B eing an Internet Marketer can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be dangerous. When the money starts rolling in while you sleep, there’s an incredible high created, and as this rush can make even the most level headed internet marketing take chances they shouldn’t, it can also affect he group of internet marketers, especially the so-called newbie internet marketers, who hear about this kind of instant wealth – but never seem to experience for themselves. And whether its the thrill of making more money quicker and sooner, or getting to the point of making any money at all – there are times when the internet marketing games spits out 4 types of dangerous internet marketers. This article will describe them in the hopes that you avoid falling to prey to them or worse becoming one of them.
The Four Dangerous Types of Internet Marketers:
The Cheater – Blackhat and Greyhat methods are taught all over the internet and while many people swear they’ve scored big using these techniques, many others have been hit with severe penalties or outright lost major revenue producing accounts because they got caught ‘cheating.’ Sadly, often these slaps or consequences occur long before a cheater sees a single dime, especially if the cheater also suffers from dangerous internet marketer type numbers two or three below. Cheater strategies are not for the faint of heart – and having to depend on proxies, fake names and addresses for every activity and transaction takes both better than average skill and extraordinary attention to detail. Internet marketers fresh out of the gate, and just toying with these techniques are sure to get into trouble, even with some of the seemingly innocent and widely practiced greyhat techniques. The Blackhat strategies which can sometimes involve using bots and software to spam forums, or hacking poorly secured WP sites to steal someone’s hard earned revenue; or paying people to click on your Ad links; or paying people to write fake positive reviews or make fake video testimonials to promote some bogus product; or trying to bring down competitors by making their sites look suspicious, and on and on – are just some of the types of practices, while potentially profitable in the short run, are both difficult to do and highly unethical and in many cases outright illegal. Don’t believe for a second that the people teaching you how to do these things wouldn’t be glad to sell you, a fellow cheater, software to help you automate your forum spamming – but also is loaded with a nasty Virus, Malware or Trojan which could infect your machine and the computer systems you connect to with everything from Root-Kits to Key Loggers, unknowingly hijacking your systems, gaining access to your credit cards or bank account information, and getting sold to organized internet crime rings. The nefarious potentialities are endless – so, cheaters better be careful. Like joining a swingers club that doesn’t believe in latex – it might be lots of fun in the beginning – but sooner or later – you’ll probably regret it.
The Fool – Learn how I made $300,000 in one hour, video proof, guaranteed – only $7 – Really? Are you seriously that gullible? How many of these $7 courses will you buy before you earn a single dime? Remember the old adage – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Many of the methods taught by people selling these types of HIGH PROFIT – FAST RETURN products involve some element of greyhat or blackhat practices. Naturally, of course, this information is not usually revealed in the sales copy. The fool will go download the report, believe everything they are told, not do any due diligence or research and end up potentially in trouble as described above. The next thing you know they’ve had their Adsense account terminated, their Youtube account banned and they wonder how their going to make it. Turning to creating a Porn Site using your all the house wives on the street that you think you can recruit with the budget webcam setup that they’ll have to pay for looks like a good option – when the other strategies are no longer viable. The other type of fool will keep buying from the same types of internet marketers who offer these questionable money making strategies, and then will never implement them because the fool is a ‘good soul’ who doesn’t feel comfortable pushing a CPA type product that promises a free iPad or whatever when the fool knows in his heart of hearts that the juvenile who falls for this $1.59 Cost Per Action will NEVER end up getting the promised free item that you promoted to them. So, the fool swears off CPA products until the next time they can’t resist – because – darn it – those CPA guys make so much money so quick. And then they are back in the same boat, not implementing a strategy because they don’t have the stomach for it. so there goes another $7 or $27 down the drain. And how many of these Get-Rich-Quick-Schemes does the fool need to fall for before she has to fess up to her parents about the credit card debt, or file bankruptcy, or lose her boyfriend, or get kicked out of his parents house?
The Slacker – Why learn real time tested proven strategies for making money online, such as building a quality list of followers by providing value and good content and monetizing your site with products or ads that your readers actually would be interested in? Why – because if you’re a slacker – it’s too much damn work! All that keyword research, all that article writing, all that social book marking, all that relationship building, all that content generation, all that effort – whew – for such small returns? Why bother? To the slacker it seems like a waste of time to, so they go after the fast and easy buck options (see #1 and #2) but sadly, those methods never work for the slacker because even the fastest and easiest methods still require work. And because there’s some element of effort involved that the slacker won’t do, nothing ever happens for them. Sometimes the slacker tries to ‘outsource’ the work – and often get’s crap in return, or maybe they get some results for a while – but eventually the slacker get’s slapped because the cheap outsources they use may be using greyhat strategies, so things like Adsense and YouTube accounts can get banned – even in a slackers world, because the slacker need for the quick and easy short cut can often lead them down the path of “Cheater” techniques in direct violation of T’s & C’s. When this happens, the slacker has to start from scratch, which is never easy to do – so many times the slacker will become a whiner and complainer and ultimately just end up quitting internet marketing altogether. All because they couldn’t stomach the idea of writing their own articles, building a relationship with a list – instead of just selling to them, and gawd forbid providing anything of value.
The Player – This type of Internet Marketer is probably successful to a point, and some are incredibly successful. They are the ones that sell some of the products making the outrageous claims. In the early days – they are the fake it till you make it crowd – and as they become more successful they are the IM cruise crowd. They provide training that they know most people won’t implement, and always – ALWAYS – have an up-sell – and sure enough – some people actually do the work, make money, and then get to join the ‘in crowd’ and get invited on the next cruise. So these players have a track record of creating other successful players – and they build off these successes into more successes. Player’s have to be careful not to get a bad reputation however by Over Promising and Under Delivering. Some players turn out to be crooks, disappearing off the face of the earth after collecting large sums for promised coaching sessions or having loads of affiliates sell their just launched products where the affiliates spend tons of money doing all the advertising, then loses their commissions when the refunds start rolling in. Some players get into trouble with their bookies (or whatever) and turn on their followers to help save their legs. If you are a player personality – try to be better then the player that’s playing you – and maybe you’ll have a future outside of the slammer. If you are following up with your $29 coaching students – pushing $500 websites that are clearly in violation of someone’s copyright that anyone can buy of Flippa for $30 bucks then you are a player going down a dangerous path. Your reputation in IM can be pretty sleazy amongst those who’ve come in contact with you, but thanks to fake reviews and #1,2 & 3 above, and a rule for the most part to not bash another internet marketing guru – you can still make a lot of money in IM as a player, because your reputation for making money will almost always supersede your reputation for being a sleazebag, or being something less than perfectly ethical or honest all the time. Eventually, however, the less scruples you have, the more likely your empire will come crashing down upon you – when someone you screwed makes it their life’s work to get the word out. And then you’ll be left without friends, love or money.
