| FEATURE GUEST
ARTICLE
Tickling the Internet's Seething
Underbelly
By: By Linda Cox J.A.M.G.
(Just Another Marketing Guru)
THE PEOPLE SHRIEK
An article I wrote called The 10 Great Myths of Internet
Marketing unleashed a torrential response. The common thread running through
this response was:
"Aaarrrggghhhhh!!!!!!"
Cyber-angst. Weltwidewebschmerz.
Apparently, a great many
people who make their living on the internet are feeling a bit frustrated, owing largely
to the fact that so many other people who make their living on the internet are, uh,
well... scumbags.
Can I say that?
Guess so.
WHO ARE THE SCUMBAGS, AND WHY DO THEY
KEEP FOLLOWING ME?
I began my research by looking
up the term scumbag. I'm not going to share what I found. No matter how vile the scumbags
of the internet might be, I think it's fair to say that they are not ~literally~ scumbags.
Trust me on this, it cost me a meal (not in the form of a wager).
So what makes someone a
scumbag? And why do these scummy persons have so many of our marketing brethren in such a
dither?
From the deluge of email I
received on this topic, I would say that a scumbag is someone who displays a tendency to
over-state the effectiveness of traffic-building products and services, most commonly for
purposes of personal gain.
Bad.
MOMMAS, DON'T LET YER BABIES GROW UP TO
BE SCUMBAGS
(Including doctors and lawyers and such.)
Simply put, it's bad to be a scumbag.
But is it profitable? And if it's profitable, is it good
business?
Well, we have to say no,
because if we say yes, then we're saying it's good to be a scumbag, and we already said
it's bad.
WHO'S ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SCUMBAG
COIN?
Scumbags are those people who
keep coming up with exciting new ways to market a website.
Suckers are those people who
keep falling for it.
The new and exciting ways
don't work, and the suckers get angry. Then there's a ~new~ new and exciting way and the
suckers suck it up.
It's one of those symbiotic things... can't have one
without the other.
IF YOU DON'T FEED THEM, THEY'LL GO AWAY
Whoops! Here comes another profound insight...
Let's talk about organized
crime for a minute. No, I don't mean the credit card industry (let's not get started on those
bastids!), I mean the seething underbelly of society: La Cosa Nostra.
They're not delivering pizzas
at night to support Crime Inc. They don't have pancake days or sell chocolate bars to
raise funds. They have customers. People pay them. If no one paid them, they'd all have to
go sell shoes and bust a cap in their own damn heads.
(BEGIN AIMLESS DIGRESSION
HERE...
Calling them criminals always seemed like hairsplitting to me. They provide services, take
risks and get paid. They pretty much only kill each other, and they serve to pull
attention away from the true organized criminals--the ones who reshape laws around
themselves rather than break them. Really, I think they're just very misunderstood. Have
you hugged your crimelord today?
...END AIMLESS DIGRESSION HERE)
My partners claim to throw the
scummy people around $300-500 a month. They don't choose to, they don't want to, but they
do. They call it the price of doing business on the web, but it sounds like the price of
not being cautious and doing your homework to me.
Easy to judge....
WE HAVE MET THE SCUMBAG, AND HE IS US
An interesting thing about
scumbags and suckers is that they can be, and often are, the same people. More accurately,
MOST scumbags are suckers, and MANY suckers are or have been scumbags.
WELCOME TO SCUM-ANON
"Hi. My name is Linda and I'm a scumbag."
I wish I could come before you
and say that I stopped being a scummy girl because I'm innately good and chose the high
road...
Actually, I just couldn't make it as a scumbag.
Tried, though.
It's not like it was a career
path or anything, I just dabbled in a few, uh, misadventures. Not many, and not for long,
but nothing I reminisce fondly over, either.
I'm nearly comfortable
admitting that because I don't think it's terribly uncommon. I'm not a scummy person, I'm
a good person who did scummy things.
There, I feel better now. (Actually, I felt pretty
good anyway.)
STALKING THE WILD SCUMBAG
So, where does the wretched beast lurk?
Right where I wish I did, is the painful truth...
--Smack dab in millions of inboxes.
--All over the top of the search engines.
--Behind half the banners we see.
--Behind half of all forum and newsgroup posts.
Is it any wonder we're tempted by the scum beastie?
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Linda Cox (J.A.M.G.) was actually a real-world
corporate
marketer for many years before going on the net without
a net. Now she's Just Another Marketing Guru.
MORE LINDA & FREE EZINE! http://www.LindaCox.com
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