BEWARE of Free Internet Marketing Seminars Promising Riches

As the old sayings goes, if it seems too good to be true it probably is.

Someone recently forwarded me an article from the local newspaper which after reading I felt compelled to write about; free internet marketing seminars claiming to be able to fulfill your dreams of making money while you sleep.

The internet marketing industry is being inundated with new internet marketing seminars and training programs promising to make you a fortune with websites that are on autopilot. Now I have no problem with individuals and companies making money offering internet marketing workshops and training programs, these are not the problem, the problem is the internet marketing training companies locking their clients into training course contracts under which they can’t realistically get out of once they realise the course information is weak.

These sham internet marketing seminars operate like most shallow get rich quick schemes. They stage a FREE seminar which attracts a large gullible audience then after a day of building trust they move into a well crafted sales pitch that plays on the hopes and dreams of the unwitting, pitching the “potential” rather than the “reality”, selling how “easy” it is rather informing them of “the years of experience and system building” required to truly make it “easy”.

Of course despite the hard sell and obvious holes in these training products dozens of audience members end up handing over credit card numbers paying hundreds sometimes thousands of dollars a month for the “privilege” to have repackaged information that’s freely available online sent to them monthly over their 12 month contract.

But How Quickly These Shams Fall From Grace

It was only a couple of months ago when Geedversity was being featured in the news positively:

Mr Stenning teaches people how to make money from the web; how to rank in Google “within 24 hours of launching a web product” and how to market a business – sometimes without spending a cent.

“In the past 18 months we have had around 2000 participants (in the seminars) with 27 per cent (of participants) seeing returns in the first six weeks of start-up and 42 per cent making enough money to quit their day job after six months,” claims Mr Stenning.

Now, according to the courier mail, the company is facing legal threats from disgruntled customers who were sold hope but purchased a nightmare.

A company promising to teach internet marketing techniques that would let people quit their jobs is facing cancellations and threats of legal action. Internet marketing company Geekdom spent months spruiking the benefits of its course in Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Clients paid up to $21,000 to learn of internet marketing strategies including trading advertising traffic, affiliate marketing and domain name trading.

One client said, “we were not making money to the extent we were told. We were told we would make our money back in the first six months. We were paying $1,800 a month, a total of $8,000, plus other costs up to $9,000!”

“It could work however there is more work involved than they ever suggested. They said it would take a few hours a week to maintain, we were working 10 – 12 hours a day”

Geekdom’s chief executive officer then goes on to say “we are doing our utmost to offer refunds to people who qualify, those people who have put in the work.

My Recent Get Rich Quick Internet Marketing Seminar Experience

Intrigued, I personally went to one of these  free internet marketing seminars a couple of weeks ago (though I won’t name names). I was of course skeptical given the cost of the seminar was the princely sum of nothing (I’m a big believer in you generally get what you pay for). Nonetheless I wanted to see the up sell, and maybe learn thing or two, and most importantly meet the seminar leader who I felt might be a good joint venture partner in the future.

The seminar targeted beginners (real beginners) though there were even one or two valuable insights even for an old dog like me, but in whole the outline of internet marketing that they pitched was VERY incomplete, not that a beginner would know that. The concept of making money online was pushed as being “easy”, “simple”, “anyone could do it” which of course prompted the question from a skeptical audience member, as to why wasn’t he doing it himself if it was so easy, but he dodged that bullet very well.

The Money Is In Selling The Sizzle Not The Sausage

Of course the real reason the speaker no longer focused on scraping together a living selling ebooks (he did at one point but no doubt his markets got saturated) is that he could make a fortune selling hopes and dream for thousands of dollars to people who wanted to know the “secret” method of how you make ebooks and sell them online.

At the end of the day I tried to count the number of people that signed onto the $4000 course, it was close to 45.  Making $150,000+ in a day never looked so easy. It truly was eye opening.

Warning Signs That A Internet Marketing Training Course Is A Sham

Of course amongst all sales hype there were a number of obvious warnings signs that clearly weren’t registering amongst the masses of individuals who were too busy stampeding towards the back of the room to sign up.

Firstly the guarantee was very conditional. This to me just screamed of a lock in contract with little opportunity for recourse.

Secondly, the limited time offer and the hard sell. I mean if their training course is legit they shouldn’t care if you sign up today, tomorrow or next week. It makes no difference when you are selling a pre-packaged info product.

Thirdly, the speaker himself wasn’t involved in the training process. Sure he put together some materials, ebooks, audio, videos etc – but once you signed the dotted line he cashed the check and walked away. If you had any problem you could always ask an under trained outsourced assistant or post your question on a forum that was provided.

Finally, and most alarming, as a “bonus” for “buying now” each member would receive the same couple of already packaged mini online ebook businesses ready to go. Of course the head smackingly obvious problem with his was that 45 people were going to get the exact same ebooks and landing pages. Last time I studied economics competitors selling an identical product cause price competition destroying profits for all firms. Not to mention Google doesn’t look fondly on duplicate content.

Know Who Your Buying From And Selling To

Despite my opinion that the product was incredibly over priced, I wasn’t there to buy it; I wanted to speak with the seminar leader personally. I wanted the opportunity to introduce myself and meet a peer in the industry. So I hung around and waited for the masses of new students to disperse from around the seminar leader. Though what I heard as I hung around waiting for the chance to chat to him blew my mind.

One individual asked point blank “what are the chances I’ll fail at doing this”, which floored me, I don’t know why anyone would ask such a subjective question. It’s like asking “what are the chances I won’t be able to run 100m in under 11 seconds”. Unfortunately many people just don’t have the genetics to run that fast not matter how good the training.

The real tragedy was that I was sitting near this individual in the seminar and watched him ask a number of relatively simple and in some cases blatantly obvious questions throughout the seminar. This young kid clearly wasn’t the brightest bulb in the pack and if I had to make a snap judgement I’d say he was going to struggle with the course, but of course the response from the seminar leader was a very unconditional  “you won’t fail if you just do what I tell you”.

I cringed and watched that kid walk away with the look of renewed confidence that he wouldn’t be burned again on another get rich quick scheme.

At the end of the day I got my couple of moments with the seminar leader and in those few moments I realised he wasn’t the guy I thought he was. He wasn’t as altruistic as he claimed. He wasn’t as informed as he claimed. He wasn’t as experienced as he claimed and he had just made $150,000 selling a prepackaged info product. I walked away jaded, but it gave me the inspiration to start this blog.

You CAN Make Money Online

The internet provides many money making opportunities, but the fundamentals of business on the internet apply virtually the same way they apply in the real world, you just have greater opportunity for scale and distribution online. And just like traditional get rich quick schemes don’t’ work; they don’t work on the internet either.

Competition is fierce and what were great ways of making money in 2007 are not today. Everything evolves online, and quickly, website are made redundant and market positions are difficult to defend given the few barriers to entry. However there is lots of money to be made for those willing put their head down work hard and be smart.

I’ve been working for myself online since 2005, but it’s only been achievable through working hard and working smart. There’s no silver bullet and there definitely aren’t any internet marketing courses out there that will make you millionaires themselves – a lot of it is up to you. At some point you are going to have to do what every other successful person on this planet does – work hard and work smart.

I’m not saying going to conferences, buying ebooks and even joining internet marketing training courses are a bad idea (I’ve attended, read and tried lots myself) but there sure are a lot of junk products out there so make sure you’re learning off those that are worth learning off when it comes to internet marketing. Or better yet wet your appetite with the HUGE range of free ebooks and blogs scattered all over the web on how to make money online so that you can differentiate the wheat from the chaff.

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