The Internet Marketing Industry is Mostly a Scam!

Agreed, in every industry there are shady types, some more obvious than others.

Cherry picking obvious scams doesn't justify your original comment. Most products are not scams, in my opinion. I buy dozens of products every year, it's important to keep learning, and not a one was a scam. I think I've asked for refunds maybe a half dozen times in all my years online because of low quality, and I've been doing this since 1997. But scammed ... not once. If you're getting scammed, maybe you should take a look at your decision making processes.

For every obvious scam you name I can name 10 products that aren't obvious scams. If you haven't tried them, you don't know if they are scams or not. So again, to say most products are scams you would have had to try most products. Stating opinion as fact does not make the opinion fact.

Really? YOU chose the title of this thread.

Adding a "clarification" that you don't mean "everyone" is probably not helpful at this point.

Does "mostly" mean honest IM products are almost never, hardly ever sold here - but once in a while it happens?

LOL - sometimes you need to just cut and run

kay

No I'm saying that most products about making money online are very low quality and overly hyped in the sales letters.

Selling products as magic bullets is very common apart from the internet I agree. However cars and beer would not be my examples of this.

Website Owners

Teach about hosting and promote quality hosts.

Yes I agree some products are good.

That could establish the intent part I mentioned previously. You may have misinterpretted something too, or your expectations were inaccurate. I have no way of knowing. I do know two people can see things completely differently without either person being in the wrong.

I also know two customers can buy the same product and one uses the product and gets results and the other cries scam, sometimes without even using the product. And what you're doing, what everyone is objecting to, is you crying scam over products you haven't even bought.

Do you not see the problem with that?

Just the way your overall tone has changed and that you've backpedaled from your harsh stance some. Being "bothered by the shadiness" is a long way from saying "most products are scams."

Now let me ask you something. I told you I buy dozens of products every year and have never been scammed. How many have you bought in the last year? What sample size are you using to pass this damning judgment on an entire industry?

Mind if I edit your comment? How about this, and it's directed at no one in particular...

Whiners never win and winners never whine!

Of course, that wouldn't always be true, but I like to play with words.

I'll bet it's true a lot more than some folks would want to admit, though. In general, winners tend to do the things that help them win, while whiners tend to waste their time complaining about things they can't change.

common sense

I would love to know which orifice you pulled that out of. Are there scam products out there? Yes. Are there a lot of them? Yes. Would I say that it is 9 out of 10 products? No. If people stopped chasing hype and actually looked for products that would be great tools to build a business they would find that they are scammed less than 1% of the time. Also, if people stopped looking at MMO ebooks as the answer, and looked at them as a way to pick up at least one new bit of information then we would be looking at very few products actually being scams.

Of course, that requires people to have to actually be willing to work to make money here. The ones that get it get it, and they all roll their eyes when you guys post threads like this thinking that you are crying out about some horrible injustice being done against people like you just looking for the right product.

IM is not a scam. Are there scammers around? Yes. There are scammers in every type of business; and yes this is a business. So if you can't use your brain, practice due diligence, and only buy products that will help your business, well then quite frankly you need to go.

End Rant

This is a huge misconception.

On of the fundamental ideas of this type of marketing is to diversify your streams of income.

If you are making $5,000 a month with AdSense and "never bother" to explore other streams oif income, like selling your knowledge in a WSO, then you are in great danger of losing all your income at the whim of Google if they ban your adsense. That applies to many income models.

And personally, if I was making $5,000 a month- I'd love to make $10,000 a month.

The WSO's I find most disappointing are the ones that lay out a very basic affiliate marketing strategy and then the "secret" is use a paid tool to drive traffic to your offer.

I purchased one huge product that included a section on traffic. The whole section was on how to buy traffic from their service with tutorials on walking through the order process. It wasn't a traffic course so this was a minor (though important) part of the package, but the sales copy said it revealed an "awesome source of traffic".

Disappointing but hardly scams.

Mahlon

I think the problem is that most products are very easily saturated.

There are not many Internet Marketers that sell a guide on how they make money from a method before that method starts to slow down in revenue. Selling the method then becomes another income stream.

Once you combine both the slow down in the methods revenue with 5000 people attempting the method simultaneously you start to see the problem.

There have been many methods sold on the internet, the methods themselves are solid but once mass reproduced the target usually catches on eg. Youtube and then it becomes very difficult for the beginner to make decent money, while intermeditate marketers still can drain a few $ using experience.

There are definalty outright scams, I have seen a few of those but the main problem I think is what I outlined above and this leads to the appearance of a scam while in actual fact its jsut about getting on the wagon too late.

Hi Chr,

Perhaps people should have a look at the definition of 'hustling'.

Hustling

According to the definitions offered via that link, it has a wide range of meanings depending on the context of it's use, interpretation etc.

EG

From the noble or wise type of hustling -

To the unethical or illicit type -



Therefore, it is clear that there is a line that can be crossed, perhaps a grey area in the middle.

But it's also worth noting that in a competitive environment, it is often the person who is most aggressive (or who hustles the best) while staying on the right side of the line who will succeed without compromising commonly accepted ethical boundaries - the ultimate achievement of a professional salesman/marketer.

In other words, hustling as aggressively and successfully as possible (whilst remaining on the ethical side of the line) is perhaps a noble art, one that all salespeople should aspire to master in order to be as successful as possible, while doing so with an element of stealth, but with an over-riding and lasting impression of deportment and class.

To do this, one must (presumeably) develop a deep understanding of this skill and it's related issues.

You said -

It sounds to me as though you have just learned a basic lesson of hustling - if your initial pitch is exposed as misleading or erroneous and this becomes clear at the secondary stage, then it may taint the whole message because the prospect will feel deceived and may assume that the whole pitch is of the same ilk.

The obvious 'bait and switch' may draw a crowd, but it requires much back-pedalling and hard work to achieve the ultimate aim of conversion. Perhaps it is better to avoid shouting the loudest and instead concentrate on using a small crowd to create a buzz and spread the word? (In the context of creating threads, that would perhaps mean providing quality content that creates a solid and useful discussion (long term interest) which illicits positive replies from reputable contributors (social proof)? Note that the title of the thread is virtually irrelevant in this example.)

Therefore the lesson would be that although the initial pitch needs to be enticing and draw people in, there are important consequences if one is to flirt with the ethical boundary at this initial stage.

As you can see it's not a simple subject - which is why professional marketers are some of the most highly paid and sought after experts in the world. It's therefore logical to assume that the best approach to this subject is with an open mind, a mind that is not tainted and biased with the cynical blanket assumptions adopted by the typical consumer and a mind that is respectful and appreciative of this noble and difficult art.

To approach this subject with cynicism and bias while hypocritically applying and demonstrating the common and obvious mistakes of the amateur (mistakes that one is currently seeking to criticise in a blanket, all-encompassing manner), is an amusing but common error, notably one that I have also made myself along the way.

He might have seen a few overly hypey sales pages, but to think all the IM world is like that is a little bit ignorant, I'm just gonna throw in a few exemples : physical products , do you think affiliates selling physical products that peoples are looking for are scamers too ? and membership sites do you think most peoples owning membership sites are scammers too ? go check, they offer great content or something unique .

Of course not all of them do but for the most part they do, and this does'nt mean information pruducts have no value, they surely do(again for the most part ) it's just that peoples tend to see virtual ebooks as something without value because it's just megabytes of data.

Also the IM world is vast and there are many different aspects and possibilities to make money, not only sell products.

Just trying to clarify things a little bit no offense to the OP !

Once again, false. As a matter of fact I would say this is one of the best places online when looking at the ratio of honest:dishonest sellers. Please, please, please tell me what you are basing this off of; because whatever train of thought you have going in your head is escaping me (and most others I'm sure).

Edit: Oh, it makes sense after going through your post history. You are a serial refunder. Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

May I politely ask what you get out of this forum and why you come here?

You don't seem to have anything good to say about this forum despite your extremely short membership of just one month. Is that enough time to assume 9/10 sellers here are scammers?

How did you arrive at that figure in such a short space of time?

I'm intrigued.

Making money online and health are the two most common industries within internet marketing and yes they are taking advantage of people oblivious to its shady nature. However, there is still a lot of legitimacy in internet marketing, just try to look at it that way.

It's funny how many people came in to attack the op as opposed to pointing him out to legit IM products as examples. I bet I can guess what you sell.

INTERNET MARKETING. Selling rainbows, dreams and unicorn farts since 1929.

Well some people see some hypocrisy is the OP so yeah...

That makes absolutely NO sense ... Hey look whose on the defensive now??? Anyone with half a brain can figure you out.

1) You say that you cannot trust honest reviewers

2) You say you recommend a company that isn't good by your standards

3) You apply the affiliate link to that one anyway

That is deceptive to say the least... And you sit there calling everyone of us a SCAMMER?

You're a hypocrite.

The only scammer that's been uncovered here is YOU!

You say:
"I'm also planning to remove the recommendations from my ebook when I put out the next version. I've been kinda busy though and I'm waiting to work on this site (I may actually cancel the site all together.)"

So when will that be exactly? Hmmm sounds like a cop out to me and to take the heat away from you and your website.

If you are going to call things scams without investigating it thoroughly yourself (by actually trying out a number of products in an industry you are slamming) be prepared to become the nail...

I disagree. They are more vocalized in the MMO niche, but not more prominent. Now, its true that every day there are newbies who come in here and other places online and try their BS to make a quick buck. None of them last long, and they are in the minority. It's a revolving door of idiots who quickly blow their reputation and are gone from the game. But like I said: they are a flash in a pan and then gone. If you would do the proper research and approach this like a business, then you would find the real marketers who really have something to teach you. Guess what? There's a lot of them.

Here's the thing though; I've got you pegged as one of those guys who buys the "Make xxx a day products", waits ten minutes, and gets pissed when you aren't rich. Well, with a mindset like yours its easy to see why you see IM as a scam. Nobody is making you rich, so they must be scammers. It couldn't possibly be the fact that you are the only one who can really make yourself money, and that you can only do so by implementing the information in these "scam" products.


We all know he doesn't, and would never think of putting it lol.

I can agree with this, these "bad guys" seem prominent because of the fact that they flash

around shiny offers.

"the shine will always outshine the no-shine" :rolleyes:

And the barnicle heads take the bait time and time again. Some people provide honest aid.

An example would be this forum, but how many newbies start here? How many noobies stay

here? They eventually go seeking for gold.

It's the few that gives the rest a bad name.

This could be part of your problem. You're making condemnations that require supporting evidence but you're basing your statements not on evidence, but on your feelings. That's a procedural strategy that often backfires, sometimes spectacularly.

Remember what I said a while back? When you find yourself in a hole sometimes the best thing to do is quit digging. There's nothing wrong with admitting you were wrong or went about saying something in the wrong way. Such an admission only means you're smarter today than yesterday. It's called a graceful exit.