Pinnochio -- lies Internet marketers tellThere are lies, damn lies and lies told about Internet marketing. Okay, so I’m taking liberties with the old saying about statistics, however the reality is that no one seems to lie like Internet marketers lie. Sometimes, the lies are outright lies which have absolutely no basis in reality. Other times, the lies are more like half truths or things that could be true but probably aren’t true.
Now I should say from the get go that I am an Internet marketer. I make my entire living on the Internet, mostly from writing for various websites, however also occasionally from selling other products. That said, because I don’t work directly in the make money online niche, I’m less likely to be the sort who feels the need to deceive my customers and give them a false sense of hope.
So, here are five lies that many Internet marketers tell, especially in the field of “make money online,” though there are other fields which are rife with lies as well.

I Made X Amount of Money Using This Product/Method, etc.

By far the most common lie ever told about Internet marketing is the line about how someone made gobs of money using this that or the other method or product.
I cannot tell you how many times I see people on Warrior Forum who are asking for basic advice on how to make their first dollar online, but they have in their signatures “this is the exact method I used to make $5,872.12.” The number is always an odd number, never something in round numbers, probably because they think that will be more believable.
I’ve also seen thousands of ads all over the Internet where people scream about the fact that they are making gobs of money and it’s so easy to do it. I still get a chuckle when I think of one guy who created a whole video talking about he has girls and fancy cars and everything else and how he was giving away his secrets for just $47 because he wants it to be affordable for everyone. Then, he says “and if you can’t afford even that, then you’re more pathetic than I even thought at first.”

The Reality:

Yes, there are some people who genuinely have made that much money using their methods or products or whatever. Rich Schefren for example comes to mind as someone who is well known for having made money. Ditto for John Chow and also Kim Roach and a few others that I actually have a certain amount of respect for.
For the large majority of these people however, one of three things is going on:

  1. They didn’t make a penny with this thing and they are lying and or using a photoshopped version of their bank account statement or Clickbank results page.
  2. They made some money and are exaggerating what they made.
  3. They made the money they say they did, but the method or product is now saturated and has run its course.

Bottom line, take anything you hear in the make money online niche with a huge grain of salt. Speaking of which, here’s lie number 2:

This Secret Method Will Bring You Gobs of Traffic

I’ve been working in the world of SEO for quite a while now and I will be the first to admit, I don’t know everything about it. I doubt there is anyone alive who can claim to know every possible method for attracting traffic to your website.
However, that said, I do know a great deal about this subject and I have looked at dozens of reports and hundreds of articles claiming to provide some secret method for building backlinks or otherwise getting traffic to your website. I put the word secret in italics because of the fact that about 90% of the time, these so called secret methods aren’t worth anything. Here’s the truth:

The Reality

As I said, I’ve looked at lots of these so called secret methods. In the vast, vast majority of cases, they are either worthless or they aren’t so secret after all (or both). One of my favorite examples was a WSO where a guy was promoting an offer to use a “secret, new method” help you build thousands of new targeted Twitter followers overnight for free.
The report was just $5. I bought it was and was shocked when he had the nerve to be selling the fact that you can use Twiends to do this. Not only is Twiends well known (Google “Get Twitter followers” and it comes up in the adwords ad as the first entry) but I also found that the hype was just that.
The reality was that Twiends allows you to follow people and in exchange get points for being followed by others. In theory, it should allow you to get targeted followers since it shows you a list of people you may be interested in following.
However, it also shows you a list of random people to follow, most of whom are offering more points for following them. Whom do you think will get followed first? When I tried it, I added a few new followers, none of whom were worth anything and in exchange, I was stuck following people I didn’t care about either.
Okay, enough about Twiends. Bottom line, I have found very, very few methods that are truly “secret” or even not well known. In most cases, you can find all this information with some good Google searches. These methods may be “secrets” to newbs, but for seasoned people, we know what to do to find them and if we don’t, the odds are good that it’s because they don’t work very well.

This is So Easy – Just a Few Clicks to Make Money/Get Traffic

The only reason this isn’t first on my list of Internet marketing lies is that I hope that most of my readers know about this by now as being an obvious lie. However, it is by far the most prevalent lie told today in the world of Internet marketing and making money online.
I have alternatively seen people make claims that they could help you make thousands of dollars in just one week or that they could help you build your traffic up to millions of hits per day with just a few easy steps. It’s truly sad, but the fact is that newbs in this business keep believing this pathetic garbage.

The Reality

There are no quick fixes and there are no “easy” methods to strike it rich or get boatloads of traffic to your website. I’m sorry – they just don’t exist and anyone who tells you otherwise is a bald faced liar. Now, that’s not to say money can’t be made online or that it can’t be “easy” in the sense that you don’t need to be a genius to do it. However, that does mean that you can’t expect to simply click your mouse a few times and just rake in the cash.
Case in point: I once attended a webinar where there were two presenters and one guy kind of dropped out after introducing himself saying he was busy doing something he wanted to show us later in the webinar.
He came back about 45 minutes in and showed us that he had found a product on Clickbank to promote and that he had created a website to promote it in that time. He implied that it was that easy to make gobs of money online – just find a product, set up a website and watch the cash roll in.
What this guy didn’t bother to mention is the thousands of backlinks he’d have to build, the additional content he’d need to add or all the work that would be involved in promoting this website to the general public so that they’d get there, find out about this miracle product and buy it through his link.
Again, it’s not particularly difficult to do these things and there are automation tools as well as companies (such as this one) who will help you with most or all of that work. However, it is still work and it will still take a lot of time to make the steady income he claimed could be had for 45 minutes worth of work.

This Webinar Will Tell You Everything You Need to Know About XXXX

I will say this much: I am a huge fan of John Chow and one of the big reasons why I’m such a fan is because he really does provide webinars with serious amounts of content and without lots of fake hype. Most such webinars however are anything but actual content.

The Reality

I have found that the vast, vast, vast majority of webinars where I was told to have a pen and paper ready because I’d want to take notes on all these wonderful pieces of information they were going to share were a waste of time.
Case in point was a webinar where I was told I’d learn everything I need to know about making money selling PLR ebooks on the Kindle.
In reality, the guy spent around 45 minutes building up how wonderful the Kindle is and how it’s such an amazing way to make gobs of money. Then, he made a big show of showing us how to sign up for a Kindle publisher account and how to buy a PLR ebook. That was pretty much the extent of what he shared.
Everything else, such as formatting the book, picking titles, prices, marketing, creating covers, etc. were part of his $997 course, which was of course heavily discounted if you act right now, since it’s ordinarily $5,000. That by the way, brings me to the final lie.

This is a $XXX Value, Yours Free (or for a steep discount)

I really have to wonder why a report that is supposedly worth $97 is being given away for free. Who said it’s worth $97? Do they sell it elsewhere for that amount of money?

The Reality

Some of these reports really will have some value to them. Most in fact have some value to them. However, I hate these guys who claim to put a dollar figure on their reports, usually a vastly inflated figure which has no bearing in reality.
My personal favorite was one guy who claimed to be offering a report worth $1997 for just $5. Now I ask you, if your report really is worth two grand, are you really interested in promoting it to someone looking for a $5 product? I think not.
The fact is that while some of these reports may be worth something to you, you shouldn’t be suckered by the ridiculous inflated prices they claim these things are worth. Just get your free report and accept it for what it is – a free report.

Bottom Line

As I said earlier, the bottom line is this: there are lies, damn lies and Internet marketers. Not all of us are dishonest and many of us really do make a living working full time online. However, there are also many people who are looking for a get rich quick scheme and think that just one more report or method or program will do the job for them. These people are regularly taken advantage of by charlatans who make their money selling false dreams.
The reality is that being an Internet marketer is a business like any other – it requires hard work and dedication (and a deep ability to ask yourself, do I really need to buy another program or report or is this another lie told by unscrupulous Internet marketers to part me from my money?)