Ain’t That America
Posted on April 15, 2008
Filed Under Internet Marketing
A highly successful Internet marketer I know - and you
may too - has recently been hung out to dry by a government
authority.
They’ve taken everything from him, then put him in
jail on $500,000 bail. Essentially, he has no way
of defending himself with all assets frozen.
Ain’t that America. Gee - I wonder if the government will be
refunding taxes paid on that money.
If this doesn’t scare the hell out you, it should.
I don’t know the minute details, but here are some
things I’ve gleaned and you may want to keep them in
mind.
1. He was selling products of the “natural cures”
nature. His appearance was very “medical” from the
names of his products, the images used on his site,
references to “medical researcher” and more.
First off, any time you’re “taking business” from the
multi-BILLION dollar health-care industry (talk about
a SHAM) you’re asking for trouble.
Any time you promise to “treat, diagnose or cure” any
medical ailment you’re stepping on the toes of the
special interest groups representing doctors, insurance,
companies and the drug companies.
In New Jersey, they call organizations like this the
mafia.
Be very careful when dancing on this turf.
2. Internet marketers have this “wild west” mentality
that we don’t really live by the same rules everyone
else does.
Well, we do.
You can’t make up testimonials. You can’t make
inaccurate claims. You can’t avoid covering your ass
legally. If there isn’t enough money in it to do
things right, look for something where the money is
there to do things right.
3. Here’s what concerns me most - and again, I only
have partial facts but here’s what I see.
This marketer was running ads - paying for ads - through
Google that were running on About.com. You know that
About.com was making a huge income from people clicking
these ads on their site.
Yet some heinous know-it-all About.com guide named Mary
Shomon took it upon hereself to declare this marketer a
fraud (who qualified her to call anyone a fraud, that’s
unclear).
It’s my guess, this is where the problems started.
So he’s paying for ads that produce income for About.com,
and I believe About.com pays Mary Shomon a percentage
of that revenue - and I’m wondering if anyone on that
end of the deal is returning that money?
You can probably bet the answer is NO.
I suggest boycotting About.com.
Or, if you want to play their game then it’s pretty
smart to identify a high-traffic area of About.com and
big traffic sites like it and run ads Adwords 180
style.
But be careful.
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