Donna D. Fontenot is an Internet marketer… and a striving novelist. That mixture of trades can yield quite a lethal concoction, if a one choose the path of the sinister. The Internet Marketing fraud subculture thrives from the creative scammers with the imaginatively mind which can ease the modus operandi into the victim’s wallet.
But I can’t peg Donna Fontenot as such a bilker. Not yet.
I first got acquainted with Fontenot through a post on Search Engine Roundtable. The Barry Schwartz’s article discusses about Google’s third Penguin update, and to offer more context about this update, it links to a forum thread on Cre8asite Forums by Fontenot.
So when the mighty Penguin struck way back in…I don’t know when, but something like six months ago, a company came to me asking me to help them recover.
…And now, FINALLY, Penguin has run again, and the client’s rankings have recovered. Finally, I can get some peace. LOL!
LOL indeed… and very interesting too! Recovering from the Penguin update is agonizing, on the verge of impracticable even, so just to hear about a site who did pull off a rescue from the algorithm’s trapping clamps is pretty scarce… and heroic! Whoever who’s responsible for this grandiose salvage should be granted an ocean of respect and authority!
For a marketer, it can possibly means a flow of new businesses that seek a search specialist, with a rare success story. In fact, Fontenot’s recovery proclamation was so uncommon that WepProNews dedicated a whole article just for it. Fontenot’s worth as SEO expert has been promptly inflated monumentally.
My initial thoughts about Donna Fontenot and her claims were positive- she deserved all the credit, and likely the new businesses thrown in her way. She earned it. She achieved what so many others hadn’t. Why shouldn’t she ride on the wave of fortune which she has been accomplished with her two bare hands?
But then, I saw something that made me a bit suspicious.
One sentence. Just a few words, limited to 140 characters. A simple Tweet. When being asked if she’ll publish some study about her remarkable recovery case, Fontenot posted quite an odd reply:
@marie_haynes Hmm. Maybe. If I can find some time. That ever-elusive time. 🙂
— Donna Fontenot (@DonnaFontenot) October 6, 2012
That’s weird… an Internet marketer who has a truthful exceptional attainment, but yet, somehow reluctant to share any information about it? That’s a first…
Sure, there’s this thing of clients confidentiality, but Fontenot could have done it without revealing any private information. It’s not like Donna Fontenot hadn’t done it before, for example on this page from eBuzzCoach (her business coaching and consulting site) where she flaunts details of her past clientele.
By the way, this particular page contains a super-manipulative “Coaching Quiz” with questions (which aren’t really questions) like “I sincerely need and want to be successful” and “I would love to accomplish the goals I’ve set.” If the respondents answered Yes to at least some of those questions, they’re “an ideal candidate for coaching.” I guess I’m (and probably you) an ideal candidate too…
I’d tried to contact Donna Fontenot myself for more information about her alleged-recovery claim, but until now she declined to respond.
I’m not the only one who questions Fontenot’s integrity on the subject (and in general), there are many more doubters out there whose skeptic comments had already been raised. As somewhat of a response, Fontenot posted that in the initial aforementioned forum thread:
…Here I am trying to get away from SEO and clients, and move to just writing books, and I get blasted for trying to scam people into hiring me for SEO. Whatever, dude!
Tell me this novelistic Donna (can I call you novelistic Donna?), if you are truly trying to get away from SEO, why your little $600-a-month recurring subscription PayPal button still fully active on your pricing page?