What I Hate About The Internet Marketing Niche
By Anna Johnson on April 3rd, 2009Before I get started on today’s rant, let me assure you that I wouldn’t be involved in the Internet marketing niche unless, overall, I loved it.
I LOVE Internet marketing itself, and I love helping entrepreneurs harness Internet marketing skills, tools, strategies, tactics, etc to enrich the world with their innovative products and services.
But there ARE a few things I hate about the Internet marketing scene…
Firstly, let me be clear about what I mean by ‘Internet marketing’ and ‘Internet marketing niche’ (or scene, industry, etc).
In my mind, ‘Internet marketing’ involves using the Internet to generate prospects or ‘traffic’, converting that traffic into customers, satisfying those customers, and enticing them coming back to buy more, again and again.
Admittedly, this is a pretty broad definition that encompasses many activities that go far beyond, for example, online advertising.
The ‘Internet marketing niche’ refers to the market for (buyers and sellers of) information, tools, training, products, services, etc about Internet marketing.
First the good news…
Because of where the Internet marketing niche is focused (i.e. on Internet marketing) it is rife with people and companies on the cutting edge when it comes to utilizing the Internet to generate traffic, bring about conversions, satisfy customers and get them buying more and more often, etc.
Not surprisingly, Internet marketing has also attracted the best and brightest minds from the more general marketing world. In particular, many have come from direct response marketing. Direct response marketers have, by and large, discovered the Internet as the most immediately measurable, large-scale marketing medium yet invented.
Now for the bad news, or what I really hate about the Internet marketing niche…
And what I hate is the emphasis on ‘making money’ over delivering something great to customers.
Go to one of the popular Internet marketing forums, or observe the promotional emails or ads put out by many Internet marketers pitching to Internet marketing niche buyers, and you’ll see the emphasis on money over everything else.
No-one writes headlines such as: ‘How To Change People’s Lives By Learning The Secrets To Marketing Online’
What you see, instead, is: ‘How To Make Thousands of Dollars By Learning The Secrets To Marketing Online’
Before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I will state loud and clear, that we run the money-focused ads in this newsletter. Why? Because they work! And they work because it’s the money that appeals to Internet marketing niche buyers.
It may sound like a cop-out, but Internet marketing niche sellers wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t give people what they wanted.
The fact is, buyers don’t necessarily want to know how to change people’s lives or bring world-changing innovations to the world… they want to know how to make money.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. Many, if not most of us, have been brought up to value money and to value it above many other things. After all, we depend on it for food, shelter, clothing, health care, and general living.
Moreover, if you’re tired of struggling financially, and are looking for something to get out of your rut, you will naturally want to know if a given business opportunity or marketing approach is really going to work i.e. make you money.
Show me the money, right?
So we do run ads like this, and will continue to do so.
But I will, at least, use today’s feature article, to voice my belief that there is too much emphasis on making money, and not enough on delivering great products and services that delight customers. Or building great companies where people love to work and that deliver great products and services that delight customers.
I don’t expect to see a de-emphasis on money in sales letters, ads, or promotional emails within the Internet marketing niche. Not when sales are at stake.
But I would love to see it come across in what Internet marketers think, say and do.
I would love, for example, to see more people come into Internet marketing thinking about how they can use Internet marketing to, not just make money for themselves, but to impact people in a wonderful, profound way.
I see this in many other entrepreneurial circles… why not Internet marketing?
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:53 am
There isn’t?
How about those people who have spent many thousands of dollars and many years to master Internet marketing? When they have finally done it, and made their money, they are willing to sell you their system for the low, low price of $19.95 – to give something back. You can go from zero to a few thousands in just one month using their system. In fact, if you order now, they will even give you a discount, and throw in many ebooks worth hundreds of dollars.
Don’t bite my head off. Just kidding.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
You got it David
Although, it’s often for the low, low price of $1,995!
Seriously, though, I am all for successful Internet marketers teaching and helping others to bring even more great innovations and wonderful things to the world. I think that’s a wonderful calling and a wonderful business. And more power to those who are inspired to do that above and beyond the money they make.
But shame on those who just see teaching, training, coaching, advising, etc as a way to enrich themselves at the expense of their students.
April 3rd, 2009 at 8:19 am
Hi Anna,
I am one of the ones who came online looking for the “Silver Bullet” to riches and spent thousands of dollars hopping from one thing to another. Some of them were of course pure BS (but I didn’t know it at the time), but yet many of the others gave me true value. In other words they sold me what I wanted to buy. “Get Rich Quick”.
But the real value of the IM niche to me was the inspiration to create a real service of value for my customers; who are all Internet Marketers. This is making me a nice monthly income so I have to say thanks to the BS Artist and a Big Thank You to the true Internet Marketers which gave me true value.
Ken
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:39 am
Anna
wonderful article and somehow in line with what we chat a few days ago about a quality label in IM.
I thought a little about this and think the Warrior Forum could issue such a QL, reviewing products before sold = WARRIOR APPROVED. Guess many scam artist would stop to over-hype their material.
Now to your article.
It\’s the difference between building a long term business or making the fast buck. A marketer can decide to go one or the other path.
1 – The long lasting plan includes all we want, delivering quality in first place, caring for clients, building a relationship and much more.
2 – The short version, fast money, mostly a scam or only rewritten PLR in a new box.
Funny is that many have a high success in the second one. This is where human stupidness takes place which believes seriously that you can make millions buying a $47.- product, with no work involved.
And even worse, he believe it over and over again.
But as a professional, as marketers, we know that people new to this are blind to see the truth, that\’s why I think a scammer has to be punished, as he does fool people on purpose.
Off course there are difficulties to decide what\’s a scam and what not. But there exist a definition of what\’s a scam and the proper product and his sales letter gives us the base to judge this. Nobody can claim that it was not meant to be the way it was written.
G.
April 3rd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
The IM niche and many other home business sectors are much like the drug trade. On one side you have throngs of people who know they won’t actually work with the info they are buying; they just love the rush of buying from one more sales letter and telling themselves “this time will be different”.
And on the other you have the peddlers who know how to package and push and often don’t care about the wellbeing of the consumers. After all, the junkies will always come back for more.
Is this a fitting picture of the entire home business industry? Of course not but it’s appropriate for many cases.
April 4th, 2009 at 6:34 am
@Timothy
You hit the nail on the head, people are screaming for what what they perceive to be the magic formula. We live in a fast community where we all want results right now! So if you want your fix now then hop over to any big IM Forum and you will see for yourself. Thankfully there are one or two gems that don’t BS you and actually come up with the goods.
April 4th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
You guy’s are right, folks are hungry for quick fix.
But does this justify the BS and scam products out there.
Bar owners are sued when they sell to drunken people if they cause an accident. Drug dealers go to prison if they sell what addicted want.
They just sell what the hungry crowd want.
So IMO, this is by no means a excuse for the bad quality of a lot products published. That’s why I’m a favor of punishing scam artists in some way.
If they claim “make 124’235.97 dollars in 2 weeks, just copy my system” then I even don’t have to open the sales page. That has to stop or people will stop to buy.
You know what’s still THE BEST form of advertising ? Mouth to mouth.
So if the overall market is so full of crap that you can’t find the good ones anymore, then consumers/newbies will simply stop to come in as all will tell them to forget it, this IM stuff isn’t working no way and you just get ripped off.
G
January 18th, 2010 at 2:36 am
I’m sorry but I used to work for Citysearch, and did a brief stint working for a Facebook partner and I have come to realize that internet marketing is a HUGE SCAM. I have spent or wasted, much time learning SEO only to realize that it is a completely useless piece of knowledge. You want people to come to your site, use Google Ads, and then do traditional forms of marketing, like tv. You really want to annoy people even more than they already are in our increasingly impatient and claustrophobic society, then fine, by all means convince yourself that when you are on the computer, your purpose is to sit their and pay attention to annoying ads and “clever” use of key words. I mean cmon that sounds ridiculous. What I have come to understand is that when someone is on the pc, they are looking for something, not SOMETHING ELSE. You have a small business, and want internet presence, use Google, PERIOD. They practically are the internet. I’ll save you thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours listening to some marketing “executive” try and explain all the wonderful benefits of using some crappy website or “service” to help you get higher up on the Google search, oh yeah!!! God get a life people. Citysearch was a scam to me. Facebook was worse, my god how awful is that site. I guess after working online “I’m form the internet” for 6 years now, I have come to realize, I need to unplug and go back to a time when there was no pressure to register online to see my own damn money in my bank account, or to view a picture or read an article. I have been using the pc for no more than a standard work day, I’m on the phone mos of the time, and I feel great. Americans are getting stupider and more dependent on “technology”, um web based applications, wow how advanced. And we are getting fatter too. Not me hahaha
June 12th, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Just forget internet marketing folks. It will only lead to max out credit cards, possibly bankruptcy, a huge loss of time, and extreme frustration. There is no quick way to get started or easy money in this game. Maybe when the internet was new and before people realized the potential of it, then it was probably a great feeding frenzy back in the early years. The bones have been picked clean, there is no meat left for the beginners anymore.