"Internet Marketers"

People selling c**p IMHO

[Habtom]

I sometimes find myself into some internet marketing events (I keep on forgetting how the last one went) ... and see people selling guides to make money . . . it makes you wonder the thoughts in the minds of people buying the training kits and the drive to easy money.

Is it me or those people really make their living by selling those training kits and not by following their own advices in the training material. What surprises me the most is that I have met several of those people and I am yet to see anyone showing me the website or blog they built that offers some kind of value.

I have nothing personal against them, but just a nagging curiosity ... do you see my point?

[Old_Honky]

It's a bit like a guy called Horace Batchelor who used to advertise regularly on the old Radio Luxembourg back in the day when we had only one commercial radio station. He was selling a system guaranteed to enable you to win the football pools, and I always wondered why if his system was so good he didn't just win the money every week himself.

The answer is that anyone who is trying to make money by selling other people a way to make money is a snake oil salesman conning the gullible.

[piatkow]

I remember an old Wizard of ID cartoon, Rodney sees an ad saying "make $x in 6 weeks" and sends off his money. He gets a piece of paper saying "put an ad in the paper saying 'make $x in 6 weeks'"

[wyweb]

I believe if I actually had any "get rich" secrets I'd most likely keep them to myself.

[Old_Honky]

My grandfather had a scam he used in London which was legal at the time but was stopped when the newspapers reused to take his ads. He didn't make much money from it.
He advertised in the evening paper classified section:
"I can show you how to halve your coal bill, guaranteed 100% success!"
when they sent him their 10 shilling note he sent back a piece of paper with a dotted line printed down the middle the instructions were "place paper over coal bill, cut along dotted line"

[wyweb]

There was a male enhancement ad that was published widely in numerous media venues a number of years ago.

"Add 3" inches overnight! Guaranteed or your money back! Only 29.95 plus shipping!."

I didn't actually order this mind you, although the prospect did sound intriguing.

Customers sent their money in and 3 weeks later a small, discreet package arrived by post, just as advertised. The contents contained a latex, well, add-on I suppose one could say.

The manufacturer probably made millions before being run out of business.

[Habtom]

Lucky manufacturer, not many people would openly talk on how they got ripped off.

[ronin]

It all comes down to too way too many people being encouraged to believe that:

money = success in consumer-capitalist society;

instead of:

money = consequence of success in consumer-capitalist society.

[sugarrae]

Those people are called "snakes" and "conmen" and "#*$!s" - I call myself an Internet marketer - after thirteen years, I know a hell of a lot more than simply "SEO" in the old school style.

I think these types of guys are d bags, but, it doesn't help to take a legitimate title and slap it on them. They have their own "titles" that span industries - don't give them one of ours...

MTC

[milosevic]

Seriously I think half of the people that follow me on Twitter are like this.

Some of them have 10,000 followers and all they do is brand themselves an "entrepreneur" and post spam links to sites reminiscent in styling of late night infomercials for the "Ab King Pro".

It makes me wonder if Twitter is really just one big self-congratulatory back-slapping ring where if the emperor had no clothes, we'd see how many of these "self made entrepreneurs" actually live in their mum's trailer. But I think what gets me is that these people probably do make money - So many people are stupid and willing to get burned by one get-rich-quick scheme after another. It's almost like self-help books, where the way to help yourself is to write your own self-help book. How many of these Twitter douches are actually uneployable idiots that are part of a Pyramid marketing scheme like this?

[piatkow]

So many people are stupid and willing to get burned by one get-rich-quick scheme after another.

I bought my house off a finance company who had reposesed it. For years I was getting mailings addressed to the previous owner for various get rich quick schemes.