The Who Do ,That Gurus Do So Well

Whats the damn deal anyhow?

[King_Fisher]

Ive been around long enough to probably know the answer about this question.
But would like to get someone else read on this.

I get tons of email promos from various gurus. Yes I signed up for them because you sometimes can learn bits & pieces of info here and there for free,

In these promos the gurus are always showing check stubs detailing earnings in
the hundred thousand to the million dollar range annually. The individual amounts are conveniently hazed over so you cant see who the payee is.

My question is are the amounts earned from selling the programs or
are the amounts earned using the program they are selling to make money from
Adsense, Affiliates sales or Ecommerce?

In other words are they selling the cow or the milk? KF

[Lobo]

Is not what they're selling made up information for people to buy in to?

[rocker]

In other words are they selling the cow or the milk?

Neither. I think they are getting rich from selling "cow pies".

This reminds me of those infomercials where it shows all these people getting rich buying and selling real estate with no money. It is posible, although I think they make more money from selling the videos on "How To Get Rich Selling Real Estate".

[skibum]

I suspect many of them have at least some success doing what they are writing about but then the cash really starts to pour in when they start selling the info packages on how you did it. You can still make a mint doing the stuff in the PPC affiliate e-books. It's more competitive now for sure but it still works, just have to find your markets.

[lgn1]

GURU is actually an acryonmn for:

Great Understanding, Relatively Useless

[King_Fisher]

I thought it stood for Gosh-U-R-Useless.

[ogletree]

You have to be careful with that kind of stuff. It is not hard to make $500,000 from adsense if you spend $500,000.

[callivert]

It is not hard to make $500,000 from adsense if you spend $500,000.

Really? That sounds good to me. What is your secret?

[ogletree]

My point is you don't know how much they spent to get that. Most of the people showing checks are doing some sort of arbitrage.

[rocker]

It is not hard to make $500,000 from adsense if you spend $500,000.

If you get repeat traffic it might be worth initially breaking even, but if you're visitors are not returning, you're wasting your time.

OT:
That reminds me of the old SNL episode when John Belushi opens a change store. If a customer comes in and gives him a dollar he would give them 4 quarters.

When asked how he made money, he said, on volume :)

[callivert]

Um, you did realise I was joking, right?

[King_Fisher]

Ogletree,

Good point. Really no way to know. If you notice the individual amount on the
checks are always the same 99.00, 99.00, 99.00 etc etc. I think this indicates that they are selling marketing material to us dupes.
What I would like to see is a check stub showing the amounts earned by using
said program on Adwords affiliate sales, Adsense or Ecommerce sites. More like
8.42, 13.50, 4.20, 26.50 etc, etc. Faint hope for that! The magician never lets
you see where the rabbit comes from. KF

[ogletree]

John Belushi was not in that sketch. That was one done in the 80's called First Citywide Bank of Change [yelp.com].

[Old_Honky]

You guys are talking as though you would be comfortable making money like this.

Surely it is the modern day equivalent of snake oil. Conning money out of the poor and guilible.

[ogletree]

Old_Honky it is snake oil for the most part. You can make that kind of money but it is hard work and requires a lot of skill and creativity like any profession. Aff marketing is a legit business. You have to treat it like any business.

[Old_Honky]

Whether you call it multilevel marketing, affiliate marketing or pyramid selling, to me any business idea that makes money by knowingly conning others to invest in something that they have little chance of breaking even with let alone making a profit is not something I would ever want to be involved in. IMHO The fact that it's legitimate just means that the laws need to be changed.

I've worked in marketing all my life and these scams are not marketing.

[ogletree]

Old_Honky I thought we were just talking about affiliate marketing. Where you put up ads for other companies and they pay you for leads or per click or impressions. There is nothing wrong with that. I have never done 2nd tier stuff where you try to get other people under you.

[Old_Honky]

OK Ogletree perhaps I'm at cross purposes. I mean the scams where some so called expert offers to sell you a plan showing how you can make untold riches (like he supposedly did).

If the idea was good it would be more cost effective to develop it yourself rather than let xthousand other people in on it, so AFAICS none of these are worth considering.

Don't know much about affiliate marketing except that I've heard only a very small percentage of people make much money out of it whether affiliatee or affiliator.

[vincevincevince]

Whilst your reservations are probably very well founded, it is possible that for some people, the issue is risk diversification. Relying upon one single strategy for your income is very risky - if you can make money from telling people how to do it, then at least you hve a bit more relience.