It’s an interesting question and the terms ‘unethical’ and ’scammer’ are tossed around way too liberally. First I’m going to tell what an unethical marketer or scammer is NOT.

The guy who sends emails promoting a new product to you every day regardless of whether he knows if it works or not … he’s not being unethical or scamming you. He’s desperate and has no business plan. He most likely maxed his credit cards out buying every get rich quick scheme that he could get his hands on and now he’s desperately trying to make some money back so he can pay the next electricity bill. Rather than getting angry and calling this guy names … learn from him. Realise that this isn’t something you want to do because it’s just going to end up with a lot of unsubscribes from your mailing list.

The guy who sells you a product with some fairly specific outcomes such as ‘You WILL make $500/mth with this’ is not a scammer or unethical if YOU DIDN’T TAKE ACTION AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS. This is probably one of the single biggest causes of disappointment  amongst buyers and the biggest frustration for sellers. You will see many many blog posts, forum posts etc saying ‘product X is worthless .. it didn’t make me any money…’ but in many of those cases the buyers were lazy. There’s really no other way to put it. They simply didn’t get off their behind(s) and use the product in the way that the seller intended or suggested.

Granted, the laws are changing and still need some changing but if every online marketer who was accused of being a scammer really was – then the majority of online marketers would have an office at Sing Sing or some other prison .

So, before you go labelling someone a scammer or unethical .. think … REALLY think about whether you gave a product your best shot or whether you expected that it would somehow, magically put money in your hands. Making money online isn’t as easy as many sales pages suggest -  but sales pages are about making sales rather than deterring people with terms like ‘hard work’ and ‘takes time’ so it’s not surprising that they are all very ‘glass is half full’.

The REAL scammers and unethical marketers are people who sell ponzi schemes, don’t honor guarantees, don’t deliver the advertised product, don’t deliver the product at all … you get the picture I’m sure. Basically they are people who break the law. Somewhere, someone decided that online marketers were some different sort of breed to offline marketers but the reality is that online marketers have to adhere to pretty much the same trading laws as offline marketers. The biggest difference is that it’s much easier to have a global market with your online business than with an offline business AND it’s much easier to call someone a scammer on a forum or blog than it is in person.

There is no doubt that you will come in contact with or buy products from someone who you may think has questionable marketing techniques or products. Learn from that and don’t let it distract you from building your own online business. I know that I spent 2 or 3 years being ‘angry’ about online marketers in general until I realised how destructive that anger was to my own ambitions. Nowadays I just take a chill pill and get on with building my business!

In my opinion it is essential. I created TheMarketersGeek with a rough kind of plan but I don’t really think that was adequate.  I’ll tell you why. Just after I created this blog/site I also created a site at thewebmastercourse.com. The plan was that this site would be mainly about the technical side of online marketing and thewebmastercourse.com would be mostly tutorial videos.

There’s the first problem. If this is a technical site, then shouldn’t it have videos? I don’t want to duplicate everything I do so straight away I had to change my plan. That’s fine and it’s not unusual to have to tweak and change things as you go but if I’d written my plan down to start with and done some brainstorming then I probably wouldn’t have had to make changes so early.

So I figure that this site will be changing focus a little. I’ll still talk about technical topics but I’ll also throw in some of my own experiences and things I’ve learned on the marketing side of things. All of the tutorials will be over at thewebmastercourse.com and then at some point I’ll make a premium membership available that will include some coaching and a lot more video material for you.

Ideally I’d like to present a plan starting right from  ‘I have no web site so what do I do’ and progressing through the task of creating a Wordpress blog initially (because it is by far the easiest way of creating your first online presence) and then looking at web sites and how you go about building them.

‘It’s so simple that my 90 year old blind grandmother can do it…’. Ever seen a tag line like that? I’ve seen them many times and I cringe every time. The fact is that regardless of HOW easy it is and regardless of HOW good the tools are and regardless of whether it’s so simple that a two year old could do it … you’re still going to need some skills and knowledge.

If a product requires you to ‘change the red text to your name’ then you need to be able to edit a HTML page. If it requires you to ‘add your payment processor details here’ then you will need to sign up with a payment processor, know how to create payment links and also know how to edit a HTML page. Many products will tell you how ’simple’ they are but you don’t see many pages that list any skill requirements. That’s because they are written by marketers (or by copy writers who are writing for marketers) and it’s their job to focus on the features, benefits and ease of use.

Don’t fret though – the main aim of the TMG newsletter is to bring you up to speed so that you do have the necessary knowledge that will allow you to perform any tasks that are needed in order to get your business online.

Note: If you’ve just signed up to the weekly newsletter please check your email. You will need to confirm your subscription before we can send the welcome message which contains the download link for your free report.

If you’ve read the ‘About’ page you’ll already know that I’m a successful programmer, internet service provider and IT consultant. Those are the things that I’m most passionate (and most knowledgable) about and all throughout the past 4 or 5 years that I’ve been concentrating on the internet marketing side of things I’ve been making most of my income from programming. My main focus has always been on programming and there’s never been a period of time that I didn’t have a programming  project to work on.

In order to be successful with an online business you need to work consistently at building that business. Just like the real world, you get as much out of it as you put in. Well, that’s not strictly true. The average Joe (or Joelene) can earn a much larger income online than in a factory or shop working for someone else.

It took me 4 years and an eye opening e-book before I realised that I had failed to do one very important thing. What I failed to do was make a firm decision about what I wanted to do and whether I still wanted to be doing it in 10 or 20 years time. Like many others I bounced from one thing to another … afiiliate marketing, adsense, adwords, e-books, articles, list building …I tried them all and didn’t find that any of them were a ’snug fit’ for me. During those 4 years I was also programming, helping people with their websites, providing hosting and server management…all the things that I really enjoy.

I’d thought that I had pretty much failed at the Internet marketing gig. It wasn’t until quite recently that I realised that I WAS successful … but my success has come via the programming projects and websites such as WhirlwindTraffic (a free traffic exchange) that I have worked on and built over the past few years as well as the friends I have made and the work I have done for those friends. The truth is that I’ve earned a decent income and my entire income has come from the work that I’ve done online – I was just too obsessed about being successful with a plethora of different internet marketing programs to see that. As they say – I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

So why create this site? My other passion is teaching others some of what I know. I have nearly 30 years of experience in programming, IT, servers, hosting and just about everything that you could think of that’s related to the technical side of computers and the internet. I know of literally hundreds of free and low cost tools that can make a huge difference when trying to set up a new site or enhance an existing site. I also know that there are a lot of potential successes out there that are literally tearing their hair out because they don’t have all of the information and skills they need to take virtually any program and get the full use of it.

Something that I very quickly noticed when I started buying or joining some of the programs and packages out there was that in many cases the instructions and tutorials that were provided with some marketing programs lacked some of the finer details or assumed some basic knowledge of a range of skills such as HTML programming, FTP, payment processors etc. Stumbling blocks in internet marketing are lethal. By that I mean that there are so many programs out there that many people will strike a hurdle whilst trying to use a program and simply quit from frustration and try another program. This leads to lots of spent money and little in the way of results.

My aim at The Marketers Geek is to help you over those stumbling blocks. I write a newsletter that provides information, tutorials and resources that will help to empower you to be able to purchase a product and fully understand what you need to do in order to get the most out of that product. The topics that are covered include:

• Writing web pages (HTML)
• Getting a hosting account (what to look for)
• Registering a domain
• Uploading your site (FTP)
• Installing a blog
• Tracking your results
• Squeeze pages
• Splash pages
• Autoresponders

As we get further along we’ll look at some more advanced topics such as:

• Traffic generation
• Email deliverability
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Split testing

I’ll also be answering questions that my readers send in. I can cover everything that I think is important but I’m sure you’ll have some other questions. For most of the topics that I’ll cover I will create a video showing you exactly what you need to do. I’ll also be showing you some software tools and online tools that can make life a lot easier.

The Marketers Geek Newsletter provides a wealth of information for any online business owner. So what are you waiting for? Bang your details into the newsletter subscription form and let’s get started!