Apparently one of the hottest new scams is to hawk DVDs containing “thousands” of woodworking plans, most of which are either unusable or stolen/plagiarized. What’s more, these guys are offering 75% affiliate commissions, inviting countless others to share in the dirty work.
Steve from Woodworking for Mere Mortals has launched a campaign to educate woodworkers on the perils of buying these too-good-to-be-true plan compilations. Judging from a few posts on popular woodworking forums, even seasoned hobbyists are falling for this!
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For a surprisingly entertaining (9 minute) report on woodworking plan scams, check out Steve’s video:
One of the major players in this game is John Metz from “woodworking 4 home.” According to Steve, John Metz has also been posting video clips of New Yankee Workshop minus the title and credits and with his own “woodworking 4 home” branding.
Even googling “woodworking scams” brings up dozens of “reviews” that try to legitimize the product. If you took a look at the site that all of these affiliate sellers link to, you’d find fake review content ready to be reposted, positive reader comments included. Of course the “comments” section is “closed due to spammers.”
To help curb this problem, don’t buy a woodworking plan CD or DVD from sketchy sources, and don’t help sell the junk copy-paste product to others.
Fight Woodworking Scams via Woodworking for Mere Mortals
Update About the Woodworking Plan Rip-Off via WMM
Thanks to Hising Wood Design for bringing this all to my attention.
The lead image is a screenshot from Steve’s video.
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