How do you find honest advice?

Putting in the time is the only way. Stick around for a while and eventually you will be able to find a few people who you trust.

There are still people on this forum who are honest, but I agree that there are more spammy post than there was say 18 months ago.

As for finding honest advice and information, then you will just have to do your searching and soon enough you will come across some good sites that offer the info you need.

Your best bet is to find blogs, the top blogs in your niche.

I could name a few very easily ( not mine ) that are very good and offer some great information and tips for the Internet Marketing niche.

The thing is though, the owners of the sites will need to make money, so there will always be some kind of service they will want to sell to you.

This could be a membership site, coaching or simply a product.

The best sites are those that also offer free advice, not trash free advice, but quality advice, but you then also have the option to purchase their high premium services.

I suppose you get very little for nothing these days, but there are still some solid free resources out there.

What is it you are after?

Thanks guys. I guess what I am after, is to simply not fall victim when trying to learn, and I realize that is difficult. I used to be current, but with time that has passed, now I am filtering through the new methods.

For instance, before focusing on squeeze pages, PR(N) blogs, etc, and simply being able to focus on a real site that offered a product or service, the focus was more on search engine algorithms. At that time, Google was on the green side, and so you could use "black hat" methods for your site, which were not really frowned upon. Such as, CSS layers, color matching, meta tagging images, recursive JS that forces body text loads, and more. Today, these things will get you delisted (except maybe meta tagging images, such as EXIF...I am not sure), and unfortunately, I never got into squeeze pages, but just did some homework. I saw the benefit in affiliate sites like ClickBank, or even independent affiliates, but I have heard of others that owned 100's of domains, put a ton of work in, and made one slip up only to have everything regress. That's an expensive mistake, and I think one such culprit is something like FIVERR. Not only are the scripted services that people are suckered into (including me once) hurting them, but it seems apparent it could be used to hurt competitors intentionally...and that's not cool.

To give some background, I have my own physical product company, which for the sake of mixed SEO indexing, I won't mention the name of, and I put a lot of effort into real campaigns (email, reddit, facebook, Adsense/Youtube), and real personal marketing in blogs in a non-spam fashion. It's my baby and I am passionate about it, but this is 1 to 1, and there is no way for me to replicate this on 20 different websites in a few different niches. I am simply interested in learning how a successful IM manages multiple. Are there real tools?

This is pretty much what sparked my interest to look back into this again...and I do give the guy credit for the top notch tactic...
Look at M.a.r.c.u.s L.e.m.o.n.i.s FB page, and you will see a "sarcastic" article that generated so much interest the guys (A.d.a.m W.h.i.t.e) site shut down. The article pushed his business, w.e.b.s.i.t.e.r.o.c.k.e.t.c.o.m.
Honestly, I don't think I need something to tell me to do SEO every day, as the more engagement the better, and garbage in garbage out applies with all things, except maybe the flying Delo in B2TF 2.

Sorry for the partial rant / partial curiosity post. Thanks all.

Hello Raredesign,

You will find honest advice by doing "Due Diligence"

For example when you see a video or some other promotion of a "Shiny Object", go and do a Google search as follows: 'shiny object + reviews' and see what results come up:

But that is only step 1 - You now have to look for reviews that are NOT affiliates of 'Shiny Object'. The honest reviews generally give the pros and cons of the shiny object.

Those reviews would assess 'shiny object' from a business perspective asking and answering questions like: Is shiny object selling a product? Are you getting value for money? What other alternatives are there on the market?

So you see 'Raredesign' you have to work - in order to find honest advice online. I think the warning is "Buyer Beware!"

LB.

The best advice is given by the people who aren't incentivized to give it. Let me explain: People who take your money or resources to give you advice or information in return, can care less if the advice is good or not, as long as it makes sense and can't be traced back to them, they will give you the most general vague advice they can think of to get you off their back fast. On the other hand, someone who takes FREE time out of their day to give you advice is more likely to mean every word of it, because why else would they be willing to give you such information? They aren't getting anything in return so if they were to reply at all, it would be with something valuable...right? At least this is how i think of it. I know i would do the same thing....

I don't have the answer to your questions, raredesign, but man, I sure DO appreciate your post! I hope you get some legit answers because it's a huge issue. Thanks for posting the question.

Sometimes it's hard to see the clear path with all the clutter in the way... but you don't need to reinvent the wheel... just stick with the simple business model to sell online.

Find niche market that people are spending money in... focus on helping that niche market...provide them with a solution or whatever makes them happier. Offer them REAL help and value (in the form of great content) and sell your product or service in addition.

Don't get hung up on all the trendy stuff and all the apps and gadgets proclaiming to be the answer to making money. No matter what... it takes W-O-R-K and Determination.

Anything worthwhile will take time to make it work...but it will get easier as you learn what works best for you. EXPERIENCE is the best tool in your favor in growing an online biz...so you have to get busy and take ACTION.

When was that exactly, I must have missed it

Ask a detailed question about what you want to know about in the main forum, where the pitching possiblities are limited, sig pimpers are easily spotted and spammers are quickly nuked.

There are some very experienced folk on here that will point you in the right direction for free, gratis and for nothing.

As others have mentioned, it boils down to putting in the time. More than that though, you have to maintain an objective viewpoint when conducting research. For example, I searched "Business" on Google Play and found a book that promised me fortunes in the stock market for only $2. Why would anyone making a large sum of money sell their secrets for such a low price? It's the same thing with many of the WSOs you'll find on this forum. I'm not saying books can't offer you real value, but if someone promises you $500 a day for the low price of $3.99, you should remain skeptical.

It would probably be best if you just keep your head down, and go make money. Questions like the ones you asked will continue to give you random generic answers... that will keep you asking more generic questions - with generic answers. And etc.

But... if i want *real*, "honest" advice... i ask the people i've bought from in the past. Most of them are great marketers, but better business owners who actually understand the meaning of "customer support".

Unfortunately that's not going to happen, on the top level you have two types, the rational people and the irrational. The problem is that the irrational pull is so strong it filters down the chain until no-one has any clue what is rational or irrational any more. That is where it's all at right now. Can give you examples of delusional Moderators on Reddit with 1,000s posts who just abused our Twitter account which Twitter then forceably had to suspend them, twice, Reddit couldn't care less or technology that can 35% rank a 20,000 product site in 2-3days, and everyone is blank instead waiting 3-6mths to see if something changes. The people doing some predicative analytics work with just released a No Cost Commerce using technology derived from the multi-nationals (but based around Magento as the underlying platform) for startups, it's so ridiculous it will probably do really well.

Where do you find honest advice, honestly, nowhere. Every person is good a something but people who know how it works are not going to give it away for free unless there's something in it for them. No-one values time and you will find human nature (behavioral science) that for the most part everyone wants everyone else to be slightly below them. So the irrational drown out the rational, which permeates the irrational, but irrational actions plus irrational thoughts actually make a positive, not a very big one but they do. So today, even if someone has something sensible to say, the people who don't value time will just go out of their way to destroy whatever is in their path because to them, the rational is irrational.

It's not rational to generate spun content, but at the same time it's also not rational to put handwritten content out that is instantly taken and reused. Are there enterprise tools, yes, but they are damn hard to find and almost, but not all, are priced accordingly. As no-one values time anymore, setting up a website is no longer a one-person venture, and that's where the irrational come unstuck. They don't trust anyone to offload the work to and they have problems with enterprise automation (to do with psychology). If you can employ people you trust and offload work to them and/or use highly automated tools to value your time, you will beat 95% before you even start. Then it's just about selling to the right, preferably rational, customers who value time, trust and experience.

Find somebody that you feel is experienced in what you are looking for and see what they have to offer, most of the time they offer you some free information, if you find what they say helpful, then buy there products. The key is knowing exactly what you want to accomplish, from there study an expert in your niche and take consistent action. If the information looks the same from many marketers and you still aren't getting no where then what is holding you back? Is it information overload? Is it shiny object syndrome? Is is not taking enough action?