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Have you been ripped off Infomarketers?

I’ve read several hundred eBooks now, taken dozens of InfoCourses and well, frankly I feel ripped off. It’s not only the money but the time. Why is it so hard to get good information? Especially when you’ve paid for it?

Recently I listened to a course by Dan Kennedy, the Grand Puba of Marketing and Sales information products, where he said “The pitch page will never be as good as the product itself. How could it?”

Over promise and under deliver. That seems to be the motto of these internet sellers. What off-line business could operate that way? How many customers could we keep if every time they bought something they felt cheated? I suspect not many.

Their formula is simple – an openly taught by them – tell people the problem and even what the solution is – just don’t tell them how to fix it. For that you’ve got to pay the big dollars. Well unfortunately, even the big buck course are pretty light on the “How To” of getting anything accomplished.

For example the subject of how to use the internet. There are tons of websites and courses on this subject. They talk about all the money that is being made and give endless examples and techniques about Internet Marketing. I’ve taken these courses: how to drive traffic, how to optimize your website for search engines and on and on. However I’ve discovered a huge problem.

The problem is that making all of these things work – actually executing and implementing – is harder than they say. Plus they don’t tell you HOW! I know, they’ll argue with that statement and I’ll probably get flamed in comments and email. But its true. How many eBooks have you read that were worthless? How many free offers to you get that actually have any meat in them? Few I suspect. Its gotten to the point I don’t even open these emails anymore – I just ignore all of their nonsense.

I’ve discovered that there are three levels of knowledge needed to really have a working solution:

• Understanding of the Problem
• What to do to Solve the Problem
• How to Solve the Problem

How often involves tools and the practive of skills learned in the ‘Understanding’ and the ‘What.’ For example to build a house I first have to learn a lot about building, architecture, legal and structural rules, etc. I then have to learn what a house builder does. I have to learn what tools and resources it takes. I have to learn about all of the skills and techniques that will be used when I’m ready to dig the foundation or put up the walls. Before a single nail gets pounded I have to know these fundamentals.

However none of that will do me any good unless I learn the ‘how to.’ What are the steps to putting in a foundation? Actually doing something is always harder and more time consuming than learning about it. Perhaps that is why for hundreds of years people apprenticed under other ‘Masters’ in their trade.

When it comes to Business and the Internet these same principles hold true. I know the understand email for example (the ‘why’ part of the problem). I also understand the ‘what’ of email: get a good email system or an autoresponder. What is lacking is the ‘how to.’ Sure we all know some of the how to: we type letters on a page and hit the send button, we already know programs like Outlook and Yahoo Mail. But…

Do we know how to do it right? And what about using an autoresponder or setting up our websites to accept email addresses so that we can write people? Those are the critical ‘how to’ details left out. If you don’t know how to use something you won’t use it. The same is true if you don’t know how to do something - it just won’t get done.

Ever ask an employee that you thought knew how to do something and then wonder why it didn’t get done. Often its because they really didn’t know how to do it and were simply too embarrassed to let you know. I’ve had this happen countless times (so much for my learning from my mistakes huh). I would ask my service guy for example to look into a problem and a week later find out that they hadn’t even called the customer. When I dug into it I found out that my computer guy didn’t really understand networking (strange I know) and avoided any kind of situation involving networks. But until I asked he was going to pretend he knew and just not fix anything.

The Backend of the Internet: how to get autoresponders working, how to get orders fulfilled, shopping carts, and the various bits and pieces of using the Web for Business can be overwhelming and complex. Unfortuanlity most of the courses don’t get into these nuts and bolts of the HOW.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting on these subjects because I believe the BACKEND is the most important part of taking the Web Step in a Business. We’ve got customer service, product ordering and all of the other business processes nailed down for our off-line businesses. If we can’t figure this stuff out for the internet we’ll be like my hapless computer guy forever not doing.

See you then…Russ