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Shut Up And Buy Your WSO
Many people are not going to like this, but I don’t really care. Yesterday, I had to open my eyes again to the scams that take place in Internet marketing. And once again, places like WarriorForum.com proved to be bad places for any form of Internet marketer to learn and expand their business.
A day or so ago, I picked up a WSO which I won’t name out of courtesy. I read through this thing and by the end I had a few thoughts in my head:
- That was a lot of hype and fuss over really nothing
- I remembered seeing a blogger post that same method publicly on his blog about a year ago
- I wasn’t sure if I should tell other potential buyers about what I knew…
And that last point is what drove me into an interesting turn of events.
You see… I actually did go share my experience over at Warrior Forum. After posting my review, someone was quick to try to discredit my review. I chose to go find that blog post from a year ago and share it on the sales thread. After all, I don’t like to start fights, but I do really care about a few things in Internet marketing. First off, I am in this business to make money. That’s not really related lol. Second, I have friends and business partners in this industry. Whenever I find a bad product, I send a review via email about it so that my friends don’t get ripped off. Doing that review via email on a regular basis actually made me start this blog.
But that is all really just back story to show you were I’m coming from here.
Needless to say, Warrior Forum was not very happy that I had posted an informed negative review with a link justifying my point. That post spurred on a few people to ask questions about whether this ebook by the author actually added anything to the original method.
This morning Warrior Forum removed the negative posts. And in steps more people to discredit and target me for saying anything negative about the product. People actually went as far as saying that I wasn’t an entrepreneur for posting a negative review. People said that I ruined the guy’s sales thread. People actually think that it’s my fault.
But…
I ask you this… Did I create a product that did not add any value beyond a freely available blog post? Did I hype my product up with a long sales page and a promotional video? Did I fill my actual ebook with affiliate links and 15 pages of fluff?
No. I was the guy who bought this product. Simple as that. I don’t owe the author anything. When I buy things from Warrior Forum or anywhere else for that matter, I am wearing my consumer hat. I should not be expected to give products and services a good review just because I am a marketer.
So this is a call to action for anyone who uses any forum in Internet marketing!
For some reason, forums like Warrior Forum have led everyone to believe that it is not your right to honestly review products. They allow products to be sold without question, just as long as the sales page looks professional.
You need to listen to this warning, because it is only going to get worse. Warrior Forum WSO products are going to start selling more heavily. The fact that this is a forum sales page/thread, makes these products sell very well. List owners and other marketers love to promote these products for that reason alone.
Chances are that you are going to be seeing a lot of WSO products in the coming months. Heck, I can’t even open my email inbox without seeing 2-3 WSOs being promoted every single day.
In closing, I don’t like to sound like a negative ass – but sometimes it is needed. We both work in a business called Internet marketing. Some people have made it their business to deceive you in order to make their living. I personally don’t agree or condone that… and if that doesn’t make me the most popular guy in the room – so be it.
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Tags: Getting Rid of Buyer-itis In Your Business
Most marketers don’t realize it, but buyer-itis is one of the biggest pitfalls for every single marketer on the Internet.
What is buyer-itis?
Buyer-itis is a term that I created recently while I was trying to define something pretty common… Marketers getting stuck in the mindset that they can buy their way out of a problem. It’s probably best to tell you about it through an example…
John is a marketer who is just starting out, or he is looking for a new method to help him make money online. He visits a forum everyday where other marketers sell very attractive looking products, software, and courses. John buys about 3-5 of these per week even though his business is making a big fat $0 every month. He’s spending at least $50-$100 on training every week, but he feels hopeful that he will uncover a gem if he just keeps digging… buying more and more.
John is stuck in buyer-itis. He thinks that if he keeps investing in training and software, that the will get back on his feet with his business. What John doesn’t realize is that this is NEVER going to pan out and he is going to go broke very quickly.
The fact of the matter is that you have to put in the work before you can see any money roll into your business in Internet marketing. Yes, a course might give you some ideas and structure – but a course will never make you money. The same can be said for software. Just having software on your computer will not product money either.
How did they say it on Austin Powers?
It’s not the size, it’s how you use it!
That might be a crude quote, but I think you get the point. You can spend $1,000 on the most amazingly complex piece of software of training from the most wealthy marketer out there. But if you’re not willing to sit down, hammer out some actual work, and produce results – you will never make a dime online.
Are You An Honest Internet Marketer?
Would you consider yourself an honest Internet marketer? And would you be willing to let your spouse, children, and other family take a look at exactly what you’re doing online?
Every marketer that I know, including myself, would probably say Yes.
However, there are some marketers out there that dupe people on a daily basis. And I’m guessing that 9 out of 10 of these guys know that they are doing it.
This morning, I was researching a few clickbank products. And while I was looking through the front page results for this top selling Clickbank product called Flight Sim Pro… I found this video:
If you watch it, you’ll hear a guy who is exposing a recurring theme in Internet marketing – affiliate marketers not telling the whole story in their promotions. Hardly ever do you see actual honest reviews coming out in Internet marketing. This guy is basically saying that there is a free version of this product and it is a “scam” for the company to sell it.
That may or may not be true. After all, the Flight Sim people seem to have improved the free open source engine a bit and are likely selling it legally.
But the reason I’m showing you this is for few reasons…
Being honest and transparent in affiliate marketing is VERY rare. That might surprise you, but it’s true. Most marketers have tunnel vision with products they promote and will not tell visitors about alternatives, faults, etc…
Do you see the opportunity here?
Instead of getting mad about the not so honest marketers out there, you should be jumping with joy at what I’ve just told you. Imagine what would happen if you walked into just about any market on the Internet and were 100% truthful/honest/transparent with the products you promoted. You would stand out and the audience would love you.
Think about this…
- What if all of your videos, blog posts, and other content on the web was 100% honest and trustworthy?
- Would people be more likely to buy from you?
- Would you feel better about your business knowing that what you are promoting is actually worth buying?
- How much leverage would you have over your competition who are all just saying the same thing about the products?
Take this advice to heart! Become an honest marketer and your audience will love you for it. You will crush your competition who are all claiming every product is a gift from God.
Dude, Did You Get Paid?
The more products I promote, the more of a pain it is to get paid. So many merchants are starting to use their own payment systems and stray away from Clickbank. One common affiliate management center is Infusionsoft.
For some reason, big name marketers are usually horrible at paying affiliates on time. Which is why I am here to give you some advice today…
Before you spend your time and money to promote a product, make sure that you are going to get paid (and on time). Paying your affiliates for referring sales to you is completing the promise that you made with them initially. Not paying them is criminal. But for some reason, many marketers don’t take it seriously. They draw it out, don’t reply to emails, and basically ignore their loyal affiliates.
If you cannot get your full payment and you’ve exhausted all possible avenues of resolving the issue, then maybe it’s time for legal action. Internet marketing is a business just like any other business. If you don’t fulfill your promises and forget/refuse to pay as promised, then let the legal system sort it out.
Perhaps after enough marketers are slapped by the hand of the law, then they will start taking affiliates seriously. Until the, you’ve just to be careful with WHO and WHAT you promote.
Luckily for you (not so much for the fraudsters), with the social sites on the Internet today, you can easily share your experiences about fraudulent authors/merchants/vendors.
An Internet Marketing Newbie? Best Advice
When you are first getting started with Internet marketing, you need to make sure that you have a solid foundation. There are a lot of people who try for not only months, BUT YEARS in Internet marketing. And by “try” I mean that they go for 2 or even 3 years without even making one dollar online. I don’t mean to offend anyone, but that is just insane.
Albert Einstein once said something along the lines of “doing the same thing over and over and expecting… is the definition of insanity” or something like that.
In Internet marketing, as with anything that takes effort, you have got to be careful. A lot of people will read the above quote and think “well, maybe I just haven’t tried enough methods… time to jump over to Warrior Forum and buy some more WSOs!… away to the bat mobile!”. Well, maybe you didn’t scream out the bat mobile part, but a lot of people think that buying a new course is going to help them make money online.
Here comes hard hitting advice #1: Sorry to tell you, but buying a course IS NOT going to make you money online.
Now that your feet are back on the ground, it’s time to get real about making money online. Money is only made online by selling something. Here are some examples:
- Selling a product via Amazon.com. You could be referring people to Amazon and if they whip out their credit card and buy, then you get a commission.
- Selling products via affiliate networks. Same principal… they need to buy.
- Selling leads to an affiliate network… A lot of affiliates don’t think about this, but when you are generating leads (email, zip, short/long form), someone is buying those from the affiliate network. You are just the person who is generating them. A transaction is still taking place.
Do you get the point?
And now that we’ve figured out that money is only being made when people are buying a product/service, we can get into my next piece of advice…
Advice #2: Higher quality, trusted, and valuable to the customer products are easier to sell… duh!
Do you have a subscription to Netflix? – who doesn’t! Well, my point here is that services like Netflix are very easy to “sell” to your friends and family because they are such high quality, are trusted (not to mention reasonable priced). I wish I had an affiliate link for every family member I got into Netflix because there were a ton.
In the online marketing world, you need to spend some time digging around for products that have that “no brainer” feeling for the customer. It makes your job a whole lot easier and you sell a lot more product with a lot less work.
Changing direction, I just want to cover one last point before we end this post…
Time is either your best friend or your worst enemy. For example, time is your enemy if you are wasting it by surfing around forums reading non-sense threads. On the other hand, time is your friend if you are using it to make money!
I used to spend the better part of my day looking through about 10 blogs in the Internet marketing space. I would pull up my bookmarks, open all of them in tabs, and then start looking for updates. My hopes were that I would find some little tid-bit of advice that would help me make money online.
I never found one!
But… everything changed when I just picked a method and started working.
Advice #3: Focus… Focus… Focus young Padawan
Put your head down and just get the work done. You shouldn’t care if everyone says the sky is falling and all the traffic methods are drying up. Just put your head down and hammer away. Come up every now and then for air (to relax and clear your head), but whatever you do… for the love of Pete… don’t stop and change direction because of a whim.
Well, I hope that you got something out of this. When I was first starting out, I felt like I was one of the many Internet marketing sheep (email list subscribers) being toss around from this method to that method. When I stopped listening to the “experts” and started getting actual work done… I started making money.
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