Even Guru Internet Marketers Get It Wrong
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Most people working in the Internet industry would have heard of Joel Comm. He is most famous as being the AdSense “Guru.”
Well that guru credibility took a mighty battering this past week and left many affiliates red-faced.
$9.95 for the 4th Edition of a top-selling ebook on AdSense was just too good to be true.
It was later revealed that once you purchased the book, you were automatically subscribed to his newsletter. Yeah, that’s not bad, but … he’s the bite: it’s a $29.95 a month newsletter!!!
And that’s when the ‘you know what’ hit the fan.
Negative Option Billing is Frowned Upon … And Rightly So!
Such negative option selling is rarely used online because it simply screams of sneakiness. Negative option being when you are subscribed or purchase something that you didn’t necessarily asked for - you are signed up without knowing and you were never given the option.
In other words, the normal way to make any up-sell would be to ask at the time of purchase.
What this means is that to get off it you have to actually request it after finding out after-the-fact … and possibly only finding out after the money starts coming out of your account. Pretty obvious to see the negative connotations in that!
Such a tactic is a big no-no on the internet, and I always advise my clients to steer clear of it.
Selling on the Internet is About Credibility
Which brings into question the credibility of Joel Comm, a seasoned internet marketer. I find it very hard to believe it was a mistake because it takes planning to implement such a marketing technique.
The problem lies in the fact that the option - or non-option to be precise - was buried deep in the long sales letter. I don’t know if this was a planned tactic or just poor marketing communications. If it was planned - lets say for publicity sakes - then Joel Comm might as well hang up his online boots.
Because in the end, Joel Comm takes a massive hit in credibility, the many affiliates promoting this are red-faced and have learned the valuable lesson to read first before pushing products and the whole internet marketing industry is embarrassed once again.
Joel Comm has gone into quick damage control with an apology and offer to send all proceeds to charity and so on but …
… as I will be telling my mentoring clients (how’s that for an announcement! - HomeOfficeMentor.com is coming soon) the real lesson to be learnt from this is to stay away from such tactics in the first place.