Internet Marketing Consultants - suddenly there are so many....

[tpr2]

Am I the only one that finds it funny how all the property guru/eductors jump on the same band wagon at the same time?

I'm talking about the likes of Richmastery/Massive Action who are now promoting Internet Marketing as a cashflow alternative for investors.

Don't get me wrong, they are entitled to promote whatever they want, however, to me they are off their core topic upon which they built there expertise and trust, ie Property investing.

I have been learning and applying internet marketing/affiliate marketing techniques for 2 years and know like most things, its not a get rich quick scheme. In fact quite the opposite, especially affiliate marketing where the more I learn and apply, the more I realise 95% of the money is made by 5% of the people.

So when I see Property educators promoting courses on how "you can get a website up in under 30 minutes and start making money" I tend to be sceptical!

However, there are people making good money from internet marketing but like the property experts tell us "learn from those that are actually doing it"!!

For me personally, I have more respect for the property educators that "stick to their knitting" rather than jumping on the band wagon and emailing me to sell the next big thing.

Hi kiwia

Sounds like you started out at about the same time as myself.
How's it going in your neck of the woods? Are you on twitter?

Read the rest of the post first Slapper.

Normally businesses such as these which advertise free or low price events to there databases use what is called affiliate marketing.
People are sent to a website by using a specially coded link and cookies. This marks the users PC or sign up as point of origin. So any further downstream sale commissions can be paid to the appropriate affiliated.
In this case the Geeks are downstream/ up selling a 10-20K product.

Another option as already discussed in previous posts is that many businesses come to an agreement. Eg you promote our xxx product to your several thousands member database and we will give yourself xx% off or free xxx product etc.

These sorts of things are common practice and nothing wrong. The danger is when people start promoting them in a reckless manner for financial gains. Some products such as property etc I fell they possible should disclose.


So as I mentioned Slapper there is more to internet marketting than it seems & Peter has 20/20 vision on this one.

Whitt is correct, the affiliate ID is loaded when you click on the link.
If someone purchases the coaching or any product while at the 2 day event then comms will be paid.

Very interesting developments in this thread. Geez I am learning so much!

I knew about this:



But the traffic trading explanation was a real eye opener.

Of course the curve has now moved from 'innovators' to early adopters and these people know the 'cat's out of the bag' and the real money has already been made due to the crack down on these systems so the best way to make money is to 'teach' the 'early majority' how to do it (traffic trading). The $$ made by the early adopters is from the 'bums on seats'.

Dear I say it this is where I think Richmastery played (so to speak) IMHO. They taught the 'early majority' and then possibly the 'late majority' property investment strategies that had been tried by the innovators and exhausted by the early adopters so when you can no longer do - you teach to a volume group that believe the strategy is a 'new secret' - it is however an old trick.

The innovators have of course moved onto the next new thing - where they will make their $$ then reveal it to the 'early adopters' who do 'okay' with it but trully realise the potential to 'sell' or 'teach' it to the volume group of the 'early majority'.

Cheers,

Donna

Traffic Trading is not something I would enter into Donna, it's OK if you are after a quick buck but in most cases you are not going to be in the business for long.
The biggies who pay the big click bucks have some pretty sophisticated tools for catching click fraud and they will stomp on you even if they just suspect you have violated any of their rules.

If you are interested in being in the business for a long time I would avoid it.

[donna]

Hi Terry,

No traffic trading is not for me - I have enough going on with Mobilize Mail and PropertyTalk.

Cheers,

Donna

[PeterEmpowerEd]

In reply ...

Slapper: You are, naturally, perfectly entitled to continue to have confidence in Dean Letfus as a 'property expert' .

Personally, I have none, based on what's emerged about him hyperbolically selling sure-fire ‘investments’ (e.g. “it would take a miracle to NOT make huge gains”) to his ‘students’ under the guise of mentoring and education.

His apparently reluctant admission that Massive Action markets property for commissions confirms the conflict of interest, in my view. Has Dean answered Xav’s question above re receiving a financial benefit for his geekversity promotion? No.

Your tired 'attacking competitors' smear has been hurled at me before on this forum. Usually it's an allegation made anonymously, which seems ironic. I can only respond with an earnest denial: No, “marketing” is NOT my motivation for participating in PropertyTalk. (If it was, wouldn’t my signature bristle with websites or bold red underlined sales statements and links? Wouldn’t my post count be closer to 6,300 like Dean’s than a humble 320?)

However, I’m not sure there’s anything I can do or say that will help you understand my truth about this.

The Gilligan-Letfus kick-fest against their former business associate Phil Jones/Richmastery earlier this year takes the cake for ‘counter business terrorism’ in my opinion. Your own anonymous gossip-mongering and contribution to that campaign (here and following) eviscerates your credibility to instruct me on “a professional and better way to conduct a business that (sic) attacking competitors”.

There is an old saying that says when you point your finger at somebody 3 are pointing back at you.

Agreed (and yet you do it.)
It can be hazardous making judgements. I try to be very careful. As noted, I have been slow to reach my conclusions. Once reached, however, what are my choices?

I'm sorry, but I won’t be party to a collusive silence about what becomes painfully clear when one properly examines the evidence around Dean Letfus’s loudly self-proclaimed ‘expertise’ and his demonstrable record as a spruiker.

I agree with Donna. This internet guru-gold rush reeks of the same modus operandi:

As to what I'm doing, my primary interest is in traffic trading and developing my own web sites.
As I said it's like property trading only no houses :-)

Traffic Trading is not something I would enter into Donna, it's OK if you are after a quick buck but in most cases you are not going to be in the business for long.
The biggies who pay the big click bucks have some pretty sophisticated tools for catching click fraud and they will stomp on you even if they just suspect you have violated any of their rules.
If you are interested in being in the business for a long time I would avoid it.

best wishes, Peter Aranyi

BTW you’re far from correct in your portrayal of Dean as refraining from public criticism of me and my ‘associates’. (But I won’t link to them.)

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Why speak up at all?

So many books try to expose bad behaviour and even worse practice but stop short of presenting specific examples. Despite the mass destruction to New Zealanders' wealth that the financial sector has wrought, the avenues of redress that ordinary folk have are so woefully inadequate that justice and accountability remain elusive. This reality is something our regulators should be ashamed of and it requires urgent redress if the individuals behind the offending companies are to be stopped from once again performing their tricks with impunity on another generation of Kiwi saving suckers.

Gareth Morgan - from his new book 'After the Panic'

[AndrewK]

Gareth Morgan - from his new book 'After the Panic'

The above post should be moved to caveat emptor as ironically it is akin to an affiliate link IMHO and we were asking those to be moved to caveat emptor earlier.

[tpr2]

I had a work out with Mark Joyner this afternoon. (Broke the leg press machine, sorry guys who needed it after me)
He is not impressed with some of the stuff that is out there and being sold for mega bucks when really you can get most if not all of what you need for free.
Sure some stuff you should pay for but things like how to build site....ahem...

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Typing In an E-Mail Address, and Giving Up Your Friends’ as Well - NY Times

I THOUGHT it was a little strange when I received separate e-mail messages from two people I knew only slightly asking me to click and see their photos on a social networking site called Tagged.

I ignored them at first, but then thought maybe I should check it out. After all, I should keep up on what’s hot in the social networking world, right? This could be the new Twitter.

That’s when I started doing everything wrong. I obligingly typed in my e-mail address and a password to see those photos. Well, the photos didn’t exist, but I had unwittingly given the site “permission” to go through my entire e-mail contact list and send a message to everyone, inviting them to see my “photos.”

I found this out only when I started receiving e-mail back from people agreeing to be my friend. I quickly realized what had happened and shot off an apologetic message explaining why I inadvertently spammed them.

As friends’ responses started rolling in, I heard from some who had received similar e-mail. Others told me about the same problems with Web sites like MyLife.com and desktopdating.net.

This wasn’t along the lines of someone stealing my bank account information or Social Security number, but I was annoyed and embarrassed.

“They’re using your good name to establish a connection,” said Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit organization with representatives from law enforcement, industry and government.

So what’s going on here? I turned to Michael Argast, a security analyst with Sophos, an Internet security company based in Boston, to find out.

He told me that this kind of thing has been happening for quite a long time in various forms, but has really caught on in the last three to six months. It’s not the same as what’s known as phishing — fake Web sites masquerading as real ones to get personal information. These Web sites really exist.

Instead, this is generally called contact scraping. Once you enter your credentials, like your user name or password, the company sweeps through your contact list and sends everyone an invitation to join the site.

How do the companies benefit? They are expanding their user population, Mr. Argast said, which they can use to attract potential investors or advertisers. Whether those users are willing participants, or people like me, is another question.

“There are multiple shades of gray,” Mr. Argast said. “Some social networking sites, like Facebook, are pretty straightforward in asking if you want to share information about your friends. Others are far less scrupulous.”

In the case of Tagged, my friends received a perky e-mail saying: “Alina has added you as a friend on Tagged. Is Alina your friend?” Then you click on yes or no. Even more insidiously, it adds, “Please respond or Alina may think you said no,” with a sad-face icon next to it. ...

Full story by Alina Tugend, NY Times June 19, 2009 here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/te...shortcuts.html

Interesting. Any comments, Terry et al?

[AndrewK]

Full story by Alina Tugend, NY Times June 19, 2009 here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/te...shortcuts.html

Interesting. Any comments, Terry et al?

I guess depending on their target audience this is a very dastardly but extremely efficient way of getting traffic. otherwise if they arent reaching their target audience its just a mass of untargeted traffic to their site.

Either way certainly not my style although i have noticed a reasonable increase in internet marketers having a redirect page before their landing page that claims that you have to provide your email to access the page you were searching for so they can then spam you with their products in the future or make money through things like CPA offers. Ironically most of them usually lack the technical skills to actually secure the site the way they claim and these intermediary pages can usually be gotten around to find what you were looking for.

[tpr2]

I'd seen that one myself Peter but always ignored it.

Most of the facebook type ones need your permission to access your contact list which I never give (i.e facebook) .

Pretty dastardly really. I have my own mail server and use a different email address for each site I enter if I don't know it, that way I can delete the account and recieve nothing further from them and I can report them for selling my email address if I find info coming from other parties who should not have that email address.

[tpr2]

I guess depending on their target audience this is a very dastardly but extremely efficient way of getting traffic. otherwise if they arent reaching their target audience its just a mass of untargeted traffic to their site.

Either way certainly not my style although i have noticed a reasonable increase in internet marketers having a redirect page before their landing page that claims that you have to provide your email to access the page you were searching for so they can then spam you with their products in the future or make money through things like CPA offers. Ironically most of them usually lack the technical skills to actually secure the site the way they claim and these intermediary pages can usually be gotten around to find what you were looking for.

Hi Andrew

your link is broken.

[PeterEmpowerEd]

Hi Andrew,
your link is broken.

<gasp> Andrew: a LINK!??! After pointing an ironic accusing finger at my link to more info about Gareth Morgan's book?

Actually, Terry, I assumed Andrew deliberately disabled his signature link in this hallowed thread out of deference -- like mafia dons leaving their armed gorillas-in-suits at the door to the meeting room. <-- this symbol means 'joking'

[tpr2]

Funnily enough Mark asked me last night if I would like to set up something special for his simpleology program last night.
I'm already a partner (he call's his affiliates partners) of his but this would be something set up just for me..... I'm pretty chuffed about that.

[Marc]

I went to a Wealth Dynamics weekend that cost a few $$ It was well worth the cost.

Would I do it again? No - unless I knew that the presenters are long term players in their field. I have wised up a bit since then.

I would pay $$$$$ to have attend a Seth Godin marketing workshop. Just search on Seth Godin and you know the man is it for marketing though you get all you need from his books and blog. So I would go to talk to him and network.

However I would not bother with some event where the presenters state themselves as the gurus of something. Even if they wrote a couple of books about 3 years ago when they were in the right place at the right time to make $$.

Right now are they making the big $?? Of course not! Thats why they are selling outdated theories in seminars to the general public.

What amazes me is why I get so upset about these con-artists making money. Maybe I am jealous of them?

Cheers

Marc

[tpr2]

I don't think it's that Marc, I think that you probably suffer the same dilemma that I do and that is you can see that it's a con and you know you can probably offer a better service however because it is against your principles to stand up and shout out that you are the best and the bee knees you won't do it, and then those people out there looking for the quick fix get caught in the hype trap.

[whitt]

I'm with you guys.
Most the stuff being peddled by these newbies ( last few years) is a big CON!! Search the internet or warriors forum and you can get the same info for free..........