Years ago, successful entrepreneur and inspirational speaker, Zig Ziglar, quipped: “Yes, money isn’t everything…but it’s reasonably close to oxygen”.

Don’t believe for a minute that any guru who circles his/her big earnings in a video or written sales page is doing so for educational purposes only. Far too many marketers, when trying to sell you their version of the Brooklyn Bridge, use this perverse tactic. In their presentations they say, “I’m not telling you these numbers to brag. Just the opposite. You can be like me.” Yeah, and if you believe that, then you’ll also believe that the pope does circumcisions.

Online marketers want you to believe that hanging around with rich folks will help you catch the fever. Fair enough. If you want to soar with the eagles, then don’t hang out with the turkeys. That makes sense.

But I tend to believe the income claims and success track boasting is more like hanging out with a lottery winner in order to increase your chance of winning the big one yourself. Fat chance!

Transparency online is as common as a three-legged dove with a mole on its underbelly. If you repeat an innocent, unconscious lie ad infinitum, that does not make it true. People show you money figures for two basic reasons:
1)To put you in awe of them and their accomplishments, and
2)To position themselves as experts and you as an incompetent in need of their services. Simply, they frame you as a victim and themselves as your savior.

Here’s another unconscious lie (in many cases) that I hear all the time: “No experience necessary.” That may be true, but it is often a ruse to separate a fool from his money. In non-doublespeak: “If you have $1997 to fork out for my offer, sure we’ll give you the goods. But without a flyspeck of knowledge or experience, expect a much much longer learning curve than our more experienced target market will require. You may well fail if you are undisciplined and unteachable.”

Refined sugar is addictive. It is not good for your health. In the same manner, sugary offers are the diabetes of your soul. They will blind you and eventually take the wind out of your life sails.

Don’t be led by money claims and bold promises. You have a mission in this world that is unique, just as you are unique. Other people have great plans for you and will resort to artful and designing means to soften your will and prepare you for slaughter.

Just say, “NO!” to incongruous, shiny objects. That may be difficult to do unless you first discover who you are and who and what you want to be(come). Not as sexy as dollar promises, but essential for your economic survival. Become strong enough to not take the bait by building up your inner compass.

There are certain people in Internet marketing who stand light years’ above the crowd both ethically and professionally. Usually they do very very well financially without being sucked into dubious alliances with less-than-ethical Internet gurus and pointed-head software developers trying to scam the system.

Mark Joyner has always struck me as a straight-from-the-hip (and heart) marketer who may have been caught up in the glitter of being an Internet guru superstar for a brief moment in history. He recovered quickly. Though I heard of his glowing achievements in forums and elsewhere, what struck me most about the present-day Mark was (and is) his authenticity. He truly tries to provide thought-provoking, action-taking products and services which empower his followers with a full-throttle life.

Whenever I get a letter from some Internet guru telling me that he/she is retiring from the Internet marketing game, my first reaction is flat-out skepticism. I think it is some marketing ploy to reposition him-/herself in the marketplace.

I then usually scroll down looking for a Jeff Walker-type pre-launch link, but Mark offered none. The letter was starkly authentic and refreshing. Surely, many of the incestuous mastermind groups with big players are reading this letter and dismissing it as either foolhardy or a well-developed ploy.

My take is that it is congruent with the man, material and accomplishments of this Internet marketing pioneer. In future entries, I will cover some of the other high-profile marketers who have refused Faustian bargains so that they can maintain their integrity. Cautionary tales will also be covered.

Read Mark’s email letter, as I did, with a breath of hope, and pray that my trust in him and his mission is not a case of mistaken identity:

Dear Richard,

Mark Joyner
MJ on Marketing

You’ve seen it before:
“Don’t buy “Testosterone-Driven List-Building Matrix” until you read this!”

Google is overflowing with such drum-beating, bated-breath fluff each time a known Internet marketer launches a game-changer. The trouble being that I have never met a marketer who doesn’t want to trumpet their thingy as a game-changer for everyone.

The objective critic is – with few exceptions – a biased affiliate looking for a cut in the action. But unlike the guru who launches the product, the affiliate provides NO numbers to verify the super duper results supposedly attainable using the goldmine product.

As more fodder in their ranked, Google listing, the unbiased author will use a trumped-up Ben Franklin approach line to help you see that the positives far outweigh the negatives.

Folks, this is horseshit on a stick in the same vein as “As seen on Oprah,” should be your seal of approval. The product may actually be good and relevant for some folks, but for most it is just another chance to chase a stray rabbit down a foxhole.

Even more insulting to our intelligence is when the marketer (through his affiliate) proudly tells the potentially duped that a 30- or 60-day money-back guarantee makes the product a no-brainer.

If you’re in a landscape business and someone sells you a product that helps you build a network marketing downline of 10,000 on steroids, is that 60-day money-back guarantee worth even one nose follicle to you? Have you got two months to waste on greed-driven, pie-in-the-sky launches?

Bob Dillon wrote, “Don’t think twice, it’s alright,” in one of his songs. For the IM world we live in 40 years hence, the new lyrics should be “Don’t think twice, hold your wallet with all your might.”

There is a sucker born every moment. Our job is to not be one of them. Live life on purpose, so that every shiny object doesn’t blind or distract us from our mission.

Watching someone else who has things that you want and for some reason you cannot get – love, intimacy, money, business savvy, significance -    perform his or her orgasmic feats online will never help you get your rocks off.   This is a truism in both virtual sex or in guru-gawking.

The IM field is always in a state of flux because people are becoming more and more skeptical and only the slickest (but not necessarily the slimiest) marketers must adjust their approach to get you to pass over your credit card details.

They do it with scenario content videos which show many morsels of a million-dollar strategy.  They  give you one tit.  Then, in the next video, they give you the other.  They use the takeaway – the panty crack shot – which usually will cost you between $49 and $97.  And like I said in the last entry, that’s when the tease becomes a scam.  You find out the titillation was actually a dutch wife and that if you buy the upsell it will become like the real thing.

So here’s what I observe.  The big players are now inviting you into their virtual living room after you buy the scaled-down or stripped version of their real product.  And then they’ll give you everything they have previously produced and made millions selling as a bonus simply because it is stale or on the verge of being obsolete.

It is time to open our collective eyes.  The IM field is gimmicky and ephemeral.  What works today – once it is spread virally – will be in the marketing graveyard before the average bloke can implement it.  To believe that marketers want you to be rich like them in droves is, for the most part, unadulterated nonsense and naivety.

If they gave you their non-sexy, complete package with long-term coaching…then their businesses would be doomed.  The key to online sex or sexiness is to sell the illusion rather than the solution.

Case in point.  Yesterday Frank Kern gave a webinar -after much fanfare – that was supposedly a way of giving back to the community.  He made casual references while promoting it  to the rarity of giving such freebies to non-students.  The casual, laid-back Hippie style – which is superstar Frank’s trademark – insured a full house.  And he delivered the tits and the crack before revealing the $1997 price tag – the trade-in from the dutch wife free content.

Anik Singal did the same thing just a few days before him.  First he titillated with an under-$50, stripped-down version of a product, then banged you with the promise of a revealing webinar for new members which turned into his dutch wife trade-in for the nearly two-thousand-buck real lady.

It is not a software or a sexy-sounding idea that will transform a wannabe into a star.  Gimmicks can never trump low self-esteem and low self-confidence.

You don’t need to buy sex when you become sexy yourself.  That is why Napolean Hill in his masterpiece, “Think and Grow Rich” talks about sex transmutation emphatically:

“The men of greatest achievement are men with highly developed sex natures; men who have learned the art of sex transmutation.  A man may attain to great heights of financial or business achievement, solely by the driving force of sex energy.”

Putting aside his sexist expressions – a natural style in his time – one must realize that the biggest producers in business and life have or have developed a sexual appeal.  It may be their physical appearance, but more often in marketing it is the sexual appeal of their arguments to buy their thingy.  The thingy is just a vibrator still in the box.  They want to convince you else-wise.

Watch over the gateway to your mind.  Other people’s sexual allure is not your ticket to financial independence.  It will instead make you a slave to virtual sex, always one step removed from the real thing.

Butterfly Marketing software – introduced by Mike Filsaime some seven years ago – is an effective yet often deceitful tool meant to “bait and trade” the unwary customer into  buying not only the attractively described info product or online service, but also the numerous up-sells and cross-sells.

Over time, the users of this software (or clones of it) have become increasingly slicker in getting skeptics like me to let down my psychological guard long enough to let the bait set in.  Such  is the case with my recent purchase of Anik Singal’s Commission Domination.

Anik has been basically an honest and very successful online marketer in his mercurial rise and he could perhaps attribute a lot of that success to his alliance with Mike Filsaime.  Mr. Filsaime, as well, strikes the average bloke as a very generous and kind multimillionaire marketer with a Butterfly twist.  Both have their video promotion techniques tweaked and those promotions often give one a trigger finger to the order button.

Remember: one of the seven deadly sins is greed.  In Dante’s Purgatory, the sinners were bound and laid face down in the soil for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts.  How many marketers openly and wantonly exploit this common flaw of character to the detriment of a customer with sweet talk and dreamy, unprovable notions?

Truly, kudos to successful marketers who know how to get into your head and anticipate your  objections and reservations before they rise to the surface. But then, beware of the whammies.

In Anik’s case, he convinced me that he had a “Can’t miss!” software that can be had  for less than $50.  Hey, that’s less than the cost of a romantic dinner for  two and, if it works, as he insists it will (with 60-day money-back guarantee to boot), it must be a no-brainer, right?

Nada.  When I made my payment, I was led to a page that introduced three different up-sells after you rejected the previous ones.  They all seem so syrupy sweet and necessary to get maximum impact of using the software.  Huh?  Time out!!  Why the hell doesn’t the software perform up to snuff without all these sweeteners?  I bought into his initial  vision, but now he tells me that the car (his initial product offering) is a stripped-down frame without an engine or brakes.

Of course, I found myself incensed again by this manipulation.  He (Anik) even made it seem like I would have to switch my hosting to his recommended provider.  In reading between the lines, I did determine that was not necessary, but the overall feeling was/is that I was taken to the cleaners (again).

I say again, because several months ago another sweet-talking marketer with a great rap pulled the same software shenanigans on me.  I returned his product without hassle, fortunately.  Anik’s product I have decided to keep and try to seriously implement for profit without the proper engine and brakes.  I will not let it collect cyber dust;  I will either make it work without the butterfly trimmings or return it on day 59.

We live in a world where the term “caveat emptor, or “Let the buyer beware,”has taken on more meaning than ever before.  With major economies tanking, unscrupulous or reckless marketers will use every trick in the book to induce you to make a purchase which will sink you incrementally deeper into debt and into a state of disillusionment.

There is a fine balancing act which must be mastered so that skepticism doesn’t keep you from seeing authentic opportunity.  Marketers can help make that balancing act easier by abandoning the “stripped-down version” of their product and just charging what they think it is worth with all the parts in place.

Final words to chew on:

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising?  Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public. ~Vilhjalmur Stefansson, 1964