Internet marketing-web2.0 part2 of 7 keys

Part two of 'Give & ye shall receive' was initially intended to focus more on giving advice to noobs. However, certain wrong practices have given me the incentive to write the following parody.

Once upon a time, Mr Blackhat sent a jibe to Mr Whitehat through an IM forum thread. Mr Whitehat had objected to Blackhat's methods of spamming posts.

"I bet you I will earn more than you in a month", was Blackhat's jibe. "Ok, let's give it a reasonable time scale to add up the score" replied Whitehat.

12 months was the agreed period to compare their efforts in building business. Now here is the results, bulleted by each month.

1st month :- Blackhat races out of the traps and decides to push products made by other vendors by affiliating for them. He makes up simple word blocks to insert into forums and blogs as comments, and continues to spam.

Whitehat creates his own product, on his own 'free' hosted website, and continues to give advice on the same forums and blogs.

Summary of month1. (note) figures rounded up or down to suit calcs.

Earnings ~ Black = 20 sales @ $50 = $1000.00. White = no sales. Email list ~ Black = no list. White = no list. Friends ~ Black = no friends. White = 60 friends.

2nd month:- Black continues to spam the forums and blogs but notices his bites are getting less, so he decides to hit the social networks, using part of his 1st months earnings to buy 'friend bots', and jumps on the Myspace whore trains.

White continues to advise and also utilizes the social networks, building up genuine friends. His website product now begins to get visits and people are starting to sign up for more advice and special offers.

Summary of month2.

Earnings ~ Black = 15 sales @ $50 = $750.00. White = 5 sales @ $100 = $500.00. Email list ~ Black = no list. White = 35. Friends ~ Black = 2000 friends. White = 140 friends.

3rd month:- Black is anxious to boost his affiliate earnings so he buys a 'proxy' bot and hits the free classified sites. Craigslist bans his initial account and he is forced to use a number of false email addresses to continue.

White is also using the free classifieds, but like all his dealings, he places them manually. Slowly but surely is his motto.

Summary of month3.

Earnings ~ Black = 12 sales @ $50 = $600.00. White = 10 sales @ $100 = $1000.00. Email list ~ Black = no list. White = 80. Friends ~ Black = 3500 friends. White = 280 friends.

What began as an illusion of magic for the blackhat is turning, with the whitehat tide of hard honest work verses laziness.

Cutting a long story short, Blackhat made early strides, hitting the unsuspecting newbies that were desperate to learn internet marketing, but his reputation took a nosedive as people began to realize his spamming methods. Lazy ways lead to a losing dead end.

Whitehat worked hard and long honest hours in the begining, building up relationships and proving the worth of his product. When enough clients had tested his product and gave testimonials, he was able to offer the product out to established affiliates, whom he knew would not use spam.

Although he offered 75% of the price to affiliates, meaning he now received just 25% of the value. The cost of PPC advertizing and time spent pushing the product was now on the affiliates side. The principle of 100% of low sales against 25% of mammouth sales is well worth considering.

Although he still offers advice to noobs, he has more leisure time now and friends are flocking to join him, whilst his mailing list is gigantic, requiring an autoresponder.

Whitehat could of chosen to wear a grey hat, meaning he could have worked smart instead of hard ~ that may be the subject of another Hub.