Spring is the most popular time for weddings -- so it's also the peak period for wedding scams.
You might have read recently of a wedding scam in Boston, when thousands of brides-to-be and bridal service exhibitors were conned into paying for tickets and booths at a non-existent Home and Bride Show.
And, as the Boston non-event demonstrated, they're targeted not just at the bride and groom but also at photographers, wedding planners and others involved in what is supposed to be a wonderful day.
Click Here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
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Friday, April 23, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Scam Book and Movie Favorites Teach Us a Valuable Lesson
It's time for a lighter touch this week, with a look at some true or not-so-true stories featured in a bestselling scam book or movie.
Although they may be mainly for entertainment, scam books and scam movies actually have a lot to teach us about the criminal mind, when crooks set out to con us out of our money, or even just to give the perpetrator a good time.
They show how easy it is to be taken in by a silver-tongued con artist and how clever tricksters can be in inventing plausible stories. We can even learn some valuable lessons as we're entertained.
Click Here for the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Although they may be mainly for entertainment, scam books and scam movies actually have a lot to teach us about the criminal mind, when crooks set out to con us out of our money, or even just to give the perpetrator a good time.
They show how easy it is to be taken in by a silver-tongued con artist and how clever tricksters can be in inventing plausible stories. We can even learn some valuable lessons as we're entertained.
Click Here for the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Friday, April 9, 2010
WHY YOU SHOULDN'T DO WHAT THE GURUS DO C.J. Hayden, MCC
It's only natural to emulate successful people. You'd like to copy their success, so it seems it would make sense to copy their approach to sales and marketing. But modeling your marketing after the gurus in your field may not get you where they are.
Simply put, the present situation of these successful people may be entirely different from your own. They typically have plenty of money to spend, staff to help, a large in-house mailing list, widespread name recognition, a suite of products and services to offer, and many years of completed work to draw from. If you don't have all this in your business, trying to copy their marketing and sales approach may be a recipe for failure rather than success.
Here are five ways that doing what the gurus do can lead you astray.
1. Relying on email and website traffic alone to promote your business.
With a high-traffic website and a large email list, a guru may need nothing more than to make an offer on his website and send some emails to his list to land plenty of new clients. But if your website gets few visitors and your mailing list is small, you'll need to find other ways to attract and reach out to prospects. Personal networking, phone calls, public speaking, or other high-contact activities will need to be part of your marketing mix. Email and web copy alone aren't going to do the trick.
2. Counting on your reputation and personal charisma to convince people to do business with you.
When new prospects make contact with a guru, they're usually already familiar with her work. They arrive pre-disposed to do business, and rarely ask about her background or even question her rates. She, in turn, expects most prospects to turn into clients, and speaks to them with confidence and authority. She spends little, if any, time persuading them she's the right person for the job.
When new prospects make contact with you, regardless of who initiates the conversation, they may know very little about you. You will need to build their trust in your ability to help, provide evidence that you have the skills and experience they need, and convince them you are worth the price you are asking. A winning personality may not be enough to land the sale, especially when your prospects must justify their buying decisions to a boss or a spouse.
3. Promoting your own free workshops or teleclasses instead of guest speaking for others.
Gurus frequently offer no-charge workshops or teleclasses to convert prospects to paying clients. With a large email list, it costs almost nothing to promote these. Most of the people who attend will be those already on the guru's list. Trying to do this without an existing prospect list will almost always fail. You'll have to expend far too much effort just to attract an adequate number of participants. And they'll still be only prospects; you'll still have to convince them to spend money with you.
A much more effective strategy for an entrepreneur without a substantial prospect list is to offer yourself as a speaker to professional meetings, conferences, and teleclass series sponsored by others. That way, the sponsor promotes the program and provides the audience, and you get a host of new prospects to sell to without all the effort.
4. Spending unbudgeted amounts on promotional opportunities.
You'll often see gurus as paid sponsors for events or initiatives, advertising on websites or in publications, or exhibiting at trade shows or conferences. They can afford this relatively expensive type of promotion because their higher income allows a higher advertising budget, and because they have multiple products and services to sell. And, what you may not know is that gurus often receive benefits like these at no cost in return for speaking or promoting the event or publication to their list.
When someone offers you a paid promotional opportunity like this, do the math before saying yes. Divide the cost of participating by the number of new prospects you expect to attract as a result. Is that cost per person a reasonable amount for you to pay? Remember, too, that these will only be prospects, not clients. You'll still need to convince them to buy before you can earn back what you spent.
5. Maintaining multiple websites, ezines, blogs, or social networking identities with different themes.
Gurus have paid staff, multiple products and services to sell (and earn income from), and a large body of existing work to repurpose for ezine articles, blog posts, etc. If you have one part-time assistant or none at all, a short list of products and services to offer, and must create most of your material from scratch, you will be hard-pressed to manage just ONE website, plus ONE ezine, plus ONE blog, plus ONE Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn identity, even with all on the same theme.
The typical guru became a guru because he established a name for himself doing one recognizable thing. Only after building a successful business and reputation did he have the resources available to branch out to multiple brands and market niches simultaneously. If he tried to do this before becoming successful, you probably never heard about those ventures, because they didn't survive.
The essential message underlying all these examples is this. Copying what successful people do after they have already achieved success will not necessarily help you become successful in the first place. Their present situation is not yours. If you want to become a guru yourself, you may need to copy what the gurus did before they ever achieved guruhood.
Copyright © 2009, C.J. Hayden
Read more free articles by C.J. Hayden or subscribe to the GET CLIENTS NOW! E-Letter.
Simply put, the present situation of these successful people may be entirely different from your own. They typically have plenty of money to spend, staff to help, a large in-house mailing list, widespread name recognition, a suite of products and services to offer, and many years of completed work to draw from. If you don't have all this in your business, trying to copy their marketing and sales approach may be a recipe for failure rather than success.
Here are five ways that doing what the gurus do can lead you astray.
1. Relying on email and website traffic alone to promote your business.
With a high-traffic website and a large email list, a guru may need nothing more than to make an offer on his website and send some emails to his list to land plenty of new clients. But if your website gets few visitors and your mailing list is small, you'll need to find other ways to attract and reach out to prospects. Personal networking, phone calls, public speaking, or other high-contact activities will need to be part of your marketing mix. Email and web copy alone aren't going to do the trick.
2. Counting on your reputation and personal charisma to convince people to do business with you.
When new prospects make contact with a guru, they're usually already familiar with her work. They arrive pre-disposed to do business, and rarely ask about her background or even question her rates. She, in turn, expects most prospects to turn into clients, and speaks to them with confidence and authority. She spends little, if any, time persuading them she's the right person for the job.
When new prospects make contact with you, regardless of who initiates the conversation, they may know very little about you. You will need to build their trust in your ability to help, provide evidence that you have the skills and experience they need, and convince them you are worth the price you are asking. A winning personality may not be enough to land the sale, especially when your prospects must justify their buying decisions to a boss or a spouse.
3. Promoting your own free workshops or teleclasses instead of guest speaking for others.
Gurus frequently offer no-charge workshops or teleclasses to convert prospects to paying clients. With a large email list, it costs almost nothing to promote these. Most of the people who attend will be those already on the guru's list. Trying to do this without an existing prospect list will almost always fail. You'll have to expend far too much effort just to attract an adequate number of participants. And they'll still be only prospects; you'll still have to convince them to spend money with you.
A much more effective strategy for an entrepreneur without a substantial prospect list is to offer yourself as a speaker to professional meetings, conferences, and teleclass series sponsored by others. That way, the sponsor promotes the program and provides the audience, and you get a host of new prospects to sell to without all the effort.
4. Spending unbudgeted amounts on promotional opportunities.
You'll often see gurus as paid sponsors for events or initiatives, advertising on websites or in publications, or exhibiting at trade shows or conferences. They can afford this relatively expensive type of promotion because their higher income allows a higher advertising budget, and because they have multiple products and services to sell. And, what you may not know is that gurus often receive benefits like these at no cost in return for speaking or promoting the event or publication to their list.
When someone offers you a paid promotional opportunity like this, do the math before saying yes. Divide the cost of participating by the number of new prospects you expect to attract as a result. Is that cost per person a reasonable amount for you to pay? Remember, too, that these will only be prospects, not clients. You'll still need to convince them to buy before you can earn back what you spent.
5. Maintaining multiple websites, ezines, blogs, or social networking identities with different themes.
Gurus have paid staff, multiple products and services to sell (and earn income from), and a large body of existing work to repurpose for ezine articles, blog posts, etc. If you have one part-time assistant or none at all, a short list of products and services to offer, and must create most of your material from scratch, you will be hard-pressed to manage just ONE website, plus ONE ezine, plus ONE blog, plus ONE Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn identity, even with all on the same theme.
The typical guru became a guru because he established a name for himself doing one recognizable thing. Only after building a successful business and reputation did he have the resources available to branch out to multiple brands and market niches simultaneously. If he tried to do this before becoming successful, you probably never heard about those ventures, because they didn't survive.
The essential message underlying all these examples is this. Copying what successful people do after they have already achieved success will not necessarily help you become successful in the first place. Their present situation is not yours. If you want to become a guru yourself, you may need to copy what the gurus did before they ever achieved guruhood.
Copyright © 2009, C.J. Hayden
Read more free articles by C.J. Hayden or subscribe to the GET CLIENTS NOW! E-Letter.
Toyota Recall Scam Uses Bogus Helpline Number
A scam based on the Toyota recall of autos for gas pedal and floor mat problems heads up this week's Snippets issue. It shows just how quickly crooks latch on to a news event as a way of conning the public.
They used a simple but sneaky trick -- sending out spaham (intentionally misspelled) emails, some of which land in the inboxes of Toyota owners.
The messages simply invite recipients to call a 1-800 number for more details about the Toyota recall models and what action they need to take.
Click Here for the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
They used a simple but sneaky trick -- sending out spaham (intentionally misspelled) emails, some of which land in the inboxes of Toyota owners.
The messages simply invite recipients to call a 1-800 number for more details about the Toyota recall models and what action they need to take.
Click Here for the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Scam Alert: Are You a Secret Spammer?
As tax season kicks into high gear, so do scammers—with an onslaught of e-mails that falsely claim to be from the IRS.
So if you get one—whether it claims to contain important tax forms or news about an entitled refund or money owed, know this: It’s a scam. The IRS does not send unsolicited e-mails to individual taxpayers—and never asks, via e-mail, for any personal or account information.
Click here to read the full article.
Copyright@ Sid Kirchheimer | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | March 22, 2010
Sid Kirchheimer is the author of Scam-Proof Your Life (AARP Books/Sterling).
So if you get one—whether it claims to contain important tax forms or news about an entitled refund or money owed, know this: It’s a scam. The IRS does not send unsolicited e-mails to individual taxpayers—and never asks, via e-mail, for any personal or account information.
Click here to read the full article.
Copyright@ Sid Kirchheimer | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | March 22, 2010
Sid Kirchheimer is the author of Scam-Proof Your Life (AARP Books/Sterling).
Are Facebook and Twitter Next For Investment Scams?
Hear the cry of the investment scams artist: It's going to be the next big thing; it's going to change the game; hardly anyone knows about it... yet.
They're going to let you in on the secret, so you should sell the family silver and pile the proceeds into whatever it is they're selling.
It's always the same old song, but often sung in a different voice. And it seems there are plenty of people who are willing to listen.
Click Here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
They're going to let you in on the secret, so you should sell the family silver and pile the proceeds into whatever it is they're selling.
It's always the same old song, but often sung in a different voice. And it seems there are plenty of people who are willing to listen.
Click Here to read the full article.
©Copyright Audri and Jim Lanford. All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
Subscribe free to Internet Scambusters at
http://www.scambusters.org
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