Internet marketing is a sham. It’s a pseudo-industry created by people who want to take your money. That’s it.
Roll your eyes if you want. I sound bitter, yah? But the truth is I’ve watched these kinds of trends come and go over the years, and internet marketing is a classic example of snake oil.
ANYONE – and I mean anyone – can build a web site or have one built for $250 or less. Go to a template site, buy a template and set up your site. Bam, you’re done. Or use a free site like WordPress.com. Or hire someone for $150 to build it. Whatever, you’ll get 90% of what you’d get by paying someone $10,000.
Second, the only thing you need to succeed in internet marketing is decent content. If you can write halfway decently, then you’re totally OK in that department. Can’t write? Don’t want to? Guess what! You can go to Elance.com and hire someone to do that, too.
Think an internet marketing consultant can help you get a top ranking in the search engines? Think again. No one outside of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! knows what makes a site rank. So paying an ‘expert’ to move you up gets you nothing.
Even if you do hire an expert, and even if they do know what they’re doing, you’re up against competitors who’ve put years into their own sites. You’re not going to beat them in any decent amount of time.
How do you tell the scammers from the real marketers? It’s impossible. Look at 10 internet marketing sites. Bet you can’t tell who’s for real and who’s not.
It’s way too expensive. One guy told me he’d charge me $5000 a month for an SEO campaign (search engine optimization). $5000?!!! I’d have to quintuple my sales to make that pay. Forget it.
But the real kicker was when someone told me that the rules of internet marketing change all the time. E-mail marketing? Worked for a while. Now spam filters and laws prevent you from using it. Search engines? They change their algorithms for ranking so often that an SEO expert told me they have no idea what makes you move up. Nice.
Do yourself a favor: Stop paying for internet marketing. Use the money to improve your own skills and market your business. In the long run, it’s a better investment
Edward, you are calling a knife a scam. Knives aren't scams, they are simply tools.
I empathasize with what you are saying concerning the marketing aspect however I am extraordinarily good at both online and offline marketing and as an example, just yesterday myself and my 13 year old daughter analyzed a client's business, his competition, the competitiveness of his marketplace and put up one blog with 3 levels of optimized backlinks and one blog without.
Both were submitted to google webmaster and both were onpage keyword optimized.
The one that has the backlinks is already showing up this morning in the number 2 position above dozens of regional directories in the auto market.
The one that was not externally optimized, despite having a domain name which is the exact search phrase shows up nowhere. I can't even find it at page 200 yet.
Internet marketing does work. This new client may get new business today or this week from this venture.
I have done this regionally in areas like New york and totally dominated for clients in different areas.