Good morning!
Hope today has found you peachy! I myself actually slept past 4am, which for me these days, is more of a miracle than extracting coffee from a turnip. Woot!
But I'd like to chat with you today about a subject near and dear to me heart…
Icky Marketing.
Otherwise known as:
- Sleazy marketing
- Dishonorable marketing
- Lying marketing
and the rest.
Especially with the economy so, well, icky, more scammers than ever abound online who are ever eager to steal money from you.
And unfortunately, that's one reason why Internet marketing has such a truly horrendous reputation.
I'm not the only person to write about this, of course – you can also check out:
- How to protect yourself from sleaze marketing
- How sleazy have you become?
- How not to advertise on the Internet
- Parody of Sleazy Marketing
- Sleazy Internet marketing tactics
- Sleazy SEO Sales Tactics
So…it's obviously a wide-spread plague on the Internet landscape.
And just as obviously, it's not going away. So it's your responsibility as an educated consumer to do your best *not* to get scammed!
Here's some of me best tips about that.
1.) Realize – if it sounds too good to be true, there's a reason for that.
Remember, a marketer's job is to make a product sound sooo enticing, space aliens would conquer the known galaxy just to get a discount on it.
So when you think, zero effort, beeyons of moola….you're doing exactly what the marketer wants. You're ignoring common sense and letting your emotions grab you by the throat and scream, BUY BUY BUY!
It's normal reaction, after all…superb copywriting hits on all of your emotional buttons!
COMBAT THIS WITH: Write on a sticky note, "I will NOT get scammed" and place it on your computer screen. Then everytime you're moved to buy the dream, you'll at least have a visual prompt NOT to be a victim yet again.
2.) Realize – you need specific skill sets for specific products.
No matter how "zero effort" a product touts itself to be, the fact is, you already need a skillset to use it wisely.
For example, let's say that you want to generate traffic to your site.
One product might talk about article marketing. Well, to do *that* well, you need to:
- Be able to craft up a compelling resource box
- *Know* ahead of time that you need to craft up a compelling resource box
- Be able to create landing pages for said compelling resource box
- Be able to make a blog post for said landing page
- Be able to blog to make a blog post
See?
That's 5 skills you need to have, right there.
And that doesn't even take into account:
- Article spinning
- Cloaking affiliate links
- Having pages deindexed by google
Think those trivial details will be highlighted in the marketing copy?
COMBAT THIS WITH: Google!
Research everything *first* online.
For example, regarding article marketing, consider these searches:
An easy rule of thumb is to search on:
- How do I do (topic)
- (topic) tips
- What does (topic) require
You'll be able to get a far better understanding of what's needed for you to use a particular product wisely.
3.) Realize – you need time!
Everything…requires time.
And unless you outsource, you will have to do everything…yourself.
Does your life afford you the time to do everything required?
Using our article marketing example above, do you have the time to:
- Manually submit articles to directories?
- Set up all the data in an automatic article submitter?
- Monitor your traffic inflow and tweak when necessary?
COMBAT THIS WITH: Honest evaluation.
Everything regarding running a business online….it takes time.
Do you have it?
If not, don't buy the product
* * * * * *
While it does take time and effort, it is possible to avoid the majority of icky scams online.
Do your due-diligence and research products *before* you buy. Don't get swept up by typical review sites…instead, evaluate *your own abilities* and time honestly and *then* consider if a product makes sense for you to buy.
Your bottom line will thank you for it.
Grow strong,
Barbara Ling
Get Started Here
You’ll love what you learn… Promise!