This sort of thing gets me annoyed, so this qualifies as a rant.

 

There seems to be a trend of internet marketing guru's inviting would-be internet marketers to "work with them" in a sort of partnership. It works something like this (there are variations on the theme):

  • YOU act as a lead-generator for them. Get the traffic and convert it to a lead. (You are given a website, a back-end system etc.)
  • You can earn in initial income by selling the entry-level product and keeping 100% of the profit.
  • THEY convert the lead who buys a high-ticket product - usually some form of 'coaching'.
  • YOU get a good commission on those sales.

In itself that is all fine, and in the "real world" it could be a great business venture. But the internet marketing world is all too often one step removed from the real world.

In the real world, you would be selected to be a partner on the basis of your skills, experience and track record etc. Here, you're selected to be a partner based on your ability to pay for the privilege (e.g. $497).

In the real world, you would expect to be shown something of the product being upsold so that you can be comfortable with and confident about what is being promoted to the lead which YOU generated and with whom you now have a business relationship. In the internet marketing world, you're not expected to be interested in that - or you simply assume the IM guru is above reproach.

Here are some things to think about with this business model.

Firstly - the upsell product costs several thousand dollars (perhaps $3,000-$5,000), which means that the client is going to expect to be coached by an expert in the field and to receive personal attention.

Secondly - because there is no limit on the number of leads which each partner can generate, the whole operation needs to be able to scale up potentially quite significantly. The only way to achieve that on the sales side is to employ hard-pressure telephone sales agencies. And these agencies charge a hefty commission on each sale: which is on TOP of the commission paid to you.

So - where does that leave the client?

Screwed.

For one thing, although you can relatively easily scale up the sales operation (you don't need a lot of training to switch from selling product A to product B), how can you scale up the delivery of the coaching if you are going to use people who are true experts in the field? You wouldn't expect there to be an unlimited supply of people who are true experts in a field that justifies charging $5,000 to learn about?

And for another, how are you going to be able to afford to pay those coaches given the two lots of commissions you've paid out AND make a profit yourself?

 

It seems to me that the only way this works is to minimise the cost of delivery. On other words, don't use experts for coaches, and minimise the personal interactions.

So the client gets nowhere near $3K - $5K of value.

 

I know that in the past, high-cost internet marketing coaching - sold through telesales - has been delivered by "coaches" who simply read to the client from a manual. That is certainly a way to keep the costs down and allow indefinite scale-up of delivery. I thought that practice had ended, but perhaps not.

 

The chess player here is the owner of the whole operation. He/she has two collection of pawns dancing to his/her tune: the lead generators and the clients.

Don't be either of them.

Be your OWN chess player (but play with a different strategy!).

Or, as I would usually put it: work to your OWN Agenda - not to someone else's.

 

Alex

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