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This is a response blog post to what Michel Fortin and Salty Droid* had to say about our beloved “gurus” in the IM industry.

If you are a customer, affiliate, or seller in the IM industry of any relation THESE BLOG POSTS ARE MANDATORY READING!

Over the last 6 months the “shit” has finally been hitting the fan. While I don’t think anyone can stop the train yet, it appears efforts are underway.

What I Saw When They Let Me Backstage

Not long ago I wanted nothing more than to be part of the “big boys club” and I worked my ass off trying to get there. I copied their styles, I bought their products, I made them tens of thousands of dollars as an affiliate.

Before long I started getting “in” and the invites started coming in. One seminar here, one mastermind meeting there, and now I’m starting to get some recognition… finally.

While attending on of there private and yes “secret” mastermind meetings I got my chance to stand up in front of the room.

The way it works is everyone shares a bit of intel about what’s working for them and what their sticking points are, then everyone chips in some advice to get through the sticking points.

The sticking point for me was “How do I help more of my customers take action and get results from my courses?”

This is a real pain point for me because it kills me to know that 80% of the people buying my products will never use them, I HATE THAT. So I asked all the guys who I looked up too how to fix it.

Their reply was “Oh, you’ll get over that”

WTF!!!

That’s the moment when I knew I was in the wrong room with the wrong people.

I remember ranting to my wife about it later that night in the hotel room and saying “GET OVER IT! What if I don’t want to get over it!”

These days I focus much more on giving real value, both upfront and after the sale. We honor every refund, we go out of our way to help customers that ask us for help, and we only promote/teach things we would sell to our own mothers.

I do want to point out that I am not speaking about every seller in the IM industry. The bad eggs are outnumbered, but their tricks have been so effective that their sheer size is intimidating. (Intimidating is not even a strong enough word)

If you could imagine an elephant pissing in a blow up kiddie pool, you would understand what they are doing to our industry and at what speed.

The Cure is Consumer Education

Michel said it…

We need to educate the market about what to lookout for, because the current philosophy of “subscribe to anyone who makes a lot of money” is just not working. It’s hurting them, it’s hurting us, and it’s hurting the industry.

As always you should decide for yourself and use your own head when making decisions, but these are the rules I use when I’m personally buying advice/training/tools for my business.

Does the person/course/tool pertain to your current business model?

By business model I mean how you acquire revenue. For example an affiliate marketer who solely build blogs optimized for the search engines has no business buying something about “product launch methods.”

Just like someone trying to sell an ebook doesn’t need to be buying a course about getting local SEO clients.

You wouldn’t buy shampoo to wash your car so don’t buy the wrong courses/tools/services in your IM business either!

Can YOUR BUSINESS afford the product?

If you are buying products and courses with your house money you are hurting yourself and possibly your family as well. It’s different if you have set aside money or raised money to start a business and using those funds as start-up funds.

However, there are far too many stories of “I’ve bought thousands of dollars worth of products and nothing has worked.”

If you are not making money then you should not be spending money… That’s the exact opposite direction you want to be heading. Although, once you do start making some money you should invest it immediately to grow your business with.

Refer to rule #1 at that point

Does the seller care more about your success or their own?

There is an easy test to see if the guy you are considering buying training from cares more about you or himself. Just look at the way he interacts with you.

• Is every email he/she sends out a sales pitch for another product?
• Do they have a phone number you can call for help (and someone actually picks up)?
• Do they put out educational content on a regular basis other than when it’s a follow-up to their product launch?

If they are always selling you something, provide very limited assistance, and rarely put our educational material than maybe you should find someone else that does. There’s plenty of them out there and I’ll even name a few Michel Fortin, Lynn Terry, Myself, Travis Sago, Michelle MacPhearson and many more.

If treated correctly, instead of pillaged, the IM industry could change the world. We just have a few bad eggs getting 90% of the attention.

Follow those rules, do your research, stop drinking the kool-aid, and together we can change the tide.

* I did not link off to Salty Droid’s blog post about the legality of Frank Kern’s “Internet Marketing Syndicate” because I don’t approve or condone the viciousness he and his commentators often use. However, it should be read.

Tagged as: bad gurus, internet marketing syndicate, problem with the IM industry, salty droid