21/06: Internet Marketing Lies and Stupidity

I have a bee in my bonnet today, and it was caused by an email I received on one of the lists I am subscribed to.

If you are or have been involved in internet marketing for any length of time, or even if you haven't, you've probably at least seen examples of what I'm going to write about today.

I'm going to cover several points in this post

1) Marketers who speak with forked tongues

2) Marketers who patronize their so called "valued" subscribers

3) Marketers who forget that credibiilty is easily shattered

4) Marketers who believe that to mislead or outright lie in pursuit of a dollar is the acceptable norm and is actually fiendishly clever.

The email I recieved was one in a familiar vein, that went something like this:

"If you missed the launch of product blah blah....."

"It sold out in fifteen minutes so don't bother visiting the link because they've all been disabled...."

"BUT, I am going to do you a huge favor! I'm going to give you a copy entirely free, all you have to do is...."

OK, at this point I'm going to say that this kind of ridiculous pop psychology approach to marketing really annoys me although I concede that it probably works on a proportion of the people out there or they wouldn't do it.

Sold out? Really? A digital video information product that is sold out?  So they have no more copies of these videos, they destroyed the files themselves or did someone break into their homes and steal their hard drives, raid their hosting company and carry of the servers in the dead of night?

Maybe that is what happened but surely they could contact one of the mugs, sorry, customers, who bought it and ask them for a copy, or am I being naive here? Where is my free copy going to come from? It's all very worrying.

OK, so they've taken down the links on the salespage temporarily. Let's be honest here folks, we all know it will be back up and running in the near future, if it's such a great seller why would you stop selling it? It's not a membership site or a software product, it's just a bunch of videos.

So, I think we can say that heroic email marketer is guilty of sins one through four above already, but not satisfied with this he makes it worse with his special offer to me, his "valued subscriber".

Now remember, although it is sold out, he is going to give me a copy for free. Lucky me, I can't wait, it's too much excitement for a hot and muggy Sunday afternoon in the Caribbean. He tells me that ALL I have to do is take a trial of another Clickbank product for just $4.95. As it's a product I'm very familiar with, I already know that after taking that trial period I will have to hand over a monthly membership fee of $67.00 should I want to keep using it. I also know that the product in question pays a healthy recurring monthly commission to affiliates.

Now, lest we forget, he is doing me a favor, not the other way around, so of course the email neglects to mention any of these pertinent facts.

This is marketing at its lowest level. I don't care what labels the promoter might put on it - bonuses, deals, never to be repeated, you'll thank me forever etc. etc. The truth of the matter is that it is good old fashioned bullshit designed to trick the unwary or inexperienced. The product he is trying to sell, in order for you to get something for "free", is not for the inexperienced either, something I also know for a fact. It's not a bad product, but as usual the sales copy skims over a lot of the facts with a lot of these $$$$$$$! Besides, doesn't something stop being free the moment you hand over money?

My point is this - if you are new to the whole internet marketing hooplah, don't be taken in by people like this who are the reason that marketing online is so damned hard a lot of the time, and please, whatever you do, don't think these kinds of tactics are the only way to succeed and are something you should be emulating.

Find some decent and helpful people to learn from and help others by passing on your knowledge and experience.

For this subscriber, it was a very quick bye bye to that list and I hope I'm not the only one either. Why build a list and completely destroy your credibility with emails like this? (For information on how to use email marketing in an ethical and non-scummy way I recommend you read the New Age Email Marketing Report)

If you genuinely feel that life is too short to live it honestly and don't believe that there is more to life than easy money on the internet, or anywhere else, then you won't care what I think. The "nice guys finish last" philosophy might help people like this guy sleep at night, but do you really want someone like that to get their grubby hands on your hard earned money?

Think about it. That's all I'm saying.

PHOTO CREDIT: ATENCION