When people become so big that they automate their blog/website, it is a warning sign that the marketer/Internet guru is not going to be responsive.   Communication will take place through gatekeepers or even a Philippine or Indian outsourcer.

Frankly, I loathe such disconnect, regardless of how good the material on the site may be.  A warning signal must always go off in your head when the guru has developed a bureaucracy.

I like  Rich Scheffren.  He is is the mentor of many of the best marketers on and off the Internet.  He is sharp, writes meaningful material, and if you can afford him he could turn your flagging concern into a business empire.

But a recent email from him – or his surrogate affiliate manager – took him down a rung or two in my estimation.

Marketers of note chum around with each other, form ventures, and share strategies that work.  For that reason, you see marketing patterns in guru launches and promotions.

One style of marketing stinks to high heaven.  It’s the wife or affiliate manager, in somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek fashion, announcing a sale while the boss is out of town.  Read how I responded to it:

“This is old hat marketing and insults my intelligence, Todd.

The moral of this story.  Lies are lies.  “It depends…” is the language of fraudsters, scammers and shysters.  You can do better, my friend!

Richard Posner
Internet Gurus in the Buff blog”

I sent it off and got back a autoresponder bounce that told me to jump through five hoops to get the message through to Rich’s office – not him!  Beware of marketers who become too big to talk to the little fries.  They can’t and often don’t have your interest in mind.

Relativity in marketing must be kept in check.

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

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of being treated like a laboratory rat by successful Internet marketers. Unfortunately, every one of them is in incestuous relationship with other ones. They promote and cross-promote to us like we are easy prey for their alluring “free CD for shipping cost and complimentary membership for a month” forced continuity programs.

My dream every morning is not to become one of them, but to create/promote empowering, ethical material to level the playing field for people who do not wish to put their line into the Internet Marketing arena of scumbags.

Geez, just this morning I received this offer from guru god, Mark Joiner, promoting some sleaze that might be pleasing to the National Enquirer crowd, but smacks of Las Vegas signboard hype that should put up warning lights to even a slightly savvy marketer or consumer.

But if you talked in confidentiality to these guru gods, they would give a lowest-common-denominator response: “I sell to people what they want in the way they want it. You might find that disgusting, but it puts a Maserati or two in my garage.”

Take a look at what guru god Joyner passed my way

Nauseating! The title of this offer is Instant Money Toolkit. Any warning alarms blaring? They should be. Pure crap to separate a fool and his money.

The sad point is that until that moment I had great respect for Joyner’s integrity and useful material. Why did he sell out to a medicine man concept? It couldn’t be for the money. It must be because whatever makes money is good enough for him and his circle-the-wagon marketing buddies.

Laura Schlessinger sums up the mindset of the inner circle of super Internet marketing gurus:

“When you’re the victim of the behavior, it’s black and white; when you’re the perpetrator, there are a million shades of gray.”

Is my voice alone? Am I to be drowned out because I am a struggling citizen, rather than a millionaire? Must I join the fray in order to point out the diseases prevalent in the IM industry?

There needs to be voices in unison screaming: No more hype. No more bait and sell. No more waste in the name of stealthy marketing practices. Outstanding motivator and entrepreneur supreme Earl Nightingale once said about following the crowd:

“If someone shouts, “Fire!” it is automatic to blindly follow the crowd, and many thousands have needlessly died because of it. How many stop to ask themselves: Is this really the best way out of here?

So many people “miss the boat” because it’s easier and more comforting to follow — to follow without questioning the qualifications of the people just ahead — than to do some independent thinking and checking.”

This very wise and successful man would have loved many of the attributes of the present-day marketing millionaires and billionaires, but he would also be disgusted that so many sheep wannabees follow blindly the soothing words of successful marketers without ever believing that they – the burgeoning entrepreneur – could achieve excellence without the crutches of others or the blatantly false hype of far too many.

In the coming weeks, I will begin to outline an ethical guideline and rating system when choosing gurus. Few, I’m afraid, will pass the mustard today. While making money is what business is all about, your life is much more than the money you make and spend.

Ethics and commerce deserve to meet and share the same floor.

The ad nauseum use of such phrases as “No List. No brain! No worries! Former bagger at Walmart earns $13,499 in 48 hours,” is great copy for a dog and pony show, 2009 style. It especially works on people desperate to believe in a magical shortcut to fame, riches and sipping pinatas on the shores of Bora Bora.

I challenge any hypster marketer – that’s most of them – to take myself, one of my Twitter companions, a random person on a live webinar/teleseminar, or a random person chosen in some other way to protect against plucking a confidant of the marketer, and then demonstrate live how this super-dooper system can make instant riches for a technical moron with less than a hundred dollars in cash to spend.

If the software/system is so great for common folks, then this is a great way to show wannabe marketers live that this is not some income circling crap with no direct show of how (and if) it can work with No list, No website, No (You fill in the blank).

Talk is cheap and we can blame it on Internet Marketers who know what they are doing and know that you don’t understand jack shit and can be reeled into their marketing loop.

Guarantees and risk reversal are meant to lower our guard, but the savvy marketer knows that when the buyer fails he/she will often – though not always – write off the failure to their own shortcomings (probably right!) rather than the failings of the seller. Asking for a refund will happen in less than twenty percent of the sales, I surmise.

The key to low returns despite failure is that the marketer is smooth-talking, knowledgeable, and sounds sincere. The buyer then blames himself for buying and then not implementing systems.

I’d like to have a dollar for every marketer who bought, for example, the Butterfly Marketing software for shipping cost only and then canceled the continuity program immediately, could then not install the valuable asset on their server (despite a video instructional), and ultimately filed it under the “Some Other Time” file on their hard drive or backup disk. I’d like to have another dollar for the similar deals from Stompernet, PPC Affiliate Classroom, Listbuilding Club, et al.

The truth is that most people don’t have the perseverance levels of those selling them a product deal. The successful marketer can paint – or hire someone to paint – a rosy picture, but he can’t pull you away from Fox TV or solve your problems with an nonsupporting spouse. He can’t make you a marketing maven unless (and since) you are willing to pay thousands of bucks for his/her one-on-one coaching.

Failure is a state of mind rather than a lack of software or systems. To work on the income rather than your person is a glaring mistake most people make in their marketing careers. The successful Internet marketer knows the truth: his/her system will fail most of the time because the mindset is piss poor, the finances are in the tank, and the person is a technical clutz lacking imagination and foresight.

In other words, “No list, No Website, et al…” is a crock aimed at unfocused losers more than seasoned pros looking to move up a rung or ten.

Get your mind clear before making another purchase.

If you want to work with people who are clearly above board and not into hype, then consider Steve Little or Ken Evoy.

Freddy Mercury was right when he said: “It destroys the soul to hear that you’re all hype, that you have no talent, and that your whole career has been contrived.”

The No-Brain-Needed hypsters should listen to Freddy’s graveside tune. If you got something worthwhile to hawk, prove it live.