I’ve been thinking about “trust” and “Internet marketing”. Having started the ScamFreeZone in 1997 to help people find home business opportunities while avoiding scams, trust and ethics are very important to me, and I found myself with a question…
Once a marketer crosses the “ethical” line and starts lying, how can you trust their motives in ANYTHING they do?
For example, if a marketer does the following…
1: Lies about the number of product copies available (only 224 available!!)
2: Lies about when a product will be taken off the market (only until Sunday!!!)
3: Lies about income generated, or the sources of such income (this method made $524,192 last year!!!!)
4: Lies about anything else (insert your favourite sales letter lies here)
… how can you trust them AT ALL?
Where does an unethical marketer draw the line? Is it when they reach a point where something becomes illegal and they’re faced with doing something potentially criminal?
How do you know for sure that the “3 clicks to instant mega riches” software they sell doesn’t contain a key-logger to snoop on your bank details?
How do you know for sure that they won’t sell your contact details to other “marketers”? What about selling them to people who’ll try to scam you of your bank account or credit card details?
OK, so let’s say you want to learn how to make some money online, but want to AVOID unethical marketers. How do you do that? How can you determine a marketer’s credibility and trust?
Here are my recommendations. I suggest you check out…
… how long the marketer has been in business online
… how frequently they send promotional messages to their free email lists
… whether they promote high quality offers or trashy unethical offers
… whether they take the time to add personal reviews or get exclusive deals for you
… whether they send you quality info and reports for free, with no strings attached
Let me know, below, if you have any other ways to sort good marketers from bad, or if you have any other thoughts about the trust issue.
By the way, if you liked this blog post, you may also want to read A Disturbing Internet Marketing Trend by Gauher and Internet Marketing Victim Services by Mark, both of whom have related information.
Neil,
Great Article, I really agree on your point. Who Do You Trust???
Mark, It isn’t completely correct that because some one is using a gmail address that “they aren’t making they mega bucks they claim.”
Here, in Canada Bell mobility doesn’t offer email addresses and I have the choice of using my site’s emails, which I keep for business, or using gmail for personal messages. That or, wait for it. . . . . Hotmail :-{
I imagine that the problem may occur with other mobile carriers.
I agree, all this so called “call to action” rubbish is becoming off-putting and perhaps there to catch the “newbies”. I hope it will soon stop (yawn). Another irritation is to be offered a downloadable product, only to be overwhelmed by a load of upsell immediately on purchase.
This is really cool post you made here Neil. I certainly do have other ways that I think are pretty good at determining if an internet marketer is ethical are not. Here are some of the following ways:
Lack of any solid guarantee
Sales websites that tell you nothing or very little about what that product actually does and still takes about a couple dozen or more pages to tell you nothing.
Pictures of mansions and luxury cars or real exotic sports cars.
Marketers who require you to prove that their product didn’t work before they will give a refund. This is gravy for them. They know that no one will be able to provide proof. You can’t prove a negative and they know that, and that’s why they have that kind of refund policy.
Marketers who leave no contact info on their website.
Marketers who only take Paypal, or more to the point, those who don’t take credit. Paypal’s resolution process is horrendous, and Paypal often will not make those who were frauded, whole again. With credit, you can just call your credit and odds are they will take the charge off for you. This is something else a lot of marketers know as well, and a lot of the unethical marketers that don’t take credit count on this little fact.
Those who just keep holding the carrot in front of the horse, so to speak. These are the marketers that will try and sell by telling you that what they are selling is all you wlll need to make money. Then next week or so, if not sooner, they sell something else and this time they say you must have their new product to make money, even though his or her last product was suppose to have been all you needed. Now their new product is all you need now, until they have something else to sell, and then they say now you need their newest product, and their newest product is all you need to make money, and this is a vicous cycle that do goes on and on and on. They never really have any intention of giving the horse the carrot.
Those who they don’t need to make a guarantee because their product is so great. I just love this one. This is one of the dumbest things I see on sales pages. If a marketer claims they don’t make need to make a guarantee, it’s most likely because their product is so shoddy that they fear of getting multitudes of refund requests, so it’s because their product is bad, not because it’s good, and that’s why they don’t have a refund policy. I think these come from marketers who are more paranoid than knowledgable, about the whole guarantee issue. I think these sales pages come from marketers who just don’t realize that even bad products don’t get that many refund requests. A lot of people will just eat their loss rather than ask for a refund.
The really good marketers will have no problem making a guarantee. They count on this fact as well. Most marketers who do make guarantees are not being unethical, they just know how the way things are and work that to their advantage.
Their are quite a few other ways I use to judge a marketer, but these are then ones that I were able to think of right off the top of my head.
The points you make are great and more people should take notice of them…! But eye tracking studies combined with user interviews show that there is common behaviour whereby people look for a signal of trust on any web page. People tend to scroll right down to the bottom of the page IF they have found something at the top which interests them. When asked what they are looking for in the fraction of a second they spend on the bottom of the page they say they are looking for the following information: a real, physical address (not a PO Box), a telephone number and an email address. Essentially people are looking for a signal that you are a “real” business. Almost all so-called internet marketers fail to do this, yet it appears to be one of the measures of trust which website visitors use.
Well said Neil. I totally agree, especially about all the false scarcity lately (250 copies, etc). I need to write about it one of these days.
Nice post, Neil. We are always having a million offers and it is really not easy to find out what is really works. And, what is more difficult, to suggest to your customers something and make them trust you. Hard job. I found one article about what could really make customer trust you. Of course, first is to be really honest. And then – you can review it by yourself:)
Great point Neil.
I also start to wonder when the “secret system” has made the seller $8000 a month for the last few months ..but he is selling his “secret system” to only 200 people for $19.95 … and also has a 50% Clickbank affiliate commission on it …
With his bottom line on those 200 sales – less 50% affiliate commission ..he would have made more in 30 minutes using his “secret formula” himself !!
Perhaps he should have used his $8000 profit to buy a calculator !