Here are a few little hints that might let you know, in advance, that the "special report" or "secret information" you are being offered to "build" your website and "flood it with traffic" might not be so special or secret after all:
- Ask yourself this: If the information is so special or secret why is it being sold to anyone and everyone who has $19.95 or $29.95 or $39.95 or whatever price is being asked? With the speed that information moves on the www, pretty soon it will be no secret at all - even if it truly was in the first place!
- A fancy name: The fancier the name the greater the probability that what you are being offered is just a cobbling together of widely known, FREE or old information. The thing to watch out for is the tying together of a well-known name or technique with an obscure one. (I could name examples, but that would really make certain people most unhappy.)
- Repetition of negative terms such as "no BS": I assume everybody understands what "BS" is. If, in fact, it were not BS, why would anybody go to such great lengths to say it is not? My advice is to stay away from anything using this type of description. If it walks like a duck and it looks like a duck and it quacks, well... chances are it really is a duck! Trust your instinct. Other things to be wary of are poor spelling and grammar. That should basically suggest to you that the quality of information will be just as poor.
- Have a time limit attached: Usually the time limit is, wait for it... midnight on exactly the same day that you are viewing the information. Funny that! Now why do you think that might be? You guessed it - to push you into purchasing now rather than later. This is impulse buying. Strike while the iron is hot (note: in this case, you are the iron!). Try this: If you are so impressed by the offer come back the next day and see if the offer is exactly the same. Midnight again, huh? Hmm...
- Have a bevy of "bonus" incentives attached: Now why would this be? It's to make the offer look BIGGER than it really is. Often the bonuses are nothing more than flimsy bits of information. Sometimes they are just sales pitches from other marketers. If the offer you are looking at does not stand by itself without bonus number one through to five, six or seven (I have seen up to 12), why purchase it? This is almost an admission by the copyright owner (or the cobble-together owner) that their product cannot stand alone for the price that they are asking. It's a trick!
- Any outrageous claims: These are designed to appeal to basic human greed. Greed can often blind you from reality. Anything that makes promises like "guaranteed to make you $10,000 in the first three months!" or "your hit counter will almost explode with the extra traffic!" are appealing to your greed and not your common-sense.In reality there is no magic formula to building a website and directing traffic through it. Like any business venture it takes time and effort. After you have expended that time and effort then yes, the time you spent and the effort you put in may well decrease or even become exponential. But don't hold your breath in the meantime.
Even testimonials and recommendations from other "independent" people and internet marketers should be viewed with a certain amount of caution. Many testimony and recommendation givers are "affiliates" (remember the "friend" from Part 1?) which means they earn commissions from the sale of the product. Why wouldn't they endorse something they stood to make money from?
The best testimonial or recommendation check you can do is to seek out the person giving it and ask them if they have any association with the person who is using the testimony or recommendation. Ask if they are an affiliate or if they have a vested interest in the product. You can do this quite innocently and nicely. If they are genuinely impressed by the product and what it did for them, they will probably be pleased to answer your enquiry.
Just a little word of caution here - if you are asking somebody for help don't put them through a trial. A simple email will suffice. Keep it short and to the point. Don't be too concerned if there is no reply. People get dozens, even hundreds of emails every day now. I know I do.
It would seem that there are just as many self proclaimed "experts" out there on the internet telling others "how to do it" as there are those actually "trying to do it." Sure, there are some credible people offering good advice (most often at quite a price too) but there are so many others offering absolute rubbish. How can you differentiate? The simple answer is that often you can't - until you actually get what is being offered. Then you realize. Oh-oh! Too late! It's junk!
If you don't get what you believed you were paying for you have every right to ask for a refund. However, this is not a method of receiving good information for FREE. Falsely asking for a refund on something that really did help you will bring your own integrity into question. Being fair is what it is all about - fair information for a fair price - an even two way exchange.
In summing up, website "newbies" are soft targets for the latest brand of snake-oil cyber salespeople. They are certainly out there. Think of it this way: you are searching for the Kings and Queens and Aces in the deck. Along the way you will find fives and threes and twos and sevens. You will even come across the Jokers. It's up to you to try and sort them out.
My advice is this: examine the information being offered then wait a day or two and come back to it. If it still looks as good to you the second time round and doesn't reek of some of the descriptions above, consider buying it. (I would even give the same advice for people visiting my own site.) Like me, you will soon "wise up." Along the way you will probably have to give your credit card a nice little "top up" to pay for your mistakes.
Purchasing e-books, special reports, secret documents and the like to learn how to increase traffic to your website is very subjective. The only way to measure the value of what you receive is to assess it against the "blurb" (see Part 1 ) used to promote it and the price you paid for it. As I mentioned above, both parties must be fair.
Just be wary.
If you know a website owner struggling to develop their site, this information could help them save a lot of money, not to mention that awful, sinking feeling that you have been duped. The money saved can then go towards some positive steps to develop their site. Heaven knows there is enough junk out there that will do the reverse. Some of it is sitting in my in-tray.
Cont' Part 3
~Analyzing All Those Web Traffic Ideas - Part 2.
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