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

* 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

Thanks Mark Evans for opening up the discussion on your blog.

“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

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?).

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.