A Couple Of Disturbing Trends In IM

There are two fairly new and questionably ethical trends in internet marketing.

Both effect your inbox and your time.

Trend 1 - More and more products have two to four "creators" and sometimes as many as five.

Now, I can think of several reasons why this is happening, but in the final analysis, I think this practice by the "producer marketers" is quite detrimental to the average "consumer marketer".

Sure, partnering with someone can add credibility to you, your product and your brand.

And with that added credibility can come increased profits.

And I'm not saying that two (or more) heads aren't better than one.

But the real problem with such collaborations is that when you buy from them, you are now communicating with ALL of the creators - individually.

Or rather, THEY are communicating with you!

So, you buy a product from Joe and Norma.

Right after that, you begin receiving emails from the Product Name, Joe AND Norma.

Three senders from a single product purchase.

And these days, it's quite common to see three and four creators behind MANY products.

You get DIFFERENT marketing emails from Tom, Pete, Ralph and George AS WELL AS from their product, WP TURD.

You honestly think that $7 WSO was a great deal?

Well, maybe it IS full of great, actionable content.

But now you are getting four or five NEW, distracting emails in your box each day.

Maybe twice a day.

How much is your time worth?

Because you might as well add a minute per email to your life.

Buy several multiple-creator WSOs and you add a slew of new, daily emails, often unrelated to the product you bought (or eachother) to your inbox.

That's maybe the worst part.

SO often, those daily emails start coming pitching something completely new (or often, the product of the day), without even TOUCHING on the product you JUST bought from them.

I mean, not even a "Hey, thanks for picking-up XX from me." "Here's step one on getting started with the material."

Crazy.

Trend 2 - The SECOND trend is, to me, completely unethical.

That is the process of automatically subscribing you to SOMEONE ELSE'S webinar after you buy something.

NO mention of it on the salespage, yet BOOM, there it pops, your webinar registration, right into your inbox.

Part 2 of this nasty trend is that the webinar is normally for a high-ticket training or service that may or may not be directly related to the $7 product you bought.

Ordinarily I would say that a $7 dollar entry product that presells a RELATED high-ticket product or service of someone else's, is brilliant marketing.

Particularly if the $7 product actually provided what the sales material promised.

But being automatically subscribed to someone else's list without your permission or any forewarning, is a blatant violation of FTC guidelines.

And to be honest, I don't know if they can also auto-subscribe you to the lists of the webinar presenters.

Seems to me that I've started getting emails from each of the presenters after being auto-subscribed to a GoToWebinar event.

Again, if I'm correct about that, the number of presenters (which is usually 2-4) then adds further to your daily inbox bombardment.

And when the presenters make it sound like you won't get very far with the "base material" without investing what seems to be a standard $1497 plus $297 a month, that's when things begin to get clear.

Like I said, being ASKED to see a webinar with advanced training and an offer is OK with me. I expect it.

If I get quality info, I'm ok with being pitched with a related high-ticket offer.

But being automatically subscribed is not OK.

I wonder if GoToWebinar is aware of this happening widely right now?

Anyway, this has obviously become an issue with me and I wanted to write and rant about it.

Clearly, the 2016 internet marketer has to dedicate some time each day to unsubscribing from crappy lists.

Even ones they didn't sign-up for.

Sign-up (or get signed-up) for one list, unsubscribe from two...

Caveat Emptor!