"Beware Information Products 'Recommended' by Internet Marketers"

by Chris Malta

Most Internet Marketing is a well-oiled machine designed to separate you from your money.

Whether you're looking for information on how to sell on eBay, how to build your online business, or anything else that has to do with getting into business online, you're going to see all kinds of web sites "recommending" other web sites.

You might be on a site that sells some wonderful "system" that will make you "$5,000 a week" on eBay, and see advertising for other information that claims to tell you where to get an instant Internet Storefront. You might be talking to a company you bought an Internet Storefront system form, and they tell you to go buy a business software program from some other company. The list goes on and on an on.

These are called Affiliate Relationships. The web site or company that recommends that you go buy something additional from another web site, is usually making a commission for sending you over to buy that other product.

Now, Affiliate Relationships in themselves are not a bad thing. They are a good and necessary part of getting information to you that you need, and that you might not find otherwise. It's the people who ABUSE Affiliate Relationships that are the problem here.

At Worldwide Brands, we have a relatively small number of companies we recommend in other areas of EBiz Information. We KNOW those companies. We work with them, we've talked with them, we've tried and tested their products and know that they are on the level, and do what they say they will. Those companies that we recommend ALSO only recommend other companies in turn that are honest and market good products and information. Over the years, we've located a small group of providers of Internet Marketing information that are honest. Unfortunately, that is RARE.

Worldwide Brands has a wide marketing reach on the Internet. We're a very well known and trusted company. Because of that, we are constantly approached by people who want us to promote their products and information on our web site, through our Radio Shows, etc.

Many of them offer us very large commissions ($1,000 or more per sale) to promote their "Internet Business Systems". We've checked out those "systems", and found that they cost the average EBiz consumer as much as $10,000, for information and training that can be found elsewhere for free, or much less. We always turn them down.

Others offer us large sums of money for advertising space on our web site, and on our Entrepreneur Magazine Radio Shows. We know that those who come to us offering lots of money are MAKING lots of money selling these "EBiz Systems". We check them out, and find the same thing...they're not worth it. So we turn them down, too. We don't sell advertising space on our web site at this time to begin with, and we have "right of refusal" for any commercials that are submitted to our Radio Shows.

Still others who have a wide-reaching audience already (TV infomercial producers, etc.) have offered us money and promotional partnerships if we will change certain parts of our web site (like our Scam Watch page). Those changes they want made are always things that we tell people that reflect poorly on the company in question. In other words, we tell our site visitors to beware of certain things on the Internet. The people who sell those things try to buy us off and get us to stop warning people about them. We turn them down, too.

Even a couple of our own Affiliates (people who promote our Worldwide Brands products on their sites) have come to us and said "Your competitor, Joe Smith, is willing to give us a higher commission on his lower quality product if we stop promoting Worldwide Brands, and promote him instead. If you increase the money you pay us, we'll keep promoting Worldwide Brands". Well, we at Worldwide Brands do not need Affiliates whose morals are for sale to the highest bidder, so we turn them down, too.

We always take the high road, and do not get involved in selling out our name and recommendations to the highest bidder. That's dishonest and immoral, and we won't do it. The few companies we DO recommend on our site are the same way, or they wouldn't be on our site.

However, it's unfortunate that the majority of Internet Marketing IS involved in this "recommendations for sale" mentality. Most Internet Marketers are in business for a quick buck, and don't really care whether the products they recommend to you are good for you or not.

I'm not saying that all Internet Marketing is like this. I just want you to be aware that you have a responsibility to YOURSELF when following the recommendations of others. You need to make sure that the recommendation you follow is a GOOD one, because very few others are going to look out for you in this area.

Here's how you do that:

1. Always check out the reputaiton of the person MAKING the recommendation first. Search the web site or company name on Google. Look for complaints, warnings, or lots of posts from people who are dissatisfied with them. Remeber that even good companies get SOME small amount of "bad press" online. What you're lokoing for is a larger number of unhappy people. If you find that, don't follow the recommendations of that company. If they themselves have a bad rep, they certainly won't care if they recommend and make money from others with a bad rep.

2. Do the same thing with the company that has been recommended to you. Before you buy any kind of internet Marketing or EBiz information, check it out thoroughly through Google. Again, you may find some very small amount of dissatisfaction with even the best companies, but when you come across one that really is bad, you'll know it after a short time searching Google.

3. Watch for web sites that recommend huge numbers of unrelated products, or recommend more than just a couple of poducts in any given subject area. When you find a web site, for example, that recommends 15 different Internet Store platforms, you can be pretty sure that they're only making recommendations for the money, and have probably not checked out even one of those store platforms to see if they're any good.

Always keep in mind that Internet Marketing recommendations themselves are a money-generating business for those doing the recommending. Those companies who only recommend other products based on how much money they can earn by doing so are the ones to stay away from.