Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A letter to the Internet Marketing "Gurus"

This is outside the scope of self help but I feel compelled to write this, I am p"£d off with "gurus" ripping people off.

Dear Gurus,

This is a letter from a very frustrated and angry customer who probably represent 95% of the Internet Marketing Population, I want to ask few questions and suggest some changes.

Whether you listen to me or not i honestly don't care because i know there is an underground revolution coming your way, This revolution is a group of %95 of the frustrated intermediate and newbies.


First let me emphasize about one very important thing: Treat your customers as they should be treated with respect and don't think for one second that treating one person badly is going to go unnoticed, this is the superhighway we are talking about, one bad mouthing and your business is in trouble unless you can prove that the person was at fault and even then you can not stop the propagation of the bad message, not unless you are a God which i highly doubt since you are not even a real Gurus.

There's a recent event where a “guru” has a Private Label Rights membership and allows his customers to sell the master resell rights, but as soon as one of his customers created a Master resell right membership to sell his products in line with the terms and conditions of his membership website, he went mad and threatened to sue the Customer for doing so. This is not ethical in my books

He is stupid because he doesn't think outside the box, his customer would remain a loyal customer if he treated her well. She may even bring more customers to his membership site through affiliates, which in turn increases his bottom line profits.

Gurus, If you say something and someone used your terms and conditions as you stated you have no right to change your TOC once everyone accepted them at the time of purchase.

Second let me ask this : Would you please cut the BS and go straight to the point with your sales letters, what's the matter with you, a sales page if printed would be 4 to 8 pages of fluff. Enough of the sizzle give us the steak.

All I want to know about your product is this:

What is it? Where and how can i use it?

How is it going to benefit me?

What are the features?

Give me an example? It is an ebook give me a chapter, if it is a script show me where do you use it?

How much? Not expensive unless you come up with something very very original that nobody has done in the past.

Here is an idea, take someone from the newbies and teach them for free and tape it or document it when they do succeed then you can sell it by giving away the film, of course you can hide your secrets but at least give your readers a general idea.


That's it.

I don't need the fluff, you know why? I don't have time, This is my process when i read any of your letters:

I read the title and the first paragraph if i am interested i jump to the bullets to see what's in it for me, after that I go straight to the bottom of the page looking for the price. if you hide the price from me hoping that i would go through your page and i may like your product, you are wrong, I give your page about a second, if i don't find the price right in front of me, bye bye, ciao, see you. Never come back to it.

3rd thing: here is something your tracking software can't tell you:

When you spend your money on adwords and i click on your advert because it was interesting,

I go to your page and if i see that i have to give you my email address to let me into your sales letter? I simply click the X on the top right corner of my screen. This tactic would work if you are giving me value for my time. If you promise me something and you don't deliver after i gave you my email address i can assure that i will unsubscribe from your list. In your terms you call this squeeze page, landing page etc (you are good at coming up with fancy names)

4th Look after your existing customers before you look for more, follow up with them, ask them how are they doing with your product, is there anything they want to ask you about, insist that they use it. Don't just send them another automated email asking them to buy more products from you, because you call these people a qualified customer. You seem to have a very bad idea i don't know where did you get it from: “if a customer buys from you once he/she will buy from you again” This is totally wrong. If I personally buy from you and your product is crap that's the last thing you will see from me and i will be asking for a refund because it is my right. When you assume, you make an ass of u and me. And we don't want that assumption.

Just listen, how many people have your product still zipped in their hard drives?

5th If you see one of your customer climbing the ladder don't push them down because you are afraid of loosing money, in doing so you will lose them, help them instead and you gained a friend and loyal customer forever.

6th Stop conspiring against people, don't think just because we need to get out of the tick tock we are willing to max our credit cards, I am working on waking up people and teaching them that unless you use a product from a marketer don't buy from them again until you use it.

7th always always remember that you were a newbie one day and you went through hell to get to the top, have the newbies in your mind when you price your products and when you create them.

8th When there is a firesale organize it among yourselves and don't send me 1000's of emails about the same thing, this devalue yourselves and you become like sheeps all i hear when i open my inbox is bah bah, this translated to “Please buy from me! I will give you my other products for free, or 50% of my next product, or i can only give two kidneys so hurry” I will buy when i am ready to buy, firesale or not.

Even if i don't buy from you at the time, i can still get the product some other time from someone else much cheaper than the price you are selling for at the time of the firesale.

This is what the Gurus know about customer behavior, NOTHING. That's why Google introduced Google analytics to give you a glimpse of what your customer is doing when they get to your page.


Aziz meknassi

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Aziz Meknassi is a motivator, martial arts instructor, internet Marketer, multi-lingual and a webmaster, Free Marketing Info at http://www.wakeuptocash.co.uk and Free self Help Online reading at http://www.azmek.co.uk

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