How what passes for “Internet Marketing” could clog a sewer
I’ve been working on learning online promotion and marketing for several years now. Purpose was to figure out how to market the books I write and publish in order to make a living online – from out here in the Midwest.
What I kept running into was more and more different things to learn. And to some degree, it seemed like things were changing all the time – but that was yes and no.
I did have to catch up with search engine optimization through the complete history of the Internet and search engines, essentially because I was finding stuff that was being passed of as “new” which was actually old stuff that the search engines had dropped long ago. So that history was to give me comparatives in order to figure out what was garbage being offered today. The same thing happened with people selling what they claimed was the latest in “Internet Marketing”.
As I went along, I participated in various ripoffs here and there – and as long as it was under a hundred bucks, I just figured it was another expensive lesson learned.
Recently, I started updating and reviewing all I’d covered, because some of it was valuable, and I wanted to present it in a fashion that other people could simply get the data they had to know in order to either start online or expand their business online.
Not too surprising, I found that there was more bunk being sold than value. And I’ve got at least one hard-drive filled with stuff like this. Not that it’s not useful, but you have to study what doesn’t work sometimes to figure out what does.
To cut to the quick, here’s 8 common sense actions you can take to verify if something is bunk:
- It’s a telemarketer on the phone line that you’ve never heard of. Action: Say “No.” and hang up. This screws their computer program and drops you from their list, usually.
- When you click on the link, you wind up at a sales page which you didn’t expect. Meaning, this was your first contact with that subject. Action: right-click and go back, a couple of times. You don’t know you can trust them.
- A company asks for both your phone number and credit card number. Don’t fall for this one. This just means you’re inviting them to sell your name over and over to various sales floors who will call you because you opted in. Action: go back to some earlier page or favorite bookmark. And never give your real phone number online – some have a celphone which is never answered – ringer and message service are both turned off.
- The sales call lasts several hours and you can’t call them back after you think on it overnight. It’s a ripoff. Action: If they won’t politely let you off the phone, then tell them you’re hanging up and then do.
- There are more bonuses than products being sold on the page. Action: Skip it. These guys don’t really know what’s valuable, or all those bonuses are just pitches for other people’s junk.
- It has the word “dominate” in it. That’s not our modern social Internet. All conversations on this Internet are two-way. When a person says they can take all the top spots on Google, know that while they might for a short while, they will ultimately get banned. Action: Skip this one, too.
- If it sounds like and ad or reads like an ad, it probably is an ad. Someone has no clue what social media are. Action: Skip this one, too.
- It has pictures of celebrities, big-bosom women, or popular politicians of some sort. They are using old associations to get something from you. Action: Skip this one, and look up Cialdini when you get a chance – his book “Influence” is a great read on this area.
So how do you find products you can trust? Get a network of people around you who don’t push products on you continually. Unsubscribe from any email lists where you are getting a continual stream of paid offers. Unfollow people on Twitter and other social networks who simply are telling you “me, me, me, me” all the time and not providing anything of real value to you.
Eventually, you’ll wind up with a bunch of people you can trust. And when they say something is good, will expect you to check it out for yourself and tell them if you had anything but a great experience as well.
And that’s pretty close to penthouse living online – a long way from where most of what goes for Internet marketing ultimately winds up.
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