Internet Marketing Gurus? Don’t be fooled by their hype.

There are so many people marketing themselves as an Internet Marketing Guru that the term itself has lost it’s value. Seems like every marketing offer I receive in my inbox is being offered one. People I have never heard of and I have been online since there was an online!

Then there are others claiming to have been underground for x amount of years making so much money that they now have the time to teach other people how to make tens of thousands of dollars a month with a couple hours of work a day. They have broken the code!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when you start an on-line business it takes good old fashioned hard work. There’s always going to be work to do. No matter what business you’re in. You’re still going to have to set up your online site, respond to emails, keep track of your commissions and sales, setting up your auto-responders, the list goes on and on. Think about this for a moment, making over $10,000.00 in sales a month in any business, Do you really think it’s possible to only spend two hours a day managing a business like that? If are making that kind of money wouldn’t you want it to grow even more? Any offer you get that promises a two hour work day where you will make over $10,000.00 a month the best thing to do is hit the DELETE button.

So how do you know what to try and what not to try? After spending over $8,000 on offers (that’s just a guess it’s probably more) I now use a checklist prior to even considering the offer. I still occasionally get burned, but if you use Click Bank they will give a refund.

Here’s the check list:

1. Is the email from the so called guru or from someone else?
   If it’s not from them or from some auto responder go to number 2.
2. Do they provide contact information in their offer or is it a ticket based system?

If they provide contact information use it prior to purchasing. Ask a question to see if you get a response.
If it’s a phone number call it at different times to see if someone ever answers the phone.
If it’s a ticket system, again try it out see if someone actually responds and how long it takes. Usually you will get immediate response, but they are just telling you they received your question. It’s an automated response.

3. Visit other forums and post a question about the offer. One forum where you can usually count on a response within in hours is the warrior forum. If no one has heard of the offer, you’re probably better off staying away from it.
4. Use Google, Yahoo, and MSN and type in the Name of the offer and then in a separate window type in the person’s name claiming to be the author of the product. If this is a legitimate offer you will find other sites offering and talking about the product. When typing in the author’s name you should again not only find the product they are offering you, but other as well, They should have other sites and other profiles at other forums. This is a great indication that this person is of character and really know what they are doing. Here’s an example, WEB 2.0 Hurricane Traffic, the author is Ross Goldberg. When you type in WEB 2.0 Hurricane Traffic you see the product on a lot of different sites, including YouTube. You don’t see a bunch of cheesy testimonials telling you how they made money using the product. When you type in Ross Goldberg, You will again find numerous sites that he authors, membership sites where his profile is stored as well as other products he has for sale. I consider this guy a Guru.

Please keep in mind that this check list is not the catch all. You will occasionally get burned, because there are people calling themselves guru’s who don’t care about anything except making money. However, this list will help you when considering which offer to purchase. Remember a lot of these guys spend more money on the 30 page sales letter than they did on the actual product. I hope you find this information helpful. If you have anything to add to this check list please fell free to comment. We welcome all comments good or bad.