Humphrey Bogart said to Ingrid Bergman in the classic movie Casablanca,

“I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Now, now… Here’s looking at you kid.”

Not to be too cynical, that is what the majority of IM tweaks and systems are all about: Fleeting ways of raking in a little money with secrets and tricks which quickly are no longer secrets or tricks and go the way of the dinosaur.

They amount to a hill of beans.

Matt Bacak, a noted millionaire marketer, recently sent me an ultra-hype affiliate promotion about one of these “hill of beans” no-brainer offers. Michael Jones’ affiliate link is pure American bull. I say that because I have lived in Japan for 28 years since leaving Seattle in 1980.

Matt is a noted marketer with an outstanding track record of success. I met him at a seminar in his rising star era and found him to be sincere and very astute on how to market on the Internet.

In fact, I remember him giving a series of lectures about the importance of having a system rather than just flogging anything. Jones’ offer is one of those highly exaggerated efforts to fleece newbies and veteran IM failures of their sparse cash by slickly promising a pot of gold.

Michael Jones might be Jesus incarnate, but he has no way to contact him and he is running an online equivalent of a ghost corporation from Israel it seems. One of his mailings had the “As seen on Oprah” crap near the header, and my take is that only a moron would buy something with such a come on. Yet he has obviously befriended and gained the trust of some of the top names in marketing and he is using these coattails to fleece the rabble.

My name is Richard Posner and I am not a successful online marketer. You should trust me because I know what I need to do to flim-flam people, yet I loathe people who use such shenanigans to sell worthless or unusable crap to the millions of unknowing, unmotivated victims infected with laziness and greed.

I am an in-the-trenches expert in uncovering hypnotic marketers who are motivated by greed and can understand the desires of those who are failing or have failed more times than the New York Knicks.

Making money is great. I condone becoming squeeky-clean rich by selling products and services which teach you skills that can be banked on for as long as you live. That’s a much higher, and yes, idealistic vision of how we can level the playing field and bring sufficient prosperity to the majority of earth inhabitants.

Let’s wipe out hype and pitchmen, so we can see the sky of honest, achievable heaven on earth. We needn’t walk on each other to get our fair share. The first step is to discover what you are cut out to do…

TAKE THE TEST AND BECOME YOUR BEST!

The phrase “Just Say No,” is often applied to moral campaigns to discourage people from having premarital sex or trying drugs. That same phrase is appropriate when we talk about a nasty drug called Opt-In.

On the surface, Opt-In seems a very wise and just concept to protect marketers from spam complaints. But it has now become a new type of spam.

Savvy marketers want to micromanage their campaigns at your expense. If you have been online for a significant number of years, you develop a liking for certain marketers and any time they offer some free download or video, you feel curious to at least take a peak.

But no……!!!! They can’t just send you a link, though you are already a subscriber to a list. They make you opt-in again for each video and PDF file and then set up a mailing list revolving around that one-off ebook or download of some nature.

Fast forwarding, your email box starts to overflow with the same offer coming from multiple mailing lists of one marketer. It irritates me to receive these multiple mailings and I sometimes reach the “That’s it!!!” point, and then I unsubscribe from all the lists of that particular marketer.

Nine times out of ten I will get re-introduced to these quality content marketers through another marketer and I will be reeled in again by the spamming marketer because I do want to learn and be in the know.

Just say no to this obnoxious micromanaging opt-in by following the marketer on Twitter or Facebook since they all have caught that fever and will announce their pre-launch content there. If you become an affiliate of that person, then factor that in when you consider the likelihood of multiple spam from the marketer. Usually you cannot be an affiliate without being willing to receive non-affiliate related offers. Ugh!

My firm feeling is that you should be more discretionary about opting in. Do you really need another great report on how to set up a blog or how to do a teleseminar? Most likely you have some outstanding, unread reports on the same subject slumbering on your hard drive.

When you first downloaded them, those reports screamed to be read and acted upon, but your passion died quickly. I know why.

Most people don’t awake each morning hoping to learn how to be a techie maven. Few of us wake up wanting to be an affiliate marketer or newsletter writer. We do, however, wake up wanting to make lots of money and live the lifestyle of an Internet Guru.

The money and the lifestyle are intriguing, but the nitty-gritty of tweaking websites and blogs bores us to tears. We are unique individuals with unique life skills and aptitudes. We want to express ourselves and be justly rewarded.

A majority of us do not want to be Internet marketers selling to other hungry Internet marketers. But that’s what most Internet gurus who get you to opt-in for them have in mind for you. They want you to virtually become their mouthpiece.

This blog and all my sites and writing are about empowerment. If you don’t know what you stand for, you’ll fall for anything.

Just Say No to every marketer with a good sales pitch. The starting point to becoming the person you can be is to work from the inside out.

Who are you and what can you offer to the marketplace? That is an excellent starting point to resist the temptation to opt-in and download every crumb on the virtual table and to clean up your cluttered email box.

By far, the best system for evaluating your abilities and getting in touch with your heart worth gold is to take this survey. Do it now…

http://www.theperfectbizfinder.com/?af=947759

Marketers get you to opt-in with a so-called ethical bribe. Each time they have a new product/ebook/software download, they make you opt-in. This is nice for the record-keeping, but is an unnecessary pain in the ass for the receiver.

I recommend boycotting all marketers who do this – most of them – and shoot off a message to them simply saying “No Mas.” These were the famous words of a boxer named Roberto Duran who quit without cause in a bout with Mohamed Ali.

We all have better things to do than to join one list after another, just so that the guru can spam you with legitimacy from umpteen lists. They could easily set up software to track signups from the original database – and that’s what we, the spammed, must make sure they do.

Let’s get the ball rolling on this and put an end to this insipid practice. The practice will change, if we refuse to budge. Gurus, we have opted in once and that’s enough! Internet marketing need not be like a layered onion.