Tag Archives: ticking off customers

Tired of Being Urged to Make Crappy Products?

I am sick of Internet marketing “gurus” teaching people to make and sell crappy products—such as ebooks on topics they know nothing about—by simply relabeling and reselling the same old, tired private label rights products everyone already has.

Does this Constitute Fraud?

Just last night I listened to a guy urging people to do those things. 

On the webinar the guy used as an example a niche that he *clearly* (and admittedly) knew nothing about. Yet part of his sales copy was a *guarantee* that the processes he made up or swiped and cobbled together were not only effective (How on *earth* would he know?) but also safe. In a field that is extremely active and known to be physically quite dangerous.

Can you say “lawsuit waiting to happen when someone is injured or killed”? And rightly so. In effect, the guy is urging us to commit fraud.

Can you imagine that he is going to do more than refund the purchase price when his product (and his *guarantee*) result in someone being crippled and confined to a wheelchair for life? Yeah. Right.

Abusing Private Label Rights (PLR) Products

I recently feel for a sales ploy and bought another “brand new” super duper, highly touted “complete step-by-step system”. It not only led to the kind of OTO bait-and-switch process I described in a recent post, it also turned out to be a barely relabeled PLR product. It was so bad that parts of the OTO still had the title of the original ebook in the header. 

Fair enough, you may say, if it was a good product. But it was crap. It was fluff. Generalities. Nothing useful.

Not only might I already have owned it. (Who wants to pay twice for the same ebook with a different title and cover?) It was useless to anyone. So far from being a complete, step-by-step process, it was actually just several “modules” of…well, nothing much. And old, vague, useless nothing much at that—but with important-sounding titles.

So if anyone tells you to create products on topics you know nothing about, don’t do it. At the very least, you will be unmasked and laughed out of your chosen niche. At worst, you could end up sued for everything you own—or, in some jurisdictions, even end up in jail. 

If you are going to repackage private label rights products, start with *good* ones. Then really do something to improve them. Combine two or three to make one much better product. Add information. Update instructions. Contribute some useful ideas.

In other words, create a new product. Make the product actually worth the money for your customers. 

That is how you develop a good reputation and a loyal following. Come on, take the pledge: “No more crappy products!” There now, don’t you feel better?


Why Snark About Marketing?

Why snark about marketing, you may ask? Well, as a customer, I find that the little annoyances (as well as the big ones) add up. Some of these marketing gaffes are so annoying that I carefully avoid certain marketers and their products. Who needs the aggravation?

I kept wondering why so many marketers, on line and off, cannot see how annoying some of their practices are and how much they alienate customers. Sometimes I contact vendors directly. I figure I’m doing them a favor. Other times, I just let it go. After all, there are plenty of other vendors to buy from. 

Remember, success is not measured how much traffic you get. Success is measured by net profit. And that is mainly determined by how many people you get to buy your products and by how many customers you get to return and buy more

Repeat customers are much more profitable. Needless to say, ticking off your buyers (or potential buyers) not a good way to create loyal customers. And I found so many little things ticking me off as a customer that I finally decided to blog about it. 

Not that you would do make of those annoying marketing gaffes… But it seems sometimes that people are so close to their own business, especially Internet marketers, that they just don’t see how annoying some of their practices are to customers.

So here they are: Pet peeves of buyers (or potential buyers) and things to avoid to keep from losing customers you could have otherwise kept.