Internet Marketing Scams – I’m Retiring From Them

This is  it – my final word on Internet Marketing scams. Every now and then I check out yet another program – the last one I was considering was Ed Dale’s 30 Day Challenge – I even started following along – but frankly I got so bored with the leaden pace that I dropped off (to sleep). Then we got to the show down to see what they the actual up-sell was happening – it was mainly Intermediate Edge – hmmm $97 or $67/month whatever – put it on the maybe list. Then the next message to the list was all about Kajabi – WTF – where did that come from – and it wasn’t even his product … You probably thought the same.

So why am I retiring from Internet Marketing scams? Well  frankly the competition is really too much- I’m being beaten by a robot! Oh and  it takes quite a lot of time to check out the “new” programs.  But really I am very much feeling like “been there, done that” . Those of you who thought I was a little harsh on my Third Tribe Marketing review or Scribe SEO Review – both from Brian Clark aka Copyblogger may find The Salty Droid an interesting site to check before you buy anything (more).  DISCLAIMER that site uses bad language and has incorrect punctuation!

Part of it is I kept on research latest launches hoping that I would find another program that compares with the Keyword Academy – I haven’t. Though if you want just the facts and not the support and the hand-holding kum-by-yah forum – then Nomad’s e-book will work for you too.

Recently our local news featured a lady in her late 60’s who had been scammed into paying tens of thousands of dollars for a business marketing course – which taught her – basically how to sell the course to others, on the side she should cold-call local businesses and get them to pay for her marketing plan. But she hadn’t been taught much about marketing (it was a 7 day course … ) and she felt like a fraud… so she stopped doing it. One of the reasons she wanted the money was because she had debts from property investment schemes which had gone bad … Sounded so much like every second guru launch in Internet Marketing it was scary.

A year or so ago I would have been foaming at the mouth about people who scam others – this time I wondered whether anyone held a gun to her head to sign the contract. She was reported as being treated “like royalty” when they flew her to Auckland – well of course they bloody did – after all she could have enrolled for a marketing course at somewhere like the Open Polytechnic for around $500 – and got an interest-deferred student loan to pay for it! Didn’t she smell something then … Did she not give even the slightest thought about what value she was getting – apparently not.

Fools and their money as they say… Actually the psychology is fascinating – and the behavour described in the comments on this post  about the so-called Internet Marketing Syndicate but actually talking about Ed Dale’s 30DC – are an echo of what Iread and experienced with the Site Build It review post.  I’ve even seen it in the Keyword Academy – and there it happens without the moderators encouraging and supporting it. When the owners of the site really want to do “my way or the highway” – its a frighteningly easy upsell.

Internet Marketing scams of the moment by the way:

• SEO for local businesses
• Video blogging
• membership sties (never gets old that one)
• Kajabi is particularly evil – check out Rob’s Kajabi review

My advice – as usual

• YES you can make money online – you make it money from people who want to pay for products or services – NOT by selling get rich Make Money Online schemes
• NO as a beginner you can’t make enough online to stop your house being foreclosed in the next month – sorry – that’s the reality
• YES  you can really develop an online business that you can operate anywhere in the world with your laptop and a broadband connection;
• NO trying to work on said laptop on the beach, or by the pool – is just plain stupid (try it if you are not sure …)
• YES you can learn what you need online using low cost, legitimate programs such as the Keyword Academy.
• NO – spending more and more money and more and more expensive courses/programs/coaching/gurus – won’t help – at the end of the day you need to do the work
• YES – making money online is hard work and you will work for up to a year and earn very little
• NO you won’t  earn enough to take a extended 2-month overseas trip within a year;
• YES many people can do this – even if they know nothing about marketing – I know because I was one of them.
• NO not everyone can make it – check out my post on Online Income Secrets

Despite the occasional panics when Google changes its algorithms – very little but detail changed in the two years I’ve been doing this. To make money online you need to:

• choose good keywords – those that are used by those searching the Internet with money to spend
• you need to develop a website or use someone else’s site to put some content up. Regardless of what  the above gurus say – unique content is easier to rank than duplicated crap, regardless of what the grammar purists will say the quality of that content matters very little for ranking
• you need to get some basic On-Page SEO right
• you need some time because a site gains authority over time (if you do it right (and page rank is practically irrelevant)
• you need to get backlinks – the easiest way to do this build your own
• once you rank you will get traffic – once you have traffic you can worry about monetization
• rinse and repeat, some keywords will work, some won’t, some audiences will buy, some won’t – if you aren’t prepared to experiment and test – you won’t get far.

So that’s it from me on Internet Marketing scams – really people if its sounds too good to be true – then it probably is – you don’t need me to check it out for you! And yes everything I recommend here is a genuine recommendation – which is why I didn’t make $117,231.25  from this site last month!