In the internet marketing world, you can make a lot of money by showing other people that you make a lot of money. It is easy to understand why. Everyone wants to learn from the best. Which is why new internet marketers would rather learn from someone making $10,000 a month than someone who is making $100 a month.
Blogger John Chow was one of the first people to become renowned for teaching affiliate marketing and his blog tagline “I Make Money Online By Telling People How I Make Money Online”, reflects an industry in which telling people how to make money online is the person’s main source of income.
John is a legit marketer who has been working online for many years and does know how to make money online. Unfortunately, there are a large number of people who fake earnings reports in order to sell eBooks, mentoring services, courses, and other informational products. Anyone who has visited the special offers room at Warrior Forum will know that most marketers use earnings reports to verify how effective their marketing technique is.
Faking Earnings Reports
It has always been easy to fake earnings reports, which is why many sellers verify the validity of their claims by showing evidence of earnings using videos instead of screenshots. However, these are easily doctored too.
Veterean internet marketer Gobala Krishnan uploaded a video two days ago to YouTube that illustrates this. He had earlier teased his Facebook followers about how he had earned $1,560,000 in JVZoo commissions.
Don’t worry, Gobala is an honest marketer who has always made money online by selling useful products and services. His intention was not to mislead anyone. In the video he shows how easy it is to modify the values on a page by using the “Inspect Element” tool in Google Chrome.
I had always known that the “Inspect Element” tool could modify the details of a page, however I had never put two and two together and realised that marketers would use the tool to falsify income reports.
As you can see, it only takes a minute to change the figures displayed on an earnings page. Then a video can be taken to show others that your earnings are legitimate.
Be Skeptical About Info Products
I am not a big fan of informational products that use earnings reports to market them. Nor do I like products that promise that you will find out all the secrets once you have purchased the product. 99% of the time, marketers of info products are vague about what is contained within their products because that information is freely available elsewhere on the internet for free.
If you are going to buy an eBook or course about making money online, it pays to be skeptical. Be cautious of any marketer who makes claims of making thousands of dollars online, yet can only back it up through earnings reports. I appreciate that many people are making a living by emailing offers to subscribers of their email list, though it is prudent to only buy products from people who have a presence online, be it an established website or a good reputation for making money from other types of products (i.e. they do not only make money by selling people books about making money).
Do not trust testimonials either. On forums such as Warrior Forums, people will gladly give a testimonial in exchange for getting a product free of charge. I have even had some people using my name in testimonials without my approval. This is why it pays to be skeptical about any marketer who makes claims about making money without any evidence of them.
Good luck,
Kevin