White Hat Guys

When all is said and done, most people create an online business for one purpose -to make money. Some want to make a few extra bucks, others want to make a full-time income.

But regardless of everyone’s individual goals, I think you will agree that we all want to make additional income from our online businesses.

In order to do this you need to sell. Whether it’s a product, a service or just to get someone to take a desired action - it’s all about being able to sell whatever it is your promoting.

So needless to say that it is very important to use powerful selling words to really convey each and every little benefit of your product to convince your visitors to take action.

And it is not uncommon to see popular trigger words like “unbelievable” and “sensationall” or other similar words in most great salesletters.

There is a fine line in using hype on your sales pages and if used responsibly it can indeed be a poweful tool that can explode your conversion rates and skyrocket your profits. Notice the hype I used then

However there are a number of marketers who cross this line and purposely use hype to mislead their readers. For example:

Not so long ago a collegue of mine contacted me and asked me to check out his new website where he was promoting a new ebook he had just created on earning an income from selling red widgets. (I’m protecting the interests of my friend so this is not what the report was really about)

When I visited his site the first thing that interested me was his sales copy. The copywriting was very good in that it targeted my emotions and promised that “everything I have ever wanted” could be obtained just by purchasing the ebook and implementing what I learned.

The copywriting also gave the impression that the author owned a garage full of sports cars, luxurious mansions and he spent most of his time on tropical holidays by the sea.

The problem was that I knew this person personally. He is actually a salesman struggling to make ends meet and he was looking to make quick buck by flogging off a report he complied using public domain information.

Naturally the alarm bells immediately started to go off and needless to say that in my view his reputation has taken a severe noise dive. I now have little trust in him. And I’m sure others have also now gotten the same view.

But I can only guess how many naïve visitors may have been fooled into thinking this person was an authority on this subject and were sucked in to parting with their money.

The sad fact is that this is becoming way to common. There are hundreds of online marketers with very low ethical standards. They are just waiting to take your hard-earned money by using excessive hype to embellish the truth.

So the moral of this story is that if you’re selling anything online, your reputation and the trust of your potential customers is EVERYTHNING. Your reputation is all you have and if it is tarnished, for whatever reason, it is quite possible that your online business will never recover.

It may be ok to use a little well chosen hype to encourage your readers to check out what it is you are promoting. However, you should never mislead your visitors into thinking you are not who you say you are. And never try to overstate your earning capacity from what it really is.

Your reputation is all you have online - so don’t blow it!