TheWayoftheWeb

Trading Standards is a UK institution which aims to enforce consumer protection with information, settling dispuates and issuing fines…

The reason they’ve come to mind is that my Twitter account contains the word ‘marketing’, so I appear to have attracted an inordinate amount of followers who claim to be internet marketing experts, mavens, network marketers and other such terms proclaiming their expertise.

The strange thing is that they appear to have misunderstood Twitter, and have decided to follow way more people than are following them.

And their linked webpage is normally a single page proclaiming their expertise and offering the chance to learn more by paying a small sum. A quick check reveals their page has a Google Page Rank of 0.

Now, I’m in no way an internet marketing expert, but I do think it’s slightly suspicious that someone who is able to teach you a way to be hugely successful and make large sums of money on the internet hasn’t found out how to give their page any authority, or use Twitter in the right way…

Hopefully most people who read my blog share my cynicism, but if not, do make sure you check easily accessible background evidence like Google PR, or Technorati rank etc before parting with cash for anyone who claims to know about marketing!

Almost everyone who I’ve had the pleasure of learning from will happily share for free via their blogs or websites in order to build up their real world authority to lead to opportunities of future employment - not try and sell you an ebook or dvd set. And those that do offer tuition tend to also back this up by sharing a lot of information for free, and having a website which has a legitimately large following, for instance, Problogger. (Note: Real experts are always honest about constantly learning more)

To save some time, here’s the real secret behind huge financial reward from internet success:

1. Have a really good idea.

2. Work really, really, really, really hard to make it a success.

3. Have a bit of luck.

4. If it still doesn’t work, have another good idea and go back to Step 1.

After 10 years of running websites, including for one of the biggest magazine publishers in the UK, I’ve yet to see anything which defies those rules and isn’t a scam in some way!