As an expat American living in Japan for the last 29 years, the marketing hype emanating from the United States and other Anglo clones has become both laughable and infuriating.

Laughable because the public keeps on hunting for the elusive pot of gold.  Few succeed in using the information, software or other training to effect, mostly, in truth, because they never hit the proactive accelerator with their new-found marketing plans.

Infuriating because too many savvy marketers in the know often use psychological traps to get the rabble to bite. They flash dollar signs and unimaginable promises of a good life to the gullible, something-for-nothing crowd – a very large audience indeed.

A fool and his or her money are soon parted, yet the marketer will continue to gloat about his or her successful launches which are always spiced (or spiked) with testimonials from those who allegedly succeed using the guru’s system.

What constitutes a successful product launch is about to undergo a rapid and unpredictable paradigm change. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is about to enforce new laws beginning on December 1st concerning truth in marketing both online and off.

The new laws are vague enough and ominous enough to send marketing shivers down unscrupulous (and scrupulous) marketers’ spines. It’s about time that the government stepped in and wiped out nauseating money and performance claims which have gone mainstream in the last few years.

How can any marketer use  testimonials of  those who are super successful at implementation and not concurrently convey that

“Not only are these income claims from using or selling this product extreme cases and unverifiable, but  most certainly nine out of ten people will have little or no profit or positive effect on their business or life after making the purchase”?

The FTC regulation gives many examples of violation, so that hypsters and low-key, ethical marketers alike can learn to tone  down their claims.   For a large number of marketers this may be a death sentence and a hefty fine.  The crooks who deftly use hypnotic hooks and exaggeration to close the sale at any cost, will face a marketer’s guillotine.

There are many ethical marketers who may also get in the cross-hairs of the FTC, but by and large I fervently support the clamp down and hope the most obvious hype maestros will lend up parking cars in Santa Monica or making license plates in  San Quinton Prison.

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BTW, a great trainer who gives tons’ of quality material on how  to set up up and operate an online business is Eric Holmlund.  His Eric’s Tips are a treasure you CAN take to the bank.  I ain’t selling this to you…just go there and see what the dude has to offer.  Yes, he sells things and makes a handsome profit online, but he is also one of the great guys in IM.

We are all being deluged with email after email promoting one-dollar trials of a continuity program. Sometimes every tried-and-true stale program of the promoting guru and his collaborating networkers is tossed in gratis as bait.

So should you bite? After all, he’s giving you the kitchen sink for a blink. What have you got to lose, right? Or for you positive thinkers, “What have you got to gain?”

Success is a process, not a particular product. Your cyber shelf and mine are lined with well-intentioned trial products collecting dust and choking our hard drive over time.

This stark truth has led me in recent weeks to start organizing these materials so that I can choose which of them to keep and devour (immediately) and which of them to send to the cyberbin in the sky.

Quite frankly, some of these programs have tons’ of doable, profitable ideas that are just screaming to get done. Most of them, however, are worthless unless you have a coach to help you understand how to implement the strategies or unless you buy their costly platinum or gold continuity programs.

Ugh! In the final analysis, most of these cheap introductory offers are quite costly. Why is that?

That $1 trial with the bonus balloons is a time bomb clicking. They will automatically renew after a one-week or one-month trial period without notice.

Quite a few opportunity seekers, jumping from one great deal to the next, forget the deadline and suddenly receive a notice of billing for the recurring program they bought for that measly buck. While getting your money back is possible after you bitch to their billing department about having innocently forgotten the deadline, it’s a time-and energy-waster you and I should avoid.

More insidiously, there is something terribly flawed – perhaps unethical or illegal – in renewing a first billing without first giving a reminder to the trial subscriber that his/her trial subscription is about to be converted to a full-paying one.

Certainly, such a notice would affect the bottom line of the promoting marketer moderately or even drastically. The trial purchaser would realize he hasn’t even cracked open the ebook or system he so enthusiastically and desperately desired a month past. More than likely, he would cancel the subscription before it reached the recurred billing stage and release a sigh of relief that such a notice was in place.

The scourge of online marketing has been the tidal wave of marketers using this trial offer paradigm without notice that trial subscriptions are expiring. In any given month nowadays, I will be tempted by more than a dozen enticing offers of both notable and obscure marketers with a slick sales letter to lure me in.

Despite my fears of forgetting the recurring billing cycle, the idea of getting the marketer’s entire kitchen sink for a measly buck can cause me to throw caution to the wind with a wistful, “Oh well, what the hell for a buck?”

The time is upon us to move from being a victim or sucker to understanding the real problem for many people. We want to make money quickly with a minimum of effort and so we buy or try anything that touches those buying buttons in us.

Indelicately said, we are moronic, directionless puppets on strings without a flyspeck of a marketing or life plan to guide us wisely.

More thoughtfully stated, “Shouldn’t these continuity program shams be a wake-up call to us all that we can design and direct a life of our own?”

Regulatory bodies could and should stop continuity programs, but it is up to each of us to know what is in our best interest and discard the rest, even if it only costs a measly buck for immediate participation.

It’s ironic that successful marketers are fully aware of two indications which seem to be undoubtedly accurate:
1. Over ninety percent of accumulated wealth sits in the coffers of 5~10% of the people on earth.
2. The 80/20 principle is absolutely correct. That is, 80 percent of the sales in an organization, for example, are created by 20 percent of the workforce or affiliates. Conversely, 20 percent of your customers buy 80 percent of your products and services.

Not being too cynical, the majority of online marketers willingly deceive you about the opportunity they claim to offer. They know that many dreamers will buy it and hope against hope that they will follow the program to the end and claim the riches promised by the guru. But more than 80 percent don’t and never will until they learn to tame their impulsiveness and learn to laser-focus on one concept at the total exclusion of all others.

The truth will set you free. Success is a mindset and a journey, rather than a destination. Yes, you will have to pay a price financially and with your time to find and tweak your knowledge and skills into a marketable product/service, but the price of not doing so and jumping from one 80/20 scam to the next is that you will remain in the 90 percent crowd of losers to the grave.

I end this short post with a Federal Trade Commission post which could save you from being duped (again)…

No doubt some of the best acts in marketing are mega-successful John Reese, Frank Kern and Tony Robbins.  They got together recently ostensibly to discuss the real problem of  “Why people who purchase in-depth training programs for the most part fail.”

Though the discussion was part of a pre-launch for Tony, the content is gold.  This is happily becoming a trend in Internet Marketing – great content preceding a launch.  It dovetails with a theme I have been belaboring for a good while:  Marketing success is an inside job before it becomes an outside success.

I am including this video now, although it is likely to be removed in the not-too-distant future…

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.