenda.

All of this would be fine, and should be ignored, except for the fact that they are gaming their review to rise to the top. This means anyone coming to the book see’s their review first.

6. HOW TO PUSH DOWN NEGATIVE REVIEWS

Here is what you do:



Scroll to the bottom of the review. We see the same question, “was it helpful? YES | NO”.

Before you hit NO, check out to the left where it says 12 comments.

On any review, you are able to comment and reply to the review. This guy is making a lot of negative claims, and some people have disputed those. Here’s the problem – that only feeds this to rank higher on Amazon. This comment is getting engagement, that draws people to Amazon, which Amazon wants so it gives it more juice.

If you are considering making a comment, check to see if the point you want to make has already been made. If so, walk away. Don’t feed the troll. You can’t win an argument on the internet. All you do is give the negative people power. I would say after 4 comments, everything that could be said, has been said. And checking the comments, the first person to respond made great, practical, down-to-earth points. That’s the best you can hope for. If that’s done – move on.

Go back to the review and click NO.

Next, Amazon will have a message appear.



They will thank you for your feedback and give the option to tell them if the review is inappropriate.

Now, normally if you just disagree with a 1 star or they went on some weird rant that wasn’t helpful – just click NO and move on.

However, if it really is abusing the system and is way off topic, go ahead and report abuse. In this case, we are going to click “please let us know”. Go ahead and click NO, and then “please let us know” if you haven’t already.

A pop-up window appears like this:



You have two choices, simply report the review by clicking, “Report as inappropriate”, or enter a reason why and then submit it.

For this review, we go to Amazon’s own rules and terms and conditions. They say that information which is offtopic, so unrelated to the product or service, is commenting or reviewing the seller rather than the product, or is promoting offsite url’s – is against their policy.

In this case the person is going on a rant unrelated to the book (offtopic), attacking the authors character (commenting on seller rather than product) and is pushing people to url’s off Amazon.com (offsite url).

So I type in: Offtopic information, personal attack on author, inappropriate content – offsite url

hit submit and I’m done.

All the other 1 star reviews I leave as-is. Why? Because anyone of same or similar personalities may feel the same, which means they shouldn’t read the book in the first place. We want the negative reviews to weed out the wrong people, just as we want positive reviews to attract the right people.

If I were going to do anything I would find 1 to 2 more that I feel were off-topic or totally unrealistic and I would click “NO” they were not helpful – but I wouldn’t flag them for abuse.

The main point is – NEVER flag all 1 or 2 star reviews NO. NEVER flag all reviews as abusive unless they really are. If you only promote 5% of positive reviews, only downvote 2.5% of negative reviews. The ones you REALLY disagree with.

If everyone likes a book – something is seriously wrong. Nothing in life is so clean-cut. Every single book on the planet should have people who hate it. Even books about puppies eating ice cream. This is a natural balance. Don’t try to control it.

7. TAKING MORE TIME – COMMENTS

Most of what we just went through involves simple clicking. YES a review was helpful, or NO it wasn’t.

If you want to take more time LEAVE A REVIEW!

Write a review of the kind you would find useful for yourself. Don’t ‘hype’. Be realistic, make it personal, keep it real.

Short or long doesn’t matter to Amazon. What you rate it and that you left a review is enough. If you are Amazon verified as owning the book adds more weight. If you don’t own it – doesn’t do much.

Also notice you can comment on other reviews. Writing a comment on a positive review gives it more weight than if you simply click YES. It doesn’t need to be long. If you found something really helpful in a review – write a quick comment telling them that.

Quick rule of thumb is that if it takes more time to do something – generally means Amazon gives it more weight.

8. DO IT FOR ALL THE BOOKS

Now rinse and repeat for all the other books. Take 5% of total reviews and click YES on positive ones. Comment if you have time. Downvote half that of really negative reviews (or leave them alone).

That’s it! A really simple, easy way to help promote Higher Balance on Amazon, contribute to getting the books out there, and using Amazons system to moderate people abusing the system.
 
Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

A couple of days ago I received a cease and desist from a religious cult that SOTT knows only too well. The letter came from a lawyer who works out of a hotmail address, works from home, gave no reference number, no name on the letter and no signature on the letter. There is also errors in grammar and spelling mistakes through out the letter. This letter can be found attached below.

Seven months ago I was browsing through Higher Balance Institutes forums when I came across an Amazon review rigging guide. In this guide it stated how to downvote negative comments, how to inflate positive comments, how to get around the reviews being flagged as false. An eight point guide that appeared to have internal knowledge about Amazons systems. I then came across a former staff member of HBI now working in the Data management side of Amazon. Who had just started that very moth the guide has been published!

Imagine my surprise at the coincidence of waiting several years to publish this review rigging guide and they choose the exact same month a staff member begins work at Amazon in the data management side. Naturally I contacted Christopher North the CEO for the legal department of Amazon. They informed me that they will be unable to tell me the outcome but they will investigate my claims.

The important part to know here is that my Amazon and everybody's amazon account is nigh on impossible to associate with you. A simple username and that's it. My user name was 'Anklers'. With an L in the middle.

A few days ago the letter came, demanding my cease and desist. In this letter it states my negative reviews on Amazon are defamation and that I attempted to have a former employee fired from his current position. On the last page it claims I have been impersonating my neighbors who are called Ankers.

My Amazon account name for reviews is Anklers. My neighbors are called Ankers.

In the letter it states that the former Staff member of HBI was put under review because of my reporting of this guide. In this we have a motive.

Finally we come to the conclusion of my post. I believe a disgruntled Amazon employee whose job was put under review has broken data protection and handed over my personal information to a cult so that they could send me this cease and desist letter.

The claims made in the 4 page letter

If I was to make any claims against HBI or Eric Pepin. Those claims would consist of factual information taken from HBI websites and news stories. This has escalated and carried onto Higher Balances facebook page in which they claim they are being cyber bullied by me. One of their claims state that I am responsible for over six amazon accounts and 40 negative reviews. Which is beyond ludicrous. This cult now wishes to blame me for any and all negative discussions.

Who am I and what is my motive

I have read through the wave series and the secret history of the world. I respect this community for it's analytical thinking and logical approach to discussions. Any attempt upon manipulating others into getting others to do work or take actions for them is quickly squashed. I do not ask nor hope anybody here can offer services to me in this situation. I am fully capable of handling this myself but do thank people for their viewpoint on this situation.

Back in 2005 I bought some books and CD's from HBI. It was a revealing experience to be brought inside a nest of vipers, to see from the inside how these cults operate. That point on wards I have felt it was important to try and helps others from falling into those viper nests. I only post here so that information can be shared.

Also because the cease and desist letter borders on hilarity. Thank you for your time.
 

Attachments

  • Page 1.jpg
    Page 1.jpg
    158.7 KB · Views: 290
  • Page 2.jpg
    Page 2.jpg
    219.3 KB · Views: 285
  • Page 3.jpg
    Page 3.jpg
    219.5 KB · Views: 279
  • Page 4.jpg
    Page 4.jpg
    99.1 KB · Views: 278
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

Looks as if the letter is a fake. There is no "Reward Claims" in Sutton Coldfield. In fact, the company "Reward Claims" doesn't exist at all in the UK.

You can check here: _http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

The letter is poorly done in that respect, no name in the signature either.

Might be an idea to phone and see who is answering.

M.T.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

I can send you the contact details of our attorneys that handled the HBI case. They are experienced with that sort of thing.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

Minas Tirith said:
Looks as if the letter is a fake. There is no "Reward Claims" in Sutton Coldfield. In fact, the company "Reward Claims" doesn't exist at all in the UK.

You can check here: _http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

The letter is poorly done in that respect, no name in the signature either.

Might be an idea to phone and see who is answering.

M.T.

No answer to phone calls. Ten attempts made. I believe the man is called Guy Bailey. Also upon a little fact checking with people finding websites. The home owner checks out as Guy Bailey.
A solicitor who refused to comply with a Legal Ombudsman decision to return files to a client has been fined £5,000 for contempt by a county court.

A spokesman for LeO said Guy Bailey, director of Reward Litigation Solicitors in Birmingham, was the fourth lawyer to be fined by a court in this way.

http://www.solicitorsjournal.com/news/regulation/complaints/solicitor-who-ignored-leo-fined-contempt

I can send you the contact details of our attorneys that handled the HBI case. They are experienced with that sort of thing.

Thank you Laura. That would be very helpful.

I have also attached further posts in which HBI claims they are being cyber bullied. The third attachment is mine. Mostly written out of anger over the whole incident.
 

Attachments

  • Cyber Bully - letter - 18.06.14.jpg
    Cyber Bully - letter - 18.06.14.jpg
    166.4 KB · Views: 250
  • escalation - 19.06.14.png
    escalation - 19.06.14.png
    892.3 KB · Views: 29
  • my response - 19.06.14.png
    my response - 19.06.14.png
    549.7 KB · Views: 26
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

chrisbanks said:
No answer to phone calls. Ten attempts made. I believe the man is called Guy Bailey. Also upon a little fact checking with people finding websites. The home owner checks out as Guy Bailey.
A solicitor who refused to comply with a Legal Ombudsman decision to return files to a client has been fined £5,000 for contempt by a county court.
A spokesman for LeO said Guy Bailey, director of Reward Litigation Solicitors in Birmingham, was the fourth lawyer to be fined by a court in this way.

"Reward Litigation Solicitors" in Birmingham was closed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in September 2013, which might be why he is writing from his home address, neither giving his, nor his practice's name.
Look here: _http://www.shacklocks.co.uk/news/news.php?news_id=70

I would be surprised if the document you got should in any way be "legal" (no name, no known practice's name, indecipherable signature)

By the way, how do "they" know your neighbor's name???

Yeah, good idea to contact Laura's people.

M.T.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin


You'll find atty contact details here:

http://www.sott.net/page/10-FAIR-USE-NOTICE

bottom of the page.

You can get more details on the firm on the net including email addys.

If you write, you can refer to this thread with a link as background.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

To be fair, their logo is so symbolic of the undiscriminating, co-opted new age movements.

A man "meditating", flanked by Horus' wings, curved in the manner of a crown of laurels, topped by an overbearing, fragmented pyramid with a floating apex. I mean, really?
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

chrisbanks said:
Seven months ago I was browsing through Higher Balance Institutes forums when I came across an Amazon review rigging guide. In this guide it stated how to downvote negative comments, how to inflate positive comments, how to get around the reviews being flagged as false. An eight point guide that appeared to have internal knowledge about Amazons systems. I then came across a former staff member of HBI now working in the Data management side of Amazon. Who had just started that very moth the guide has been published!

Imagine my surprise at the coincidence of waiting several years to publish this review rigging guide and they choose the exact same month a staff member begins work at Amazon in the data management side. Naturally I contacted Christopher North the CEO for the legal department of Amazon. They informed me that they will be unable to tell me the outcome but they will investigate my claims.

Did you save or take a screen shot of this "guide"? What is the name of the former HBI staff member now working for amazon and what is the evidence that he IS a former HBI staff member.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

If any members aren't familiar with Eric Pepin and Higher Balance, here's the thread that goes into the initial investigation of HB, the charges they came back with against QFG and Laura, and how the case unfolded:

Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute - Discussion

And these SOTT articles:

Internet Free Speech Under Threat! Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute Sue QFG for 4.47 Million Over SOTT Forum Comments!

Happy Winter Solstice! We Won!

It's all very useful reading!

Here's a post from chrisbanks/Anklers on Amazon's Customer Discussion forum about the issue:

_http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20discussions%20feedback?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxLCMW9UN2N6QR&cdThread=Tx1GREPM9ZLT49Q
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

Did you save or take a screen shot of this "guide"? What is the name of the former HBI staff member now working for amazon and what is the evidence that he IS a former HBI staff member.

I saved the html format of the Amazon rigging guide. The HBI staff member, josh Leavitt. Has appeared in videos and is very well known at HBI. His previous history of working with Higher Balance is all over the internet from linkd profiles (which he later deleted) to google+.

I have made it very clear that I found it very odd that after several years of Eric's books being released. The very same month that Josh joins Amazon on the data management side, HBI publishes this Amazon rigging guide. This guide was only available and accessible to those who had created a profile on HBI forums.


A Short Guide to

Promoting Higher Balance on Amazon


So, you say you love Eric’s books, you want to help share and get them out in the world, but don’t know much about Amazon or the internet?

Well, this handy guide is here to show you how, in a few simple steps, you can help get the good word out about Higher Balance. It’s simple, takes only a few clicks, and requires the least amount of effort for the biggest reward.

The journey of a thousand minds begins with a single click ;-)

1. BOOKS, BOOKS, AND BOOKS
This is really all about the books, which is the easiest and fastest way to get knowledge into peoples lives right now. There are four books on Amazon (but this applies to all future books as well).

Right now we’re going to boost the books on Amazon. It will take less than 3 minutes. Here are the links you’ll need:

Silent Awakening: _http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Awakening-Telepathy-Effective-Awareness-ebook/dp/B00HBSBJQS

Igniting the Sixth Sense: _http://amazon.com/Igniting-Sixth-Sense-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B00EH0RL8I/

Meditation within Eternity: _http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-within-Eternity-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B00B0MPCKA

Handbook of the Navigator: _http://www.amazon.com/The-Handbook-Navigator-ebook/dp/B001NEKDDG/

Bending God: _http://www.amazon.com/Bending-God-A-Memoir-ebook/dp/B005E1OXEE/

2. BOOST HELPFUL REVIEWS
Right now, log into your Amazon.com account. Now go to _http://amazon.com/Igniting-Sixth-Sense-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B00EH0RL8I/

Scroll down to the bottom where you see the reviews. There are two columns of reviews. The main column in the center of your screen, “Most Helpful Customer Reviews”, and on the right side, “Most Recent Customer Reviews”.

Most people scroll straight down the center to the most helpful reviews.

Notice at the top of each review is something like this, “52 of 56 people found the following review helpful”
Amazon ranks these reviews in large part based on this number. The more people find something helpful, the more Amazon pushes it to the top. The least helpful, the lower. Now scroll down to the bottom of the review. You see, “Was this review helpful to you? YES | NO”.



If you are logged into your Amazon account, click YES on Steve Pfaff’s review.

Congratulations! You just helped Igniting the Sixth Sense with a single click :-)

3. ALL THINGS IN MODERATION – BOOSTING POSITIVE REVIEWS

Here’s what you can do next: Find a few reviews that personally speak to you, or you think someone else looking for the book would find helpful. Click YES, you found it helpful.

DO NOT click YES on every single positive review. Don’t spam the system. As much as I like 4 and 5 star reviews, I read some and they don’t speak to me. As a book reader, they sound too much like a commercial or don’t speak to what I would look for in a book.

As a general rule, don’t YES more than 10% of total reviews. 5% is perfect.

If a book has 60 reviews, I would click YES on 3 reviews. It may not sound like much, but if each person does this it really adds up. Plus, it means you don’t have to put much time into it to be really helpful.

4. UNHELPFUL REVIEWS AND CLICKING ‘NO’

Here’s the thing: Amazon is trying to create a system that is as automated as possible. They want people to police the system themselves by the power of the crowd. With a small number of results, it is easy to game Amazon. The larger, more popular something is, the harder it becomes.

Relying on people to police the system is great – if everyone is completely honest without personal agendas. Unfortunately, the system can be abused by fake profiles, or competitors looking to harm your reputation, or when the number of reviews is still relatively small… even a single person with bad intention can drag a book down while it is still gaining momentum.

For the most part, the rule of the internet regarding negativity is simple: Don’t feed the trolls.

Some people feed off negativity. Ignore them, and it goes away. Put energy and attention to them, and it makes them stronger. You give them what they want – attention.

Amazon, like most search engines, rewards any kind of engagement. It doesn’t see good or bad. Energy is energy. If you comment, click, or link to a negative review or comment – even in the hopes to dispute it – all you do is give it power.

In an interview Tim Ferris (New York Times bestselling author and all-around incredible promoter and ‘messager’) said that you should ignore any reviews of 1 or 2, because people who leave reviews like that are a) generally impossible to make happy about anything, so why try b) leave 1 or 2 rating on anything they review, so are generally impossible to make happy or c) have some other issue or agenda (they are a competitor, philosophically opposed to your content, or just don’t like your face).

I’m really emphasizing this because many Higher Balance people are very passionate – which is cool. This passion often leads to seeing something negative and then pouring all this energy into trying to dispute it or argue in such a way to change the persons mind – which is bad. Because you can’t. All you do is waste your time and give more juice to the negativity.

The internet is a terrible medium for having in-depth discussions in general. Discussions that involve opposing-viewpoints is even worse.

The rule-of-thumb then is to feed the positive, ignore the negative.

5. WHEN YOU MUST DISPUTE NEGATIVE REVIEWS

There are rare cases when you need to dispute negative comments. This is when comments go beyond what could be considered someone’s opinion about a book. Everyone should be entitled to their opinion, whether it agrees or disagrees with yours. Their opinion is theirs – don’t take it personal.

Sometimes, a comment is made by someone with an agenda, who is purposely trying to harm a book and turn people away. A little research (if you want to bother) shows this pretty quickly.

Here’s an example:

Still logged into your Amazon account, let’s revisit:

_http://www.amazon.com/Igniting-Sixth-Sense-Spiritual-ebook/dp/B00EH0RL8I/

Scroll down to reviews and currently, there is a recent negative review that has climbed to the top of the list.



The first thing to look at is the number of people who found the review helpful. 105! That’s quite a high number for a review made on August 31, when today is September 16th.

Scroll back to Steve Pfaff’s review, which has been at the top since the release of the book on August 12th. It has 56 votes total, versus 118 on this review. That’s double in less time.

Quickly scrolling through the list to see the total number of votes on the top reviews you see: 31, 30, 34, 22. When I look at other 1 star reviews I see totals of: 3, 2, 4.

In other words this review has an abnormally high rank above any review on the whole book – WAY above any other negative review. Right away this sends up a red flag that someone is putting a lot of energy into it and is gaming the system.

Those numbers don’t happen naturally, there is a campaign directed to get traffic to it.

Ignore the irony that someone is gaming a negative review, while the review is complaining that other reviews of the book must be fake and the author (Eric) must be gaming and cheating the system. Remember, don’t take this personal. Success breeds animosity and as Eric’s best selling book to date, it is only natural that it brings out an ugly side in competitors or organizations that might feel threatened of this. For every action an equal and opposite reaction.

Reading the review, you can tell this person spent a lot of time researching Eric Pepin, because the review is mostly an attack on Eric and trying to tear down his character than discussing the book. Someone who simply read the book and didn’t like it, even a 1, isn’t going to spend the time to do this without an agenda.

Following the Tim Ferris rule that most people who do 1 or 2 star reviews will always rate that, we can check their profile.

We find they rate “Words of Jesus Daily” a 5 star and say they use the app twice a day. Right away their strong reaction to a popular metaphysical book makes sense and we can see the picture forming already. Christianity, sadly, has its fair share of extremists and a church would have the draw to collectively campaign to game a book via a message forum or church email.

He also gives a Sylvia Browne book a 1 star. Feng Shui book – 1 star. A diet book – 5 star. So any book of any metaphysical philosophy is getting a 1 star by this person. Pattern. Agenda.

All of this would be fine, and should be ignored, except for the fact that they are gaming their review to rise to the top. This means anyone coming to the book see’s their review first.

6. HOW TO PUSH DOWN NEGATIVE REVIEWS

Here is what you do:



Scroll to the bottom of the review. We see the same question, “was it helpful? YES | NO”.

Before you hit NO, check out to the left where it says 12 comments.

On any review, you are able to comment and reply to the review. This guy is making a lot of negative claims, and some people have disputed those. Here’s the problem – that only feeds this to rank higher on Amazon. This comment is getting engagement, that draws people to Amazon, which Amazon wants so it gives it more juice.

If you are considering making a comment, check to see if the point you want to make has already been made. If so, walk away. Don’t feed the troll. You can’t win an argument on the internet. All you do is give the negative people power. I would say after 4 comments, everything that could be said, has been said. And checking the comments, the first person to respond made great, practical, down-to-earth points. That’s the best you can hope for. If that’s done – move on.

Go back to the review and click NO.

Next, Amazon will have a message appear.



They will thank you for your feedback and give the option to tell them if the review is inappropriate.

Now, normally if you just disagree with a 1 star or they went on some weird rant that wasn’t helpful – just click NO and move on.

However, if it really is abusing the system and is way off topic, go ahead and report abuse. In this case, we are going to click “please let us know”. Go ahead and click NO, and then “please let us know” if you haven’t already.

A pop-up window appears like this:



You have two choices, simply report the review by clicking, “Report as inappropriate”, or enter a reason why and then submit it.

For this review, we go to Amazon’s own rules and terms and conditions. They say that information which is offtopic, so unrelated to the product or service, is commenting or reviewing the seller rather than the product, or is promoting offsite url’s – is against their policy.

In this case the person is going on a rant unrelated to the book (offtopic), attacking the authors character (commenting on seller rather than product) and is pushing people to url’s off Amazon.com (offsite url).

So I type in: Offtopic information, personal attack on author, inappropriate content – offsite url

hit submit and I’m done.

All the other 1 star reviews I leave as-is. Why? Because anyone of same or similar personalities may feel the same, which means they shouldn’t read the book in the first place. We want the negative reviews to weed out the wrong people, just as we want positive reviews to attract the right people.

If I were going to do anything I would find 1 to 2 more that I feel were off-topic or totally unrealistic and I would click “NO” they were not helpful – but I wouldn’t flag them for abuse.

The main point is – NEVER flag all 1 or 2 star reviews NO. NEVER flag all reviews as abusive unless they really are. If you only promote 5% of positive reviews, only downvote 2.5% of negative reviews. The ones you REALLY disagree with.

If everyone likes a book – something is seriously wrong. Nothing in life is so clean-cut. Every single book on the planet should have people who hate it. Even books about puppies eating ice cream. This is a natural balance. Don’t try to control it.

7. TAKING MORE TIME – COMMENTS

Most of what we just went through involves simple clicking. YES a review was helpful, or NO it wasn’t.

If you want to take more time LEAVE A REVIEW!

Write a review of the kind you would find useful for yourself. Don’t ‘hype’. Be realistic, make it personal, keep it real.

Short or long doesn’t matter to Amazon. What you rate it and that you left a review is enough. If you are Amazon verified as owning the book adds more weight. If you don’t own it – doesn’t do much.

Also notice you can comment on other reviews. Writing a comment on a positive review gives it more weight than if you simply click YES. It doesn’t need to be long. If you found something really helpful in a review – write a quick comment telling them that.

Quick rule of thumb is that if it takes more time to do something – generally means Amazon gives it more weight.

8. DO IT FOR ALL THE BOOKS

Now rinse and repeat for all the other books. Take 5% of total reviews and click YES on positive ones. Comment if you have time. Downvote half that of really negative reviews (or leave them alone).

That’s it! A really simple, easy way to help promote Higher Balance on Amazon, contribute to getting the books out there, and using Amazons system to moderate people abusing the system.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin


Well, I don't see anything so terribly shocking about the review boosting advice. I DO know that amazon frowns on that sort of thing and are trying to crack down on it, but what this "guide" is saying is pretty much what you would expect when an author publishes a book and his friends want to help him boost it.

I don't think you have much of a case here.
 
Yeah, at this point it's just a letter. I would be more concerned with Amazon's behavior here.

What they are doing is a bit shady, but it's not in any way criminal. Giving contact information of a customer to an employee under review is a seriously unethical and possibly criminal act. I wouldn't expect less from Amazon. They've been getting very sloppy.
 
Re: Cease and Desist - HBI - Eric Pepin

Renaissance said:
If any members aren't familiar with Eric Pepin and Higher Balance, here's the thread that goes into the initial investigation of HB, the charges they came back with against QFG and Laura, and how the case unfolded:

Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute - Discussion

And these SOTT articles:

Internet Free Speech Under Threat! Eric Pepin - Higher Balance Institute Sue QFG for 4.47 Million Over SOTT Forum Comments!

Happy Winter Solstice! We Won!
Thank you very much, man.

It's all very useful reading!

Here's a post from chrisbanks/Anklers on Amazon's Customer Discussion forum about the issue:

_http://www.amazon.com/forum/amazon%20discussions%20feedback?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxLCMW9UN2N6QR&cdThread=Tx1GREPM9ZLT49Q

Thank you very much, Renaissance.
 
I tried hbi for a while. I will admit that at that time, I was searching for healing and I was very very broken. That being said, I wanted desperately to figure this stuff out. I had never really encountered any other kind of enlightenment so I had nothing to compare it to. The first few years, I worked with their star reach program and had great experiences but then something happened. I got engulfed in the addiction of it. Then I switched coaches and something kept going horribly wrong. I couldn't think straight. It seemed like I nose dived into hell and everything was going wrong. The problem here is that there version of surrender wasn't right for me. Then I was doing all these high vibrational things and I was attracting bad bad energies because I wasn't in a place where I should be. In my opinion yes they have some good stuff, but no one has all the answers and that is where hbi is in the wrong because they the sell their label as that they do have all the answers and they are the best. It was my belief in this that caused a major fall and I ended up harming myself in ways that now practically 20 years later is still something I'm dealing with. In their belief that they do have all the answers and eric's so called illusion of sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, I believe that they manifested a scenario to try to force me into surrender which did way more harm than good. Maybe not, maybe it's just me but I finally did find someone that at least got me out of the gutter and put my soul and life back in alignment so I know hbi is not the end all be all, in fact I wish I never met them but I am where I am now. Plus from what I've seen and kept track of, you have to be able to afford or be at eric's side constantly for hbi to be truly effective and even then, it's not about sovereignty but more like being a mini eric. So many parrots and no one actually learned how to access their own info, they just hung on to every word he says. We should be growing into our own connection not who can connect to eric the best. I am a very different person than I was and I've learned how to let go and love and be patient. I see some of the hbi students after 20 years still just have the most rediculous egos and well it makes me go wtf. All I can say is that I found what I needed and good luck to you all and I do hope to see hbi meet a bigger fish. Im not going to waste my life in hate and want revenge but this system needs a reality check...
 
Back
Top Bottom