Things I hate from internet marketers

I'm busy. Others are too.

I'm writing another hub, and like many here on Hub-Pages I like to update My hubs adding new content and old that I have found laying around in my head, or that someone has shown me, or even an old bone that I have picked up and decide to write about. It's my time and I choose how to use it.

I also work for me. I build sites, split test AdWords driven landing page results, do keyword research and build new add campaigns.

I have no time to investigate another screaming landing page that has added to the 200 or so emails I get a day that I must answer, save or delete.

it take effort to stay on top of all my jobs ... so.

I just don't have time I want to waste on spam.

I need my time to be productive, and already have subsribed to many marketers newsletters and memberships, I certainly don't need spam.

Any spare time I make is spend with my kids and grand-kids.

This is really valuable as I learn, teach and enjoy.

Their joy of life allows me to laugh at life's little annoyances and grab some un-conditional love.

Then it's back to the computer and the couple of large LCD screens that run my online life to find out who has purchased from me, or emailed me. I do not want to search through a pile of spam to find real mail. I still have 20 or so other tasks to do, plus what ever work the emails have produced. like I said, I am busy.

Here is a list of things I hate to get from Internet Marketers

• Un-solicited email spam of the piggy back type.

Although no less prevalent these days spam seems to be on the rise from some of the Internet marketing heavyweights and would be heavyweights.

This is a real pain in the rear!

Their latest way to send spam is to send what could be called "semi-spam". or "Piggy Back" spam.

It gets past my filter software uninvited.

Well, sort of semi-invited a bit like facebook you have another new "friend" you never heard of before today.

This new type of spam is posing as something my filters have correctly allowed because I had confirmed an email request to allow email from that company or individual.

By providing my email in exchange for free information about product A. which I may just have wanted to look at or B wanted to buy, I am then sent piles of junk with a new tag saying You got mail or stuff from Joe or whatever name, and we are a member of his group, here look at our product.

My reaction is to stop looking at buying any of Joe's product, and un-subscribe from his mailing list or whatever, as basically he has sold me to his list!

If I spent from the original site, I want a refund.

My time has value I do not want that value ignored. If you want to allow your affiliates to contact me, ask me at least twice first!

Here are my personal hates.

• Making ridiculous claims for products.

Claims such as "Our new marketing method has never been used before." (pigs backside it hasn't!) has me off the page in a flash. Since the world developed commerce the tricks have all been used before, the difference is they were not generated by code.

• Auto responders posing as people.

Just how stupid do you think I am?

They take at least 2 mouse clicks to go away, and often hide what you were reading if you hit the back button by mistake.

• Un-notified up-sells.

OK you sold me some near useless piece of hyped crap for 23.95 which I am angry about, because the same information is free at Google, then you tell me for just $689.00 I can get what I expected in the first place because we are best mates!

I'm gone from your list and I want a refund, and will never stop till I get one..

• massively hyped products.

"You will never need to spend another dime" type statements are a favorite of mine.

This will change your life/fix all your problems/save you thousands/make you a millionaire type statements all get up my nostrils and smell more than a little like last weeks fish.

Sure! If you believe that, have I got a deal for you!

I've got a bridge for sale that crosses Sydney harbour or would you prefer one from Frisco. Can deliver.

• Dear friend.

Unless I know you, I am not yet your friend, hell I don't even like you yet and your not helping by addressing me as "Dear friend".

• 10/30/60/90 days to wealth.

Any way you put it won't wash with me. If you can make me wealthy in that time why not do yourself a favor and do it for yourself?

Or did you mean make you wealthy at my expense?

• Pop ups that won't go away when I try to.

You idiot! I may be leaving your page because my computer had another discussion with Bill Gate's software and lost, or I tried to mail your offer to a friend who may buy your product or any number of reasons other than what you have assumed, then to follow that with a beautiful looking "person" in the form of an auto-responder is just too insulting. I made a decision to leave your page and you make me work for it?.

• Sales pages that are larger than the bible.

Ok you need to get your point across, but if it is going to take this many testimonials and this much hype I will not believe a word you say. Reminds me of the famous web landing page that screamed in red

Buy My Stupid Ebook!

If you have not seen it, look it up. It is funny as hell.

• Offers of free products that are not free.

This one takes many forms. "Crippleware" is a pet hate of mine. This is the sort of free software that does nothing except tell you that if you want it to actually work you have to pay for it.

• Fear based offers.

I would need to be in peril to go for this.Pathetic.

Only chance ever, last minute offer, ending now, last chance free offer, I just delete em right there.

Any Internet Marketing software that makes even a tiny difference will be pimped on the Internet in minutes and it will be on the nightly news for a week,

I know it and so do most other experienced Internet users.

Save me!!!!

• Adds that imply I'm a fool.

Wrong tactic. If I was some sort of fool I may buy it, but telling me I am a fool if I don't buy is insulting up front. No respect. I already know your product is crap right there because you show a lack of regard and a low level of moral dignity, so you are the last person I would trust, especially on the Internet where you may be pretending to be who you are not.

This one guarantees that I will not buy from you now or ever. I know already that I am a fool and do not like being reminded of it all the time!.

If you are using these tactics I say go back and learn another way to do your marketing, it will benefit everyone including yourself and you will start making income and won't need to lie any more even if it is $3 from AdSense at least you can say you are making income, not just pretending and pimping any old rubbish..

People do not like being ripped off.

Even if it is only time you are taking, some do not appreciate it and I am one of those.

As in any business, understanding our customer as human being is the essential ingredient in good marketing online or off and these guys don't get it.

The snake oil salesmen understand human weakness and seek out the fearful greedy part of people, they do not all make long term money, as many of them have mortgaged their homes several times chasing the big money online dream.

The true expert Internet marketers I know give a full range of useful information and useful links away free, and their good reputation is well earned.

When getting advice from experts it is important, nay imperative (if you value your time) to get only one problem solved at a time.

The Internet is kinder to those who finish the first task then learn how to do the next one then the next... so I thought an overview may be useful.

Using your guru

Some already know that running around looking for some Internet guru to do all the work for us and make us rich doesn't work. Unless we do.

Which Guru you need depends on what marketing you are developing. By way of example Perry Marshall is the definitive source of many how-to articles about AdWords, and his ideas work.

It is easier to see Internet marketing is a series of learning stages that require different steps depending on which type of marketing we choose to do.

If you know what it is you need to learn you are out in front.

To see an enormous list of solutions for online marketers, that is well laid out and easy to follow go Ern's Choice Software site for Internet marketing software that is savvy in every way and will provide you with real answers.

AdSense

If we are going to use AdSense then the expert is someone who specializes in AdSense. Look for it on Michael Blochs free website.You can get a good start in learning on hubpages too. Many of the people on hub-pages know how to improve what you are doing and will happlly teach if asked. This way you do not have to spend any money, and you will learn a lot.

AdWords and other marketing.

If you are using click-bank for affiliate marketing your needs to learn a totally different set of skills.The pitfalls are a real worry.

If you need to make great landing pages and promote them through AdWords paid advertising, find the niche keywords with good tools like Brad Callen's PPC Web Spy.

You also need to get on your bike and get a lot of knowledge about affiliate marketing with all it's website tech before you waste time writing dozens of related articles for a dead market, or one you will not be able to compete in.

Learning AdWords takes time, as the methods you apply vary so much depending on your type of product and keywords. (It is usually an expensive apprenticeship, but you will get sales with AdWords even if the ads are just reasonable.)

Unless you are very shrewd though and well taught, I can guarantee you will lose money with AdWords at first even though you will very likely get sales.

Until you have quite a lot of knowledge about your market you will lose net money on AdWords. Learn AdWords as a priority to get started and to minimum losses.

You will be fine once you have a list of customers you can sell to, and for that you need free content..

Your newsletter or other freebies must be an exact fit to your niche as this will take the weight off AdWords and get your own warm market operating to reduce your costs as you go on. You keep selling new product to you list.

Like everything else on the Internet AdWords is in a niche market of it's own as a whispered science, but a lot of it is common sense.

Don't buy any AdWords software yet!

Almost everything you need to know from getting an AdWords account to running your advertising campaigns is available free from google AdWords before you should spend any money at all.

It is well written and learnable, just don't expect to be able to apply your new AdWords campaign knowledge to your niche straight away, and try not to buy stuff that tells you otherwise. If it will work, Google will tell you about it

After your google AdWords education start researching related AdWords experts in your broad niche.

You will find enough info to get a market started with a simple site, blog or landing page.

Take it easy at first with your daily budget, and only pay for markets you can reach and afford to risk money on.

Selling your own information you will soon need a shopping cart and auto responder set up in order to have an organized and controllable workload while maintaining good Internet marketing practice.

You will not keep up with the work load created by sales growth with your AdWords ad. They work great, it is just that your costs are enormous at first!

Without a reserve of money tread carefully at first as you may well fail. Especially if you get a good response and just cannot manually make that many sales without one of many time saving and in-expensive online services.

You will need reliable and constant sales to pay for them. It is always a trade off between money and time, but setting it all up is your job, and you can contract work out or do it yourself. Both have problems, so I suggest you dip in to both lightly and learn.

I will not pimp products here, but there is only a couple of really good online providers of combined services like these and by time you know why you need one you will know the right ones to pay your monthly fees to.

Reckon on spending up to $100 per month to get started fairly quickly. It gets really expensive when you grow your business turnover as all your costs will increase to amazing amounts for online and offline expenses and services.

It greatly assists to have an auto responder for sending out a regular article or newsletter as well as using them to grow your business by setting up dozens of them to make different offers to market segments in your list.

Just remember it takes CPU and bandwidth to run a decent sized quality focused list, so allow for that in your budget too. This becomes more expensive and evident as your business gets bigger, and that goes for most services, so budget for it.

Customers.

You don't have to have as many customers or as big a list if both are mostly potential spenders in your exact tight niche, and you have a good sales price point with enough punters in the google searches for your page names, article headings and AdWords ads.

The same with back-links.

3 good back-links are worth hundreds of weak ones.

You will need hundreds of quality back-links to be in a position to slow down the AdWords spend by being higher up the serps, especially if in a very competitive market.

Realistically, unless you found a remarkable niche with cheap keyword and high product demand you will not get the "holy grail." without paying for it first with AdWords.

An organic search that drives sales.

If you do set up from scratch to market a product,from keyword rich Website name, articles and ads then I hope your landing page is well monetized, because the sale still has to be made, and so far all we have is that we have been seen for our keywords in the serps.

How good does your text read. Will it get clicks? After that will your squeeze page convert? then finally will your customer buy from your sales page. Can they pay you without problems? will your stats tell you how you got the sale? if it doesn't then you are in big trouble as you can't split test without accurate data to enable you to maintain your position at the top of the serps.

You will still need to work hard to "hold that page" so to speak ..... good luck with that!

For all except really tight niches with enough market and therefore affordable keywords.It is easier to learn AdWords than to get on top and stay there.

All we should need online to make money, is to sell good value products at a good price. The problem is that your proposed customer has to be able to find your website, blog, hub or social pages in amongst the 7 seas of bullshit, exaggeration, lies, frauds, scams, phishing sites and last but by no means least the Internet marketing self appointed guru's and experts campaigns.

These all detract from the user experience when looking for information. No matter how good the algoriths are it is hard to establish trust with your customer. It gets tricky when you try to market in any direct way without trust, so if you are trusted and have a good product you should do well, but unless your marketing is right you will lose to the shysters wide-boys and scammers who have a hundred webpages loaded with the keywords you want.

It is human to want more value for money. It is human to want a faster and easier way to make money. If you enter a strong market on-line be prepared to be beaten out of the profits by the bigger players as soon as you start to make a dollar.The way to beat these odds is to build a list of your own loyal customers and sell to them based on the trust you have established with them, and that takes planning and some time. More likely a year or two than a month or two...