Thursday, April 24, 2008

I went for a internet marketing conference, not a sales meeting

Today I spent almost three hours of what I consider my valuable time at what was supposed to be a conference on Internet marketing for retail websites. What I was actually at was a presentation focused on telling me I could make lots of money on the internet, but I need to use this companies store front that is included in their hosting package. Come on people, I could not believe what I was put through. The worst part was that if I wanted to get the actual course for marketing it was included in the package as part of a full day of how to be successful using their store front and hosting company, but I had to pay the one time fee of $25.00 right then and there (which is $199.00 any other time, don’t you know!)

They tried to pressure me by telling me that I must not being doing everything I need to do in marketing my web store Medieval Magic, because if I were I would be rolling in money and would not be there. Um, actually I was expecting to have spent my time learning about other methods of online marketing and had hoped to find some new ways or better ways. I am always looking for a way to positively market our product and web site. Only a fool thinks that they know everything and does not understand that there are new programs and methods developed all the time. I am not a fool and did not like being treated as one.

What I did find shocking is the number of people signing up and handing their $25 for their new website. They don’t even have an idea of what they want to sell or who their market is, but they have a web site. Next week they are going to this full day course on how to be successful with their stores. These are set up to hold them by the hand and show them what to do step by step, including giving them a list of drop shippers and some one-on-one time with someone who is going to help them do it all.

The basic idea is that they are getting an out of the box web site, a list of drop shippers and instructions on how to market the web site. As this wonderful company pointed out, if these people are not making money they will not keep their website up and they will not get their $24.99 a month. They want people to succeed. They also want people to have multiple web sites as diverse income streams. All good ideas, except I feel it has more to do with the $24.99 they get each month for each site you have. The more sites you have reaching out to different markets, or using different branding strategies the more money they make off of you.

I may or may not be going as a guest with one of the people who signed up. It depends on them right now. For me it is just to make sure they don’t get pulled into the, "oh by the way to be successful you need to add these add-on’s to the original shopping cart." The company has already indicated that you need $5,000 of add-ons but they are selling them for $3,000 but they are willing to give you a deal on the day of your training. The sad part is that up until I heard about the add-ons I was actually comparing their price and service favorably to other companies I did research on when we were looking for a new shopping cart. I don’t like any company that said here is a web site and hosting fee, oh but your going to need to buy all this other stuff to succeed. I don’t think they are going to have much to add to my online marketing strategies, or at least not ones I am willing to use. It will be interesting to see what they have to say if I end up going, but I would not be upset if I don’t go.

1 comment:

Nancy said...

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