I have become more and more aware of a marketing tactic that has been dropped into the waste water over the last year or so. Seems the hunters are feeding the chum with low cost memberships or software products. They may in fact be decent enough but that is only to capture the prey and feast upon it while keeping it alive.
See, your guberu might be telling you how great their (initial) product is. The 78-page long sales page tells you that you can make tens of thousands of (soon to be worthless) dollar bills using their method or product. And in some cases you just might do OK with the product. But the next thing you know, after about a month, you start getting emails from these fuckers pimping other people’s shit. So if your shit was so good then why do I need someone else’s shit?
The lastest guberu email recommending someone else’s product hit my spam box this morning. Seems they are promising an AVALANCHE of traffic. Like most goodness apparently you don’t need a product, experience, web site, PPC, no tech expertise, no SEO training, no social bookmarking…nothing. Why it seems in a few clicks you can make hundreds of dollars a day, if not thousands. It’s so easy. Automated. Only a few hundred get to play. Don’t want too many folks in the pipe to clog things up you see.
Apparently they are exploiting a “glitch”. Folks, why the fuck would you risk your livelihood of making thousands a day? Seriously. If I am making thousands of dollars a day on a “glitch” the rest of the fucking Internet would be the last to hear about it. If you’re feeling altruistic and need to share your discovery with someone how about going down to the local computer training job shop and help people out of work? You say you don’t need experience or a webpage. Give those lucky few a hand up. And what the hell are you going to do when the “glitch”, if there is such a thing, gets fixed? Glitches gets fixed unless it benefits that which you are exploiting. Then it’s not really a glitch now is it?
So anyway, the critters scamper over and start slobbering over the comment stream on the dude’s blog. There are some desperate people swimming the sewage. I read a lot of “hope”. Everyone with plenty of cynicism yet cannot wait to open their wallet for just. one. more. purchase. I fucking hate reading dorks commenting on IM pre-sale product blogs. “I can’t wait to get my hands on this.” Or “Great video. This is just what I need.” Really? Many of these people are desperate. They don’t have a clue what they are doing. All they read/heard was that they don’t have to do the traditional hard work. It’s sad, man.
The only reason those people are excited is because some opportunist promised riches without having to do any work. This may in fact be the murky discharge onto the white sandy beaches people have hoped to find. I hope each and every one of these desperate critters find riches beyond their wildest dream with this bullshit or others like it. But my guess is if it’s this dubious you better scoop that shit while you can because whatever shit this dude is manipulating is bound to collapse in a putrid pile.
I despise these marketing tactics. Why the secrecy? The dude only wants a couple hundred to play. He has a couple of hundred slobbering on the blog. Just sell the crap already. Why does the web sewers need more self-serving videos over the next few days until go time? I will get an email from my spammer every day until launch letting me know I should get in line. All the while I’m wondering why the fuck isn’t this pencil neck not telling me to get busy using his glorious make money online technique that I originally purchased. Alas, that isn’t the way it works. It’s all about the next easy sell.
Don’t you love the reverse psychology these jokers use now? They spin it around and tell you that they know what they’re selling sounds too good to be true. That they wouldn’t trust them either. So you think, hell, yea, he is one of us. He can be trusted because he wouldn’t trust himself. Say what?
This may be the one. It really might be. It could be the exception that disproves the rule. Though the chances are better that it will be the latest pile of shit. At some point you have to just decide that you are done chasing the latest and grooviest. It’s like crack. An addiction. And it gets worse because these fuckers are getting really good at presentations and the economy and desperation people feel are getting worse by the day in our fucked up world. You may miss out on the biggest thing ever, but man, the chances are damn good that you won’t. Dig?
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
This is why I like to use disposable emails through “10 Minute Mail”. If the free item or report is of value, I will go back and sign up with a real email address… But I keep a short leash on the marketer. When they start promoting the latest fad, I remove myself from their list.
It’s amazing how much more you can get done in a day when your inbox isn’t overloaded with marketing crap.
Mark
Oklahoma City
Great f–king post. Forget about pre-launch blogs, now everybody is doing webinars. There’s about 100 webinars a week. The last 30mins is about their must have product that you can only get access to thru the special webinar only link.
“But the next thing you know, after about a month, you start getting emails from these fuckers pimping other people’s shit. So if your shit was so good then why do I need someone else’s shit?”
Craig Kaye of IPK (Info Product Killer) has been doing this. Before the relaunch of IPK 2 he was promoting Mass Article Control to his IPK members. I just happened to be one of them. IPK 2 was $37. I paid $97 a year ago for the same info. Lots of new buyers, built up his email list and just last week he sent out emails promoting Rob Benwells product Autoblogging System X which is crap in my opinion.
Another thing I see going on is guberus selling SEO products when they make the majority of their income using PPC. Example: Joel Peterson of TheMiniSiteFormula. He just did a webinar last week about how he has been killing it with PPC the last 6 years. I have this product also.
From the salespage: “You don’t have to pay for advertising so you can get started even if you don’t have much cash.”
What?
Ref your comment:
“I can’t wait to get my hands on this.” Or “Great video. This is just what I need.” Really? Many of these people are desperate.
No… many of these profiles are sock puppets.
I saw some comments on a teeth whitening sales page a while back… first comment:
1) Sammy SlimeBag 01/02/2010:
Great im gonna order this today, it looks great:
2) Sammy SlimeBag 01/05/2010:
My order just arrived, looks great, cant wait to try it, Ill post back the results for you in a few weeks
3) Sammy SlimeBag 02/15/2020:
Wow this really does work, here are some BEFORE AND AFTER SHOTS
Images in a comment?? I wondered if perhaps Sammy Slimebag had been so kind as to hyperlink them from flickr or a free image hosting service.
No… the images were hosted on by the rotten tooth fairy himself…
You can never trust a comment.
You can never trust a forum post.
There are a handful of review sites that are trustworthy, but most of those are only trustworthy whilst they are “exposing comptetitors scams”, once trust is built they almost always unleash scams of their own on their own trusting readership.
I am on a couple of mailing lists from people I used to rate, who sold valuable stuff, recently they have started peddling crap too… how little value they place on their own names and reputations.
I guess they know they were one hit wonders and will never have anything genuinely worth a shit to sell again.
Mark, I’m with you. I’m a curious sort and enjoying seeing the pitch, if for nothing else to give me something to bitch about on this blog. I have a garbage email account that I use solely for pitches.
Thanks for reading Conray. Kaye is one of the worst offenders in this game. Like you said, the fact that he dropped the price of IPK from $97 to $37 is a slap at anyone buying at the higher price. He sacrificed those folks for a larger audience and more emails of the desperate. And yea, the webinar thing is out of control. And even if you are interested in one, they don’t record it or give you access to the recording. Stupid.
Jez, yea you’re right. Many of those comments are bogus. I’m sure you could dig up some Wordpress plugin that mass creates garbage comments.
Just wait until I unleash my web sewer magic on the unsuspecting readers of this shitpile. Building up that trust until I snap it like a twig in a glorious sunami of green colored paper riches.
Like Seth Godin says, “All marketers are liars”.
I’d say a lot of marketers are liars.
What’s “the next secret”? Simple, just product great stuff, give away as much as you can, build a customer base that is proud to tell their friends. (Being a little weird and outrageous seems to help too.)
And most importantly, keep it real. I wrote a tiny little ebook on how to make a few bucks in the next week online. I sell it for $12 bucks. I don’t sell tons of it, because so many folks are chasing the THOUSANDS of instant cash scams out there, but there are a few, here and there, who are really looking for something that is real, that works, and isn’t all hype.
Thank you SPLORK for keeping it real.
Mr Twenty Twenty
Thanks for reading Mr Twenty Twenty
All the best disgusting techniques I picked up have been kept under my hat. Although all of my grubby arsenal was shared with one of the above commentators. The only time I would let people into the loop is if they would be useful as some cog in my crap-link schemes; not in a way that they were being used though. The people I dealt with got very good deals in terms of link for investment.
IMO, the only time you see any of these crap schemes having any value at all is if its a pyramid scheme and no doubt most of them keep the serfs happy enough not to flop out while creaming of the top of their schemes. An old example being the link exchange networks, which give bottom level users a hand full of crappies while the owner launders their links through the system en mass.
Nice work, Splork!!
Super Like this post…
I have been working like a fucking dog on hubpages for the past few months and probably wont be seeing results, not at least till 4 or 6 months later when the backlinks start kicking in…
Throughout the years, I have learned that there are only two truths about this whole internet marketing bullshit: Build Pages & Get Links, then rinse and repeat…(that is if you do not want to develop some “orgasmic love affair” with your email list subscribers by pimping them shit)
But sadly, many people are not even willing to do these two simple steps and are praying for some gold nuggets to fall from the sky…
Ken
Michigan
Unfortunately six months is probably the reality. I went on a Hubpage rampage a year or so ago and burned out. Wish I had built more because those suckers are pulling in some change. Nothing dramatic. Some even collect a stinking penny a day, but all together I can buy at least some dinner each day with the effort I put in. But it took a few months before they started getting noticed in Google. Now they are ranked and have stay ranked. And they are referring traffic to other sites I have in the sewers.
Thanks for reading.
Alright….I am going to play devil’s advocate here because although I don’t actively promote IM pre-launch products on my “regular” blog, I do have a pseudonym in which I promote them…and I have actually created products for “consumption”, once again using pseudo-names….
Unless you are Jeff Walker or Frank Kern (John Reese, ect..)then chances are your product launch is making you somewhere’s in the ballpark of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars (not the hundreds of 1,000′s that many would believe).
And as you know, developing products and software takes time. So, you build a product, market it, make a few thousand dollars and you have this list just staring you in the face. What do you do?
You could develop more products but that takes time and energy. Promoting someone else’s product doesn’t. ’nuff said, right?
As far as the claims (100′s of 1,000′s of dollars using a cryptic method noone knows about), well, you have been around the block to know it is all bunk. There is no such thing…and if there were, no one would tell (for instance, I know of a way to stuff ebay cookies on the actual site…haven’t done it but know people who do that make $1,000′s a month…and that kind of information will probably never see the light of day)….
All this said, most of the products have some merit to them, provided you don’t already know it (which chances get smaller and smaller the more experienced you become). You basically play with the “business in a box”, and creatively find a different way to utilize it that the masses of idiot marketers aren’t.
Most marketers who market to marketers are in the business to make money from other marketers though, not from their system.
But you already know this, I know. Just trying to play devil’s advocate here. We can all hate on the gooberu’s but the reality is that they wouldn’t create products if they didn’t sell those products. They are just fulfilling a need, no matter how useless it may actually be.
Splork, that’s classic of you, but yeah, it seems even those IMers whom I used to have some shred of respect are now stooping real low promoting garbage offer after garbage offer….. Few years back, they at least, had more dignity.
Not anymore….
It’s really showing, the desperation, the depths to which people will stoop just to make a few (soon to be worthless $$$) …Sigh.
Leo, yea everyone has to eat. The thing that drives me nuts are these guys that I buy a product from then turn around and pitch me affiliate products the next week. This is how these guys get rich and I get it. Apparently their product is good enough for them to sell for me to get rich but they must not be making enough to get rich themselves. Weird. I would have more respect if they actually liked a product, used it and emailed their list saying “this thing is the greatest. It compliments the product you bought from me because…” But no they just pitch the next Crapbank product or big guru release. I can see both sides of it. Folks are raking in fat stacks. I dunno. I hate being on email lists and I’m not happy servicing an email list (AJP).
Thanks for reading SF
I totally agree with this post…
Have you noticed the new shit thats being peddled on Clickbank now. You buy the product that sounds like a steal at $39 and before you get to download it you get an OTO then another one and another one. The other day I got 5 OTO s before I could download the latest and greatist thing.
Thanks for reading Joseph.
The marketers are in overdrive coming up with new ways to get people to part with their money.
Great post Splork.
Trouble is, those newbies getting sucked into the IM products sewer and just human beings with a common defect, their reptilian brain stem. If they weren’t wasting their life and money on these s*it products, they would be buying 10 blurays a week, or whatever.
The solution is twofold (at least) in my view. (1) Education, and that’s where great posts like this help. And (2) continued IM hard work by ethical real grafters to build up more reputable sites and services, that will eventually pick up the work from those who are educated.
Just my 2 cents, which is more than I have earned so far from IM.
Enjoyed the article Splork and it is good that you are telling it as you see it without the niceties.
I think you have summed up the whole internet marketing industry superbly. They are just feeding on the desperation and hope of people who have a strong desire to succeed online. A lot of these people cannot afford to keep purchasing these dubious products but they do motivated by a strong impulse to strike it lucky the easy way.
I feel I know and I feel I can relate to your post as I was one of those people. I would be sucked in by the latest this or that and would find myself poorer for buying it, yet nothing changed. I now steer clear of these products and have unsubscribed from most of these kind of guys’ lists.
Very good written information. It will be helpful to anybody who employess it, as well as myself. Keep doing what you are doing – can’r wait to read more posts.
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