Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Ethical Internet Marketing: A lie, an exaggeration, and a fib away from success?


Today I am going to tell you a lie or two. Maybe tell you a fib. And definitely exaggerate to get you to buy something.

Well, maybe not.

However, this is the exact problem I see within the Internet marketing world these days. As new marketers come into the fresh new world of marketing, they tend to approach it in the wrong way. They understand the marketing aspect…but not the ethics. Ethical Internet Marketing does not mean making less money, in fact it will result in making more and I am going to explain exactly why within this post.

At the core of all sales (online or offline) and the product you choose to sell, money is typically the ‘persuading’ factor. If you make a sale, you make money. If you sell something that is higher commission, you make more money. If you sell something that is more expensive and is of the highest commission, you make the most money.

The problem is that consumers tend to remember negative experiences and embrace positive ones. Choosing a product to sell for the wrong reason can lead to a negative sales experience, impact your brand, and ruin the ever sought customer relationship.

Have you been to a car lot recently…and been surround by the “sharks” trying to feast on your wallet? It is not only overwhelming, it is a pushy and uncomfortable experience.

Go another step further. Ask the sales person what kind of car they drive. You might be on a Mercedes lot, but the salesperson could be driving a Honda. I have seen it happen first hand.

How can someone try to sell you a car when they choose a completely different brand? It doesn’t make sense and the entire sales angle of the sales person is flawed. Practice what you preach right?

Try going into an electronics or an appliance store and see what the salesmen tries to sell you. Chances are it is an item that they make the most commission on versus the best value product. Go to a non-commissioned store like Best Buy…you will find that they tell you how to get the best bang for your buck by offering sound advice that is not being impacted by what makes them the most on the sale.

AND THE EXACT SAME THING is happening within the Internet marketing world. I see it all the time.

Marketers and salespeople tend to choose the highest commission product versus the highest quality. It’s OK in some instances of you have product A that is equivalent to product B…and one pays more than the other.

For example, some web hosting companies offer $100 per sign-up to affiliates whereas others offer $50 per sign-up and they offer the exact same services…down to the support. Choosing the one that pays more may make sense in this situation assuming that the $100 product converts at least at 51% of the rate of the $50 product (i.e., is more profitable).

However, if you are promoting one product as the better one, knowingly understanding that the only reason you are doing this is because you make more money (at the expense of your customer), then you are doing a disservice to the general public.

I know what you are saying right now…

“Kyle, if this business is about making money, why would someone sacrifice a higher commission just to be a little more honest?”

Because quality creates reputation. Reputation creates repeat buyers. Repeat buyers create longer term success. By being honest you will promote the product that is of the best quality for the best value.

Yes, you are in the business of earning money, but this business requires relationship building and ethical marketing to create long term success.

The problem is that most people associate doing whatever it takes to make a sale with “marketing 101″. Terms like snake oil salesmen and guerrilla marketing come to mind.

It is quite funny what we see at Wealthy Affiliate. People sign-up with us and come in thinking they know how to market, because they know what they know. They know that they need to sell something in order to make money.

Unfortunately they know the marketing techniques they have been subjected to…problem being, the only real marketing they have been exposed to, they probably bought without even thinking of it as a “sales” experience. Read more and get lots of free stuff here.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Do Your Share and Stop Getting Spam Emails

Who would not love surprises? Women love surprises, so do men. Or, some could be just too proud to admit it. On the internet, one of the many surprises we get is the spam emails. These are those unwanted emails that we receive in our inbox. Contrary to the fact that surprises should most often make us happy, these spams make us restless about hitting the delete button instantaneously. The war to fight email spams has been waged years ago and yet the quest never seems to cease. Yes, it is indeed difficult to fight email spams. These mails often catch us by surprise especially when your inbox says that you have hundreds of unread messages.

Some of you may have thought that you have urgent messages to attend to. Only to find out that everything is actually just a hoax from strangers who are selling on the internet. You can only imagine the range and variety of products that these people are selling. Some can be pretty amusing, while some can be unimaginably annoying. Have you ever bothered opening mails from senders you don't even know? If this is your habit, then you are only welcoming more spams to get into your inbox. We may not totally eradicate these nuisance emails but surely we can minimize its damage.

We need to fight spam emails by not giving them any chance of being opened. Thus, when you receiving mails coming from you don't know, delete them right away. If it's coming from people you know but has some suspicious attachments in it, better verify first with the sender before even opening it. Another bad habit I have noticed about many internet users, they are so fond or forwarding chain emails. If you receive mails asking you to forward it to your list or else your dog will die in the next 48 hours, I say don't ever forward it.

It's obviously a scam. It's one of the techniques of spamming actually. If you do this, spammers will harvest more email addresses. Just imagine the chain. It could result to thousands of addresses being harvested. Good for the spammers, too bad for us. Spammers utilize advance technology and so to fight email spams has become quite a big challenge for every internet user how to regulate it. To sum it up, you can fight email spams if you have an apt anti-virus software, don't give out your email address to just any person or any website, don't forward chain emails, and don't open suspicious mails with attachments.

Surely there are many other ways to fight spam emails. If you seriously like to stop getting spam emails, then you have to seriously abide with the rules in eliminating spams.

The author of this article Menno Spijkstra is an underground Internet Marketer who has been successful selling products online for many years. Menno is now coaching people how to make real money online through his program http://www.IMachiever.com. This course includes a detailed manual plus 5 products to sell and keep 100% of the profit.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Programs to Remove Spyware and Clean a Registry

Are you looking to download programs to remove spyware and clean registry? This type of software is able to find and delete unwanted applications in your system. Doing so will get rid of a lot of irritating symptoms like pop up advertisements from your computer as well as speed up the system significantly. I have been able to download good software that is able to find errors in my registry as well as clean up all the malicious files, acting as a spyware removal and registry cleaning program at the same time.

Why Should You Download Programs to Remove Spyware and Clean the Registry?

1. Get Rid of Pop Up Ads Appearing on the Screen

Some malware like Trojan viruses and adware will cause irritating advertisement popups to appear persistently. Trojans are able to create unauthorized access for other parties to access your computer through the Internet and then display pop up ads or steal private information from the system. They can only be removed by specialized remover programs that have databases containing the most updated definitions of these viruses.

2. Make Sure That Your Virus and Spyware Protection Program is Always Updated

With the file definitions, the software will be able to identify threats in your PC and then proceed to quarantine them for repair or removal later. This is also the main reason why you need to ensure that your protection software is constantly updated with the latest definitions so that you can get protection against the latest threats.

3. Unauthorized Access into Your PC System

As I have explained above, some types of viruses can weaken your PC's defenses and create loopholes for external parties like hackers to gain entry illegally to access your system's data. There have also been cases of hackers breaking down the entire security system of the computer to take complete control over it. When this happens, the victim may get his or her identity theft stolen because confidential information such as bank account numbers, credit card numbers and social security numbers can be stolen and used illegally.

4. Improve the Speed of your Operating System

Having spyware and adware running in the background will consume a lot of unnecessary memory space, slowing down your PC significantly. This can happen even when you are not running any programs and you will find that you have to wait at least 30 seconds to a minute before you can open any program.

Are you looking to download Programs to Remove Spyware and Clean Registry? Don't do it yet, because the author has found many bad spyware cleaning software on the web. Read the author's review of the Top 5 Spyware Removal Software on the market now at http://www.review-best.com/spyware-removal-software.htm first!

Learn to completely get rid of all the spyware and adware on your computer in less than 5 minutes with a FREE PC Scan!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Whose Email Address is This? - Find Out Fast!

Is someone is harassing you, but you don`t know who it is, and that got you thinking: Whose email address is this? Or maybe you have simply received an email from an unknown person. Then it is time for you to start tracking the owner of the email address using small steps. Which steps? This article will show you.

1. Ask around. I know it sounds dumb, but there is no harm in that. Maybe other people have also gotten abusive emails. This is a very simple step but can also be very effective at the same time. Asking the right person who you think might knows the owner of the email address can get results quickly.

2. Look closely to the entire email address.

username@business.com
username@university.com

Business and university email addresses have a special domain which can give a name of the company or university, which can lead you to your contact.

3. Search Google. That is always a popular step to finding email address owner. You just might get lucky simply by Googling the email address. The owner might have posted on a forum or may have had their information published on a web page.

4. Search directories. There are free email address directories, but they are not reliable and often are limited. I recommend trying Switchboard, WhoWhere and Yahoo's people finder. But the chances are that you wont get the information you need.

5. Luckily, not all is lost. There are various companies that specialize in tracking down the information you want. Simply enter the email address and you will get a complete background check of that person in a matter of minutes. Fee? Yes, there is a one time fee, but for this type of service, it is more than a reasonable price.

If you really want to know the answer every time you ask yourself: Whose email address is this? Then you should see this blog http://locateapersonbyaddress.blogspot.com/ and get a hold of the best online investigating companies.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Chain Letter Scam - What We All Need to Know About It

The chain letter scam has been around for quite some time now. It is one of the variations of the famous mail scam that contains spam. In fact, it might not be too far off the mark to say that the chain letter scam is among one of the earliest scams around. Unlike other mail scams that started due to the popularity of the Internet, this scam has been around before the Internet became as famous as it is now.

This scam originally was used by con man who would trick innocent people, by using real letters and mails. They would send it in the bulk to different addresses. This scam was very famous back then, but due to the cost of sending the letters, it could sometimes prove to be an unprofitable scam to those con man. But with the introduction of the Internet, everything suddenly changed.

Because sending an email is free, it eliminated the cost that required when sending real letters and mails. This makes it one of the earliest scams in the Internet today. So what is the chain letter scam? It is simple. You are provided a list of names and addresses. What you need to do is send a small amount of money to the address of the person, whose name is on the very top of the list. After doing so, remove that persons name from the list, and include yours in the bottom. After that, just send them out to as many people as you possibly can.

This is how they entice people to join. Let's say that you sent $20 to the person whose name is on top of the list. After that, your name is entered at the bottom, let's say with another ten peoples name to go. You send this mail to five other people. From there, they pay for the person whose name is on top and remove it from the list. That means that your name is at number nine. Those five people that you sent the mail to, then send it to five other people. And the process continues until your name is at the top. And when it reaches your turn, with the people sending money under you increasing, you will make $195,312,500!

They will use various other methods to calculate, and try to entice you with how much you could potentially earn. Well, I am not sure about you, but I think that earning an insane amount from a simple method like that sounds exactly like a scam. And that is what it is, another mail scam. It might appear in the form of spam to most of us who are more seasoned users of the Internet. But to many of the new users, it might seem like an opportunity to them. There are a few of them that are so well disguised, that we can't tell them apart from the spam versions of mail scam.

Although they might use different methods and calculations to entice you, the basics of the chain letter scam is still trying to get you to send money to other people. Please do not take part in such activities. This activity is deemed illegal and could land you in trouble.

Kevin Lopez is a freelancer who has extensive experience in a wide field of professions. The author has over six years of research experience in the Internet Business and Marketing. To learn more about the chain letter scam and other scams as well, please read these articles. There are plenty of information on other scams that are happening around the Internet today.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Email Scams Disguised As an Official Email From Your Bank

Email scams are every growing, and increasing almost as quickly as financial institutions are able to deal with them. One of the ways email scams are tricking vulnerable users who may not be aware of the nefarious users out there simply phishing (pretending to be from an official site inorder to steal login details) for their details is to pretend to be an official email from their bank.

First of all the scammer has to obtain the email address of the potential victim, there are various ways scammers obtain these, at the end of it, the potential victim may have responded to an email advert or their email address has been passed from another scammer that this is a potential victim, or they simply just harvested email addresses; whether bought or scraped the end game is mass emailing all potential victims for the few that may fall for it.

Of course if you do not bank with the bank stated in the email you would know something was not right, however if you do bank with said bank, you may be a little alarmed, to find the title of the email along the lines of "Warning your login details have been compromised. ...login to said site to recover them", the site in question may look like the official site of the bank complete with bank logo, even in the email, however the give away is if you were to right click on the link on the email you would see it redirects not to the official site of the bank, but to the scammer's phishing site, where they hope you would be naive enough to fill in your account details, for them to save and utilise at their convenience. A sample email is below:

Dear Valued Customer,

We're committed to protecting you when you bank with us. Our industry-standard levels of security ensure that you can always access your Lloyds TSB accounts online with confidence.

To ensure you are always protected, we are introducing a new programme of security initiatives called BankSecureTM. Over the next few months, you'll see a number of initiatives that we'll put in place to make sure you stay secure and to help you protect your Internet Banking information. We're here to help you stay safe while banking online. For more information and advice on security log on below.

LINK REMOVED

Thank you for banking with us.

Mr D Stevens is a reviewer at Email scams

Why You Should Try Anonymous Web Surfing

In this world of spywares and antivirus you are never safe when you open your doors for surfing. Even though you have the latest antivirus program, there is no guarantee that the system information from your computer is not transferred to the net. All the information that you give to the net is watched closely by the hackers to know more about you and if they work step by step then they will be able to gather all the information about you one day.

If you are really worried about this problem then there is a reason to rejoice. This is the kind of net surfing known as the anonymous web surfing. Generally when you input any information it goes to the host server of the sites and the hackers are experts in intercepting this before it reaches the servers.

When you opt for the anonymous web surfing, it closes all the options of sending any personal or system information like the IP addresses to the servers. Anonymous Web Surfing could be made possible with the help of proxy servers. This could be a bit expensive but it will create an effective anonymous surfing platform.

This kind of surfing will be quite necessary as you can always prey to giving out your financial secrets like passwords and account numbers. Today the internet banking and all are so popular and anonymous web surfing can help you have a secure online experience. This is an active shield against hackers and other malicious software programs.

Moreover all the shopping sites have programs to track your shopping habits and you are always exposed to the dangerous worlds of spywares when you download something from the net. A little extra precaution in the form of anonymous surfing could be a great measure to institute safety to your computer and financial assets.

For more information about anonymous web surfing and how you can stay safe online, visit http://anonymouswebsurfing.org/