Why Bring Down Scam Artists?

If you have more of a personal interest in bringing down these scam artists than merely reporting them to the proper Internet authorities, here’s something you can do. It could be merely a matter of self-gratification. Sometimes it’s just fun to be this kind of devious. It could also, if done right, be far more effective than merely reporting them to ripoffreport.com or a website like that.

First of all, investigate the product and the company. You have chosen an enemy; now you have to know him before you take him on. Study his strengths and his weaknesses. Do his products have more complaints than compliments? Is he actually under investigation for dishonest practices? I know of one particular person that actually has an online coalition of consumers tracking his activity on Craigslist and warning other customers of what he’s doing.

Feeling out Their Internet Marketing

Of course, you can’t just settle with whether or not the product or company is legit. Remember, you’re out to beat him, and to that end you have to know what kind of Internet marketing he has going for him. If they have infomercials on television, there’s a good chance they’re not relying on organic traffic since the phone number and URL are on TV. Look for weaknesses such as that, as it will be vital in your campaign.  See if they’ve already took over on the keywords linking them to scams.  It’s good to also know their strengths.

Exposing Them with Your Website

Now you can create a free blog or a Squidoo lens named for this product or company. Talk about this product on your blog or website. Get some affiliate links and opt-in forms. I’m pretty sure that you see by now what we’re going for.

Now, put the complaints up on your blog or website and post it. There’s a very good chance that you will actually outrank this company’s or product’s home page. If you want to be really nasty about it, you can potentially use heavy Web 2.0 properties to completely move them off of Google’s first page and have it all to yourself. All you have to do is create multiple blogs and lenses in this way and back link.

Of course, someone might call this a smear campaign. These techniques could certainly be used to that end if one so chooses. What I’m talking about here is actually the removal of a scam artist. It’s more akin, I think, to giving a snake oil salesman the tar and feather treatment.

Internet Marketing is, first of all, a blanket term for different styles and techniques of advertising and promotions used on the Internet. Affiliate Marketing, Direct Marketing, and Pay Per Click are just a few of the different styles you can encounter, and they are often mingled into an overall campaign.

Internet Marketing relies largely on how easy it is to find you. Visibility is key, and there are two main ways to do it. These are Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and Pay Per Click techniques such as Google’s Adsense.

Search Engine Optimization is geared toward maximum visibility in the search engines’ results page. This is achieved first by designing your web page in such a way that the spiders will favor it, called On Site SEO.

You can also further increase your rankings by getting backlinks from other websites, called Off Site SEO. For this, you can ask other web masters for backlinks, and you can also use Social Media aka Web 2.0 sites to generate your own backlinks.

The other main option for visibility is called Pay Per Click. Google’s Adsense is a prime example of this. The way this works is that after you apply for Adsense, you pick your keywords and make a bid.

The final winning bid is what you will have to pay every time someone clicks on your link. In return for this, you get a special placement on Google’s search results page. The danger you face is that if too many people click on your link without buying your product, you can actually lose money.

SEO and PPC can be used alone or in combination for your Internet Marketing campaign. There are three primary structures to marketing on the Internet, being Affiliate Marketing, Multi Level Marketing and Direct Marketing.

Affiliate Marketing is where you promote someone else’s product and you get a commission for every sale you make. This is often where many people start in Internet Marketing, since it’s a good source of residual income. For just a little work in starting the campaign, you can make money in your sleep.

Multi Level Marketing has an unfair reputation. A particular type of MLM, called a “pyramid scheme” has tainted the whole concept of MLM for many people. The thing to know is that pyramid schemes are MLM, but MLM is not itself pyramid schemes. This also can generate residual income. You can be marketing in a similar way to Affiliate Marketing, but you will also get sub-marketers, who will pay you a part of their income to be part of the hierarchy.

Finally, there is Direct Marketing. Direct Marketing is where you have your own product to sell, and you promote it yourself. You can also include an Affiliate system or MLM structure to this to boost your advertising. With this structure, you can stand to make the most money in Internet Marketing, but you can also bust in a huge way. It also takes a bit more attention and work than Affiliate or MLM structures.

While this didn’t cover everything, it serves as a good place to start in Internet Marketing.

If you aren’t finding a need, you’re really not going to get very far in a product launch. This has to be done before product development, before marketing, before anything. You have to be able to supply what people need. If you don’t, you’re just wasting time and resources.

Think of it this way. Let’s say that it’s around December 10. You know that people are shopping for Christmas presents at this time. You decide to launch a Christmas based product, or made a special Christmas sale. You realize that there are people on the Net with a need and money to spend. You provide the needed item, and make money. That’s the essence of how to go about finding a need.

It’s all about target traffic. As I just said, you have people browsing the Net that are “just browsing,” and then you have people that are actually shopping. Obviously, you want the ones who are spending money. Finding a need is the first part of targeting your traffic. Obviously, you don’t care about the guy sitting at his kitchen table drinking his coffee, just browsing for the sake of it.

Of course, the process of finding a need is a bit more complicated than just knowing that Christmas is coming up, so you should develop a Christmas line. It takes a bit of market analysis. Let’s say that you have this brilliant idea for a launch. Let’s say that it’s a line of instruction manuals on how to do underwater basket weaving.

The first thing you do in finding a need is condense this whole idea into as few words as possible. Now you can take this to Wordtracker or another keyword tool. Plug your words into the keyword search tool and let’s see what happens. Wordtracker will kick out every (more or less) current permutation of your keyword and how often it got hit.

Based on this analysis, can you say that by doing this search that you’re finding a need? If you’re not, perhaps there’s some variation on your keywords that will actually hit higher than your original version. It can be quite a boring process, but sticking through with it will pay off in the end.

For instance, let’s say with this example that you plugged in “underwater basket weaving Alaska.” Let’s say that in this example, you see that there’s actually more interest in underwater basket weaving in Outer Mongolia than in Alaska. I know, you had your heart set on Alaskan techniques of underwater basketweaving, but there was more demand for Outer Mongolian methods. Finding a need doesn’t always mean that you get your way.

Now that you’re done finding a need, you can begin making your instruction manuals for underwater basket weaving in Outer Mongolia. You can then move on to pricing and marketing and everything else. But this is where it starts.