Internet Marketer = LIAR?

Yea I guess when you are selling non-tangible items it is hard to believe one would stop selling them when they don't need to since you never run out of stock.

It's the oldest marketing trick in the book - Scarcity.
I guess next time you can make a little joke about it in your sales copy, along the lines of (and this isn't just a marketing trick )

So did you explain to her that you stopped the first promo prematurely and only she had a license up to that point?

I'm sure from her perspective that she seen the initial email go out for an offer of only 25 licenses... time passed and then she saw another, so she is assuming you're selling another 25.

I don't think there's any assumption of you being a liar.. just a misunderstanding that needs to be cleared up.

Maybe I'm wrong.. as I don't know how you reworded your email when you reopened the offer.. just sounds like the above at first listen.

I would say there are many (not all), but many that have left a few people jaded...

Most common tactics are:

1. Fake Scarcity. They say "Only 200! No, only 100! no, only 50! no, only 33 Copies Left!". Yet, once you purchase, still says 33. And if you leaev it for 1 week, a bunch of people buy, still says 33 (and allows them to purchase).
2. Fake countdown timers that let you know you will only get this deal once. close browser, refresh -- wow, you have a new timer.
3. The sites that when you close -- will say "Wait! How about a crisp $20 bill!". You close again, "Wait! How about a crisp $50 bill?". You close again, "Wait! How about the entire course for free, but only a $1 signup fee, and $77 if you decide to keep it after one week?".
4. Fake fiverr.com testimonials. "Oh yah, product xyz is so great, it made me billions of dollars". Then on another product you see the exact same guy saying the exact same thing, just a different product.

So yes, I would say it is natural for many people to be skeptical.

It all depends on what she thinks and how you market your stuff. Scarcety is okay in my opinion if you indeed keep your word about the 25 or whatever number you put on there. And yes I hate the fake scarcety on slaes pages to. Most clickbank offers seemd to do these kind of things. You only proof to be honest if you are.

Yes, I believe the perception is deservedly so. There are exceptions and I believe you are one of them (based on your past threads/posts over the years). However, I do believe stopping a stated promotion prematurely just because you change your mind is not exactly showing integrity. I am not saying YOU do not have integrity overall but that move wasn't exactly above reproach IMHO.

i think being a seller in the IM industry has gotten a similar reputation to being a used car salesman or a politician.

most people know that there is a very good chance things are not as they appear and that somehow, someway the IM seller is trying to get to you.

that is a reputation that has been earned by the industry as a whole when a large proportion of the sellers do in fact use at least some sort of underhanded tricks.

the majority of IMers want to put the blame fully on the buyers, and in many ways i do agree with them. However, when you do that, you run the risk of getting the reputation much like IMers have gotten over the past 5 or so years.

there is a real culture of over promise and under deliver in the IM industry and that is just not a sustainable business model for an individual or an industry.

The problem i see is that there are very few leaders in the IM game anymore willing to break the current "promise the world" sales pitch model. It would take true leaders with the ability to add real value to their customers.

The reality is that very few of those exists, and those that do exist are not interested in playing in a field where they know they will instantly be labeled a liar.

why the hell would i take my 15+ years of IM experience and bring it to a field where i know i would instantly be labeled a liar and a scammer.

Ray,

First of all Happy Birthday!
Second of all the following is in no way a reflection on you or your practices. I've enjoyed your posts and help offered on this forum for years. Only you know the truth about your actions, your motivations, etc. But if you want to dissect what MAY be the problem I saw it immediately.

Again this is not saying anything about anything - just making a point.

So you've offered this ONE time before and quit the promotion after 1 sale. That means that there is ONLY ONE license holder. Right?
"A present license holder" makes it sound like there is more than one license holder. Which is it - one or many?

Also it's kind of hard to believe that you have one customer with the license and this one customer immediately wrote to you. That's 100% feedback which rarely happens in any business or situation.

The spirit I'm giving this in is to show you how even when writing here about being honest it MAY APPEAR to SOME that there are gaps in the story. Some people would look at ONE license holder being described as "a present license holder" as proof that you did exactly what you say you didn't do.

Mark

I can see how people would make the assumption that more copies will be sold than the original amount you agreed to sell.

If it were me, I would contact her and let her know the situation. However, sometimes, you cannot change someone's opinion no matter how hard you try. I would ask her what information she needed to satisfy her suspicions that more than the 25 copies were not sold. That you are honest as the day is long and would never do anything to jeopardize your reputation.

You abided by your original promise. I think when it comes down to integrity and you know you did the right thing, then there are no worries.

Happy birthday tomorrow.

Isn't is possible that she thought so highly of you that she assumed you had no problem handing out the 25 licenses initially? (Yes, I wear rose colored glasses and my glass is always half full, etc, etc).

But, really, if someone whose list I was on said they were giving away 25 licenses, I'd think it was a done deal that 25 licenses were going to be given out. I certainly wouldn't assume that they'd stopped the offer and only given out one (making her the ONLY license holder at this point, right?).

Maybe if your email had said something like "Hey, I made this offer before and pulled it so I never granted more than 1 license. I pulled it because I decided (fill in the blank) but now it's the right time to share this with some of you because (fill in the blank)." I'm not a copywriter but you get the general idea.

Not that I wouldn't still wonder if it wasn't true when I saw it (crap - just proved your point that I might assume you were lying...) but if you had a plausible, believable explanation about the previous change to your offer and if you already had earned my trust, I'd probably buy it. Or some of it.

And Happy Birthday a day early!

Ray,

I don't think you should take it so personally. You're going to have people that think you're out to get them. My opinion is simple: spend some time writing a nice explanation and make a difference in her thoughts. If she doesn't budge, you've done what you can.

I don't think it has anything to do with the industry. It has more to do with the individual. However, in your case, I think an explanation is in order.

You answered your own question. To some (possibly the majority) marketers, money is more important than reputation. Because of that fact alone, the reputation of all marketers is somewhat tainted.

-Vlad

I say you sound like an honest man and respect your pride in being one of the "good guys" in this industry.

My opinion...Just be completely honest with her, if she can't understand that is her problem. Keep being the good guy!

Wishing you a Happy Early Birthday & Great Success,
Chris

Hi,

It's not to do with you - it's just the mindset of your customer.

They've probably seen those idiots that do blatently lie and say "only x will be sold" and then go sell as many as they can because they think people can't tell.

It's a sad fact that there are a lot of desperate people in IM who will say "anything that increases conversions".

Don't take it personally - you know if you're ethical or not and it's not crazy to think that some of your customers have trouble telling the liars from the good guys.

Andy

Honestly, I think this says more about her than about us. By far most of the people I know personally in the IM business are really stand up people.

Addressing the main issue of trustworthyness or otherwise - there's no doubt the Internet Marketing profession has a huge stigma attached to it. After all, whether you care to accept it or not, we are largely and collectively responsible for the worst of all intrusions into public privacy - spam email. Everyone knows to automatically distrust anything commercial sent via email. That same distrust ripples through to the websites we view and the sales pitches we consider. In our industry you're generally guilty until proven otherwise, your reputation precedes you based on the collective reputation of the community at large.

So what chance do you have?
Apply the same integrity with your customers and visitors as you would with your own family and children. Be open, transparent and honest. Don't over-promise or use any form of misleading verbiage. Think carefully about how your words are understood and perceived by your visitors, could they be construed as 'misleading' in any way?

Some of us old-school folks went to college and learned about business ethics and morality. I think the level of mistrust prevalent in our industry effects us at a personal level the most.

I just see so many examples of people who don't care about their customers and would stop at nothing to make a buck.

It's disheartening to be 'guilty by association' to say the least.

people jump to all kinds of assumptions.

If it was me and i was emailing my same list, i would of put in the email the last offer was cut short with one 1 sale and now re-opened with the other 24 available.

Could of saved alot of assumptions being made.

The person who made the first sale voiced her opinion but what about all the others that never!

thanks

Thekaver

One thing I believe may have tarnished internet marketing is the fact that in my experience, it can become extremely impersonal, and most people have a very impersonal experience. Now for certain endeavors like affiliate marketing, this may not be such a terrible thing, after all none of us really know who we are buying things from in a store. However, when we talk about network marketing, this has become the serious bane of the integrity of the discipline. For example, I used to be in the idea of calling many MLM and network marketing systems scams. However, when I got to look at it, the systems really weren't scams. You could usually make the money the system claimed you could make with it, but the marketing taught in the system was not very conducive to helping out it's members. You are taught to get massive traffic, with the main priority of just driving traffic to your referral link. And that's about the gist of it for most marketing, very little goes into teaching responsible sponsorship or anything of that nature. You are not encouraged to help your referrals beyond helping them be convinced to join (usually with mass autoresponse emails). Meanwhile, if you do join, you find out that most of what you thought would be there is not necessarily readily available to the beginner, at least not without some sort of human guidance.
This is just my experience, but I can be sure if you look at those people scream scam at online opportunities, their main beef falls into these categories, and sometimes I feel the internet marketing game has been so money hungry, with our jobs ending at the sale, that it is making it harder for us to make money. Perhaps this isn't so much the case with affiliate marketing, but when it comes to network marketing... this is worst mindset to have, to just stop once the sale is made.

You know what Seth Godin said: all marketers are liars!

Sounds like a misunderstanding on her part, which is understandable, given the high amount of fake scarcity, fake testimonials, fake income claims, fake everything that many Internet marketers are guilty of. Easily cleared up by communicating with her.

Well, this seems a good thread to make my first post to and say howdy. There's an old joke about the difference between computer sales people and used car sales people...the difference? Used car sales people know when they are lying. You can add that one to the millions of sales and marketing jokes out there. I think people are naturally defensive about sales and marketing people and expect that we are focused only on turning the fast buck. I'm not sure there's much we can do en mass to change that general perception. For myself, I just try to focus on building good relationships and solving problems because I sleep better that way. Hopefully that attitude is clear to those I work with and for. I agree with Lee and I think the fact that you are bothered by her attitude speaks volumes about your character.

Regards,
Jim

I've found this assumption is also attached to pretty much anyone that's selling something.

But while there are quite a few people out there who will liar through their teeth to make a quick bit of cash there is still a lot of people out there that won't, but thanks to the ones that do lie, it makes it harder for people to trust everyone else.

Especially when you see all this false scarcity about etc, a good example the other day is a sales page I saw which states the price of the product will go up in a few days then doesn't.

I can see why people sometimes tar all marketers with the same brush so to speak, although being on the receiving end of this when you're completely honest is really not nice at all.

People do seem to jump to the wrong conclusions quite quickly but if you explain the situation hopefully they will understand, if not you know you tried.

Definitely send her an email and explain exactly what happened. You can never go wrong with being honest. If the woman decides not to believe you, then at least you know you've done everything you possibly can.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of bad apples in the IM world who ruin things for everyone else. No matter what happens, don't let it get you down. Whether the woman believes you or not, you haven't done anything to deceive her, and she's still getting the full value of the rights that she bought.

Whatever you do, don't let it ruin your birthday... I see you're in Punta Gorda... Does this mean you'll be celebrating with a Publix cake?? I suggest the butter cream frosting!

<*blush*>

Only after I'd left the thread and come back to read more responses did I notice your specialty. Just like me to trip into that one and point out copywriting to the copywriter.

Thank you very much for the compliment, though!

Meh... people have called me far worse things than a liar.

Still do... and most likely will for many years to come.

You can't control what goes on in other people's minds... although Kern will beg to differ.

So stay true and be able to sleep at night.

I'd actually send out another email outlining what just happened to your list... explain why you pulled the offer and how many licenses are left.

And sell more licenses. Turn the - into a +

I've seen numerous surveys over the years about the least respected professions as to honesty/ integrity (used car sales, politicians, attorneys). I wonder how internet marketing might play into those surveys now?

BTW, Happy Birthday!