Look Through The Hype
By its very nature Internet Marketing in general is hype driven and many marketing tactics are driven by some key principles of herd mentality and greed.
Ouch! That looks kind of strong.
Major players in the industry know which buttons to push and the hype surrounding big ticket products can make you feel like you just have to join a program because everybody else is.
Here are some unpleasant facts.
For every real success story there are 100 lies.
For every real MLM success story there are hundreds if not thousands of fail stories beneath that made the success story.
Statistics can be made to say anything.
I’ll give you an example.
I received an email from a reasonably high profile marketer who focuses on the Traffic Exchange Industry several days ago saying that he as making $3.20 for every lead that he sends to a certain program.
Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?
Let’s crunch some numbers.
The program he was talking about offers a one time offer up front for $47 which enables you to earn 70% commissions on the product.
Which, assuming that you took that offer (and I’m sure he did) means you would be making make $32.90 for every sale of the OTO that you made.
By his own numbers, that means that you would have to refer ten people to this particular product to make one sale.
Now, here’s the rub. The guy undoubtedly has a big mailing list – lets say for argument’s sake 5000 people.
Let’s assume that he got a 1% opt in rate on his mailing that means he generated 50 leads to the product at a touch of button and that by his own numbers five of those leads took the one time offer. He made $160.
Extrapolate those numbers over the TE industry with the big TE owners with lists of 10, 20, 30 thousand and more and you will find that 1)There’s already been a huge amount of leads generated from the product 2)Trying to advertise the product directly in TE’s and Safelists is going to be ultra difficult because people already know about it.
This means that you may generate one lead per 500 page views.
What can you learn from this?
1/Learn to critically analyze any claims made by anyone – look behind the raw numbers
2/Build your list – this is the only way you can successfully build an online business.
It’s not sexy, it’s hard work but it works
3/Advertising products directly on TEs is a waste of time
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All this makes me think that I must get into using the Directory of Ezines. What do you think.? I have no connection with D.O.E., but his claims look justifiable
Ezine advertising can be quite lucrative, but the same rules apply.
You advertise to build your list. People rarely buy on the strength of an advertisement.
You need to use the ad to create interest, get the prospect to seek more information and then follow up with sound advice and recommendations.
The idea is to build a relationship.
You know that you have your favorite coffee shop, in the end you go there because you know you can trust the level of service.
It’s the same with any method of online advertising from Adwords right through to Traffic Exchanges and Banner Exchanges. Create interest, build a long term relationship. Most people don’t buy products they buy you.
This is something that always frosts my cookies! It is always “Look what I did in only 30 days!” and it gets people to think, “If I only did a percentage of that I will be rich!”. They don’t stop to think that this person has a monster list and they could probably sell a bunch of dog poo if they sent out a letter to their list about how great it was. To me this is selling ’snake oil’ as you know darn well that without that monster list everyone who buys will not do well at all. To me that is a lie of omission, not telling the ‘whole’ truth about a product. I remember doing snail mail marketing years ago and it was the big thing to have the ad for ‘Make a million stuffing envelopes”, it was true to a point. You did make money stuffing envelopes, but it was from stuffing many thousand envelopes that you had to pay for the envelopes, letters, and stamps. It was no different than IM as you had about the same sell rates.
It has to be about more than the money; if you couldn’t sell some of this stuff to your family or friends – you REALLY need to think if you should sell it at all. I don’t want to run the risk of tarnishing my name and rep by having a ‘questionable’ product – one that looks like it will make a ton of money, but have no real value to people. Most of the big time TE owners and others send me emails every day for programs to join, some are good – others are not. I do respect the people who deliver good content in their emails and provide me with products that are good.
The ones recently that have ‘give me a dollar and make $70,000, we do all the work’; you have to wonder how gullible people really are if these get lots of members. Anyway, I will get off my soapbox now….
You’re on the money Leonard. One of the things that I learned years ago from an honest Internet Marketer, a gentleman by the name of Graham Hamer was the “herd mentality” concept.
Many aggressive Internet Marketers use this every day, they use the triggers “Don’t Miss Out” “Everyone else is joining” you know the words. If a program is good now, it will be good in 6 months. The purpose of this post was to get people to actually think about claims made and to realize that the only way to succeed is to build a profile – and the best way to do this is to build a list.
But id you have a list, you MUST treat it with respect & dignity. This week I’ve received an email every day from the same group of heavy hitters urging me to buy and re-brand eBooks.
This after awhile must make their readers not open their mail. There is no help, only sales.
Finding the right balance is difficult. I know that everyday their are products and services that I can recommend, but I also know that the people on my list have a finite level of cash.
Why would I recommend a bunch of cruddy eBooks in sequence?
I don’t know.
Internet marketing is not easy, Traffic Exchange marketing is not easy. I takes time, effort and for the little guy it takes courage. Courage to be different, courage to spend the time building relationships and the courage to not follow the crowd.
I think I’ll hand that soapbox back now