Now don’t get me wrong, selling is selling, We all know that. The message has to deliver value, it has to be compelling and it needs to call on the prospect to take action. That’s all fine and dandy. But, The thing is.. the message can be delivered in several ways right…

1. - A long form sales letter with a call to action at the bottom of a page that scrolls all the way down.
2. - A sales video with a timed order button that pops up at a specific part of the video.
3. - A hybrid with a video on top and then a moderate sales message and product description beneath it.
4. - And naturally… a webinar. (can’t forget those)

So let me ask you this… in your opinion, with the advent of #2, 3 & 4 do you feel that #1 is dead?

I mean really? Have long form sales letters seen their day?

Personally, I think that “WE are not our customers.” Everyone is unique and has their own preferences for the way they absorb information.

While the great majority of people are going to respond well to videos over reading a bunch of text, there are still some people that would like to read the words or maybe even print the page to read it later.

Due to iPads, tablets and smart phones.. I know that not many people print things on paper anymore cause they can just read them on the go now a days. I think that video engages the prospect more because it can trigger several parts of the brain simultaneously. A video can follow a story line with pictures thereby connecting words with images and sound. This combination draws the viewer closer than just a written letter.

One of the biggest shortcomings of the long form sales letter has always been the ability for the prospect to scroll. Many studies have been done on this, and in most cases the user begins scrolling down almost immediately after landing on a website. It’s almost like they want to just go see how big the page is before they actually dive in. The challenge here is that this action typically ruins the “big reveal”. It shows the viewer the price long before having a chance to explain the value. Now the visitor has pre-judged the product on price alone and IF they still read the page the sales process has become about justification instead of impulse.

You see there is a big difference between retail selling and conventional selling. In retail, the products are each laid out with price tags on them and the viewer is “shopping”. They are here to make a choice on a product, they have already decided to make a purchase long before they went shopping. But in conventional selling…  the prospect sometimes doesn’t even know they need the product, they must be educated first. That’s where real “selling” comes in. And in REAL selling you simply can’t lead with the price if you want to be successful. The prospect can not control the pace of the presentation in real selling. Just like you can’t go to college and skip to the end of the lecture, if you want to pass the test you have to take the class at the professor’s pace. One bit of information is introduced after the other to comprise the complete lesson.

Sales videos allow us to control the pace. We can establish the need and then educate the prospect feature by feature, benefit by benefit thereby building VALUE before the big reveal. This brings up another important point…  “The Transport Bar” You know, the little controls at the bottom of the video that allow you to pause, rewind and FAST FORWARD. So, knowing what you know now…  do you think that a SALES video would be as effective if it allowed the viewer to Fast Forward to the end and see the price?  Of course not. That’s why the EFFECTIVE sales videos of today do not have a transport bar on them.  Does this upset you? Well.. if it does then the chances are that you were not going to buy the product anyway. You are probably watching the video through the impatient eyes of a marketer or competitor not the needy eyes of a prospect. WE are not our customers.

That being said…  a video should always be “pauseable”, that’s just common sense. In case we have to step away from the computer we should be able to click the screen, pause the video and return later. But, from a marketing perspective, allowing the prospect to control the pace of a sales message is a big NO NO. The salesman sets the tone, the salesman presents the pitch, the salesman closes the deal when the prospect has been primed and ready to commit.

The question I pose before you is this…

“Can a long form sales letter still deliver business value in today’s day and age?”

I would love to get your opinion on this sales letter that I recently created myself :

My Sales Letter

When you click the link take note of your actions, come with a clean slate. What are you compelled to do? Do you scroll? Are you looking for the price? Did you click the links to see the payment processor I’m using? Did you read it? Did you look at it through the eves of a prospect or a salesman?

After you have a good look at the page, I would love to get your thoughts below.

One of the things that I had a heard time wrapping my head around was “Outsorcing”. For some stupid reason I convinced myself that I had to learn everything about internet marketing and do it all myself too. What the hell was I thinking?

Normal people that need a hole can buy a drill.

They can take the time to drive over to “Home Depot” peruse the power tool section and find a good deal. Then they bring their shiny new drill home and read the users manual before they make their hole. The entire process took about 2 hours… At least that’s what you would think right?

Internet marketers that need a hole tend to do this instead…

Internet marketers start at Google and begin researching “hole drilling” After several hours of surfing they end up opting in to 5 hole drilling lists and purchase 2 ebooks on drills and bits. Next they download a “FREE” drill assembling blueprint. (They are super excited that they finally found it for free!)

Next, they go to home depot and buy the motor, the handle the chassis, the power cord and the bit mount. Then they realize they need some specialized tools and electronic supplies to put their drill together so they order those online and wait 12 days for them to arrive. Once they have their special tools, parts and blue print they begin assembling the drill themselves.
Once completed the drill does in fact turn on and spin, however it isn’t powerfully enough because they settled on the cheaper motor in order to afford the special tools. The hole doesn’t quite turn out the way they wanted and by now they are so frustrated that they give up on it all together and blame the hole drilling industry for their embarrassing failure.

I know you are in the business of building websites not drilling holes but do you? One of the keys to succeeding in business and in life is to KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS. There comes a time where you must face that it simply makes sense to let someone else do something for you in exchange for money. Let the experts do their thing FOR you while you leverage your time.

For many of us this seems like a great notion but we convince ourselves that we can’t afford to outsource. I personally did this to myself without ever even having looked into the prices of outsourcing. Did you know there is a website where you can get tasks done for you for $5. Yes, five dollars. The site is called www.fiverr.com, and for more complex tasks there are sites like Vworker.com (RentaCoder) where YOU can name your price and watch people bid on your job.

Any part of your business can be outsourced, specially those tasks that you dislike. I use a simple formula, if it will take me more than 1 hour to complete and someone else can do it for less than $100 then I outsource it. Period. What’s your formula?

Here are some cool outsourcing resources:
Fiverr
Vworker
Odesk
Guru
Elance

Thank you for your support. All of the ribbons have been mailed.
Please send your pictures to Melinda@HigherLevelStrategies.com

Please leave a comment below that honors those that answered the call.

Without a doubt, webinars are the single most profitable way to sell your products online. Don’t FREAK OUT like Jerry Maguire and his goldfish though. They are really EASY to do…  I’ve even teamed up with John Thornhill and created a complete course called WEBOLUTION. In this course we cover exactly what you need to know about creating a successful webinar. We will literally take you by the hand and show you step by step so that you can have a high converting webinar of your own in no time! Plus.. we even show you how to use Mike Filsaime’s Evergreen Business System to run the webinar on auto pilot!

Evergreen Business System allows you to simulate a live webinar every single day without having to be there. You set it up once and then literally forget about it. Your registrants will pick a date and time, they’ll automatically be notified and the entire experience will “appear” 100% live with out you having to be on every single one..  As a matter of fact you don’t have to be there for ANY of your webinars because there is even a built in feature that can forward questions to any email address you chose. Another thing that stands out about Evergreen Business System is that it has a built in affiliate system so other prople can drive traffic FOR you.  They can each have their own customized landing pages.

This bad boy even has a built in viral thank you page that each registrant sees. They can spread the love on facebook and twitter to bring you even MORE traffic. When the webinar is over there is a built in follow up email sequence thats TOTALLY customizable! This thing has all the bells and whistles one could possibly wish for. I have tried 5 scripts that claimed to “automate” but they all lacked something or other. Evergreen Business System is truly a wish come true for me.

As a FREE Evergreen Business System Bonus John Thornhill and myself will be awarding those that buy through our link with the complete WEBOLUTION Webinar Training Suite that we have created to work specifically with Evergreen Business System. NO ONE ELSE HAS THIS and no one else can offer it. This is why it just makes sense to purchase Evergreen Business System through the link below to get our amazing FREE BONUS!

Buy through this link below and claim your Webolution:

FREE Evergreen Business System Bonus

After you purchase (through our link)..  just forward your receipt to bonus@john-thornhill.com
NOTE: We will only award our WEBOLUTION bonus to those that purchase through our link.
Be sure to clear your cookies THEN click the link to ensure that WE are credited with your referral.

Traffic generation, and for that matter online business as a whole, is pretty simple, though not necessarily easy. Right away I want to emphasize a key point: there is no magic link that will make all of your traffic problems go away, and anyone who promises you such a solution just wants your money. Promoting your Web presence to the world takes a lot of hard work, patience, and most likely some form of monetary investment; if you’re not prepared for these genuine business realities I’d recommend some other sort of entrepreneurial endeavor.

Having said this, let’s next look at the critical main objective we all have as Internet Marketers. The one thing we all have in common, regardless of niche or market, is the fact that we’re trying to sell something. Maybe you’re selling a product or service, “giving away” a free Ezine subscription, or even just providing information to support some sort of idea; in every case the principles of selling apply because you’re working toward convincing your site visitors to take a desired action or accept a specific ideal. Once you understand that your intention is to make the sale, you’ll have a better chance of succeeding with your traffic-generation efforts.

Obviously, you want your sales efforts to be profitable. Immediately, therefore, you must understand the need for an active audience or niche. In other words, right from the start you want to build your business around product ideas that lots of people are already interested in. You could build a product that you’re passionate about but, if few others share your interest in a given subject, you’ll be spending an enormous amount of time and energy trying to find qualified prospects for your sales process.

Let’s use an easy brick and mortar analogy for this. Imagine you’re starting a barbeque restaurant. Would you prefer to set your shop up inside a mall where there’s already plenty of traffic, or would you save money by renting a cheap property in the middle of the desert? On one hand you’d have little trouble finding prospects because you’d already be surrounded by shoppers. In the latter scenario your whole life would become a struggle to get people out to your obscure location. It’s an extreme, maybe even silly example, but it does the job of getting my point across.

I recently summed this up in one of my Webinars with the phrase:

“It’s wiser to build a hut by a river than to hope for rain in the desert.”

What I’m saying here is twofold. First, your best bet is to select a business niche that’s already (at least somewhat) popular, or has the potential for large consumer interest. Second, when you actually begin the process of promotion you’ll want to “tap into” existing currents of traffic as often as possible; this is something we’ll cover in a future article but I’m bringing it up now so you can give it some consideration.

Returning to our example of choosing your location, consider the costs a traditional (brick and mortar) business owner might weigh when deciding on either a space at the local mall or a spot in the desert. Clearly, one would undertake quite an investment in order to get their operation into a crowded shopping center, whereas an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere would be available for a fraction of the price. The serious, forward-thinking entrepreneur would grasp the value of the mall space investment. Sure this route takes more to get up and running but the payoff would undoubtedly be well worth it. On the flip side, the business owner looking to skimp by on the smallest possible investment might choose the isolated space. Such a decision would doom him or her to a life of constantly struggling to attract customers, since very few people are already flowing in the direction of the lonely barbeque. The choice in this sample scenario is very much like the thought process that precedes the launch of an online venture.

The marketer who invests deeply in the right location is building his hut by the river. He doesn’t have to work nearly as hard to bring in traffic because there are already loads of hungry shoppers walking around the mall every day! You can be like this smart fellow by taking the time to seriously research a strong niche for your business. When you establish a Web presence within an active sector where surfers are already looking for info and buying products, you vastly decrease the strain involved with finding customers.

The last thing you want is an obscure niche that forces you to spend all your time and money scraping together enough visitors to generate a few sales. A surprising percentage of people find themselves in exactly this scenario. More often than not, when a student expresses frustration with a lack of sales, I find they have fallen short on the research phase of their business; they’ve jumped into an idea based on their own interests and passions but failed to confirm a valid market interest in their products or services.

Time is your most valuable asset, especially if you’re on a tight budget. If you’re like most people who want “free” traffic you need to accept the fact that you’ll be spending many hours each day setting up your Web traffic system. I can’t count the number of Visine bottles I went through during my first year online; it takes a lot of time to learn the basics of each specific traffic generator, and then even more time to actually implement what you’ve learned. For this reason it is imperative that you don’t have to waste your time struggling to promote something in which very few people are interested.

Commit to putting the time and energy into nailing an ideal niche, one with lots of active readers and buyers, and you’ll be able to stay efficient and effective when it comes time to actually start promoting your site. You can easily find plenty of content about keyword research, niche testing, and so forth – my goal with this article is to illustrate emphatically that before you take your first step or spend your first dollar toward bringing visitors to your sales page, you must be sure a strong flow of potential visitors (interested searchers) exists. Once you know “where” your river of qualified prospects is, it’s a straightforward matter to build your hut or Website in the appropriate spot.

If you’re serious about building a Web presence, then you’re going to have to understand how your hosting equipment and software works, how to get files back and forth from your computer to your server, and so on.  Even if you have hired someone or a service to set up your site for you, what happens if they are sick for the day, decide to quit, or are captured by Somali pirates while on holiday?

Learning even the basics of this system can save you a lot of headaches, missing out on revenue, or even costing you some serious money.  Let’s shed some light on how everything fits together.

Hosting Companies
Unless you’re a tech genius and have invested tens of thousands of dollars into your own equipment, you’re going to be paying a company to host your website.  Hosting companies have rows of powerful computers called servers.  Servers are broken down into partitions and then rented out to website owners like us.

You want your hosting company to be reliable and have a good reputation amongst other website owners.  You also want to look at how much storage space you get for your money and the amount of bandwidth provided for you.  Unless you’re making a giant website or are going to have Facebook-level traffic, the standard bandwidth they give you should be fine.  You can always upgrade later when you become an Internet Marketing superstar.

At the beginning of your Internet Marketing venture, chances are you’re not bringing in much revenue, if any at all.  So, while you’re going to be tempted go with the least expensive hosting company possible, that would be a mistake.  Factor in cost but don’t make it the most important issue; having a bad hosting company can be a nightmare and switching your sites from one host to another can be a pain.  Make sure you research your choice thoroughly.

I personally recommend d9Hosting.com; they’re owned by Internet Marketers just like you and me, so they understand our needs.

Transferring Files with FTP
Your partition is commonly referred to as your “webspace” and, now that you have that set up, it’s time to communicate with it and get your content and files transferred over.  This process is called File Transfer Protocol, or FTP.

All hosting accounts come with a control panel program, cPanel, that helps you set up email accounts, domains, and so on.  This program comes with a built-in system that allows you to complete the FTP process.  Unfortunately, it’s not the easiest, smoothest, or fastest way to get the job done.  That is why I use, and highly recommend, an FTP program called Filezilla.  It’s free and easy to use.

When you open up Filezilla, you will be asked to provide login information for your server, which you’ll receive from your hosting company.  Once your account is verified, Filezilla will open and you will see that the screen is broken down into two sides.  The left side shows files on your computer and the right side shows files on your rented server.  In order to copy a file or folder from your desktop to your server, all you have to do is drag and drop it from one side of the screen to the other.  It’s that simple!

When you move something from your computer to your server, you are only copying it.  The original still exists where it was located.  This is handy if you want to back up files, are going to work on something complex like code, or make major changes.  If you mess up you always have the original sitting somewhere.

The main folder on your server’s web space will be the public HTML folder.  When you click on it, or any other folder, you will see the subfolders and files contained in it.  This is where all of the files are kept that will allow your website to be published on the Web.

If you’d like to access any of these folders or files using your browser all you have to do is enter your root web address, adding a / behind it and then the name of the sub folder or file.  For example, let’s say your website is http://www.greenwidgets.com and you want to take a look at an image file you uploaded onto your webspace called GreenWidget1.jpg, which is located in the “images” folder.  To view this folder through your browser, you would simply enter:

http://www.greenwidgets.com/images/GreenWidget1.jpg.

With so many people using WordPress, Joomla, and other content management systems (CMS) that can be installed from cPanel, you may never even have to upload an entire website.  But you will still end up using FTP, if you want to upload a new plug-in or theme template to your site.  Individual instructions will be provided with the item you are uploading to make sure it is being installed at the right place in your webspace.

So there you have it.  Uploading files to your server’s webspace and getting them live on the Internet is not as hard as it seems.  There are plenty of free and easy to use tools out there to help you simplify the complex back-end processes, no matter what your experience level.

“Klondike” is a brand name for an ice cream treat made of a big tasty vanilla ice cream square covered with a thin layer of chocolate-flavored coating. The Klondike bar has been around since the 1920′s. In the UK it’s generic name is Choc-Ice they’re generally wrapped with a silver-colored wrapper, upon which the mascot for the brand, a polar bear, appears.

It is known for its jingle slogan “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” which has been the subject of many parody’s and comedy routines going back as far as I can remember.

What does the Klondike bar have to do with internet marketing? Well, a trendy new website has recently emerged that is gaining more and more popularity by the day. Similar to the Good Humor-Breyers ice cream company this website has adopted a catchy slogan and poses the question “What would YOU do for Five bucks?”

The website is fiverr.com and the concept is very straight forward, create a free account and post what you’re willing to do for five bucks. Visitors can see your “gig” and buy it right on the site you then deliver their purchase and they leave a comment. At first glance you may think this is all silly monkey business but don’t be fooled, after all, that’s what most of us said about twitter too.

Some of the gigs are silly and comical, things like “I’ll call anyone and sing happy birthday for $5″ or “I call and break up with your boyfriend for you.” Some are a bit more compromising like… “I’ll write your company name on my forehead with black magic marker.” Honestly, the site is quite addicting as you peruse the lengths to which people will go for just a measly five bucks. Which by the way… fiverr keeps a piece of as well a whopping $1.

Gigs on fiverr range from bizarre to business. You can get traffic to your site, back-links, videos, and SEO. There are also programmers on there that will install a blog for you or do minor repairs to your code. You can even find graphic designers that will create a logo or an Ecover for you, it goes on and on. As a matter of fact most of us are really good at something and we can do that “something” in just a few minutes. Well there are people out there that are willing to pay $5 for a few minutes of your expertise on “something.” That’s what fiverr is all about.

As entrepreneurs there are many ways that we can leverage the power of fiver to help our online business. The most obvious is by outsourcing those mundane but important tasks that you may find irritating or time consuming. Things like writing or submitting articles, creating press releases or blog posts, transcribing videos or perhaps narrating a script. All of these business tasks and many more can be easily out sourced on fiverr. The cool thing is that even if you can’t find what you’re looking for right away there is a section where you can post what you need and then someone will hit you up if they’re willing to do it for five bucks.. now how cool is THAT!?

On the other hand there is also a huge income potential with a site like fiverr to bring you new customers. You’re probably thinking… “Omar are you nuts? How am I supposed to get rich on $4 after fiverr takes their chunk?” Well, I’ve been personally experimenting with fiverr over the past several months and my results have been nothing short of astounding. I get a steady 30-40 new subscribers from fiverr each day into my sales funnels and I monetize them to the tune of several hundred dollars per day. There are many ways to do this and I call them Fiverr Formulas. Pretty original ehh?

Just think of it like this, I see fiverr as one GIANT source of potential customers. Remember ebay in the beginning? The thing that made eBay so cool was that it did more than create a platform for commerce, it actually solved peoples needs. On one side of the country you’ve got a guy that needs to make room in his garage by this weekend or his wife is going to kick him to the curb. On the other side of the country you’ve got someone looking for a fair price on an antique lamp to complete their collection. Both of them have a need and Ebay becomes the platform that gives rise to their solution. The exchange of money is just a really cool bonus. That’s how I see fiverr.

There are people from all walks of life that need help doing “something” for many of them that help can come in the form of a digital product. Perhaps a cooking recipe, or instructions on how to improve your golf swing. Fiverr flourishes where eBay runs for the hills… “Digital Products” a couple of years eBay banned the selling of digital products by way of actions on their platform and now fiverr fills that void for us. When someone purchases a gig from me they are getting a download link, or a link to a video that I’ve already created. Have the wheels started turning yet?

Fiver is an entry point to pretty much any sales funnel in any niche that you can think of. I mean if you are willing to give your ebook or report away on a squeeze page for free to capture a lead, why not create a gig for it on fiverr and get $4 in the process? It just makes sense.

Now keep one thing in mind…  you’ve got to be mindful of the way you craft the wording for your gigs, don’t be misleading and always deliver on what you are offering. If you promised to teach them how to make an omelet for $5 then you need to do that first! Don’t just sell them a link to your sales page for $5. Thats just not cool and it will get you in heaps of trouble. But once you give them the link to your omlette video there’s no reason that you cant offer them your omelet recipe ebook for $19.97 as an upsell… 

I have discovered over half a dozen profit producing methods of generating leads and income through fiver and I’m sure that you will too. It just takes a bit of creativity and a free fiverr account for you to be on your way! If you’d like to learn more about the methods that work and the methods to avoid like the plague, be sure to check out fiverrformula.com

Shiny Object Syndrome
Critical Information Overload
Paralysis Analysis
and Technical Hogwash

A long day of work at the J.O.B. has come to an end and he grabs a quick bite to eat then sits at the helm once more on his quest to make some online coin. As he opens his flash drive directory to access his current website project the wicked horseman toils with his sense of better judgment..

“To check thy Gmail or Not to check thy Gmail that is the question…  Whether it is nobler of the mind to suffer the slings and arrows that newbie flesh is heir to …by reading emails and being voluntarily sucked into a never ending cavern of email jokes, threads and next big thing promotions… ”

-OR-

“To stand fast and resist the temptation to keep “informed” by diving into his own project and charge forward….”

What to do, what to do? That is the question.

There is no component of your online business more important than your email client and there is no component as equally destructive either.

Think about it… what is typically the first thing we do when we sit at our computers? We check our emails. Consider the powerful emotional clench your email has on you, it can literally set the tone for your entire day.

For example, Day#1
You sit down to work and right away you see that you’ve gotten 4 payment notifications amounting to a couple hunded dollars… You’re excited, you’re motivated, you’re ready to conquer the world.

Adversely, Day#2
You sit down to work and right away you see that you’ve gotten 4 refund notifications or 11 support tickets… ughhh. What kind of day are you having now???

The worst is day #3
You sit down to work and right away you see that you’ve gotten 16 emails from various marketers promoting a huge product launch… You examine them all for the best bonus offer and get sucked into a 2 hour purchase decision that ends up costing you $197. Whats even more destructive is that now you download the product and spend yet another 2 hours tinkering about in yet another direction taking you further and further away from completing that project on your flash drive. Remember that?

The rider on the pale white horse is names EMAIL and he carries the plagues of marketer death,

SOS – Shiny object syndrome – the browbeaten compulsion to purchase the latest and greatest fad. Over and Over and Over again..

CIO - Critical Information overload – the overindulgence in new tactics that only leads to 37 layered windows wallpapering every centimeter of screen space on your monitor burying your project deep underneath. Have you ever started closing windows as you prepare to log off for the night and suddenly rediscovered the project you stated working on 3 hours ago?

PA – Paralysis Analysis – the overwhelmed state of mind precluding you from taking action due to conflicting information or your own literal translation of various marketers differing view points and marketing angles.

TH - Technical Hogwash – the benign gelatinous substance created from liquified neurons after prolonged exposure to lines and lines of html code, marketing blueprints sales letters and generally useless technical jargon.

The pale horse rider carries the plagues that not only spell out but also turn you into a………

SOS-CIO-PA-TH! (get it?)

Avoid the pale horse vice grip by Limiting your email exposure.
Schedule & allocate a set for email check it once a day and thats it.
Avoid opening chain letters and joke mail. If its that important just archive it and check it on weekends.
Install a support desk with an FAQ – direct all customer inquiries there instead.
Create priority labels for important people that will put the emails at the top of your inbox.
Create a “vacation response” that deters senseless emails and directs customers to you support desk.

You should view your email client as a tool and not a distraction. Turn that hinderance toting horseman into your very own pony express. Make him your allie, Domesticate him, Rule him, Control him! Use him to carry your message along on the rest of his stops rather than just leaving everyone else’s at yours.

I remember 4 years ago when I tried to submit one of my first products to Clickbank I got rejected. That product was and still is one of my best sellers and it has gone on to make me well into 6 figures and grown me a huge list.  Its a very informative ebook about how to create long form sales letters. Naturally its quite a bit out of date at this point since most of what we do is video but the free mini-course and tutorials still get me raving reviews to this day.

Would you believe that Clickbank refused to allow it in their marketplace because of the word “ASS”… they rejected me (the nerve) and when I called them they said that they could never list a product called KickAssSalesPages.com!  I was furious, I went 2 years without using the Clickbank marketplace because I was so taken back that they would do that to me.

Today, I see Clickbank approving pages that use foul language in the sales videos, they allow images of Cocaine lines and drug paraphernalia, they approve of blatant lies and ridiculous refund rates. They even tolerate vendor scams like downgrading refund requests and gravity manipulation among many others.

The sad part is that they are a leader in our industry yet rather than setting a high standard they just continue to lower the bar with each passing launch. These Autotraffic Scams have gotten totally out of control. Many of these product creators boast in public about their deceptive sales pages and literally laugh all the way to the bank as Clickbank provides the platform for them to scam millions upon millions of dollars from unwitting entrepreneurs.

How long can it last?  How much is enough?  Well, rest assured that the Government will eventually step in…  knowing the US government they’ll probably try to take control of Clickbank like they are with healthcare so they can further perpetuate the problem and make use of the money. (Don’t get me started)

In reality, it wasn’t long ago that the FTC stepped in and put some pretty stern policies in place for merchant accounts. The credit card companies bitched enough and they had their way with forced continuity, negative options and one click upsells. How long before the FTC steps in and forces Clickbank to take a good hard look at what they are empowering these crooks to do?

The sad part is that I like Clickbank, its a GREAT friggen service, and fills a big need for internet marketers. Unfortunately when the hammer comes down even the good guys will suffer because of the actions of a select group of scum bags. And let me make this clear…  it’s THEIR fault, the scum bag marketers that produce unethical and immoral products that lie on their sales pages and fail to deliver. Sure Clickbank plays its role in empowering them and can step in if they want to, but the blame falls first on these unethical marketers NOT Clickbank.

These guys are even lying to each other now… the JV recruitment pages promise bonus prizes that they never deliver, and they often just arbitrarily list the names of other marketers that are “Onboard” when in reality they don’t even know them…   I have been invited to a JV page many a time only to find upon arrival that I am already listed as “Onboard”!!  Wow.

So where do we go from here? How do we protect ourselves from the scum bags? Well for one we stick together. We isolate the scum bags by NOT promoting for them. This means that as marketers we will take responsibility for the actions we take and the products we endorse. YES it means that you’ll actually REVIEW the product and demand to see the sales video BEFORE you agree to promote something or let them list you as “Onboard”.

It also means that we will be much more vigilant when buying products from other marketers, we should actually seek out reviews FIRST. We should investigate the marketers first and we should protect one another as a prudent colleague should.

Ultimately, we will start to fix our industry by individually adopting prudent practices in our own businesses. Set the bar high. Put your customers first. Create a list of business practices that are important to you, post it on your site and hold yourself to the task. I have begun to make these changes in my own business and I have created a service that will help clean up our industry with IMtrustworthy.com

In conclusion, I think we should ask “What can I do to make things better.”  If everyone of us did that, then the scum bags wouldn’t have a chance. What’s your opinion? I’d like to know.