There’s one heck of a donnybrook going on at Mashable, kicked off via Duncan Riley at the Inquistr, involving everyone’s favourite downtime service (Twitter), and John Reese, Internet Marketing schlep / god (depending on where you sit).
Funny thing is that the comments on most of the blogs come overwhelmingly from from the “Internet Marketing is Good” camp, overwhelmingly supporting John Reese.
Now, I’m not going to debate the merits of the actual issue (Twitter’s coming apocalypse now the Internet Marketers have arrived), but what I do want to comment on — as someone who has observed the Internet Marketing industry pretty closely for over 10 years — is how refreshing it is to have some real conversation on the issue.
Because one of the biggest problems with Internet Marketing is that are very few real conversations about it. Most of it are on the forums, but the even there its hard to find a real opinion on things.
(but if you’re looking for a rare post, look over here)
Why is this?
Because of affiliate marketing.
There was a reason why Mark alluded to the industry and affiliate marketing like spyware. Now of course it is nothing (literally) like software replicating itself; but what he was getting at was that because people are compensated / monetized for promoting something, it encourages people to do it — ad naseum.
In fact, this is an entirely rational response, and billions are made in the affiliate industry doing it.
Unfortunately, because the Internet marketing industry lives on promoting itself *TO* itself, you get very few real opinions and conversations on products *IN* the internet marketing industry, because everyone is too busy chasing affiliate checks.
Let’s be honest — it takes a (VERY) strong Internet Marketer (or blogger) to avoid reviewing a product without throwing out their affiliate link; and if they’re going to do it, its going to make it doubly hard to write a real critical review.
If you doubt me, head on to see the over abundance of folks on John Reese’s side and follow their links. To a man (or woman) they’re all promoting — guess what? — products or services related to Internet Marketing (and its a big industry).
There are many things that Internet Marketing does right. An emphasis on actually selling a product, for example, rather than persuing the freemium model endlessley.
But there are a great deal of things that are fundamentally bankrupt that very, VERY few people acknowledge or even talk about. And I’m not talking about the exceptions, or exceptional individuals, who John Reese may be.
I’m talking about the average. I’m talking about the rule. I’m talking about what ordinary folks see when they try and dip their foot in to the water — and to spell it out, yes, its the endless hype, the endless promotion, and the lack of any critical thinking on anyone’s part.
And I think its a very good thing — at the very least — that perhaps the conversation on this topic has begun in earnest.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:29 am | Permalink
[...] Andrew Goodman wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThere’s one heck of a donnybrook going on at Mashable, kicked off via Duncan Riley at the Inquistr, involving everyone’s favourite downtime service (Twitter), and John Reese, Internet Marketing schlep / god (depending on where you sit). … [...]
June 20th, 2008 at 11:37 am | Permalink
Tony,
Good to see you back in the blogging saddle again. We’ve missed you!
Mark
June 20th, 2008 at 2:27 pm | Permalink
I think that this very same cross promotion you mention, Brent, calls into question their integrity as well as the offers they promote. I’m not sure how you can call one into question without the other.
I’m all about finding appropriate ways to monetize presences around the web for the various tools - it’s something I find quite fun. On the other hand, I think this route, given the unique culture of the network/mlm/affiliate marketing world that it’s like giving crystal meth to a kid with ADHD.
It’ll amplify all the aspects of that world - the good as well as the bad and ugly (which are very prevalent, despite what bulk of the commenters on my mashable post would have folks believe).
Look at how that subset of marketing reacted when they all discovered MySpace. Instead of going the legitimate route by buying advertising on the site, or going a perhaps more respectable and innovative route of giving high profile users endorsement deals, they infiltrated the system and came up with scads of programs designed to create fake profiles and overwhelm the system with spam and fake profiles.
You think Twitter has stability problems now? Wait until the developers employed by the likes of Peter Drew and the shadier side of that world get a hold of it.
June 20th, 2008 at 4:54 pm | Permalink
Your comments were a great read, Mark.
You’ve got a brilliant mind and your heart is in the right place. From what I’ve read, we agree on a lot of things - but on this topic, we disagree on a few key points.
–
Firstly - you raised a good point re: me not calling into integrity “gurus”, despite advertising other people’s products without doing much in the way of quality or suitability checking.
This is because assessing quality and suitability is a subjective measure, it’s difficult to do, and almost zero advertisers actually do this…
Take Mashable, for example - I counted around 20 ad spots on your profile page on Mashable. A
m I to assume that you endorse the Delta American Express Gold Delta Skymiles card displayed here?
How do you know that I’m not suffering from financial distress, or am a bad credit risk?
You can’t know this.
Did you consider the effects of the credit crunch, or the downturn in the global economy to my situation?
It’s impossible for you to know the suitability of that particular offer to me, or the thousands of other people who will see it.
In the same way, it’s impossible for the “gurus” to work out the suitability of every offer to every one of the thousands of individuals they will end up promoting the offer to.
The best that they can do is to look at the general quality and value of the product promoted - and even at this point, it’s disputable whether this is valuable - whereas I might see a product as being “too basic” and of little value, it might be perfect for a beginner starting out in online marketing.
Did Mashable consider the general world economic downturn, and effect of rising inflation, before promoting a credit card? Did you consider this in general terms? But it’s OK to show the ad, right?
The issue isn’t black-and-white…
Where the “gurus” are different is in their customers’ psychology…
If I subscribe to your newsletter because your strategies specifically help me, through the relevance your content has to me you will build rapport. When I see you promote someone else’s offer, I might translate that rapport into mistakenly believing that offer relates to my situation as much as the other information I’ve received from you, and purchase.
Should the “gurus” promote fewer product? Should they only promote a certain type of product? Should they put other quality restrictions on their promotions? - I don’t know, and it’s for them to decide, not me.
…Mashable benefits from the American Express offer, and gurus benefit from their joint venture offer.
Should they? - I don’t know.
At the least, people need to take personal responsibility and look past this to their individual needs.
This isn’t something that I can realistically thrust my moral judgement upon - it’s not black and white.
—
Secondly - specifically who are we talking about when we’re talking about the impending-Twitter-apocalypse?
Is it John Reese? Peter Drew? Is it me? Is it everyone who’s ever been in the marketing industry? Specifically network marketers, MLMs and affiliate marketers? Only those MLMs etc who work online? Everyone who’s ever been in the internet marketing industry?
Surely we’re talking about a very small (”less ethical” by many peoples’ definition) subset of the internet marketing industry that are closer to spammers than people who deliver genuine value running genuine businesses?
We need to be very clear here because, just like in all industries, there are a lot of “good guys” and a handful of “bad guys”.
It sounds like you’re saying that people are guilty by association…
“John Reese is an internet marketer… Some internet marketers send spam… Therefore all internet marketers must spam… Therefore John Reese must be a spammer - or at least a market leader among spammers.”
It would be like someone saying:
“Mark Hopkins was involved in creating the technology for downloadable ringtones… Unscrupulous downloadable ringtone companies have used fine-print subscription services, and Mark’s technology, to sucker consumers into paying huge ringtone subscription bills… Therefore Mark Hopkins must be complicit in ringtone scams by helping to create the technology that they use.”
Or perhaps a more outlandish scenario:
“Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins is a blogger… There sure are a lot of spam blogs on the web… So, being in the blogging industry, he must have something to do with spam blogs.”
We both know that’s not how it works.
John Reese is no more responsible for spam because he’s in a particular industry than you are.
So, for the sake of clarity, let’s talk call a spade a spade and talk specifically about “web spammers”.
—
Thirdly - specifically *what* are we talking about?
It’s all good to say “Spammers ruined MySpace, and soon they’ll ruin Twitter” - but how?
Creating fake profiles?…
…Who will see the profiles?
Spam-following people?
…As we saw in the Mashable article on this, only ~1.6% were “fooled”.
I commented on your Mashable post that to make Twitter work from a marketing perspective, you need to treat it as a “crowd gathering” exercise - people need to want to follow you.
If you have nothing worth listening to, you don’t get followed - simple. The problem sorts itself out.
Brent
June 21st, 2008 at 12:58 pm | Permalink
Great post.
It seems that Mark Hopkins may want to take off his cynical glasses and stop looking at all affiliate marketers, network marketers, or even multilevel marketers through the lens of his own disappointments.
He should be a little more responsible as a “contributor” with how he presents things as not to create and promote negative stereotypes (and also keep things a lot more classy when naming names.) He seems like a sharp guy and can do much better than that.
Sure there are unscrupulous folks in every industry around the world, but that doesn’t mean everyone in a particular industry is dishonest because of the ones that aren’t.
Plus, just because one successful marketer promotes another successful marketer’s products and makes a profit, that doesn’t make it dishonest one bit.
Consumers are responsible for their own decisions as to whether to purchase or not to purchase. If they make an impulse decision that doesn’t prove to be beneficial or doesn’t live up to expectations, just freakin return it… 98% of the legitimate offers have some sort of no risk guarantee that protects the consumer. Use it as needed.
The so-called gurus don’t become gurus by selling snake oil to thousands and then heading for the hills. They become labeled as gurus because they do a good job of providing products and services that consumers find valuable and are willing to pay for. Their future success depends on their continuing to do so.
Most consumers are smart enough to know when to disengage. Those that aren’t will be “victims” of marketing everywhere they go… even if it’s Walmart.
So does that mean Walmart should stop promoting things or they’re somehow “dishonest” because some goofball doesn’t know how to make wise buying decisions based on his or her individual circumstances? Of course not.
As far as marketers of any sort on myspace, twitter, or wherever, that’s just part of what comes along with human interactivity. Someone will always be selling something, and someone will always be buying… that’s how life and the world works, whether it’s digital or not.
No matter what brilliant interactive technology comes out in the future there will always be sellers and buyers right in the middle of all the interaction. Always has, always will.
If people don’t like it, they can simply exercise their free will choice to not interact or participate…
-Johnny Hope
June 21st, 2008 at 11:18 pm | Permalink
Johnny…
I’m not looking at individuals, but the culture of MLMs as a whole. I’ve spent enough time in them to know that there are a few well meaning folks, and even a couple honest ones.
The MLM/NM/AM world on the whole ends up corrupting most of those in that world due to the unfulfillable promise of a quick buck. Those that end up making that quick buck occasionally are honest and legitimate, but more often than not are con artists to one degree or another.
I’m not talking about theory, Johnny. I’m talking about practice and reality. In theory, nothing about affiliate marketing/MLM/NM is inherently bad. In practice and reality, it’s dominated by folks who are in no way honest or responsible to those they sell to.
To compare the negative elements of MLM, network marketing and affiliate marketing to walmart is disingenuous at best, particularly if you’re in any way aware of what goes on in those worlds. Worst case scenario in MLMs, they’re barely a step from ponzi schemes selling a program or ebook that tells you how to sell that program or ebook. More often, they’re education programs that can’t be found through legitimate educational outlets because they themselves aren’t legitimate education.
Simply put, if it was truly a program that would make me rich beyond my wildest dreams, they’d keep it to themselves instead of selling it for $49.99.
Walmart, on the other hand, sells actual real products. If it’s a crappy product that doesn’t live up to the marketing, there’s recourse. It’s called getting your money back.
As you can see, two completely different situations.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:43 pm | Permalink
Brent,
Thanks for not piling on and actually engaging me on this! I wish more folks had gone this route, I think there is a good discussion in here somewhere.
“Am I to assume that you endorse the Delta American Express Gold Delta Skymiles card displayed here?
How do you know that I’m not suffering from financial distress, or am a bad credit risk?”
I think there’s a clear separation in the meaning of sponsorship and advertising. Sponsorship implies endorsement, and advertising implies separation. Certainly in the case of an advertisement for WalMart on CNN, am I to assume that Larry King shops there? Doubtful. But during Larry King’s radio show, when he pimps out during a live read for Gold Bond Medicated Powder, there’s a better likelyhood he’s using that product and endorses it.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m not even against sponsorship - I think it has a definite place in the Twittersphere. Viral nature of certain elements in Twitter is also very native to the environment.
But back to the corruptibility, look at advertising versus affiliate/MLM/AM setup. We get the same chunk of change whether or not you get the credit card you saw advertised. We rely primarily on advertisements that don’t give us CPA incentives. Part of that is this is a more financially rewarding model for us to go at our stage of development, but part of that is we’re concerned about our appearance of possible impropriety.
You can’t buy our opinions at Mashable. If we talk about an advertiser, sponsor or partner in an editorial sense, we disclose.
The difference between Reese and me in your ringtone/blogger scenario is that he participates actively to this day in programs that do the same sorts of things as the bad guys. He creates programs that can’t possibly live up to expectations. He does nothing to distinguish his copy style from those that are scammers. Instead of using his work-product as a marketing tool, he relies on playing fast and loose with the facts (as he did in his Twitter letter, his response on his blog to me, and the advertising copy for the Traffic ebooks.
The ringtone example is a bit odd and doesn’t fit exactly. It would be like blaming Alexander Bell for telemarketers.
As to the direct example of my nightmare scenario for Twitter…
I almost don’t want to describe the path to abuse I see. There are a number of holes in the system vulnerable to social engineering on a grand scale. Twitter is resistant to abuse in this manner, but not immune. Automating the creation of twitter accounts to exploit this vulnerability could very certainly result in an overload of the system (if the powerusers like Scoble can bring down the system, what do you think a thousand bots with scoble-like number of followers will do to it?).
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:04 am | Permalink
Mark,
“it’s DOMINATED by folks who are in no way honest or responsible to those they sell to”
That’s a pretty broad and extreme statement mixed in with many others that are lumped into your “world” view of MLM, Network Marketing, and affiliate marketing.
Once again…
Take off your cynical glasses and stop looking at ALL affiliate marketers, network marketers/multilevel marketers through the extremely narrow lens of your own disappointments.
Not sure what schemes you were involved in (and sounds like they were some real doozies), but as an entrepreneur, I know tons of very honest professional people who handle their businesses and their customers with integrity.
I know a few goofballs too, who have no clue what they are doing, but they do not lack integrity… just proper business and marketing experience.
That does not make them dishonest, just ignorant.
Plus, there is a much much (did I say much) broader range of “actual real” products and services besides info/educational products being promoted through affiliate marketing and mlm/network marketing channels.
Of course, most have some sort of risk guarantee that protects the consumer as well.
Look at amazon.com. You can promote almost any product you can think of through their affiliate program (including ebooks) and they have thousands of affiliates. Are you saying most of them have been corrupted due to the unfulfillable promise of a quick buck?
What about affiliates for Forbes, CitiFinancial, Merrill Lynch, Apple, Symantec, HP, Adobe, Corel, Dell, and hundreds of other well known companies?
According to your broad generalization, most of them are con artists to one degree or another?
What about Mary Kay… are you saying most of those ladies who earned their pink cadillacs did it by duping unsuspecting women into buying hyped up lipstick?
What about Stream Energy (one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S.)… is it because they have a bunch of con artists promoting their energy services to unsuspecting electricity users?
Dangit, I got duped into getting a discount on my electricity too.
What about Primerica Financial Services… they have more than 100,000 independent agents (MLM) promoting to over 6 million clients… are you saying that only a few of their 100,000 marketers are honest and legitimate, but “more often than not are con artists in some form or another”?
I don’t think the largest financial services organization in the U.S. (owned by Citigroup) is “dominated by folks who are in no way honest or responsible to those they sell to.”
The point is, your cynical glasses… take them off.
You’ll be much happier without them.
Mark, even if you do narrow all this back down to the “make money marketing something on the internet” information product niche, I agree that there are definitely some unscrupulous goofballs, but I still know loads more people who do a fantastic job of it… with honesty and integrity… and make great money too.
-Johnny Hope
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:15 am | Permalink
BTW - my response above was to Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins.
Thanks Mark Evans for opening up the discussion on your blog.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:10 am | Permalink
@Mark Hopkins,
* Re: The differences between advertising and sponsorship - this is beginning to get into a debate about semantics and ethics.
I think you’re completely justified in what you say - I think I’m equally justified - and I know we both have much better things to get bogged down arguing the semantics and ethics of responsibility of people who publish advertisements.
As I said in my post, grey areas of other peoples ethics are not something that I’m justified in talking about…
Let’s agree to disagree on this one ;)
* Re: “The ringtone example is a bit odd and doesn’t fit exactly. It would be like blaming Alexander Bell for telemarketers.”
You’re 100% correct. I agree with you completely.
You’re no more responsible for ringtone scammers than Alexander Bell is for telemarketers or John Reese is for web spammers - all are very outlandish analogies.
In all cases, someone has provided something to a marketplace - and a small number of individuals have taken that thing and used it for unpopular or unethical purposes.
* Re: “Secondly - specifically who are we talking about when we’re talking about the impending-Twitter-apocalypse?” I noticed that you didn’t address my question here.
I notice that John Reese is still part of the equation here… I would have thought it was easy to agree, given the weight of evidence, that you’re talking specifically about spammers, not John Reese.
* Re: “[John Reese] participates actively to this day in programs that do the same sorts of things as the bad guys”
Like what?
What programs does John Reese participate in?
* Re: “He creates programs that can’t possibly live up to expectations.”
Specifically what expectations are these?
Specifically, how do his programs fail expectations?
In my experience, John Reese’s information is of very high quality - and does deliver results.
* Re: “He does nothing to distinguish his copy style from those scammers”
I assume you mean “he uses long form sales letters”…
This is a very loose argument… Although you might have negative feelings about long-form sales letters, this does not make John Reese a scammer/spammer/whatever.
It’s another long bow to draw.
If you read “Tested Advertising Methods” by John Caples, you’ll see that some of the most successful advertisements in history have used these marketing techniques.
I’m sure that’s the reason John Reese uses these techniques - because they are effective…
…Which is no doubt the same reason spammers use them.
…And it is certainly the reason a lot of genuine, value-adding online business owners use these techniques too.
* Re: “Instead of using his work-product as a marketing tool…”
What, specifically, are you referring to as “work-product”?
How would one (ideally) use it as a marketing tool?
* Re: “he relies on playing fast and loose with the facts (as he did in his Twitter letter, his response on his blog to me, and the advertising copy for the Traffic ebooks.”
Specifically which facts are these?
I’ve read both sides responses, and disagree.
If you read John’s latest blog post on this issue (dated prior to your recent comments here), he was very straight-down-the-line and to-the-point.
However, in your comment here, I read a lot of generalisations, commentary based your own personal sentiments and overall a lack of specific detail about John Reese…
I wouldn’t accuse you of playing fast-and-loose, but I do think that you’re relying on opinion, and need to offer more fact and evidence.
I’d also point out that you seem to refer to “Ebooks” as if they were fundamentally evil.
Freakanomics is published in an eBook format. So is the New York Times for the Kindle. Grimm’s Fairy Tales are available now in PDF. As is Ulysses, Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and hundreds more.
My point is, there’s a lot of good information on eBooks, and it would be a gross generalisation to imply that they were not of value, or even spammy. I hope that I’m misinterpreting this bias against eBooks on your part.
…
After all that, I still don’t get it Mark.
I still don’t understand your “beef” with John Reese.
You’ve made generalisations. You’ve made claims. You’ve told me your sentiments on internet marketing, your feelings about sales letters, your opinions on the internet marketing industry as a whole - but I don’t see much in the way of facts or evidence that link spammers to John Reese.
But you’re talking about your feelings as if they were facts, writing in generalisations and not giving much in the way of hard evidence.
You really need something concrete here.
I’m not attached to John Reese - and I think you’re a good guy. I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt if you can discredit John with hard facts.
Presently, John might be getting away with murder - but nobody’s really come up with any hard facts.
In fact, to be honest, I believe John’s looking like a nice, level-headed guy in this mud-slinging match.
John Reese took the high ground - addressed most of your points specifically and in detail - and then apologised to you for his part in this situation.
He even address your concerns, specifically telling his readers: “…DON’T BE A JACKASS AND SPAM OR ABUSE TWITTER…”
Surely this is the point that you accept his apology, agree he’s not part of the problem at all, and move on…
…Or bring out your big guns, and discredit him with hard facts.
The odd part about the current situation is that, although you would appear to attack his character, it seems like he’s actually on your side.
He hates spam.
He’s said as much, repeatedly.
In the blog post where he extended an olive branch to you, he very specifically said that people who do spam Twitter are “jackasses”.
And recently, he complained (publicly) about a spam problem on Facebook.
Internet marketers will not lead to the downfall of Twitter.
Some of the earliest adopters of Twitter were in the Internet Marketing/Search Engine Marketing field.
They were promoting Twitter long before John Reese - attracting thousands of legitimate users to the service - and to date, I’m yet to see any spam activity beyond spam-adding (which, as the Mashable article states, isn’t effective).
Internet marketers are NOT “evil”.
I don’t want to debate generalisations - I’m happy to debate facts.
To be honest, you and I have better things to do than to debate opinions, semantics and generalisations - we both know that nobody can win in that situation.
I’m happy to continue listening-to and taking-in your side of the story, but you have to give me some hard evidence to believe in.
Brent
July 16th, 2008 at 3:43 am | Permalink
Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion often referred to as the 4 Ps) for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations.
Marketing tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers’ future needs and wants, which are often discovered through market research