About a year back, I was impressed by the offer of one
established internet marketer who styled himself as an search
engine optimisation expert and was offerring a mentoring program
on website creation and promotion for adsense, for an entire
year, with a full return of payment guarantee if his services
were unsatisfactory within the 12 months.
Since he belonged to a member of an established forum and was an
active member who had posted well over 1,000 forum posts he was
not someone who was a newbie or unknown.
I ran a check on him for his experience and discovered he had
made numerous other contributions as articles to some online web
sites.
Here was a model online marketer who was keen to help others
succeed online. Like many others who joined him on his offer,
and who paid his susbcription fees for the mentoring regularly,
I was shocked and dismayed that this established online marketer
"disappeared" suddenly one day, together with his hosting
facility, so that we lost not only our websites hosted with him,
but also out trust in him.
Of course, this incident dented the trust of many who believe in
the whole community called the internet and many of its
operators...the online marketers.
Is it really a wild jungle out there? Where are the ethics that
rule the community? What is in place to ensure guarantees made
are to be fulfilled?
Without a stated code, the internet community is self-regulating
to a great extent where users need to apply caution and to check
the background of any online marketer thoroughly before hand.
Run a search of the person you wish to check by putting his name
into the major search engines such as Google search and check
for any reported occurrences of fraud, scam or complaints. Check
his name against any forum on the internet, again using search
engines, to make sure there are no grouses in any forum relating
to the marketer. Also ask opinions of others on the program he
is promoting. Form a reasonable opinion of the marketer and his
programs.
Although doing so cannot guarantee you that the marketer will
not disappear, you will have removed a large part of the
possibility that he will abscond without fulfilling his
commitments to you.
In my particular case, there was really no warning that this
marketer would disappear without a word and without a trace. All
I knew was that he had "retired" to an island somewhere in the
far east, with a satellite dish hooked up and wired up to the
internet and enjoying himself on the tropical beach.
But then we know, his entire online career is already gone to
the dogs. Unless he resurfaces, and adopt a psuedonym or another
identity, he cannot hope to find others believing him or his
name.
An online marketer is as good as his name. His name is his
reputation, and when he has a bad record, he cannot command any
trust from wary buyers.
Is there any ethical code on the internet? Until there is, it is
to our best interests to be just extra careful in vetting any
claims from any online marketer, and be safe rather than to be
sorry.
About the author:
Peter Lim writes often on internet marketing topics and provide
free resources for niche marketing at
http://www.cashflowpc.biz/niche-marketing He researches often
into these niche markets and put up the best ideas on the
website
http://www.cashflowpc.biz for free referral by the
online community.
