The FTC may have made it a little more difficult – requiring marketers to jump through a few more hoops to continue using shady business practices, but it definitely continues. Sure some marketers made a bundle and got out before the crackdown, and somehow they are able to justify the money in their bank account to themselves, perhaps with an “every man for himself” type of view. Others are continuing to evolve in order to keep selling deceit – whether its by posting certain disclaimers, or moving their business offshore, or using loopholes in the law, or by rotating merchant accounts, staying one step ahead of government bodies, etc.

Heck, even big affiliate networks created their own in-house scam offers once they saw how lucrative it could be. Does acai berry ring a bell? Colon cleanse anyone? I actually purchased these products to see how far the scam went. It wasn’t pretty. Especially when I tried to refund before the continuity charges started.

I choose not to name individual names because I’m not here to cast stones at my fellow marketing sinners. These people know who they are, and you can easily find them yourself. A little tool called Google makes it really easy. You are likely on some of their lists as we speak.

But what happens to marketers who sell in a competitive mindset, through fear tactics, false scarcity, and rationalization, is that they are putting it out there to the world that they expect to live in that kind of world themselves. Where they too should live in fear. Where they too should expect to be sold with lies, and treated as sheep. Where they too should fear that their money will disappear any day now, when they are “found out”.

I can’t live that way. Not anymore.

Prior to 2008 I considered myself “driven” to compete with every other marketer out there to make the most money, so that when we had our big guru masterminds, I could get my ego stroked by my fellow snake oil salesmen, and feel like I was “the man”. And their approval would help me rationalize the selling practices any way I could. It was simply all about numbers to me, not value to the customer. Sure I thought my stuff was pretty good as far as ebooks go, and further from the “scammy” side than most. But I also knew less than 5% of my customers were successful. I would rationalize it by thinking those sub-5% were the only people who took action, as so many other marketers do. But this simply isn’t true. It’s just a cop-out.

After all, the people who bought the $10k coaching that I outsourced sure “took action”. A $10k committment is a HUGE “action”. And I simply got my $3k cut from the coaching floor and passed the responsibility onto them to fulfill upon their promises. Rarely did I check up on any of those individual customers or receive a glowing testimonial about the coaching. But I didn’t care. I rationalized it by convincing myself that if I wasn’t hearing complaints, then everything was ok. And I hid behind the character I had created (which interestingly enough, made it hard for me to figure out how to actually talk to my customers 1 on 1). But I figured that as far as scammy ebook stuff goes, I was one of the good guys. Looking back now, I was far from a good guy. I provided *some* value, but I could have done so much more. It seems most of the success stories came from people who ended up selling get-rich *secrets* themselves. It reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live clip – where an infomercial guy sells a book about “How to get rich by selling a book about how to get rich by selling a book”.

And many of those “success stories” are now people who sell with fear and live in fear.

Selling with scarcity tactics, such as “only 12 copies left”, or “only 5 minutes left”, or “re-opening the doors for a short time” … it’s all garbage marketing. Even if the statement happens to be true, why limit perfectly abundant information?

And here’s an insight for you: at guru masterminds, do you think we talked about how wonderful our customers were? I wish that were the case.

Looking back… how dare I talk sh*t about my customers. As if I owned them and was doing them some huge favor. It’s disgusting. And not only was there customer-bashing, but we literally complained about how new rules constantly made it tougher for us to sell people using bullsh*t tactics. Oh, woe-is-me, I’m only making $1 mil a month now instead of the $2 mil a month I could have made if the stupid FTC wouldn’t have made me start telling the truth a *little* more.

What’s really obscene is that I am still on many lists as a super affiliate, so I get the insider emails during launches. BUT, I also get the emails that the prospects get. And it’s appalling at how contradictory the 2 emails are. One email tells the prospect how great everything is, how much they will be taken care of. And the other email brags about easy money, how well its converting, how many copies have *really* been sold, when the miraculous re-opening will happen, and what prizes are involved for marketers who *pound* their lists. Zero mention of the value to the customer, other than *perceived value*, otherwise known as the *thud* factor. The 2 contradictory emails alone could probably get so many marketers in hot water, and I don’t know if they realize it because they are caught up in their own hype machine.

I realize this blog post probably won’t do me any favors as far as getting my fellow marketers to eventually promote my “Bring the Fresh” video series, but in the end, maybe that’s a good thing.

But I digress. I guess this turned into more of a rant – but to be clear I am not singling out anyone but myself. And I’d like to put it out there for you to ponder however you want. I’d like to recommend one thing to you – Be suspicious.

Be suspicious of push-button solutions. Be suspicious of products with names like “Underground grim reaper autopilot gold bar instant millionaire wealth generator.” Be suspicious of anything that says “earn up to 8 billion dollars per second”. I know it all seems like a no-brainer but people are actually still buying this stuff. Be suspicious of product launches. Be suspicious of cut and paste emails you receive from 42 different people. Be suspicious of anything that “everyone is talking about”. Be suspicious of anything with a bonus or “downsell”.

Be suspicious of ME. Be suspicious of this post! And finally, be suspicious of lines. One of the craziest things I’ve realized is that people love lines. I’m not kidding. If you go somewhere and you see a line, don’t people typically just get in that line without asking questions? And isn’t that what a launch waiting list is? Or a huge launch thread on Warrior Forum? They are digital lines.

And to be clear, what I mean by suspicious is not necessarily that it’s a scam… I just mean that the trend seems to indicate there’s a high percentage chance that it is. Do your own investigating and come to your own conclusions.

Oh, and one more thing – be suspicious of a P.S. in an email.

Maybe I’m way off topic at this point, whatever the topic is, but I felt some of these things had to be said.

Good luck out there,

Kelly

P.S. Buy lots of stuff from me.

Edited: February 22nd, 2010

END QUOTE:

Think about it for a minute: If YOU just halfheartedly gave this marketing thing a try and called yourself “The Rich Jerk” and it suddenly made you rich, would you just simply pull the plug and say “oops, sorry. I’m faking it. Here’s your money back”? The answer is, you couldn’t even if you wanted to, however… bla bla bla, right?

A true “immoral” person would keep it going forever and get richer and richer, but a person with some moral standards would feel bad, and clear his name. Well, in the interest of keeping this blog post less than a mile long suffice it to say that, I think Kelly is doing just that and is doing a great job even as we speak.

In Closing:

I could and eventually will say a lot more but this post is already very long so I’ll stop for now. More later.

Keep your chin up and… Stay Boosted!

Gary.