Before we get to internet marketing, let’s talk about the “Stupid Tax”. According to the Urban Dictionary, it’s:

The cost associated with engaging in any state sanctioned form of long odds gambling, i.e. playing the lottery.

Why “Stupid Tax”? As I wrote back in July:

I once calculated that winning the lottery is about like picking the right [...]

I’d like to hear your opinion on what I’m going to talk about today. Do you think this technique is ethical?

Over at Persuasion Theory this morning, Matt Fox wrote:

In research, students went door-to-door selling note cards for charity. In the some households they said a packet of 8 cards was “three dollars; it’s a bargain!” [...]

This morning, my wife was watching the movie “Season of the Witch”. Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman were fighting in the Crusades. With each stroke of their swords, their enemies fell dead.

The inconvenient truth that nearly all movie makers ignore is that people don’t die instantly when cut or stabbed. In real life, if our [...]

It’s well known that customers are more likely to buy if they believe that the product they’re considering is scarce. Scarcity increases the perceived value of the product and prevents people from procrastinating their buying decision (which often leads to forgetting or changing their mind).

The internet marketing industry is infamous for the unethical use of [...]

ClickBank has posted a new set of rules for vendors to rein in some of the unethical practices that their marketplace is famous for. Given that it’s been nearly 4 months since they started talking tough about certain practices that are still rampant, it may not be time to declare victory yet. But we can [...]

When you were a kid playing a game and somebody cheated, you may have repeated the saying you’d been told: “cheaters never prosper.” If you were the cheater, you may have been thinking to yourself, “not this time, but what about all the times you didn’t catch me!”

In the past two days, I’ve seen two [...]

Last month, I wrote a post about the need for internet marketing teachers to emphasize ethics in their training. At the end, I said I’d be adding a statement on ethics here.

It’s taken a bit of work to get it just the way I want it, but I’ve finally finished hammering it out. Please take [...]

Internet marketing has an uphill battle to fight if it’s ever going to shed the negative side of its wild west culture.

We’ve all seen sales letters packed with fake “proof of income” screenshots, false claims, false scarcity, fake testimonials…you get the idea.

It seems like half the products in the internet marketing market (if not more) [...]

A few days ago in my “Monday Question” post about cleaning up internet marketing, I mentioned Sylvie Fortin’s Internet Marketing Sins. If you haven’t read it, please go there and get your copy now (it’s free — no opt-in required).

Back in 2008, Sylvie published Internet Marketing Sins, listing 15 practices that she believed were ruining [...]

Internet marketers don’t have the best reputation. And if you look at some of the techniques that are not only prevalent, but openly taught and recommended, it’s no wonder.

Many of the big-name “gurus” are either consciously raking unsuspecting customers over the coals, or are so caught up in their own inner-circle echo chambers that they [...]