Tons of Bad Advice In This Thread

I'll go first.

Build it and they will come is a famous phrase from a famous movie. However, it doesn't work in real life very well.

Bad advice would include focusing on writing a bunch of content and somehow believing that Google or customers will come to your site just because you have a bunch of content.

While Google may eventually find your site (and probably put you on page 15), you aren't going to get any real traffic from a bunch of content without marketing it.

Better advice would be that if you have content make sure it is helpful and what your audience wants and needs and then market it to make sure they can find your content. Some experts say you should spend about 20% of your time writing or creating content and 80% marketing it. Yet most of us do the exact opposite.

Mark

Great thread Mark Singletary. Can you also talk about techniques that are still being recommended in 2017 even if they stopped being effective 2-3 years ago?

For one thing, I still commonly see people buying backlinks and being surprised when google penalizes them.

Another one is to email every day and even to send multiple emails every day because that's what works.

While some successful people do email every day, this advice is just bad all the way around for someone that doesn't know what they are doing or how to build relationships. It comes off as desperate and in most cases, it's because the person is in fake it till they make it mode.

Many of the people I consider guru types don't email every day and never have yet they do just fine. People like Paul Myers, Jimmy D. Brown, Terry Dean, Dave Ramsey, Jeff Walker, Kim Roach, Jeff Smith, Yaro Starak and many more. How is that?

I'm not against daily emails. I read some from people I trust daily. But they are the real deal and every email gives me a reason to open it and read it.

It's interesting when people claim to have tested the frequency and they found that without a shadow of a doubt, mailing daily is best. When I ask them if they tested sending every 3 or 4 weeks they never answer or they say that's too long. In other words, they haven't tested it.

If you plan on long term success, learn to test things for yourself. Know why you do what you do instead of something lame like "my coach told me to."

Mark

"I write posts that are nearly incoherent and make no sense. How can I make tons of money?"

You should write articles! That's an easy way to make a lot of money and you don't need a grasp of the English language.

(This is not to slam those who speak English as a second language. It's just a slam against those who tell them that writing is the best way for them to make money. I've never understood that.)

Rose

In an endeavor that allegedly has a 95% failure rate, its difficult to leave anything out, most especially getting involved in IM in the first place. Similarly, if the statistic is true, it's surprising that anyone who sells these products is able to sleep at night.

Truth be told, most of the courses I've taken actually teach me something. They are not all perfect by any means but, high ticket or low, I always get some education - even if its never to buy from that seller again. I am talking about courses here. Junky software is something else again and I'm rarely in the mood these days to play around.

I won't go so far as to say there's no bad advice, but it is helpful to check the source. There is a lot of hype, but it is a very competitive market. Do a search, visit his or her webpage or Facebook Fanpage, look at some tweets, etc. And yes, there are financial problems, language problems, cultural memes and other issues that can get in the way. But, as far as I'm concerned, the 'bad' advice that's out there is all part of the learning process. And keep in mind, good advice today can easily become bad advice tomorrow, particularly if the technique or strategy is being employed by every marketer on the planet.

Forgive me, if this seems like I'm blaming the victim, but what I often see are folks with absolutely no money to invest, a strong desire to get something for nothing, a limited willingness to learn (particularly from one's mistakes), lack of patience, unrealistic expectations and a greed so voracious that it obscures rational thinking.

I suppose I have had my share of these traits from time to time, particularly in my early experiences. I will say, in fairness, that if you can overcome the rather disdainful, over-generalized public perception of internet marketing, then you have made a major step forward.

A sincere attitude to succeed and a willingness to stick it out through thick and thin will overcome the occasional bad advice one might receive along the way.

Probably one of the worst pieces of advice I see given all the time. Is when someone who is totally new or has no idea what they are doing or what they should do inevitably someone comes along with this advice and then the lemmings follow saying that it is great advice. And that is...........................................

"Just take action" That is it. no defining what action to take and where to take it. Just take action.

I cringe every time I see that posted

al

"Content is King. Forget everything else and only focus on your content"

Sigh.

And the worst part is that the person who asked the question seemed so happy to hear that.

Content may be king, but the truth is that there are lots of other things that MUST be done before any site can rank highly and have a consistent traffic flow. Either that or everything we have spent years practising is pure bollocks.

"Buy likes so your Facebook page has social proof"

The minute I hear someone say that, I immediately know he or she has absolutely no understanding of how Facebook works - and should not be doling out advice.

I was doing some research for a friend as she is doing a thesis on Marketing and this is what i got for signing up to a list ( read between the copy for the links )

Hey [[FIRSTNAME]],
I am so thankful you decided to join our newsletter!
Here is your free gift: [[LINK]]
If you could create a niche that makes you much money in a month on auto-pilot, how many of them would you create?
Well, today I want to show you exactly how to do just that!
>>> [[AFFILIATE LINK]]
This new course details the entire process of setting up is easy so you start creating them for yourself. And remember I am just an email away
And today you are going to be able to get it at an unbelievable discount! I went all out for you
I can't wait to help you build & grow your online business
Go get started building today:
>>> [[AFFILIATE LINK]]
To your success,
[[YOURNAME]]

Now this is very bad for the person who signed up as they are going to be spammed every day , and all this comes down to bad teachings either by course or Mentor

I think some of the worst advice in the last few years involves "curating content".

Most of the advice is irresponsible, unethical and often illegal.

"Just link back to the source and it is ok." - False

"People love it if you re-post their articles as long as you provide a link back." - False in most cases

"Just write something at the beginning and the end to make it your own." - False

"You can tell it is ok because of all the big websites that do it like Huffington Post, MSN and others." - False, most of these websites are paying thousands of dollars a month for the permission/license to curate certain content.

There are usually some good comments about "fair use" - only quoting a few sentences or so - providing a link to the source, specifically getting permission first in some cases, etc... but the smart, warning posts often get buried by the content scraper/thieves that either don't know what they are talking about or they don't care.

Must publish every day, must be at least 1,000 words, coz content is king and if you build yourself a king, traffic will happen, sales will happen, but it must be 1,000 words, and keyword density must be 3%.

That goes hand in hand with:
Content is king, backlink is queen, so build yourself an awesome queen by doing:
forum posting, article posting (long list of article directories, including squidoo and a couple of other article directories that stopped existing a few years ago), blog commenting.

And the first one is advice given to people who say they've been posting daily for 3 months, articles at least 1000 words long, but are not getting any love from Google, no traffic, no sales.

The second one is often given in response to people saying: I've been doing forum marketing, blog commenting, article marketing for ages and it's done me no good.

Because bad advice by itself is not good enough for some people, it must be given without reading/ understanding the question to be good enough.

"Build the list. The money is in the list."
I found this advice is not completely true.
I made profit without a list for more than 5 years already now.
I'm not against that's the list building is important or not.
But the fact is that actually we can make profit easily without it.

This may be a "controversial" one:

"Only certain people can be successful at IM." (IMO almost anyone can be successful -- it's just that some People will find it much easier.) And part of that is not listening to other People when they say you can't accomplish your Entrepreneurial dreams.

Jonathan

My personal fave-of-the-day (today) is:

"I don't know the answer, but maybe...."

"I've never seen that but...maybe..."

"Don't know the answer but... (followed by the person's personal favorite advice of 'add content' or 'build a list' or 'get links')

Come on - if you don't know the answer, that's fine. If you can't be bothered to look up the answer before posting....what is the point? Post count? Sig exposure?

This isn't in the category of bad advice, necessarily, but it really contributes to garbage and useless information at the WF.

People, please, when you have a question like:

- Why did my account get banned?
- I can't log in - what's wrong?
- How long will it be until I receive a refund?
- Why are they holding my money?
- Software XYZ won't let me ____________ .
- Guru Bob won't answer my emails, does anybody know why?

Point is: this isn't a product, site, or complaint forum.

So many people come here asking "support" type questions without any effort to go to the source first. We're here to discuss Internet marketing, not to bypass support solutions or products, sites, and business owners.

Steve

Wait - Seriously, Steve?

The WF is not the 'help desk for everything'....surely you jest.

Not bad advice but a wrong impression that can lead to accepting bad advice:

Most people on the WF are making money or are successful in their business.

Sorry but it just isn't true.

Please always do your due diligence. You don't know who is behind the avatar and username. You don't know where they really live, what they've really done, or how much success they've had.

It's easy to spout off answers and sound like an authority. Be careful!

Even though there are indicators that can help you decide who to trust, don't make decisions solely on number of WSOs someone has started, number of thanks, or number of posts.

There are people here with many thanks and posts that I wouldn't trust for anything and there are others that I would welcome to my home even though we've never met in person.

While I believe that most people here are good and are trying to help out in the best way they can (for their own reasons of course), I also know that there are lying scammers and scum that would steal your last dollar and then kick you in the face if they had the chance.

Avoid 99.99% of any secrets or special deals that get offered through PM. While occasionally someone does reach out and has honorable intentions, there are too many sad stories of desperate people getting hurt badly by PM friends. If you have any questions or doubts about private messages, ask here in public.

Mark

This may not be totally relevant to this Topic but another thing I can say is I made a mistake about was jumping on the assertion that someone was "thread resurrecting" ( 2, 3,4 year old posts) for their own malicious
intent ( mainly Sig exposure)

However, in the past year I myself have looked up a topic and could not find any recent answers to it. But did find Threads that were over a year old and seemed to have some answers that I needed clarifying. So I resurrected
it ( one was doing a Warrior Plus Product for the first time)

Unlike I did before ,I tend to not jump on a knee jerk reaction when I see people bringing up a Thread a few years old. It can really be legit.

Still there is a lot of abuse in this area but as I said NOT always

When the WF instructed people to rip off sites using the Way Back Machine to steal content from older sites that are no longer online.

Build it and they will come.

Get free hosting. Cheaper is better.

Jump around constantly to different things before finding success.

Don't take action.


Those are the ones that come to mind for me.

I don't agree - except that you must be knowledgeable and skilled - and willing to work. The internet IS CONTENT - not always written articles or blurbs but it all comes down to content in my opinion. If all you have are some landing pages with big promises and a signup form - and your email 'list' is inundated with 'blasts' of "buy this and buy that"...in a couple years you'll have nothing.

That's exactly what many people here have - check out some signatures and you'll find mostly 'squeeze' pages - promises of easy wealth. Many of those 'promises' are from members complaining about their own lack of income.

I see an increase here in the number of people who want to make money but quickly explain they have little time, need money now and don't want to do the silly work like build a site or blog. They want to place FB ads and rake in the dough with a 'big promises' landing page. Good luck with that in the long term.

Remember the guy with the long hair fetish that didn't like bald people? What was he selling?

Lmao, only on WF.

Keep posting on your blog every single day. Well, if the content is second hand, it's not help much. Is it?

There are many. But, to keep this short.

Anyone telling people to spam.

I see product being offered for video spinners, content spinners, auto posters and all this garbage.

I see people advocating buying backlinks, spamming emails and basically spamming spam (if there is such a thing).

Quit it. It doesn't work, you are then surprised when your YT account is suspended, your site is on page 1,000 and your email account is closed.

Stop!

I've seen quite a bit of bad advice.

Believing that it is easy to make money through Adsense and telling a new blogger with no traffic that it should be easy is right up there with poor, totally untrue, way off advice.

Working harder and harder is poor advice too in many ways. Donkeys and pack mules and water buffalo from working harder. Human beings trying to grow a profitable business? Not so much.

Working from a persistent but relaxed, calm and fun-loving place and doing so from an intelligent space is the way to go because using power is attractive to success while using force (running around like a desperate dingbat for 17 hours a day) repels success.

I know it's shocking but some gooroo types don't always do as they teach. Some who have multiple lists send daily to some lists and less often to others. I know that because if they email daily - I'm not on their list for long.

Knowing what your target market will want - and will tolerate - is a big part of list management.

Here are a few of my favorites...

> If you need a free image, just Google it with the 'free to use' filter.

> It's okay to steal content if you give credit.

> Telling people who say they have zero budget to use PPC.

> Just take massive action.

> If you get a takedown notice or other legal threat, just tell them to go f*** themselves. People giving this advice tend to disappear if you ask if they'll indemnify the other person for following this advice.

And my top two...

> See my sig

> PM me for more information

Great thread, Mark.

How about the notion that re-publishing existing content on your blog will result in a so-called Google penalty? This one will never cease to exist.

Google merely ranks the original content version first, while placing your copy second (if at all). It simply "timestamps" the two.

This is FAR from a damn penalty, so stop using that word and repeating things you read somewhere back in 2009. Your blog won't be deindexed. Your blog won't automatically be seen as a spam dumpster by Google. So relax.

If you have permission (and if you don't care much for Google traffic), feel free to re-post previously published content on your blog without fear. Geez people, let this one die already.

Worst advice I ever got was to use bots and automated software.

1: They are all spam and gets you punished.

2: The only way people make money on them is by selling them,

My turn.

"Just take action."

I hate this phrase. I despise it.

The truth is that is not action what makes you money, it is effective action. Most people don't know the difference. The majority of folks do not understand the difference between doing something that works and something that doesn't work.

The secret to success is finding what works and doing more of it. Doing more of what doesn't work won't magically transform it into something good. Yes, you're gaining experiencing and building resilience and everything but from a revenue perspective, it is null.

Taking action without a direction, without a plan, without consistency is just a recipe for wasting your time and your money. This is especially true with starting 100 different things and never finishing any.

You know when I've started becoming successful? When instead of doing random things and praying to the gods that something sticks, I've started measuring my ROI per every venue / channel / project, in cold dollars per hour invested and I've started noticing patterns.

I've started to notice that about 20% of everything I was doing earned me 80% of the income. You know where most of my time was invested though? In the 80% that generated me 20%.

It was sad and funny at the same time to know that you have something that brings in the big bucks and yet, to do anything but that. It is like having a very good field to farm, one that gives great crops and as soon as you discover that it works, to stop working it and moving to another.

Once I've stopped this insanity and I've simply scaled what was effective, things started to happen. So no, it is not just about taking action. It is about taking action that makes sense.

Doing EVERYTHING except building a mail list like:

1 focus on adsense
2 focus on brutal cold sellin
3 etc.

Start building a list FIRST and then do everything else.

The absolute worst "advice" I've ever seen on this forum:

"Pay no attention to that old fuddy-duddy, Kay King."

Brent

The entrenched belief that 'the money is in the list.' Neophytes interpret this to mean that the bigger your list, the more money you are guaranteed to make. They will employ every hair-brained scheme to build that list without paying any attention to the quality of the list. Additionally, they believe it's the only thing necessary for success. People who espouse this bogus concept do more to hurt people than help them.

It's time to drop this silly phraseology and move much more accurate statements.

"There can be good money in a good list." Doing all of the other steps, 'well,' will greatly improve your chances of success.

"You don't need to build a list to make money in IM." Don't be deterred if you don't have a list. Pick up a phone, knock on doors, do direct mail or anything else you can think of to get your IM product or service in front of people. As you sell, ask for referrals.

There will be vociferous condemnation of what I am telling you by those that can't sell any other way. Do I need to state up front how I feel about that? I think, not. :-)

Thank you.

If you're smart enough to know you need some SEO done then don't hire a monkey. 99% of SEO services are utter rubbish, if they don't get your site penalized you are lucky. At best, nothing at all will happen at all. Most likely scenario is you'll be handing over $500-$1000 a month and you will get absolutely NO BENEFIT whatsoever. These creeps will keep telling you to hang in there because it takes time to see results, you must do it for the long run, 3 months at least....

GUESS WHAT? THEY RIPPING YOU OFF!!!!!!!!!

I am amazed at how many so called SEO professionals are out there who are either complete TARDS or complete CRIMINALS. and they're in business because idiots are hiring them. I can't believe how they get away with it.

ADVICE: Don't hire monthly seo services at all.. you are just wasting your money, and are likely to get your site penalized.

INSTEAD: Do it yourself, bit by bit. You can hire people to help you do it yourself if you must, but you must manage everything yourself.

PS; If you are smart enough to discern that 1% then go ahead, you'll be fine. But make sure they ARE the 1 percent and not pretending to be the 1%.

"Failure is not an option" - I HATE this.

This isn't advice this is someones over inflated EGO!

Ask any successful entrepreneur and they have failed a number of times to learn how to get it right.

Failure is research. Failure ultimately carves us into the successful person we will become.

Some successful entrepreneurs even say 'want to increase your chance of success, increase your rate of failure'

Failure happens. We learn from it. Embrace it.

"FAILURE IS AN OPTION" - It's guaranteed.

I don't think I saw this response so here is another.

People ask questions such as "what is the best antivirus", "what is the best autoresponder", "what is the best webhost", "what is the best shopping cart", "what is the best membership script", etc.

Most of the time most or all of the answers are like "GetResponse, hands down", "Norton Antivirus, no question", "S2Member without a doubt", etc.

How do you know which membership script, webhost, solo ad provider, etc. is best unless you have tried them all?

You may know what works for you but your website, traffic, financial situation, computer setup, etc. is different than mine so you really don't know which one is best for me.

You can say you love Coke and wouldn't want to switch but don't say it's the best if you've never even tried a Pepsi.

Things break, companies go broke, people get banned. Be flexible - don't put all your eggs in the same basket.

And be careful that you don't mislead people about what the best __ is.

Here we are talking about bad advice and that's what a lot of this is. Now, the fact that Joe needs to do his due diligence and check things out before he switches hosting or autoresponders or whatever is understood but it's still bad advice in most cases.

The fact is that pretty much any webhost, autoresponder, antivirus, etc. will work just about as well as the next thing. Yes, be careful but don't get so caught up in making the absolute right decision that you never open your website or send your first email.

Mark