Don’t Get Scammed By Promises of Big Bucks

Caroline,

really good post, and although I agree with some of the comments on other blogs etc I have to say that the ebook was really well produced and good on you for publishing this post. I think that many bloggers don’t get that they do have to spend a little to get something - that’s dumb notion one for me - whether it’s time or money it doesn’t matter, it still costs you in the long run. I’d love to see what John Chow spent on Google adwords last year and compare that to his revenue - he says that he’s not bothered about google, yet advertises with them - how strange! lol.

“John Chow is another blogger famous for reporting his monthly earnings but he never shows profit - only revenue.”

Actually he does in some posts say that he spent about $500 on AdWords…

And it’s really the numbers game. Seriously who would make a great first impression on your mind: a blogger who said he earned $5000 or a blogger who said he had profits of $1,000…I’d say the former…

I think you’re really onto to something here Caroline. Let me take it just a little step further. There was a little while back a little bit of a buzz in the IM circle about posting social proof on sales pages, blogs etc. And it really amounted to was putting up pictures of clickbank screenshots, there are still tons of these floating about and it’s still a mainstream thing to do. Ipersonally could give a flying sh!t what someone claims he makes, on his sales page, and one thing you NEVER SEE is how much someone who has bought what ever fad of the week IM product is making after having bought and used the product. Yes there are dudes like shoe money who have a pic of them holding a big piece of google cheese, I think he has or had a post where he sort of laid out how he did this, details are vague now though. But you do bring up a good point, what costs are asociated with the revenue. I personally dont do the social proof thing, because it isnt about me, know what I meanoccasionally I show a sales figure in a case study after having bought a product. Which I seldom do. I know how to use google to find what info I want and alot of what is sold is old or rehashed infor from like a decade ago.
Any hoo just my .02$

Shane

Another thing people don’t quite put together is that a lot of the highly successful IM people are excellent marketers. It does not necessarily follow that they have an excellent product, even if it’s a “how to market” product. Being able to do a thing and being able to teach it really well are two different skills.

(Not implying that all mega-selling info products are bad, but some of them are very light on value, IMO.)

This doesn’t only apply to IM. Dan Kennedy often throws numbers around about huge-volume results from direct mail campaigns, but if you sit there and do some mental math about what those campaigns cost (not just the mailing but the cost of fulfilling the orders), the results are more in the “quite nice” than “miraculous” category.

Again, it’s not that his techniques are bad, just that they’re not what I call magic beans. You still have to work and you still have to put solid business strategies together.

I won’t name names, but I recently got an audio program for free for signing up for something else. The program is touted as having sold for $499 to some huge number of people.

GOOD GOD IT’S BAD. This thing veers between useless and offensive. But do I believe the marketer if s/he shows me receipts showing millions of dollars of income? Sure–s/he sold a lot of crummy product. Doesn’t mean I need to spend money on it.

What you’re writing makes sense, as every business owner with some experience knows only too well. If you make a lot of money, you have to put in and pay out a lot too, alas, and support yourself as well. Even without considering what you have to pay out to other entities, there’s simply the value of the time, effort and expertise you put into it. It has to be factored in.

@Ruchir, you hit the nail on the head there :)

@Shane, yeah Shoemoney’s AdSense check ranks very highly in Google and it is his most viewed page on his website! However he’s actually pretty forthcoming with information - i was listening to a podcast of his some months back and he spends like $60k a month on AdWords some months and is happy to admit it.

@Sonia, well if something is a freebie being thrown at you just as a bonus, it can’t be that good can it hehe :)

Just read Sonia Simone’s comments and I agree with her.
Internet Marketing is the ‘in’ thing, but I have read your e-book and I have found practical tips to improve my blog (as a novice). I think that you have a talent for teaching and explaining real things, and you must be able to put this talent to good use, I’m sure, without the glitter.

Hey,
I see a lot of such ’scams’ you mentioned are mainly affiliate programs or email list marketers. Either they are trying to recruit an army non-suspecting and ambitious newbies to spread teh ord around for their product/service, or, simply collecting email addresses by luring you to smartly designed sales pages and giving away freebies.
Your example of Adsense income is spot on. Most affiliate programs are like that..by that you gross any good amount you give up. BUt I have made some money with good affiliate programs so I won’t banish all of them. But as you said, ‘take them with a pinch of salt’, as there are no ‘get-rich-quick’ thing even in online world.

Your ebook is very good. You’re a great teacher and I hope that you will use this gift to do great things on the net.
Its a pity that some are missing the point. If you did not publish your revenues last year none of this would probably have been an issue. But having said so I admire your honesty, persistence and growth.
Money or no money, you’ve proved one thing, you can teach internet marketing concepts and I’m sure you can also teach the technical stuff just as well.

Interesting post, great read of the day I might say. Keep up the good work!

-Mike

I couldn’t agree more with this! The fact that people claim making big bucks but never say how much they invested in the first place is not being discussed enough.
Too many people get scammed nowadays and this wouldn’t happen if they used a little bit of common sense. John Chow may have spent very little on Adwords but he must be a very talented marketer (not all of us are!) because frankly, I visited his blog and could only stay 5 minutes on it; actually his blog is so full of pictures and other s@@@t that my little 5 year-old computer with my cheap broadband connection just froze!
I guess you could call me one of the End Users but I will never get scammed (yes I think this word is suitable) that way because I never spend a dime on any programme on the Internet. I love anything that is free and the only way I risk being scammed is from my time!

@Internet Junkie, hmm I’m not saying that everything should be free or that every paid program is a scam! Indeed, I currently pay for Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind and CopyBlogger’s Teaching Sells programs and I have also bought and enjoyed several ebooks. But these are the good guys of the IM world :)

I can’t say that any better, Caroline.

But this is how the “make money” industry works. The “best-selling” e-books will always be “make $xxxx (in the 4-7 figure) a ___” type of information.

Although in my opinion, that is not ethically correct, there is a new customer born every minute…

I recall buying into that type of products — with lots of proofs on Clickbank account screenshots and photos of the checks, etc… To me those “gurus” were heroes to me years ago but now no more than just annoying spammers who email with with just another offer of the day…

without any content whatsoever.

Just interesting stories in every emails, because those are what sells, always.

Now that I know a bit better, those who I still subscribe to, are entirely different now. Perhaps they will change again in the future but now I really like these people.

I think this feeling is not only excitement anymore.

And your feed is being part of my news reader because I’m impressed with what you’re doing. I have been blogging for years but just recently realize that just as important as posting new posts is to go out and mingle with others.

I have been doing SEO, PPC and other things but just recently taking social media seriously because of this blog. I mean, what most people overlook is that we can build a site just by going out and network with others just like what you’ve done with 30 day challenge as a start… rather than jumping from one e-book to another.

We often underestimate the resources we have around us… I mean, I’ve following Frank and Ed since they release the Underachiever system and talking about that in seminars but never do I know I can do like what you’ve done with a free to join “challenge” group.

I never actively participated in those, although every year except last year, I joined. I saw many people quit and just a handful of them actually made money, let alone decide to quit job and become full time.

But I learned my lesson.

About your e-book, I haven’t read it yet but skimming through it I can say that it is good. Those who said about you can’t create an e-book aboout making money certainly haven’t even seen the content, or don’t know what they’re talking about.

It is really… a good post and keep continue your nice work.

Ha-ha. After editing all that, let me just say this:

Sizzle sells the steak, but you control the wallet.
We are all intelligent human beings and if we listen to our inner voice, it either says, “This could be the one” or “Puh-lease”.

Like you said in your comment, Caroline, not everything should be free and not all paid products are scams.
Experience is the best teacher.

Cheers,

Mitch

If I may play Devil’s Advocate for a moment here, forget the “why” (because there’s almost no benefit in marketing to providing Net over Gross in sales copy)–but how could anyone possibly provide an accurate and all-inclusive accounting in their sales copy?

Assuming we’re talking about an informational product, it takes time to create the eBook. How can that time be honestly measured in dollar value for anyone? Which you’d have to do to fully disclose profits vs. earnings in your sales copy.

I have no honest way to calculate the value of my time. In the last 12 months I’ve spoken live twice about responsible web use for children. Once before a high school Civics class, for which I was compensated with a Cupcake and glass of Orange Juice for 30 minutes of time, the second was for a group of local entrepreneurs who donated $500 to a charity of my choice in exchange for 40 minutes of time. So, what is my time worth?

I know the discussion here has been primarily about actual dollars spent against dollars earned, but that’s not really how you calculate your profits in business. Time and labor are expenses you have to account for, just as the branding of your product or business that comes from promotions which may not necessarily create immediate direct sales is assumed profit.

If you take the concept of disclosing profits rather than earnings in sales copy to it’s logical conclusion you’re asking for numbers that are ever-changing and incredibly hard to accurately total.

Sonia Simone commented about a $499 useless product earlier, but was there a single nugget of good information in there? If applied correctly what if that single nugget added 0.5% to your revenue stream over the next 2 years? How much is that worth to you?

Could it be the real problem (of poor results) lies with end users who want that “magic secret” in a Free eBook that’s going to bring them instant millions without any real work required; rather than with the marketers showing the earnings totals of their work instead of profit totals?

No Scott, the problem is not the end user. The problem is deceptive publicity.

People can publish informative numbers very easily. Eg I spent six months, 6 hours a day, five days a week developing this product. I spent $10K promoting this product. The gross income I got in the first six months was $X. It looks like the sales are finished/just beginning to take off.

It’s not hard at all.

One of the big problems is they never say how long it took to develop the stuff - or how much time they put in to marketing. This is apart from the dollars spent.

If they believe their stuff sells because of its quality I have an easy test. I’ll send them some of my stuff. They can promote to their megalist with their mega dollars. We see who sells more. I’ll be happy to admit their stuff is X times better than mine based on sales (or vice versa of course). I don’t think they have the courage of their copy.

Thanks for a great post. It’s great to see people being willing to say these things - and raise the bar for the whole blogosphere.

Gratefully yours.

Evan, I’m just not sure what’s actually deceptive about it. If you interview for a new job and the person asks your current wage do you tell them the take-home amount or do you tell them the full salary or hourly value? Of course you’re going to state the gross, and the interviewer knows that.

I’m sure there are some shady examples to point at, but the vast majority of sales copy I’ve ever seen usually says something to the effect of “I did this and earned X dollars in X amount of time.”

There’s nothing untrue or deceptive about that statement (assuming the amounts are legitimate), unless the reader is looking for that “magic secret” where you can operate a business without any operational costs.

Isn’t there some personal responsibility on the part of the reader to understand that any commercial venture is going to have some operational, development, promotional and other costs included? No business operates without them.

And it’s not as simple as you make it seem to lay out everything in sales copy for full disclosure. Here’s another example based on something Caroline mentioned rarely getting disclosed, expenses.

Let’s say I’m selling an eBook about making money using traffic from Google AdWords. Well, I’m pretty good with AdWords after several years of using it and can generally get visitors for under $0.10 per click in any niche. But for anyone who isn’t experienced those same visitors may cost ten times as much because of how Google’s system works.

So I can’t put the dollar amount I’d spend for the traffic into my sales copy, because without fail someone would have to spend more and then claim I lied, when the truth is their lack of experience caused the higher pricing for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending gray area tactics in marketing. I’m really asking if it’s possible that maybe those gray areas exist because end users don’t educate themselves enough before jumping in the first place?

@Scott, I’m not really suggesting that people should try to report profits accurately, that would just be silly. The point of the post is to demonstrate the tactics that some marketers use to inflate figures in order to make their product look more appealing. What they are effectively doing is saying “look I made $xxxx and you can too if you buy my system”.

Actually another point which I didn’t mention in the point is that some of these marketers ARE genuinely sucessful but it is only because of the years they have put in building up their mailing list etc so when they release a new product they can be sure of massive sales. But of course this cannot be easily replicated by a newbie and that’s something that they don’t usually mention on their sales pages.

Caroline, for sure I didn’t intend to derail or hijack your posting and discussion. I think it’s a great topic to discuss in an open manner like this from time to time.

I just think there’s culpability on both ends here. Sure, marketers paint their products in the best light; but at the same time end users are often looking for opportunity products with unreal expectations, such as running a commercial venture without any operational costs or learning curve involved.

Caroline,

Thanks for this post. I think many people forget business 101; the only real number in business is profit.

Unfortunately, many people will need to learn the hard way that almost all revenue requires work. So, for many their first business lesson is discretion in buying products that promise instant success.

I buy almost all products with skepticism first and ask myself is this really something that I passionate about and inline with my goals and skillsets.

On another note: thanks for the ebook. It was a huge help for me. I set a blue host account in September for the sole purpose of using Wordpress. Your ebook got me off my butt and I actually installed it on one of my domains.

One of my blocks is getting lost in the technical details which slows my creativity.

I am really enjoying your blog.

Brian

This is a well known Romanian joke about the Romanian mentality:

A poor farmer with a sick horse sees his neighbor, another farmer, and says, “Hey, what do you give your horse when it’s sick.”

“Gasoline,” says the neighbor.

Next day, the farmer sees his neighbor and is FURIOUS … he says, “Hey, I gave my sick horse gasoline and it died!”

“Funny. So did mine,” says the neighbor

Or for a U.S. cultural reference, take the Simpson episode where Mr. Burn’s asks his “Yes men” advisors how his shares in obviously defunct companies [i.e. Conderate Slave Holdings, Wagon Whips, etc.] are doing and the advisors, obviously afraid to tell him the bad news, reply “Steady” … as in steady in being worth zero.

Unfortunately, yes, like Mr. Burns and the poor farmer, we need to be aware that others answers may not tell the whole story.

But puhhhhhhhhhhhhhhleaze …. please don’t tell me that we are dealing with ethical people here. Please don’t tell me that the neighbor and the advisors are above reproach …. we’re suppose to just “unquestionally and uncritically” accept such people.

btw, the farmer example could be construed as innocent ethically … the neighbor would seemingly not have a interest in seeing his neighbor’s horse die so his handling could be construed as being that of a moron but not with bad will.

However,in the Simpson’s case, it is clear that the advisor’s answer is made out of interest … that the creation of a false impression / deception benefits them. They are not being innocent or acting out of good will in advising that the stocks are doing “steady.”

Thanks Caroline,

You’ve voiced what I’ve been thinking as I make my around the whole marketing online thing for the second time. The first time I gave up due to efforts of those folks mentioned above who wanted to sell something without revealing the facts. I hear a lot of talk about product but I don’t see any descriptions unless you count ebooks on how to make money. I suppose there is nothing wrong with making money from the ads on your site but if the site is really secondary to the ads then that is an upside down model, at least to me. The teaching should be the objective and advertising is to support the writers/producers of the content. Perhaps I am naive.

If you wish to sell me a book on betting at the horse races, I am gambling twice; once on the book and then on the race. So from what I’ve read it would seem that those who make a good income also have a good amount of overhead. They work hard, read and write a lot, pay for ads etc. and because their pitch is believable people will spend a good sum of money on the premise that they can duplicate what the marketing “guru” has done. There is probably a small number of people who can do it and the rest will languish with little or no profit.

Not everyone can do it! I am not sure I can do it but I am willing to have a go at it until I discover I can’t or shouldn’t pursue any further. I am not looking to get rich; it’s just that I have a bunch of hungry mouths to feed.

Thanks for the great insight, I will be following on the feed…

@Harold, yeah there is no such thing as something for nothing. All those successful online work hard and get the job done. Though I hope you are wrong on one point - I like to think that anyone can make an income online if they are prepared to learn and apply what they learn.

Caroline, I’ve thought about this a lot… my conclusion is that I can only wish right now that I had it in me to spend $250k a month in order to profit $10k. Right now, you would have to move those zeroes over a few notches to get to my advertising budget.

Mikes last blog post..$60