Not John Chow Presents "Beating The Beast Goldmine! IM Jungle Survival Guide" Chapter 4

Chapter IV

Oh, My!

That’s what Dorothy said in the ‘Wizard of Oz’…..’There are lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!” Out there on the World Wide Web, there really are lions and tigers and bears, as well as, other critters that can eat you alive, make your life miserable, or rob you of your dreams and ambitions.

The dangerous jungles creatures are also very smart jungle creatures. They all have opposable thumbs and are capable of setting traps for you to fall into. The ‘bait’ they use to get you, the unsuspecting newbie’ to fall into these insidious traps is ‘help’.

They trick you into believing that what they are offering you is help when, in fact, what they are doing is tricking you into falling into their traps. Some bait that is used is:

You have been CHOSEN: This little piece of bait usually arrives in your inbox. It is nothing that you solicited so it IS SPAM but it is very clever SPAM. The email will say something like, “You have been chosen to participate in a______________!!

The blank can be filled in many ways. One of the ways that went around for awhile, and may still be making the rounds, is “You have been chosen to participate in a program that is marketing walk-up Internet access.”

All you have to do, since you have been CHOSEN, is to buy this machine that will be installed in a ‘high-traffic’ area close to where you live. Then you can just go pick up your money whenever you find the time.

They imply that you can easily find the time to go pick up your money between flying by personal jet to play golf with Donald Trump and having dinner with the President. Snap!

You send in your several thousand dollars to purchase (or lease) this machine then you have absolutely no control over where the machine is places…IF it is placed. It can be put in a low traffic dimly it corner of a dive in the sleaziest part of town…it isn’t up to you. Oh, My!

You are SO SMART! Well, everybody likes to be thought of as intelligent, don’t they? This is very good bait! It is designed to make you believe that FINALLY somebody realizes just how smart you really are.

Again, this bait usually arrives in your inbox and it is SPAM. The offer tells you that because you are such an intelligent person, you can become an Internet Consultant and earn millions just by advising others. Sometimes you will also see these kinds of advertisements on websites as well.

But, wait just a minute! Didn’t you just get here? Aren’t you still considered a newbie in the world of Internet commerce? What exactly do you know and what can kind of advise can you give? Ah…..but the critters that baited this trap will gladly tell you everything you need to know so that you can become a highly paid and sought after ‘consultant’…..for a price. Oh, My!

You are SO HONEST! Well, of course you are honest. You know that, you just didn’t realize that others were aware of this fine quality.

This offer for a credit card or a guaranteed loan is made by unsolicited email sometimes but you can also see these advertisements in trade magazines and in newspapers.

They tell you that, even if you are young and aren’t well established financially or even if you have had credit difficulties in the past, THEY know that you are an honest person and they are willing to help you because you are such an honest person. You will see the word, ‘honest’ repeated often in these advertisements.

You are told that you can get a home equity loan even if you don’t have any equity in your home. You are told that you can get a credit card with a really high spending limit no matter what your credit history is.

These offers are most often Ponzi schemes (which we will discuss later) or they are an attempt to get your personal information for the purpose of identity theft.

Oh, My!

You DESERVE our help! Somewhere inside all of us mere mortals there is a little place that tells us that we really ARE deserving of the better things in life. That is just a fact of human nature and one that can be used as bait by the Internet jungle critters to lure you into their traps.

Not always, but certainly most of the time, people do get what the deserve. If you work hard and long you will most likely succeed and if you don’t, you most likely won’t. But we aren’t born DESERVING anything. We make our own luck and we build our own success. This is another bait that the Internet critters use to trick you. Don’t take the bait.

Sometimes this bait is used to lure you into making risky investments. Many times the Internet jungle animals believe that because you are in business for yourself, you must have a ton of disposable income and they want to get their greedy little hands on some of it. So they place advertisements that tell you that you DESERVE to participate in the LIMITED offer. The offer is only limited by the number of people who actually take this bait.

A lot of these offers that are made because you are so deserving of them are pushing off-shore bank accounts or land in foreign countries. Many are MLM or Ponzi schemes.

Some of these offers are for free goods or services. After all, you DESERVE to get stuff for free. The offer will be a membership in a ‘buying club’. Of course, there really are many legitimate buying clubs that really do offer great discounts on brand name merchandize. There offers will not, however, arrive in your inbox unsolicited. Oh, My!

You can be NUMBER ONE! Okay, who doesn’t want to be number one? There is a tiny little problem, however. There is only ONE number one spot and only one person or company can occupy that position. Promising to make you number one is very good bait.

When you see advertisements that guarantee you the NUMBER ONE spot in Google search results, stop just a minute and think about that promise. How many number one spots are there? There is ONE…so how can this company promise to make everybody number one and deliver on that promise? Answer: they can’t deliver. They can, however, collect a lot of money for themselves.

If that amazing offer appeared in your inbox, you can bet your bottom dollar that it is part of a mass mailing that went out to hundreds of thousands of other people just like you. If you see an advertisement for such an offer, you don’t think that it was placed just for you, do you? How many people do you think will see the same advertisement?

Here are the hard cold facts about rankings in Google search results (or rankings in any search engine results for that matter). The top Internet marketers, the guys and gals who really do make tons of money marketing on the Internet, struggle for YEARS to gain a PageRank of 7 or better. Top page ranks in search results is one of the hardest tasks in all Internet marketing.

There is NOBODY that can promise (and keep the promise) to make you number one in search engine results. There are ways to improve your PR in search engine results….all of which take time, effort and know-how.

Writing and marketing articles and ebooks, posting to blogs and forums, doing link exchanges, etc are all proven PR rank improvements techniques. There is no magic formula. Don’t take this bait! Oh, My!

Success can be EASY for YOU! Everybody looks for an easier way to do everything. Hey….why do you think the wheel and the lever were invented? We all want to do as little work as possible to achieve our goals. You aren’t the only one. “Easy for You” is a bait that is wildly successful for that very reason.

These advertisements sometimes arrive as unsolicited mail in your inbox but they can also be found splashed all over the Internet and in newspapers and magazines. Easy riches! Wow!

They tell you that only fools work hard to make money. They say that making money is so easy that it is basically a ‘no-brainer’. They shout that hard work is overrated and a totally unnecessary complication that YOU don’t have to be burdened with. ALL you have to do, they say, is take their advice, which they will happily supply to you for a price.

There are those in this world who really do have a lot of money that they didn’t work for. They were born rich or they hit the lottery or a long lost rich uncle died and left them millions. You have a better chance of being struck by lightening than you have of having millions without putting in the blood sweat and tears that are required to earn them. So…SNAP!

This bait is designed to take whatever money you do have out of your pocket and put it in the pockets of these jungle critters. THEY certainly don’t intend to work for their money. Oh, My!

You can learn the SECRETS of Success! Do you know what a secret is? It’s a piece of information that isn’t common knowledge. It is something that is whispered into listening ears. Ah….but we all want to know the ‘secrets’. What great bait! Secrets!

You will be inundated with offers from those who will reveal their secrets of success to you. Almost every time that you opt-in to a list or sign up for a marketing course of any kind, you will be promised that you are going to learn some ‘secrets’.

Now, some courses and seminars really do provide useful inside information to budding Internet entrepreneurs but the information is hardly a secret. It might be gems of knowledge gained through experience. It could be bits of wisdom or even some very good advice.

The trick to knowing which of the thousands of courses, seminars, teleseminars or webinars that you can really benefit from, is knowing who the leaders of the authors of the courses or the leaders and speakers of events are. You need to know what their backgrounds are.

You can learn a lot from those who have blazed trails…but they won’t be secrets. Really successful Internet marketers have a lot they can teach you and much wisdom they can share but everybody is NOT a successful Internet marketer who offers to reveal secrets to you.

One way to check out whom really successful Internet marketers are and who are just jungle beasts that want your money, is to plug names of authors or speakers into the search box of your favorite search engine. You can learn a lot about people if you just look around the Internet.

Don’t believe everything you read. Check out the credentials of authors or speakers before you pay for the information they are offering. Don’t take the bait! Oh, My!

You can learn to SELL Anything! “Everyone lives by selling something.” – Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish novelist, poet. How true! We all sell something. We sell our time or our knowledge or we sell a product or a service. Everybody is selling something. Some of us do it better than others.

There is, however, a catch to selling. You have to have something of value to sell before you will have any paying customers. Hype won’t cut it.

There is no doubt that effective selling techniques exist. There is no doubt that some of these techniques can be taught. But….you can’t actually learn to sell ANYTHING. You can sell something. You can sell merchandize or services that have value. But you can’t sell just ANYTHING!

Many marketers, those of the brick and mortar world and those of the Internet marketing world, have found out that selling is only the first part of a process. The second part is that the customer who buys whatever is being sold has untold power. Today, if the customer isn’t happy, they usually have a recourse. If you sell inferior products, you will get a lot of returns and you will have your credibility severely damaged.

Selling isn’t all that hard if you have a good product or a good service that will satisfy the customers who purchase it. You have to keep it sold. You don’t want returns.

Being a good salesman can be learned. Selling an honest product or service will keep it sold.

You really can’t sell just ANYTHING! Oh, My!