Please Stop Lying To Your Subscribers

I agree 100% with you there

The old bait and switch. That's never going away. It's unfortunate, but there will always be marketers that will say anything to get you to their offers.

JoeMack

That one drives me crazy and I unsubscribe whenever I see it. The other trick that I think is lame is when a marketer tries to act like they paid for something for me. They send a fake "receipt" making it look like a purchase was made and the click through link takes you to an obvious landing page.

Thank you!!! I was subscribed to the list of many internet marketers that have lied to me. Another annoying thing is when they would try to sell me a new product(which they are an affiliate for) almost every other week claiming that it's "the best thing that's ever happen to me".

Yeah unfortunately there are always going to be marketers that play into a grey area. I'm talking about the ones like you mentioned who say x is free, x is free, x is free and then you get to the end and find it it isn't free after all.

Marketers will do this because they know that a small percentage of people will click through to the end and page and end up purchasing anyway regardless.

You shouldn't blatently lie though. That will do more harm than good in the long run.

There's an old saying in Russia that goes.

"If you lie you cannot go back"

Always tell the truth so you can move forward.

It seems to me a "Warrior Hall of Shame" for such tactics would be tremendously useful...

This has been happening to me with greater frequency. It makes me wonder what these people are thinking - maybe we're all a bit dull? I also unsubscribe from these people.

Just yesterday, last night, I read about something that sounded interesting. So I opted in. Turns out this person was promoting something, a technique, that died a few years ago. Became obsolete due to changes made by Google.

But here was this person, writing about it like it was the next big thing on the horizon.

I unsub'd and sent the lad one of my signature emails. You can imagine what I said.

I don't understand it really.

Giving something away for FREE isn't that hard to do is it?

You don't have to give away the earth but as long as you are giving something away that is top quality and can at least help someone to take action on what ever it is you've promised then you are at least half way there.

There are many examples of high quality FREE gifts you can give away here at the W.F.

At least you can get some great ideas by looking at what questions come up on a regular basis at least.

Great post and hope this gets around enough so many members realise this before making the same fatal mistake.




"Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain."

I've received quite a number of those newsletters lately... Some even writes paypal on the subject, then some sends you transaction numbers and then you get redirected to their sales pitch... It's sad how some of the known IMers are turning to such low schemes of marketing... Whenever I see their messages I automatically delete it without even reading it, because unfortunately it seems like unsubscribe options are not working. Well good thing today, their messages goes directly to my junk folder. Honestly more than the subscribers they lost, it is the trust and respect of people (at least for me) is the greater loss.

Lying does you no good.

A few weeks ago I emailed my list about this affiliate program that has just launched last year and has already paid out $20 Million to affiliates. The fee to become a member is $25 so I offered my list this:

If they joined and paid the $25 fee, I would send them the payment that they made through PayPal. A few people did join and I did send them the money.

What would happen if I did not and didn't feel like giving them the $25 back like promised? That would put me as a dishonest person. Did not want to be like that.

Lying does you no good. Honesty is the way to go.

Thats me too! talking of which, I haven't seen an email from you in a while

LOL

I am probably making an error here as I usually really rate Steve's threads and posts but i'm unsure what you want here. I mean who exactly are you addressing your rant at? I would like to think that I and most other people reading this thread don't lie to their subs anyway so you're presumably not addressing it to those readers.

I am therefore presuming you are speaking to people who may be tempted to lie to their lists in the future. However, I feel that those who are honest people won't ever consider this anyway, and those that are dishonest will lie etc no matter what anyone says. Thus in my opinion there doesn't seem to much of a point to this thread.

In addition we don't know all the facts here, who you are talking about, what exactly happened etc. so it's difficult to comment objectively on your rant. I would have unsubscribed immediately if it's like you say it was and sent an email to the person concerned expressing my displeasure with his/her conduct and then moved on, so am unsure why you feel the need to express this in public?

Joel

I agree with you 100%!

Lying to your subscribers won't do any good to your business anyway..

There's a difference between a good email leading to a good, valuable sales funnel to a an email with lies leading you to a lie funnel.

I absolutely agree with you. Transparency and honesty is what subscribers want.

nice topic here.I rather hate when sometimes,there are squeeze page tell a "pitch" that says Free videos/Free guide (whatever the medium is) and turn out to be paid product.You opt and you have to pay to get it? Man,That is unethical for me.

Yeah I'm seeing this more and more too. It's not good and it's unethical! If you are going to call something free, then it should be 100% free. I agree with you Steve!

Yeah, I never understood why most marketers don't get this. Treat your list like gold, and it'll pay you back in dividends.

Yep, all too common. I recently unsubscribed from a fairly well known "guru" that has done the same thing. No value and he sends emails that are only a sentence or maybe two. Ugh. Seriously? You not only mislead your subscribers but you're also too lazy to write a little copy -or- provide value???

Joel,

I have to agree with you, I hate that kind of stuff, but it is never going to go away. However it is important to be Honest with your Subscribers.

Applied Education is the Difference

Or that you "have secured a private download for me, but hurry I don't know how long I can keep it keep it open for you"

Steven, this is totaly true. I also had few times the same experience... all for free... but it wasn't like that. I think this kind of marketer will not have grat relationship with subscribers.

It is free, I am not charging a cent for it. There is no upsell and when you confirm it redirects straight to the download page.

It's called building a list by providing good content. There is nothing monetary about an email, so if you find a country that uses emails as a currency, please let me know so I can cash in. Seems like you just want everything handed to you on a silver platter, forbid you sign up for a free product and have to go through the back breaking trouble of pressing the unsubscribe link

Also there is nothing deceptive about posting something for free that leads to a free product. The O.P is talking about email's that say something is free, only to find out the link leads to a paid product

True, I don't get it either man. But, I'm glad there are people that is willing to admit that they still buy products. When a free product as they say turns out to be paid smh lol. Wassup with the email when getting free come on? At least bypass that and give the direct link.

This may be slightly unrelated, but related to a certain extent because it belongs to the category of "BLATANT LYING"

"PENGUIN SAFE" backlinks!!!

I see all kinds of new software coming out, from well 'respected' marketers mind you, saying that their software makes 100% safe Penguin/Panda safe backlinks. Poor newbies will fall into the trap and get their sites tanked, but for anybody that has seen all the Panda's and Penguins KNOW that they are nothing but low quality spammy links.

This is extremely disappointing. Selling something that doesn't work is one thing. But to sell something that has a negative effect on another? How can one go so low?

Here is a Google search I did for "Penguin Safe" and look at all the results you get on warriorforum and blackhatforum! https://www.google.com/search?q=warr...w=1280&bih=630

I'm totally with you here Steven: "STOP LYING TO YOUR SUBSCRIBERS AND CUSTOMERS"

Mr Wagenheim (or anyone else out there),

do you believe they do this because it works, or do you think this is just a stupid marketer?

Unfortunately the reason some people spam is because people buy from them... this might be a similar set of circumstances.

I love this thread. It gets to the real heart of the biggest problem in IM.

It's just totally stupid marketing, by people that probably don't know what the hell they are doing, yet.

If a person tells me one lie, it GONZO, plain and simple. So whatever time and energy they spent to get me on there list is flushed. Just dumb.

I think this is why more and more people are being attracted to guys like Pat Flynn who are attempting to be transparent in their businesses. It is increasingly difficult in many ways though because there are more and more bad guys on both sides of the fence - more bad people doing the marketing and more bad people buying the products. And the good guys on both sides of the fence end up holding the bag.

Agree! Be a internet marketer but not internet scammer.

In internet marketing, there is method that always makes your subscribers happy i.e. under promise and then overdeliver
But what this marketer is doing is overpromising and then underdelivering= fail

It is always best to be honest with your clients and keeping to your promises..and even better to overdeliver

There is a saying "some people will do anything to make a buck" the internet is no different then the streets. Now that I think about it, most of these emails come people list's I've never subscribed to. I have an email with 50k+ emails, and the thing is, I've only ever subscribed to a few dozen list's in the past 8 years and most were for products I've bought.

I am pretty sure that email got scraped, sold or rented somewhere along the way. That is probably where the bulk of the deceptive emails come from

I completely agree! It's rare I open emails but when I do.. the item needs to be free. I think it's happened like two or three times where I was given the turn around time. I emailed the list owner right before subscribing. I also can't stand when WSO lie in their sales pages. That is super annoying... Being an internet market shouldn't mean that lying is required..

Seriously, if you are offended by the idea that someone is getting your contact info and asking you to buy something... why become a professional marketer?

I'm not saying it in a mean or dismissive way. I'm just genuinely curious. :/

It wasn't. The stuff the OP is complaining about is sleazy as all hell.

I'm always annoyed when people wrote the guy above them because it means the person reading is looking at the same comment twice. I try to quote if someone posts before I make my reply though.

Anyway, sorry if I threw you off.

too bad most of those people won't see this thread.....they are too busy cashing in on their scraped email list LOL

Im pretty sure im not the only person getting spammed with warrior plus (or pretending to be warrior plus) or whatever emails

These blatant lies and tricks might not be blackjat are greyhat at least.