How many Guru's do you think have Photoshop wealth?

Hi All,

I haven't been doing any b2c online marketing recently as I've been working and doing a lot of offline marketing, and the online marketing I do is corporate based and not consumer based. In the early stages of IM I was in it heavy and did quite well...I just discovered that corporations pay far more for IM advice than the average Joe. That being said I have seen things that have disturbed me a bit.

I want to preface this by saying I don't know and truly don't care about the latest batch of guru's claiming all the millions they're making...however I do find some of the claims to be facinating...or shall I say farfetched.

It started with a friend of mine who emailed me to tell me about a claim made by a 'guru.' I'm not going to name names, but I did start to look at and read sales letters and videos of these new marketers. First I want to say kudo's to those using video in their marketing because I truly believe that is the best way, as well as those utilizing webinars. I love to see tech savy IM's.

But these claims of millions in months is ludicrious. Showing someone you made/make thousands per month is equally ludicrious, and then people believing them makes you a touch off kilter.

Does that mean people aren't making that much money online? Of course not. I know several people who make that online...but they don't go about advertising it. I know that we live in a visual society and people like to 'see' what they can make, but the reality is I have heard/seen very few IM's that have made the wealth claimed. I can tell you that for four reasons.

1. It doesn't make business sense. Anybody that knows any incling about business knows that money is created over time, not in an instant.
2. Their service/support is non exsistent or minimal at best. If you're making millions why don't you have any support? If you look at a lot of these sales letters, you will be hard pressed to find any type of email/im/phone contact. Now look across the internet and you will find someone as small as Betty's Bake Shop with full contact support. A small town baker can provide CS, but a million dollar IM can't?
3. Numbers don't add up. There are a lot of bad things about corporate america..one of the good things is there fanatic approach to testing and keeping numbers. I learned more in one year as a consultant to a Fortune 100 company, than in my business for 11 years. They can tell you the numbers for any and every campaign that they or their competitors do to the penny. I have often found that fascinating. I say that because I've seen many well capitalized corporate marketing campaigns routinely bomb. This was the norm, not the exception.
4. Many of these guru's have made money in technology/practices that are no longer working in the web 2.0 IM environment. I was on a webinar where they were demoing their product and I can see (I'm a programmer) that what they're doing is no longer applicable. I asked about it on the webinar and got no response. Unfortunately I got that on 3-4 webinars I've listened to. The pointed questions weren't answered. I've also seen them go to the small print earnings disclaimers. Hmmmm...

After carefully going through these latest crops of IM I've come to two summaries:

1. The IM business has gotten more cliqueish than ever. It seems one or two cliques seem to be trying to run the whole IM arena and don't seem to like to place nice with others (newbies).
2. Many of them have created photoshop wealth. I'm not saying all; I'm saying a lot have claimed to make the money that is showed in their sales letters, but it doesn't coorespond in other areas (ie. CS)

I'm a small business owner. I provide full contact for our offices in the USA, the Philippines, and China. We have 11 full time employees and anywhere from 70-75 contract employees depending upon when/if we're rolling out a new product. I'm not going to say were making millions of millions, but I can tell you the recession doesn't affect us.

That's my opinion on the guru's...but then again, my focus is more on b2b IM. Let me know what you think and if I'm off kilter!