Not-So-Shocking Responses to Shocking Report

When my wife released her con­tro­ver­sial report, Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins, we received mixed reac­tions. As expected, of course.

Some peo­ple thought it was about time some­one spoke out on these under­handed tac­tics and stu­pid mar­ket­ing tricks. Oth­ers praised Sylvie’s efforts and gushed her with appreciation.

Oth­ers, on the other hand, didn’t feel as… appreciative.

The pos­i­tive side about this whole thing is, we received about 7–8 times more fan mail than we have hate mail. If you want to take a look at some of them (with iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion removed), click here.

How­ever, to think we were going to receive only love mail would have been igno­rant and naive on our part.

We under­stand that this report might ruf­fle some feath­ers. We knew it would peeve peo­ple off. And it cer­tainly did, although not as much as we expected.

(Are we that desensitized?)

But we also under­stand that it might seem hyp­o­crit­i­cal to some peo­ple as well. After all, we’re ask­ing for email addresses — albeit for the sole pur­pose of noti­fy­ing sub­scribers when sub­se­quent parts will be released.

There are no sales pitches, and my wife is 100% trans­par­ent. But some peo­ple still have denounced this strat­egy out­right. Mind you, some have done so with­out even read­ing the report. Which proves my wife’s point.

You see, they’re cyn­i­cal and skep­ti­cal about our “real intent,” and think the report is a front for some­thing else. Per­haps some­thing nefarious.

I can appre­ci­ate that.

In fact, my wife has answered that con­cern specif­i­cally on a pub­lic forum. One thing to keep in mind is that, my wife’s detrac­tors have good rea­son to feel that way because of the very nature of the report’s message.

Peo­ple have become desen­si­tized and cyn­i­cal, espe­cially when such reports come out. And that’s EXACTLY the rea­son why my wife put it out there.

Really bad mar­ket­ing has given legit­i­mate mar­keters (and the Inter­net mar­ket­ing indus­try as a whole) a bad name. And it’s mak­ing any attempt, whether it’s mag­nan­i­mous, eth­i­cal, com­mer­cial, or oth­er­wise, instantly sus­pect.

Peo­ple are under­stand­ably skep­ti­cal and doubt­ful. Espe­cially of those who speak out against the very thing they are skep­ti­cal about. But what they don’t under­stand is, they are, in fact, prov­ing my wife right.

It’s sad, really.

Inci­den­tally, some peo­ple have ques­tioned or denounced her attempt for a vari­ety of other rea­sons — many of which are not even about the mes­sage itself.

For exam­ple, a few were nei­ther pos­i­tive nor neg­a­tive, but were sim­ply indif­fer­ent. While they praised her efforts, they believed her attempts will fall on deaf ears and that noth­ing will change.

One per­son said, “Crooks are crooks, and this report won’t change things.”

I believe that’s true, too.

But the objec­tive of this report is not to change the minds of the obsti­nate or hard­ened, but to sway those who are new to Inter­net mar­ket­ing, and are sit­ting on the fence con­tem­plat­ing such tac­tics or emu­lat­ing those who do per­pe­trate these “sins.”

How­ever, while my wife’s report may not directly reform the most bel­liger­ent “sin­ners” out there, some self-​​admitted for­mer sin­ners have joined in the cho­rus, and a few have emailed us, in pri­vate, thank­ing us for chang­ing their minds.

Good for them!

What I do find kind of funny is that some peo­ple have con­demned my wife’s report for more insignif­i­cant rea­sons — rea­sons other than its con­tent, or the way the report was issued or promoted.

For exam­ple, some peo­ple have said that our emails noti­fy­ing them of this report are worth­less and con­sid­ered spam because we are argu­ing with peo­ple who may have a valid point. And that’s per­fectly fine.

But the funny part about this one is that my wife specif­i­cally cov­ered this on page 112 of her report, where peo­ple sim­ply feel that an email some­one has asked to receive is reported as spam sim­ply because they didn’t like it.

A “sin” on the part of the con­sumer. And remem­ber, my wife cov­ers both sides of the issue — both bad mar­keters and bad consumers.

What’s even more funny is that the per­son who emailed us did so anony­mously. Luck­ily, the per­son sent his mes­sage to us by hit­ting “reply,” so their com­plaint included our orig­i­nal email along with their unsub­scribe link.

(Clickety-​​click, barbatrick!)

Another exam­ple is, a few peo­ple feel we are “bad to trees” because the report is for­mat­ted in such a way that it makes it hard to print — even though we quite specif­i­cally for­mat­ted it to make it eas­ier to read on a com­puter screen.

Many have even praised us for for­mat­ting it in such a fashion.

While I do appre­ci­ate their con­cerns, I find this kind of funny as well because of the fact that we issued the report in PDF — i.e., elec­tron­i­cally — which clearly is demon­stra­tive that we are “kind to trees.” Is it not?

After all, if we for­mat­ted it in such a way that it not only made it hard to read but forced peo­ple to print it out on their print­ers, wouldn’t have this been seen as an equally bad gesture?

Bog­gles the mind.

Nev­er­the­less, the point is that you can never please every­one. And think­ing that you can, or try­ing to do so, is an uphill bat­tle if not impossible.

Granted, one per­son was con­cerned he would miss out because he is visu­ally impaired, and some of the graph­ics, which con­tained text, were not read­able to them. So my wife went out of her way to pre­pare a more acces­si­ble ver­sion. It’s avail­able on the down­load page.

(By the way, as kind­hearted and con­sid­er­ate as my wife is, she has just noti­fied me that she has pre­pared a printer-​​friendly ver­sion, too.)

All in all, this report has def­i­nitely shocked a lot of peo­ple. For­tu­nately, in a good way. It’s meant to shake a few peo­ple up. It’s meant to make some uncom­fort­able, because dis­com­fort is the cat­a­lyst for change. More impor­tantly, it’s meant to cause peo­ple to THINK.

And per­son­ally, I look for­ward to my wife’s sec­ond install­ment, which will be out in a day or so.

She’s almost done right now.

Even I have no clue as to what she’s writ­ing about. This is her lit­tle project, and I must admit that the inces­sant click-​​clack sound of her moti­vated fin­gers stab­bing her key­board in the last cou­ple of days makes me as excru­ci­at­ingly curi­ous as the rest.

But just like every­one else, I have to wait. And I am really look­ing for­ward to the next part.

If you haven’t down­loaded it, here’s a list of the chap­ters included in the first install­ment of Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Sins.

1. Warn­ing!
2. About This Manifesto
3. A Note From Sylvie Fortin
4. Sleight of Hand Continuity
5. Upsell Hell
6. Lim­ited Time Offers
7. Ham­mer­head Marketing
8. Feast or Famine Marketers
9. Next 10 Com­ing Soon
10. Get The Word Out!

After reg­is­ter­ing at the bot­tom of the page, you can down­load part #1 imme­di­ately, and will be noti­fied by email as soon as parts #2 and #3 become avail­able.

For exam­ple, in the next install­ment I believe she will be cov­er­ing “Slave Own­ers,” “Arro­gant Jerks,” “Piggy Back Mar­keters,” “Guru Bash­ers,” and “Me Too Marketers.”

Let me repeat, there are no sales pitches or hid­den offers.

The report does con­tain links to rel­e­vant resources here and there. And in the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, some of these include our own. But these links are not, in any way, manda­tory in order to read and ben­e­fit from this report. It’s com­pletely up to you to click them, if you want to.

(By the way, watch out for part #2, where I believe my wife cov­ers “Guru Bash­ers.” And it’s not for the rea­sons you may think.)

Nev­er­the­less, what do you think of the report?

About the Author

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