The term "guru" is not unknown to most Internet marketers. A lot of gurus are pleasant and knowledgeable people but some are just there to get you. One thing is for sure though, they all use similar techniques that I will discuss in this article. By knowing about their techniques, you can be more realistic about what their promises really are.
Here's their first tactic: these gurus show you the final results without talking about how they got there. You've probably seen some copy with compelling lines such as "You only have to work 2 to 3 hours per day." Think about it. If business people only spent 2 to 3 hours per day working on a business when they started, they wouldn't be in business anymore. If you want to spend 2 hours a day on internet marketing, you could have a nice hobby but you won't make much money. Once you've worked hard and long hours on your business, you may be able to work 2 to 3 hours a day to maintain it because a support team does all the technical work. These people answer emails, update the website, man their service desk, etc.
Here's their second tactic: these gurus leave out important pieces of information. Let's take their advice to write articles for submission to directories. You find articles on the net, edit them to meet your needs and add a link to your website before submitting them to the directories. After a week, your stats aren't impressive: a mere 30 to 40 views. You then write original articles and repeat the whole process. Original articles have to be better, right? Your stats increase to 50 views, which is far from what they promised. Weren't these articles going to bring you lots of traffic? The guru's stats show that he gets 1000s of views... The guru forgot to mention that you needed to load these articles with long-tail keywords.
Here's the final tactic: these gurus give you half-truths. You've probably heard claims like, "I made $ 75,473.99 in my first month doing..." Are they lying? No, but there is more to it. The person made $ 75,473.99 in his first month but he's not mentioning that he spent over $ 5,000 in software, textbooks, advertising, reports, recurring expenses, etc. Would you consider this a good return on investment (ROI)? It sure is but what happens if you don't have over $ 5,000 to invest? A lot of gurus hide certain costs from you in the sales pitch. Better have unlimited funds if you want to get that large sum of money...
Now that you know some of the tactics used by several gurus out there, you can be more careful and maintain the right perspective when you read or listen to what they are promoting.
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