Be Real...Are you honest in your marketing?

I want to believe that I am true to myself and that I am honest in my marketing. I think we all get caught up in the hype once in a while. We are all doing this to get ahead. To break free from the 9 to 5. We see very successfull IMers making a ton of money by doing moraly questionable things and we lower our own values and standard because we think it is the status quo...but is it?

I am passionate about the products that I support. I believe in them and I believe in the people that sell them (yes I am an affiliate marketer). I do not lie on my website or in my day to day practices but I am not saying that I am perfect. I have sent out mass emails, I have purchased links and I have even spammed a few blogs but I still feel that I have not broken any of my moral boundaries.

I believe you can get ahead and be a successful IMer without lying but that is where I stand. Then again, one persons white lie is another persons sin.

I digress...

Being authentic is vital to succeeding. Really reaching inside yourself to produce high-quality every time can be a real challenge to produce the best work you can you really need to do. It can frustrating at times because it will take a little longer to create a new product, but the end result will be worth the effort. I also think people can tell the different if material is from the sole or simply a rework of another's work.
But we all get catch up looking at other's people work for ideas, but when we do we must make sure to inject 100% of ourselves and not simply reword.

Boy, the lack of response speaks volumes. It's amazing. I'd say one percent of people who 'sell' 'information' even believe in what they sell. Look at the lack of response in this thread, people can't even 'fake' their 'honesty.'

All I can say is that dishonesty cannot last. Yes, they may make some money in the short term, but they are actually shooting themselves in the foot and short changing themselves.

Online marketing is about building relationship and trust, and once people complain, your reputation is gone.

BigBenFromCanton....You are funny bro...I was thinking the same thing...lol

Sales, are something you do for someone. . . NOT TO SOMEONE. The end goal is to help someone get what they really want and need. What's the point of lying, once the customer realises you lied. . . It all comes back to haunt you.

As for being original. . . I put a lot of work into my videos, my new video-sales-letter. . . I like to be unique. Lead, Not Follow.

I once heard/read somewhere..

If you piss a customer off in the offline community.. they tell 6 people

Piss them off in the online community and they have the ability, at the click of a button, to tell 6,000+ people... - some difference, eh?

I endeavour to put out stuff that makes ME feel good about what IT can do for people. If I don't feel completely comfortable that a product, offer, or even my own product can help the end consumer.. then I drop it.

Peace

Jay

p.s. Time is SO precious... why waste my time and the consumers time with bull**** ?.. we should all sail in the same direction, makes the sailing much more enjoyable and dare I say it?.. FUN

Exactly. Content is not King, Customer service is. Word of mouth advertising is still a key factor in any business model.

I only enter niches that I am comfortable with. Like others my IM road has been paved with some experiences that were not completely honest and forthright.

Plus the services I provide would land me in a lot of hot water if I were not 100% honest.

Tina

I sinecere when it comes to running my business, thou sometimes you dont tell prospect how tough things are, so we don't scare the ability out of them.

Yes, I'm honest. However, I'm not going to be touting how "honest" I am.

A discussion of how honest I am is irrelevant. Being honest is...

I am pretty positive that Internet marketers are honest. It is so important for me to be honest in my business, because I just believe in honesty.

I've gotten scammed because of it, but I still believe it!

Let's face it if someone is not honest in their marketing, then very likely when problems arise it is likely that the person will not be entirely above board when handling the problems. So dishonest leads to more dishonesty. Just as one lie leads to other lies.

Ken Leatherman
The Old Geezer

So, basically...honesty is something we all should have even though we often hear "content is king"...Just drumming up concerns I've heard along my journey in this world of IM...Love to hear you guys take on things...WF rocks!

Being honest in every way especially on your customers is really the core to success. People will smell something stinky if there's something fishy over your business. Loyal customers can make or break a business, so it is always good to build a strong and honest relationship towards them.

A marketer can only be sucessful if he is honest. he might get away with one or two scam products but that will be it...

Honest is the key of succes

Hey, I'm not pointing the finger at anyone in this thread (either directly or indirectly) with what I'm about to say, but there's a whole lotta high-minded TALK here.

I agree with Vince (and Descartes), and have long lived by the following:

How honest is someone being when they--essentially--spam forums for the backlink, creating a profile they never intend on using; joining a community they never intend on being an active member of?

How honest is someone being when they get their assistant to rewrite a bunch of PLR into something that purports to offer value, but is basically just generic, vague commentary on a topic with nought but a single purpose: to be distributed far and wide to directories for the backlink and the traffic the sig-link brings in?

How honest is someone being when they social bookmark all their own sites?

How honest is someone being when they clear cookies, log into a different account and social bookmark all their own sites?

How honest is someone being when they go searching for do-follow blogs to comment on and eschew (or even condemn) no-follow blogs regardless of their quality?

How honest is someone being when they send out a JV email and use the expression "my friend, [Name]"?

How honest is someone being when they make you go through a squeeze page -- without any by-pass option -- to download the product you just bought? (And often on sites you've bought on via PayPal even though (as far as I'm aware) it's against PayPal's TOS? (Could be wrong about that, though))

How honest is someone being when they join a membership site which is basically access to a set of blog-farms dispersed around the world on different servers in order to game the SERPs?

How honest is someone being when they sell your email address after a period in which you haven't moved to their buyer's list -- despite a Privacy Policy that swears black and blue that they absolutely would never do such a thing?

How honest is someone being when they send traffic to a fake "Thank You" page, impying that the visitor is getting in through the back door and getting an illicit deal they really shouldn't be getting?

How honest is someone being when they collect a bunch of RSS feeds and re-route them to an autoblog without even checking whether the feed has been copyrighted?

How honest is someone being when they set up an autoblog?

How honest is someone being when they sell some (most likely, warmed-over PLR) product in a niche that not only do they know nothing about (which in itself is not such a problem), but in a niche that could actually have seriously adverse effects on people's lives (e.g. the "anxiety niche") simply because it's one of those "deperate buyers" markets?

How honest is someone being when they read a bunch of threads here on the Warrior Forum and then repackage it as some breakthrough ebook and sell it as a WSO using the "churn'n'burn"/"pump'n'dump" model of IM (with a string of affiliate promos and PLR articles queued up in the autoresponder)?

How honest is someone being when they do a spot of deliberate and calculated cybersquatting and then do what I basically consider "extorting" the person to whom that domain really should belong?

How honest is someone being when they do a bit of the ol' cookie stuffing routine?

How honest is someone being when they use a fancy piece of software to copy someone else's hard-won keywords from their PPC campaigns? Keywords that they've spent a lot of time, money, and testing whittling down to the ones that convert?

How honest is someone being when they charge $X per month to a subscription newsletter (print, usually) and then [insert conscience assuaging buzzword here --->] "repurpose" the very same content to subscribers of their free email list (that you're removed from as a buyer, but may still be subscribed to under an alias)?

How honest is someone being when they tell you that "Only X-number are going to be sold at this price" yet you find yourself (for whatever weird reason) back on the same sales page two years later only to be confronted with the very same copy? Or that the price is going up soon? Or that (this is my favourite) "charter memberships" are being limited to Y-number of people? Or (another favourite) that the price "could" go up "any time soon"?

How honest is someone being when they get an outsourced assistant to post on forums in their niche and under their name?

How honest is someone being when they send a voice-blast that's set to only roll if an answering machine picks up and which then says "Hey, [Name]! It's TheNightOwl... I must have missed you, man. I was personally ringing to..."?



Cripes! And these are just off the top of my head!

I could go on, but I grow weary of my own cynicism.

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My point is that just about all of these (but not all, in fairness) are more or less accepted (as far as I can see) as being de rigeur in Internet Marketing.

This is without even thinking about all the stuff that is patently dodgy!

Hobbes and Schoepenhauer and the like have long been decried as too pessimistic to be gainful insights into human behaviour, but those who fancy themselves as pragmatists would do well, I think, to take a closer look at whether these guys' (undoubtedly crazily-overly bleak!) picture of the world doesn't resonate with reality.

We prefer, however, to think that unless we're doing one of those patently dodgy things, then we must be honest.

/rant

TheNightOwl


P.S. Some folks may be inclined to respond (or retort, even) "Let he who is without sin..."

Sure. Fair point. I never claimed to be all squeaky-clean. I try hard not to be dodgy. But I know I am. Standard delusional ploy of hypocrites the world over.

Happy Wednesday!

TheNightOwl, I agree with what you said , but we're discussing "honesty" here, not "ethically."

I am very honest in my marketing.

Why would I lie?
Lying will destroy your reputation and people will not trust you anymore.

If you don't take care of your customers, you will never earn a dime.