Ethics in Internet Marketing
I just wrote an article on credibility in Internet Marketing. I got an email last night for a product that will test the ethics of anyone who purchases the product. Let me start from the beginning. I got an email from a fairly well known marketer on his brand new product. I am on many lists and get these all the time. It did look interesting so I sat through the very well done video (around a half-hour long). The basic thrust of the software was you get it started and as long as your computer was on you would be flooded with money. We have all heard that before right?
This software, I have no doubt, will make the user money; for a while. Until the powers that be bring the hammer down. In my opinion, this is ‘Black Hat’ stuff – it takes advantage of a “loop hole” in a system. What the software does is scrape information from another marketers list of followers and sends them offers for the same type of products. This is how you make the BIG money with this program. I un-subscribed from this marketer immediately.
As a marketer, would you want someone to hack your list and then send them offers? You worked hard to build that list didn’t you? If you wouldn’t like it, why would you do it to someone else? This is a short cut to actually building a list. You wouldn’t believe how often this happens and worse. It is really scary what some people will do to make a buck.
Does being honest and ethical make it harder to make money on the Internet? It must if people think that something like this is OK to do to make money. It seems the lines are getting blurred more all the time. For myself, this is something that I just can’t do to make money – even if it was a million dollars. I have quite a collection of ebooks detailing various methods like this that people are using to make money on the Internet. In most cases – it is a LOT of money. There is a nefarious, seedy underbelly to Internet marketing that most people have no idea. These marketers milk an loop hole until they can’t because it got closed and then they move on to the next.
I started out learning how to use a different persona for each different niche. This was ‘the way it was done’. Finding pictures of people you didn’t know to pull it off. Using fake names. You can be a man or woman; it is all much easier than you think. I just couldn’t continue that route and scrapped it all. I have quit jobs in the past that have put me in a position where I was requested to do things that were dishonest or unethical. That is just me.
What you, dear reader, have to decide for yourself is this: What will you do for money? How far will you go? Will you be dishonest? Will you stretch the truth? Will you ‘justify’ it by saying “Everyone else is doing it”. Will you steal from another marketer? There are tried and true methods to make money and ALL of them require work. There are always ‘Big Red Easy’ buttons to make money; but, most are not legal or ethical. There are always short cuts. It is your moral compass that MUST lead you. I hope that yours is straight and true. You have to look at yourself in the mirror each day.
