And it continues...

Hi XX,

Thanks for the reply, and before going any further let me assure you that not one point of the many you mentioned appeared foolish or in anyway out of the board to me. In the online business world, we primarily work with the "No goal is unattainable" objective, which simply translates to, if the customer asks something, we have to provide him with that, even if he has no idea what he is talking about. However, in your case this is not the case at all. Everything you mentioned in your email, I will answer one at a time and then provide you with the rough draft of the invoice.

- Wordpress Blog, similar to the Your Blog 2.0 theme
Easily achievable with a lot of changes. We could keep the structure, but give you an all new look and graphics. Fresh, commented code and user friendly design.

- Ad Optimization
We actually excel in adsense optimisation, our clients get some of the best click-thru rates in the industry owing to the fact that our themes are so properly ad-optimized. Color-wise and Graphic-wise.

- Mailing List Management
Again an easily achievable feat. We encourage you to use a third party email processing application, which could ease up your trouble and guarantee mail delivery for a fee. (If you want, we could recommend some good ones.)

- Widgets
The theme will be 100% widgetized and will allow you to add as many widgets as you want without disrupting the look and feel of your website.

- Static Pages
Wordpress is very flexible when it comes to adding static pages, so that is not going to be a headache for you.

- SEO Strategy
If you take out basic SEO Plan, you are actually giving a kick start to your site on the internet, it assures faster indexing and greater rankings. Here are the details of the basic SEO Plan in brief.
> On Site SEO
Over 90 different process done on the blog, right from title modification, to description management. Right from Duplicate Content removal, to tag management, we do everything. This gives a push in the right direction to your blog in Google's eye.
> Link Building
Submission to over 200 Directories, related to your category, done gradually over a period of days
Submission to over 100 Social Bookmarking sites related to your Category, with tagging and all
--------------------------------------

That is it for now, we'd be glad to go ahead with this project and wind it up ASAP.

Below, is the rought draft invoice.

--------------------------------------

Client Name - XX
Project diversification - Cost

1. Custom Theme Design - $300
2. Ad Optimisation - $50
3. Mailing List installation/integration and guidance on management - $50
4. Widgetisation - Free
5. Basic SEO Package (Includes Onsite and Offsite SEO) - $275
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Total - $675
________________________________________

--------------------------------------

Please let me know if this sounds appropriate to you and we could begin with the project.

--
Abhishek Tripathi
Exec. CEO,
Mediawick Digital Solutions
Mediawick.com
+91 (251) 6455 909
----------
From:
Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 1:44 PM
To: Abhishek Tripathi


Hi Abhishek and thanks for the reply.

Let me flush out my thoughts a bit more and get back to you.


----------
From: Abhishek Tripathi
Date: Tue, Nov 6, 2007 at 11:55 AM
To:


Hi XX,

Any update on the project ?

Abhishek

----------
From: XX
Date: Tue, Nov 6, 2007 at 1:56 PM
To: Abhishek Tripathi


Hi Abhishek,

I'm seriously considering moving forward with this. I have a lot of
questions that I want to ask you, but I want to get them all together
so that I don't overwhelm you with email after email. I want to have
a pay portion of the site, either membership or buying information
packets - or both and I want to flush this out a bit and get my
initial copy written. I want the site to be in a usable format when I
open the doors and not look like a work in progress.

I plan to have one free white paper and about 10 others written before
it starts. Users will be able to purchase the entire set and
subscribe to a monthly newsletter containing other white papers. The
blog would feed this by posting executive summaries of the papers and
other information. Is this something that you've set up before?

Again, if I get out of line, feel free to make suggestions. I hope to
be able to move forward in a few weeks - these papers are taking quite
some time to research and write.

Thanks again,

Email exchange #1 - innocent enough

The trail starts off innocently enough with Abhishek responding to my email sent to him through Mediawick, here it is:
-----------------------------------------
Hi XXXX,

Thank you for getting in touch.

I would love to help you setup and get started with your website.

Please provide me with more details and I could come up with a proper Quote.

Regards,
Abhishek Tripathi

On 10/24/07, Unknown Stranger <nobody@servage.net> wrote:

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
Unknown Stranger (nobody@servage.net) on October 24th, 2007

db: contacts
source: Contact Me
type: signup
first_name*: XXXXX
regarding*: Blog setup
email*: XXXXXX
Message*: Hi, I\'m thinking of starting a blog to start a business selling information to engineers that get put in sales positions. I love your \'yourblog 2.0\' theme and downloaded it to try on a personal blog I\'m toying with (XXXXXcom). It\'s very clean and easy to see everything.

At any rate, I\'m curious if you\'d be interested in helping me initially set it up and come up with a search friendly domain name to secure.

I see on your MediaWick page that you set up for as low as $300. Not sure if that would apply to what I\'m asking for.

If you\'re interested, let me know and I can share my future vision so you know where I\'m coming from.

If you want to invite me to LinkedIn, my email is XXXXXX

Thanks again,
XXXXXX
email: nobody@servage.net
realname: Unknown Stranger

--
Abhishek Tripathi
www.abhishektripathi.com

Getting a refund on Monday?

Well, Abhishek Tripathi has finally emailed me again today promising a full refund on Monday March 17 - you'll be the first to hear if he actually does it. There are some crazy posts about his antics over at the DP forums. If you're interested:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=743420&highlight=abhishek

Abhishek Tripathi = Scam Artist

Unfortunately my very first PayPal transaction was with this scam artist. He goes by both Abhishek Tripathi (real name) and Mukesh Guruchal. His Web sites include www.mediawick.com, www.abhishektripathi.com, and www.theseohut.com to name a few.

I paid him $500 to begin the design and roll out of a blog I wanted. Deadline after deadline passed without any prototypes being posted. I then noticed that although I was dealing with Abhishek, my payment went to Mukesh - a quick search on this character yielded many fraud claims, a sample thread can be seen here:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=538757&highlight=Mukesh+Guruchal&page=5

After I called him on it and filed a complaint with PayPal, he agreed to refund the money several times. Sadly, it became apparent that this was also not going to happen, so I elevated my PayPal complaint to a claim - although the phantom Mukesh has no funds in his account so it is to no avail (wonder what name he's using now?).

I'm told that it will cost more than it's worth to get my money back, so I'm going the public service route instead and offering to help you not get duped by this duper. Did I mention that all three provided phone numbers have been disconnected?

I'm happy to share the entire email trail with anyone that's interested (shoot me a PM if you'd like me to forward it to you) as evidence to this situation. I'm sure that Abhishek will respond to this with some excuse, Lord knows that he has enough of them - from the flu to his credit card company being closed (that was my favorite). But I have all of our conversations neatly bundled to clearly show that he stole $500 from me.

I've learned some powerful lessons about dealing with people I don't know, so I guess I'm thankful to Abhishek that it only cost me $500 to do that. I was so excited to do this project and will most likely jump back on the horse after my wounds heal.

I'll be posting my emails here to help everyone avoid this scammer. If I'm not posting fast enough for you and you're considering hiring Abhishek - let me know and I'll get you the information ASAP.