Pyramid schemes have entered the website and marketing arena. Also known as MLM (mid-level marketing) they promise instant conveyance of computer skills, marketing knowledge, amazing but true secrets to website traffic and guaranteed money.
Pre-packaged, priced right with training and networking events to get people started quickly. Apparently, you too can make millions on the Internet for as little as $50. Who knew?
Start by watching a video
Watch a few tacky homemade videos, go to classes taught by untrained, self-proclaimed Internet and online experts. Learn about blogs, how to engage people through newsletters, form e-mails and useless links and long, boring copy.
Then start a personal website. Pay up to $5,000 to build it. There’s magical traffic-building included so the site incubates and then launches causing an explosion of your name and brand on the webisphere. No skills or talent needed.
Next, and here’s the key: get people to sign up for this miracle and training under you. Have websites built in your group and snare more people to do what you did and become successful online.
But wait, there’s more
Next, you invite some friends to a training session. You charge them up to $20 bucks for beer, wine and snacks. Sometimes it’s called networking and it’s held at a local restaurant or an enticing venue.
You teach them everything you know and there’s an MLM Master on-site to tackle all questions with slick and easy answers.
When you sign up enough people to pay you, they sign up people and the money rolls right in.
Nothing worth having comes easily
So you pay $500 Multi-Level Marketing venture. Someone you know or found on the Internet sold you. You too are ready to sell to all your friends, relatives and acquaintances. This is great and so easy.
It’s usually food or health products, but now it’s marketing. And legitimate advertisers and marketing agencies have nothing to do with it.
Debunking the myths
MLMs have tried to impart knowledge with this agency. They offer to buy key words to get placement on the first page of a Google search.
They yell through e-mails and voice mails that video will instantly drive traffic to websites.
Apparently, while actually working in advertising, events and PR, we’ve missed out on what’s happening in the real world of MLM.
Everyday, regular folks have become overnight Internet sensations filled with knowledge and skills not available to actual advertising and marketing experts. Dang, all that actual experience, for nothing. Twenty-five years right down the drain.
We’ve heard…
….there are FREE and EASY programs to optimize website search engines.
….there are networks of digital Internet empires we should be linking to.
…at DISCOUNT prices.
…that MLMs magically optimize any and all websites and put money right into bank accounts 24 hours a day.
…forget about work: the MLMs have Internet marketing secret recipes that have been kept from the general public for years.
Free for the taking: money and riches
Keep the $500 and stick with that day job. Some people fell for the Tupperware, Mary Kay, protein drink, real estate, travel websites, eBay auctions and other scams over the years but they are still working full-time in the real world.
But gosh those infomercials shouting the joys and ease of sound good, don’t they?
The Internet is new to many, but not to The Marketing Square.
We continue to honestly explain to clients how to build traffic the old fashioned way: they have to earn it.
It’s done through programming, coding and content and it’s worth every penny.
