Honest Marketing Techniques - Products You Should Stay Away From - Part 1
There are a number of types of products you should actively avoid.
If you've read our two-part series about "Honest Marketing Techniques - What's Wrong With Online Marketing Advertising Practices" you already know there are issues with uncontrolled advertising on the internet.
Perhaps you've already been burned by purchasing a bad product, or with luck, you've only been suspicious that a given product may not be what it seems to be.
In part one of this three-part series, we will first look at blind advertisements.
There is some similarity in product launches being seen lately, especially with ClickBank launches.
It isn't a problem with ClickBank per se, but as one of the most popular third party organizations involved with selling affiliate products, they are certainly the company your will be most aware of.
The launch typically follows a pattern involving several steps:
First rule: If it's blind, don't buy it.
One copywriting technique that's incredibly effective is what's called a "blind offer".
A blind offer is this - you don't know exactly what you get until after you purchase.
No matter how effective the advertising copy is, and how well it strums your emotional heart strings, don't buy it.
Typically, the sales letter spends more time telling you what it's NOT than what it is...
If you have no idea exactly what you're getting, in terms of the training content...
It's a blind offer.
If you are an affiliate marketer, promoting one of the blind ads will cause you no end of grief, in the end.
Always remember, what you are selling affects YOUR reputation, and the possibility of gaining a few bucks from promoting a blind product isn't going to do you any good down the road when your subscribers bail on you like rats from a sinking ship.
Blind copy on a $37 or $77 price point will sell the living daylights out of your product.
It will also destroy your customer list you just built, send refunds through the roof and create support nightmares.
Yes, I know that if you are an affiliate, you don't have to deal with the support issues, but you will have lower income and ClickBank will withhold larger amounts from your checks to cover the anticipated refund rates.
Compare that to the copy for an ethical advertisement.
You get real information about what you ARE going to get, so you know what to expect when you download the product.
You don't get exaggerated claims about how you will feel, or perhaps how much money you will make, but you will get concrete information about what the product actually is and what benefits it provides.
I personally would never recommend any product that I haven't purchased myself and found to be effective, and certainly not any product that doesn't provide up front information about exactly what it is.
Second Rule: "Loopholes" and "secrets" are Blind too.
If the advertising copy promises a newly discovered "loophole", you should be very, very careful about the product.
You should be aware that the great majority of "loopholes" are soon closed, often even before major sales occur for the product that supposedly takes advantage of them.
Think about it for a minute.
If you were a less-than-ethical product marketer, and you had spent considerable time and money developing a product that exploited a Google loophole, would you go ahead and sell the product when Google closed the loophole? You wouldn't, but many of these people not only would, but do, even years after the loophole has been closed.
Similarly, some of these so called "loopholes" are in direct violation of the terms of service for the sites you are expected to use to exploit the loophole.
Another technique involves using networks that cost you more to join than the benefit you are likely to receive by some obscure pay per view advertising concept or process.
Yet another (usually blind) technique is to describe a so called loophole that isn't at all, but a method for scamming social networks in an attempt to get traffic.
Why are all of these advertisements "blind" advertisements? Well, most people wouldn't respond to them if they knew what they were getting.
In part 2 of this series, we will look at automation...
If you've read our two-part series about "Honest Marketing Techniques - What's Wrong With Online Marketing Advertising Practices" you already know there are issues with uncontrolled advertising on the internet.
Perhaps you've already been burned by purchasing a bad product, or with luck, you've only been suspicious that a given product may not be what it seems to be.
In part one of this three-part series, we will first look at blind advertisements.
There is some similarity in product launches being seen lately, especially with ClickBank launches.
It isn't a problem with ClickBank per se, but as one of the most popular third party organizations involved with selling affiliate products, they are certainly the company your will be most aware of.
The launch typically follows a pattern involving several steps:
- A hook with a "loophole" or similar technique
- A blind offer for $97 or $77 (often with a price count down from $1997 or $997)
- 3 to 7 upsells after you agree to the initial purchase.
- An alternate path on this process is several levels of discount if you don't initially buy the product from the initial advertising copy.
First rule: If it's blind, don't buy it.
One copywriting technique that's incredibly effective is what's called a "blind offer".
A blind offer is this - you don't know exactly what you get until after you purchase.
No matter how effective the advertising copy is, and how well it strums your emotional heart strings, don't buy it.
Typically, the sales letter spends more time telling you what it's NOT than what it is...
If you have no idea exactly what you're getting, in terms of the training content...
It's a blind offer.
If you are an affiliate marketer, promoting one of the blind ads will cause you no end of grief, in the end.
Always remember, what you are selling affects YOUR reputation, and the possibility of gaining a few bucks from promoting a blind product isn't going to do you any good down the road when your subscribers bail on you like rats from a sinking ship.
Blind copy on a $37 or $77 price point will sell the living daylights out of your product.
It will also destroy your customer list you just built, send refunds through the roof and create support nightmares.
Yes, I know that if you are an affiliate, you don't have to deal with the support issues, but you will have lower income and ClickBank will withhold larger amounts from your checks to cover the anticipated refund rates.
Compare that to the copy for an ethical advertisement.
You get real information about what you ARE going to get, so you know what to expect when you download the product.
You don't get exaggerated claims about how you will feel, or perhaps how much money you will make, but you will get concrete information about what the product actually is and what benefits it provides.
I personally would never recommend any product that I haven't purchased myself and found to be effective, and certainly not any product that doesn't provide up front information about exactly what it is.
Second Rule: "Loopholes" and "secrets" are Blind too.
If the advertising copy promises a newly discovered "loophole", you should be very, very careful about the product.
You should be aware that the great majority of "loopholes" are soon closed, often even before major sales occur for the product that supposedly takes advantage of them.
Think about it for a minute.
If you were a less-than-ethical product marketer, and you had spent considerable time and money developing a product that exploited a Google loophole, would you go ahead and sell the product when Google closed the loophole? You wouldn't, but many of these people not only would, but do, even years after the loophole has been closed.
Similarly, some of these so called "loopholes" are in direct violation of the terms of service for the sites you are expected to use to exploit the loophole.
Another technique involves using networks that cost you more to join than the benefit you are likely to receive by some obscure pay per view advertising concept or process.
Yet another (usually blind) technique is to describe a so called loophole that isn't at all, but a method for scamming social networks in an attempt to get traffic.
Why are all of these advertisements "blind" advertisements? Well, most people wouldn't respond to them if they knew what they were getting.
In part 2 of this series, we will look at automation...