The Magic Chicken Diet that was made as a clone of Kimkins (both the web site and the diet itself) might be gone in a couple of weeks if the domain is not renewed. We have already seen a number of former pro-Kimkins sites being put up for auction. Will this one be next?

I still can not understand what purpose this site is supposed to have. Bonnie can certainly not make any money from it.

There seem to be no paying members. She can not expect to get any paying members either as she now had disabled the registration process for her forum.

Bonnie herself hasn’t been on the site for more than two weeks. Her last visit was when the ducks flocked in via the open access directly into the forum. Bonnie was upset with the “freeloaders” and banned a few of them. However, she couldn’t even do this right. She banned their IP but not the User. The link is still open unless you try to access it from a banned IP.

There was an attempt in early January to add another success story, and pictures were taken as is evident from Bonnie’s MySpace album. But the pictures never made it up on the website. They don’t seem to be able to do it themselves and apparently is not paying anybody to handle the site for them. Even existing pictures of Bonnie are now gone from the site.

Was this venture just done on a whim by a husband that was proud that his wife had lost weight and wanted to show her off to the world? And then none of them had the interest or the energy to make it into a real business?

If so, my guess it that the domain will not be renewed. In my opinion, that is a good thing. As real as Bonnie’s weight loss success seems to be, we don’t need another starvation diet like Kimkins sold on the internet.

As far as I understand, yucky saw the link on my blog, and then posted it. At least it wasn’t at yucky’s when I did my post.

I can be wrong. Surely yucky had received this “tip” a long time ago as the link has been open since the new MCD forum was put in place on January 27th. Still, if someone is to blame, it is I. I take full responsibility for “blowing the MCD tip”.

I didn’t check with anyone before posting the link to find out if this was approved by the “Blogger’s Code of Conduct” that I still have not received a copy of. My tipster didn’t have a problem with me posting the link either. We just found it hilarious. The ineptness of it all.

It seems that I stepped on many toes by posting the link, and for that I am sorry. I spoiled the chance for this being kept “behind the scenes” so that people could “spy” on the MCD from the inside. Assuming that a number of visits by Guest would have gone undetected. Assuming that there actually was something to spy on.

By the way, the link is still open. It seems that Bonnie doesn’t care or doesn’t know how to fix it. Perhaps she appreciates getting some new members. Surely nobody in their right mind would pay $69.95 to join this forum. Or, if they did, would immediately request their money back when they found out what a joke of a forum this is.

What is the purpose of the Magic Chicken Diet site? To make money is obvious, but HOW is this supposed to happen?

How would anybody find the Magic Chicken? There is no advertising.

If you would happen to find it, WHY would you pay $69.95 to join? Based on the front page with Bonnie’s pictures and success story? The only other success story is a fuzzy picture of Bonnie’s sister. For the most recent addition, Angie, the pictures were not linked properly and do not show up.

Is the Magic Chicken Diet website just a failed “get rich quick” deal? Something that with a minimal investment will yield a high return, with hardly any effort on Bonnie’s part? It certainly seems that Bonnie and David have little knowledge of how to edit websites, or how to run an online forum. How could they think that people would magically flock to the MCD, happily pay the membership fee and post away in an empty forum that Bonnie seldom visits?

Are David and Bonnie just incompetent and ignorant? If so, who gave them the idea of an online web support forum in the first place? Clearly, they don’t know how to run one.

The MCD story started as follows:
05/02/2007: www.magicchickendiet.com is registered
06/10/2007: GetAFreelancer ad for a Kimkins clone

The WW kimkins article reached stores on 06/12 but would have been in mailboxes a week earlier. Therefore, it is possible that the Lupers did see the kimkins article and decided to recreate the success based on the article and not previous knowledge of kimkins.

However, they had already planned to do something on 05/02 when the site was registered. Bonnie claimed that she was going to write an e-book. Based on her “writings” on the MCD website, I highly doubt it.

07/20/2007: www.magicchickendiet.com is launched. Lifetime membership is $19.95 for the “first 200 members”. Bonnie herself doesn’t post until 09/11.

Around this time, it seems that Bonnie is very enthusiastic about the Magic Chicken Diet. She takes professional pictures and makes a slide show. She puts up two MySpace profiles with the slide show and additional pictures. The daughter of a friend makes a YouTube video.

A few marketing attempts are made. One Yahoo question, a couple on Craigs List but that’s pretty much it.

12/09/2007: Price increase to $69.95 is announced, but still as an “introductory price for the first 200 members”. There were about 20 members on the board at that time. What prompted the price increase? I doubt that any of the 20 had paid a dime as they all seemed to live close to Bonnie and most likely were “real life” friends.

Two of the early members with Bonnie are shown in the picture below, taken at Christmas 2007. These are the sisters that Bonnie announced as new success stories in her Christmas greeting on the front page. Pictures of them still haven’t made it up on the site.

12/20/2007: The Lupers registered www.chickendiet.net. A few weeks later, some text comes up with google diet links but nothing specific to the Magic Chicken Diet.

01/31/2008: New board software is installed on MCD.com, wiping out the all old posts. All 70 of them.

02/06/2008: The magicchickendiet.net site went bonkers. Bonnie’s husband, David, was mocking Bonnie’s weight loss and linking to Medusa’s, Yucky’s and my blog even though we had not recently blogged about the MCD at the time.
AmyB asked Bonnie about it, but Bonnie didn’t address the dot net site in her answer.

I doubt Mayberryfan or I will see any answers from Bonnie. But perhaps son-in-law Hulon will stop by and post a comment.