Smoke and Mirrors………

One of the most important characteristics you must develop if you want to prosper online is;

cynicism.

Now I don’t mean this in a negative way, if you assume that every online product and offer is a scam you’ll never discover new ideas or learn new skills. No, what I mean is a healthy cynicism so that you get into the habit of challenging the claims of online vendors and looking behind the hype and BS that proliferates on the internet.

Let me give you a personal example. Some months ago I decided to expand my online activities by buying exclusive rights to an eBook that appeared to be a perfect fit for my niche.

The material I invested in was advertised on the ‘Sitepoint’ marketplace as a ready made website that included a domain name, sales and download pages plus eBook that I was told had been written exclusively for sale through the website and I was assured I would own 100% exclusive rights to it.

All I had to do was add the domain to my hosting account, upload the pages to my webspace and submit the eBook to ClickBank and I would have a new income stream in double quick time!

Of course things didn’t quite work out as I planned. Before offering the product for sale I decided to give it as a gift to reward my loyal subscribers and it was one of my subscribers who pointed out that my ‘exclusive’ eBook was in fact identical to another marketer’s product.

You can imagine my feelings whan I discovered that I’d been scammed, I was hugely embarrassed to think I had given a pirated eBook to my readers and I was hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

Now this experience hasn’t put me off buying goods and services online but it has made me a lot more cautious. I now exercise a healthy cynicism whenever I am reading a sales pitch. I don’t believe everything I read and I try to buy from trusted sources or on the recommendation of people I trust.

You should develop this habit too because it is a sad fact of life that not everybody we do business with online is as honest and trustworthy as ourselves. Sometimes our familiarity with the internet lulls us into a false sense of security which unscrupulous operators take advantage of.

I am sure that I wouldn’t be such an easy victim in an offline transaction, the face to face nature of the offline purchase where we spend real cash money somehow makes us more wary, more likely to challenge the shopkeeper if we aren’t 100% sure about our purchase.

That said, if you take a look at Ray Johnson’s Adswap Masterclass

At first sight it looks like your typical, over hyped product launch. I would urge you, however, to look beyond the hypey sales copy because this is one of those new ideas I mentioned earlier.

I know Ray Johnson personally and I can assure you that there is more than enough quality, free content in Ray’s Adwsap Masterclass to teach you how to use adswaps to build your list (and don’t forget a well managed list is like money in the bank, forever) and provide all of the tools necessary to do so.

Of course Ray offers various levels of paid membership (we all have to make a living, right?) but you can take and use Ray’s expertise to build your business without parting with a single cent.

Remember what I said about following trusted recommendations?

I’ve reviewed Ray’s product and you can trust me when I say that it is worthy of a closer look and I certainly would not risk my reputation with you by recommending a product I hadn’t tried myself.

Take a look and let me know what you think, Adswap Masterclass


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2 Responses to “Smoke and Mirrors………”

  1. Hi Stuart,

    I totally agree, you have to find the ‘happy medium’ between regarding everything as a possible scam and seeing the real jewels!

    Building online business relationships is key because ‘people buy from people’ and if you are regarded as being a ‘real person’ in this business you are well on your way to forming a successful business!

    I have downloaded Ray’s ‘Adswap Masterclass’ and agree that it is a very good read and certainly worth investing in particularly if you have a reasonably sized subscriber list already!

    Cheers

    Andy

    http://www.andycockayne.com
    http://www.twitter.com/andy_cockayne

  2. Hi Stuart,

    Yes, I agree with Andy, and Steve King’s product focuses on ‘people buy people’.

    Enjoy the journey.

    Mandy

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