Why do most people think that Marketers are con artists?

Spanked.

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/Slap

I sure am loving the forum today.

Prime example of why in general Internet Marketers are not trusted.....

The many bad apples cover up all the good apples. We are here.............

that's nobel but not realistic. Nothing would sell if everyone didn't hype it up.

succinct, to the point. I could not have said it any better

because if you do, it will come back and bite you in the end. Trust me on that one - it always does.

Many times, people are not prepared to spend any time or commitment because the "marketer" who sold it to them promised that they wouldn't need to invest time or commitment.

There's a fine line between legitimate hype (truthfully portraying a product in its best light) and deception. Cross that line and you are no longer a marketer; you ARE a con artist.

There's also a line between being hype-free and being boring. Cross that one, and you won't have to worry about what buyers think because there won't be any.

Being a "marketer" is about striking that balance between making a product appealing and setting realistic expectations...

When I registered on this forum, I decided not to use my name and not to link back to my site(s) because it felt like a lot of con-artists were among the crowd and I feared any of my customers would find me on it and would associate me with the "get-rich-quick" crowd.

I started to sell online in 1994, and was one of the first to try out Adsense years later. When I realized all the efforts required to build the traffic necessary to make $100,00, I made the conclusion that I should chase dollars and not pennies, and build traffic to sell my own stuff instead of allowing Google and Advertisers to pay me pennies for ads on my site.

Since then, I have built websites targeting niches (real ones, not diets and such), and since my audience would not be impressed by the typical flashy sales letter, I have built traffic around good professional content and my audience sees me as a guy looking to help them out rather then someone looking to sell them stuff.

When I tell people what I do for a living, they usually give me their business card or ask me tons of questions about how to do this and that. I think people can make the difference between a spammer and a marketer. Maybe you can make a script able to produce 100 videos per hour, but they are cheap non-converting crap videos with low conversion. You can also use other people's content and put it into The Best Spinner and make thousands of crappy non-converting websites in minutes. I prefer to take 3 days to produce a single video and 4 hours to prepare a post that will get shared, liked and that will make people call me and ask me questions about it. Believe me, it is much better than 3 thousand crappy videos !

I think people like Bill Hicks had an issue with much of television advertising and marketing you know like advertising unhealthy food to children and just marketing to children all together to the extend that was and still is.

Internet marketing does have its flaws but we are adults able to make decisions plus if we don't like the product or service we can get our money back most times this doesn't happen for most things advertised on television.

Because they are. The big boys teach you to sell the hope that if you buy there stuff you will be able to send your kids to collage. Even OTO's are like bait and switch. Its the biggest Con on the Internet these days.How do I know this? I have piad alot of money to sellers on this forum to learn what doesnt work. But dont believe me just go buy another WSO and tell me how thats working for you.

Because they are. The big boys teach you to sell the hope that if you buy there stuff you will be able to send your kids to collage. Even OTO's are like bait and switch. Its the biggest Con on the Internet these days.How do I know this? I have piad alot of money to sellers on this forum to learn what doesnt work. But dont believe me just go buy another WSO and tell me how thats working for you.

Me too, I don't like the too hype-y sales pages and emails (I unsubscribed to a lot btw, they can hate me now ). I expect the same from my list if i'm being that way.

I like authenticity.

But also don't forget that, if not for one of those people you wouldn't have found out about IM. It's seems to be a closely guarded secret with a lot of red herrings. (I figured).

All in all though, to hell what the gen pop thinks. We ain't here to please everybody.

We're here to do business. And give real value in the process of course.

(I hope my voice hits a chord inside a lot of warriors.)

Good night WF.

I agree with Chase Watts. It takes time to build up a following and to gain peoples trust. Please do not give up on your dreams and goals because it takes a little more time than you thought. Hang in there and you will develop a following and gain peoples trust.

Unbelievable. A con? You're joking, right?

The fact that nearly everything sold is worth more than its "intrinsic" value is what makes the world go around.

According to you, if I buy a book that shows me how to heal an illness or to build something or to earn a living I've been conned. Why? Because maybe I paid $25 for the book but in reality its value as paper, ink and actual production costs is a buck or so? But there's something called "use value" that comes into the equation.

You use the word intrinsic but that isn't even close to being accurate. Every product and service has raw costs (the materials and labor). Then there's use value. If I own a truck that, in the course of 10 years helps me to earn $250,000 then the production costs of the truck, or according to you, the intrinsic value, has been far surpassed. And by the way, no one is making anyone believe a product is worth anything. People come to that conclusion on their own.

Please tell me this makes sense to you. See, the alternative to Capitalism is forced labor and massive shortages of everything important to us. Is that what you want?

TravelinGuy is absolutely right. InboxElephant shouldn't look now, but his ignorance is showing...

Intrinsic value means what the item itself (the physical materials) is worth. (Let's keep it simple and forget about intangible products and services for now.)

So let's take books. Books are just paper and ink, but people pay many, many times more than the cost of the raw materials themselves. So InboxElephant is essentially saying that every consumer who ever bought a book was scammed.

Ridiculous! InboxElephant's argument is ludicrous and absurd in the extreme.

He's also displaying a complete lack of understanding about the various economic systems (capitalism vs. socialism vs. communism vs. etc...). I have to ask if he's studied them AT ALL???

I have. One book I absolutely LOVE on this topic is called "Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem" by Jay Richards. Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the...
It's a FANTASTIC book that very clearly and simply explains the differences between the common economic systems and why the arguments against capitalism don't hold water.

I'm not sure if it was in this book or "Credit Card Nation" that I saw the quote "Capitalism is the worst system ever devised -- except for all the others." (I'm not sure who said it.)

And that about sums it up.

People see the problems with capitalism and conclude that a different system (socialism, communism, etc.) would be better. Jay Richards does a FANTASTIC job of explaining why the other systems AREN'T better, in spite of all of capitalism's problems.

A couple of his points are the Utopia theory and the Law of Unintended Consequences. People tend to think that if we just switch to XYZ economic system, all of our problems will magically be solved (a state of utopia with NO problems). But it ignores that ALL economic systems have their own problems and that all of our problems won't disappear with a different system. It becomes a matter of choosing the lesser of the two evils.

Proponents of other economic systems also conveniently ignore the law of unintended consequences.

It's an EXCELLENT book and I HIGHLY recommend it. It's simple and clear -- and in spite of the title and subject, it's NOT boring. In fact, it's fascinating.

People like InboxElephant also ignore facts and history. Facts tell us that often, the sum of the parts are worth more than the whole. A product or service is almost ALWAYS worth more than it's straight intrinsic value. Any other argument is absurd.

They also ignore the fundamental principle of capitalism: you make money by being of service to others -- NOT by taking advantage of them. It's the heart of capitalism. It why we all start businesses and expect to make money: by providing goods and services of value to others in exchange for money.

It's called enlightened capitalism.

Obviously, it doesn't always work this way. (In fact, so much of the time, it doesn't!) But it's not because capitalism is flawed. It's because people (human nature) are flawed. Place the blame where it belongs!

And as far as history goes, the verdict is already in: capitalism is the solution. All other economic models (socialism, communism, fascism, etc.) are complete and utter failures.

However, it is true that straight, ungoverned, unrestrained capitalism is harsh and avaricious. Straight capitalism doesn't provide for those unable to provide for themselves, for example.

So modified capitalism is the solution -- that is, capitalism governed by rules and laws designed to protect consumers and the public in general. And yes, modified capitalism needs an element of socialism (much as I hate to admit it) to provide for those who can't provide for themselves.

However, I don't think that our current system is the way to do it (government providing the help). Help needs to come from churches and independent charities and other NGOs whose purpose is to provide for these people.

Saying that capitalism is a scam is ignorance of the highest order: ignorance of the different systems themselves -- and ignorance of their history. Blood has been spilled and terror has reigned in societies experimenting with communism, socialism, etc.

Think of Russia, China, Korea, etc. and dictators like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.

Don't belittle and minimize people who died and lost family members due to communism, socialism, and the accompanying dictatorships.

Michelle

P.S. I'm an entrepreneur and unabashed capitalist. Anyone trying to make money online (or offline) while claiming that capitalism is a scam is a hypocrite. and a liar to his customers. He's a fraud.

So get your philosophy straight or just QUIT.

mmmmm. apples.

A marketer's job is to bring a product to market and present it in a way that entices people to buy it.

In your example, you are referring to a bad product. If people are dumb enough to buy it, it's their problem.

Then again, if the demand wasn't there...

You know it's funny if not sad when I read these threads. Chances are that we have smokers and others who eat bad food and drink Coca Cola for example. But hey, that's ok because it's their choice. They have the choice to decide what to consume.

Same rules apply online.

If people were 100% honest about it... we wouldn't buy gas guzzlers that require gas from oil companies that exploit 3rd world countries and wreck the environment... we wouldn't have so many gadgets that use electricity that emits carbon... should I go on?

It's BS when you single out a specific demographic to point the finger.. when you yourself and your habits create that demand.

It's like the animal rights activist who wears leather shoes and eats meat.

So let's cut the cr@p and hypocrisy shall we?

Sal

PS: And before people takes swipes at marketers, can they at least have the intelligence to differentiate between marketers and snake oil salesmen??

Actually, though, emotions are tied to the brains survival instinct hard-wiring. When something hit's the "bad" category, it is shunned because "bad" means "danger" to us. This wiring is why all those ebooks that teach people WHAT to say miss the mark. What is not hype at one point of time, turns into hype via over- usage. A simply exciting description of something is not hype - when every yahoo online starts to use the same descriptions, and people start getting burned, the idea of that particular phraseology evolves toward people seeing it as hype and turning off to it.

As an example - "secret". Used to be enticing, attractive to ebook buyers. After everyone on the planet started calling even the most mundane and obvious information "secret", buyers now either just read over that word or will literally run when they see it used in marketing contexts. While we still pluggin to read "secret" documents that are leaked or declassified by governments, when marketers say they are releasing "secrets" about traffic, etc. people are starting to just shake their heads and saying "the secret is that there isn't one".

The denotation may remain the same, but the connotation has evolved and shifted to make the term "secret" completely ineffective within a multitude of contexts. "Context" being something that is of extreme importance, but ignored by unskilled marketers who don't understand that a word might be extremely valid in one, and actually detrimental in another.

Products that give advice on WHAT to say, rather than how people's subconscious minds process information, don't really teach much about long term marketing. By the time most people get ahold of a product that tells them what exact terminology works - it doesn't anymore.

What is happening is people have become addicted to short cutting - and have fallen for the idea that anyone can get rich with no knowledge of anything but what shortcuts to use.

A lot of marketers online are con artists -- but not all that appear to be cons are. Some of them are just simply too stupid to understand what they are doing. They are also under the impression they can stay that way and it doesn't matter. Love of money coupled with lack of drive.

That fact that the figure you quoted does not end with a 7 shows that you are a poor marketer. :p

No one MAKES anybody do anything.