It didn’t take long for me to learn the artful and designing marketing schemes of  legitimate and illegitimate marketers online.  They play on our basal instincts, the seven deadly sins:

1) haughty eyes, 2) a lying tongue, 3) hands that shed innocent blood, 4) a heart that devises wicked schemes, 5) feet that are quick to rush into evil, 6) a false witness who pours out lies, and 7) a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.”

Almost every trick used by the sham masters of the 19th Century, galloping into a town a night by horse and buggy to sell pidgeon feathers or snake oil as a panacea for every ailment in God’s arsenal, have now been incorporated into the seamless, online marketing world.

Moreover,  we now hear those seedy methods of yore with cyber sugar-coating being praised  as “stealthy marketing principles.”

Continuity programs, affiliate programs and any other programs that sells information and promise are facing the scrutiny of ecommerce giants such as Google and Mastercard.  Many more are putting new-age medicine men on notice.

This new scrutiny does not make me happy, nor do I gloat.  For years I have been writing about the deceptive marketers selling us sexy lifestyles and instant success on a stick.  They are not held accountable – at least until the present crackdown – for the efficacy of what they sell or the gimmicks to get you to buy at “No Risk.”

Enter, front and center, continuity meisters with their sugar-coated, giving-away-the-farm designs with a $50,100,200 membership waiting for you thirty days down the line.  They tell you that you can cancel at any time during those thirty days, but my own experience with such matters tells me that people forget, have the first membership fee taken from their credit card, inform the seller they do not want (nor did they want) to pay anything.

Here’s the kicker.  Many people blame themselves and so they won’t ask for the first payment back.  They will just cancel.

Let’s run the numbers with  Guru X.  He has a mailing list of 300,000.  Half of his membership takes him up on the  giving-away-the-farm continuity plan (150,000 subscribers).   Of those 150,000, let’s say 20% (30,000) forget to cancel the thirty-day trial and get billed.  Generously speaking, let’s say 80% (24,000) demand their money back.  The remaining group (6000) cancel but don’t ask a refund because they were negligent by not paying attention to the deadline.  Each of them payed, for example, $50, for the monthly membership.  That’s $300,000 in booty.  Yes, the marketer must pay his JV partners for leads or however he commissions them, but that was calculated into the legitimate buyers’ commission scheme.

Does this sound at all suspicious or even unlawful?  Methinks it does.  Get this straight, however – a majority of mega-marketers are good or even altruistic guys and gals who would defend continuity to the death.  They have been brainwashed and anesthetized by the allure of riches and fame.  They like hobnobbing at exclusive country clubs or Branson events to put another feather in their marketing caps.  It can happen to the best of us.  We err because we are human.

Noam Chomsky pointed out:  “The point of public relations slogans like “Support our troops” is that they don’t mean anything… That’s the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody’s going to be against, and everybody’s going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. Its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That’s the one you’re not allowed to talk about.”

While I’m talking about it.  And so is the man in the following YouTube video, Ryan Lee…