Beware of Shills in Internet Marketing
We all read the sales pages of Internet Marketing products and the testimonials are compelling. Most of us are wise enough to read between the lines of sales page testimonials. But what about the appearingly unsolicited testimonial that shows up at a forum or blog. I was following the exploits of a poster at one of the forums I frequent. He was writing about his experiences with a program I too had been following.
I’d had limited success with the program and had pretty much chalked it up to another instance of money sucked out of my pocket. Like many other such programs, it did have some value/merit. It had good training points. The only problem is that it was filled with holes and the final conclusion regarding what following the program could do was faulty at best. To date I have not met one single person who has even remotely been able to reproduce the product either in output or making money.
So it was with fascination that I was following this poster’s apparent excitement about the product. I thought maybe he is going to be the one who is going to take this thing and make it work. Or maybe he is just a newbie who writes really well. Now he never exactly called himself a newbie. He implied it. Though he did refer to himself as a beginner, novice, rookie.
This morning he posted yet again about how well he is doing. He isn’t making any money but in a matter of weeks he is producing what the product calls for at an astonishing rate. So far, several weeks into the project, he has not hit any of the speed bumps I and others had hit. So I got curious. There was something about his name that had been nagging me in the back of my mind. I’d seen him posting somewhere before. I was sure of it. And this morning I decided to find out.
And find out I did. I found him in lots of places. Research is one of my more useful talents. And research on the net is like child’s play for me. I don’t need Intelius to find people or what they are up to online. So I will put it to you the reader. You judge if this guy is being fair when he represents himself as a neophyte who just happens to be running like the wind with this new product.
1. By his own admission, he has been in internet marketing for a year and a half.
2. He has already followed one program with a lot of similarities to the program he is now praising.
3. He tweets. Well so do a lot of people, I know. I didn’t even bother checking facebook or Squidoo. No doubt he is there.
4. He has at least two personal monetized blogs, one on his life’s passions and one on internet marketing.
5. He is writing an ebook.
6. He has an Amazon store.
7. He took a master course that costs $1500 and I think to qualify, you had to complete a $500 pre-requisite, though I am not sure about the pre-requisite.
At that point I stopped. I didn’t need anymore convincing that this guy is a shill. Interestingly, he has something in common outside of IM with the guys he is pushing. It is all too often that I run into the slimy side of IM. It’s a shame because I am sure there are plenty of good products, honest marketers and sincere testimonials out there. Even this product has redeeming qualities if it wasn’t being hyped as practically better than the winning the lottery.
But shills make it hard to weed through the garbage to get to the good, real stuff. If you really are a rookie, beware. If you are not a rookie, beware. These guys are good. Their specialty is not internet marketing. It is separating you from your money.