The
Art of Distraction Marketing - The Next Shiny Rock
by
Paul Ineson - Guest Writer
When
we were kids, it didn’t take much to distract us - a falling
leaf, a worm crawling along and especially rocks with shiny bits
in them. Man, if you found a rock with shiny bits in it, you
were king. That is until the next distraction came along. It’s
the same with Internet marketing. Someone sends you an offer;
you grab it, get stuck on something, get discouraged and check
your mail while you’re taking a break.
BAM! There it is, all shiny new and promising. And so,
the cycle continues.
Recent
Experience #1:
I
attended a Classroom event in Las Vegas Nevada and to say I was
disappointed is a huge understatement. There was precious little
content and copious number of up-sell offers. We weren’t there
to be taught; we were there to be pitched to. We were at this FREE
seminar to be beat over the head with offer after offer until my
eyes literally rolled into the back of my skull.
We were there to make them money, and all along I thought
we were there to learn from them how to make money. Live and
learn.
P.P.C.
stands for Pay per Click, believe me when I say that you can
spend a bunch of money trying to make this work. If you are not
careful, you can bankrupt yourself in a very short period of
time. To be successful at P.P.C. you have to know what you’re
doing. That’s why I thought it was a great idea to attend a
Live Classroom seminar. Wrong again.
Every
one of the speakers at this event had a great
“Rags-to-Riches” story on how they were trying to make money
online for years and were at that point thousands of dollars in
debt. They were just about ready to give up and BAM! One day
they just happen, by luck, to stumble onto this system that was
right in front of their eyes the whole time and it was amazing
nobody else was even doing it. They go on to tell you the long
and laborious process of their system, but they talk fairly
quickly, so you not only have trouble following, but also have
no chance to write it down. But, hold on, they’ve written a
program that does everything for you. We’re saved!
Here
comes the shiny rock! Now they tell you how hard it was to make
this program and how much money and time were put into its
development. They had to pay someone a lot of money to do the
programming that they didn’t understand. Next, they tell you,
they wanted to sell the program for $5,000.00 but when they were
asked to speak at the seminar, they were convinced
to give good value to all the poor students (or should I say
pigeons) so, for one day only, they are going to let it go for
ONLY $2,500.00. But wait, there’s more. They then tell you
about all the other shiny rocks they have, what they do and the
value of each program, sometimes 6 or more of these. The total
value of the program and the bonuses is $10,000.00 but, for
today only, if you meet me in the back of the room when I’m
done speaking, I’ll give you this incredible package for the
low one time price of ONLY $2,500.00. WOW! What a deal! Sign me
up! Sounds like one of those cheesy infomercials on late night
television.
Try
2 full days of this, with at least 6 presenters all telling
their sad-turned-glad stories, showing us pictures of happy
families, large houses and fancy cars. Each of these people have
their very own fantastic, must have program, (I mean shiny
rock,) along with huge bonus packages.
Recent
Experience #2:
I don’t know if you can tell but I moved on from that seminar,
feeling a bit jaded, to another seminar that “promised” that
everyone would leave this 2 day event with a working,
money-making web site.
I felt this one held more promise because, well, it was
guaranteed, right?
There
we sat, all of us, with our laptops and high expectations. This
seminar cost me a lot of money to attend, but the guarantee said
we would be refunded if we left without a working site. Listen
to this and imagine how you’d feel?
Half
way through the first day, when it was obvious that more than
half of us were hopelessly lost, and so far behind that it would
be impossible to recover, the main man, whom I will not name,
came onto the stage and amongst other things said and I quote,
“you guys know the guarantee is B.S. right?” Imagine how I
felt. I’d just spent a bunch of money and justified it by
imagining I was getting something for it.
Now
all that is taken away in an instant and you know that you are
left to struggle on your own.
Once
these types of “marketing gurus” sell you something,
they’re like mosquitoes - they never let you rest. These guys
just keep pelting you with one shiny new rock after another;
never giving you a moment’s peace and never letting you find
your balance. It’s almost impossible to implement the system
they’ve just sold you, without being bombarded with the new
system, course, mentoring sessions, webinars or seminars and
sometimes, the very next day.
These
so called gurus say they have the sure thing; they say they want
to help you make money on line; they say it’s 100% risk free,
a no-brainer. So you buy it and let the first one sit, because
you think, ”This is the one, this time I can’t fail and this
time I’m going to be as rich as these gurus.” I’ll get
back to that one when I get this one working.
You
never do, you just end up with your hard drive, desk and
bookshelves full of shiny rocks. There is not much shine on
rocks that have been forgotten and left to gather dust.
Then
you download the new program or the system comes in the mail and
you open it and find out that it’s not quite as easy as the
guy said, in fact it’s pretty complicated. By now your head is
starting to spin and your thoughts are all over the place. You
are just confused. You don’t know where to start, or what to
do next.
Please
watch for Part 2 of this article where I am going to give you a
few of the dirty tricks to watch out for as benchmarks, so you
don’t get caught up in any of these types of false scams.
Please watch
for:
Identifying
the Top 10 Tactics of Distraction Marketing – How to avoid
being had! (Part-2)
By Paul Ineson
Additional comments from John Alexander:
In all fairness to some Internet Marketers, there are still
some trustworthy sources around these days.
As terribly sorry as I am each time I hear of instances like
Paul's story, beginners just making a start who were taken advantage of by these types of confidence
schemes, get rich quick programs, be sure you
perform proper due diligence and know the source where you are
getting your information from.
There is great opportunity in SEO, Internet Marketing, Social
Media Marketing if you focus on building your genuine skills.
Learn how to accurately separate "real gold" from
the surplus of "fools gold" and misinformation in
the marketplace today.
Try not to be swayed by the hyped up pitches based on some
"easy way to wealth" or some "lazy mans way to
wealth." Most professional services do not use these
wealth creation pitches, but legitimate services focus more on
education and training and legitimate mentoring, rather than
selling a lot of hype.
John Alexander
About
Paul Ineson:
Paul
Ineson is a part time Internet marketer who also owns and
operates SuperDogAgility.com - a small
company that is dedicated to bringing you, high
quality but affordable
dog training agility equipment. Our suppliers share our
passion for quality and service. For free
articles on Dog Training – please feel free to visit.
About John Alexander:
John has taught onsite search engine marketing
workshops to
small groups of people from over 80 different countries, and he's worked as a professional in the search engine industry for years.
John Alexander and Robin Nobles teamed up together in 2002 to create the
very first Ultimate SEO Mastery Workshop. For more information about their
newest live, personal, SEO
Training Workshops, please visit Search
Engine Workshops. For local SEO Community Workshops visit Search Engine
Academy for a Workshop located near you.
John and Robin also
offer complete online
SEO Training Courses and John writes Free
SEO Tips daily.
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