Online Marketing - 15 Q&A. Part20

20. Question 14 This is my first time in online marketing, how do I know it's not all a scam, and why is that the general attitude of the outside world?

If this is your first time in online marketing, it's quite understandable how you may have seen or heard internet marketing spoken about as if it were one big group of people scamming other people into scamming more people. I'm sure you've figured out, that is definitely not the case. This is a serious business, it's a real business, and it involves real people and real products, even though many of them are published and brought to our attention through a digital format, and many contain pure information.

Let me tell you that when I first started out in internet marketing I started telling my friends. They came over and had a look at my sites, and unfortunately, much to my surprise, they scoffed. Not just friends, but family too. All they could see was the standard make money online
message from the headline (it didn't read exactly that but that’s all they picked up) and they all either didn't say anything at all, or they joked about me being one of those types that sends them e-mails all day long when they don't want them.

Of course I knew they were wrong. The contents of the site, at that time, revolved around automation, and not once was money making mentioned, aside from in the standard two level affiliate program. It's a shame that people automatically assume it's a scam if it involves referring people. They've heard about the impossible matrix stuff, the fifty gazillion level mlm-insta-super-cash-millionaire-overnight-system, and they've either fallen for it themselves, assume it's a scam because someone they know has fallen for it, or seen some sort of harsh words about this in the media.

The problem comes when they mix these up, and believe online marketing to all be a scam. Look at your standard matrix, and do the math. You'll soon figure out a few things. First, the odds of earning are minuscule. Who knows how many millions of people you need to refer on your level to come into profit. You'd be amazed that if you took a calculator to many of these old systems, you'd need to refer more people than there actually are in the world on level 25, to get you $100 per month. Second the products. Look at what we're doing here. Look at what we're selling. They're not referral programs that ask to refer for the sake of referring. They're real products, quality, with real value.

When people now ask me about what I do, and after telling them I make comments, my response is easy, and yours could be the same. Hey, Amazon.com has an affiliate program, where people refer others and make money on anything they purchase. Does that make them an illegal scheme that is only out to make you broke? Just because we're not a huge business with huge names, usually only a single person or with a small staff promoting single products on single websites, it does not mean our products are not valuable, and it doesn't mean they're a scam just because there's a two level referral system up there.

In fact, it often means that the information and type of products and services open to the customer are even more diverse. No longer are you only seeing books published by big companies, no longer are you only seeing three choices of software when looking to accomplish a job. The internet has made things amazingly easy for us to get our products circulated and, because of the diversity or types and quality of product, and the low cost of doing this, there are inevitably some shoddy pieces of work out there by people who just want to make a quick buck.

As you can see, not only is this big money, but it's a serious business too. It's not a joke, or a scam, or anything like that. It's a diverse number of people coming together, and finally being able to afford to put their ideas in motion and add to the diversity of every single market you can possibly think of. Remember, a referral program, doesn't make a scam. With a document telling you how to make money online, even though that phrase is a major 'yeah right' cliché nowadays, the concept is still the same.

The only difference between reality, and peoples perceptions through what they've heard via the media, their friends, and what they think they know, makes it a scam in their mind. In reality, it's as legitimate a business as any big name multinational you can think of that’s out there, just in a smaller package.

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