Direct Marketers Need to Grab a Clue

It seems like every day or so I get an email from someone touting the latest and greatest Internet marketing opportunity of the century. Every one is crammed with secrets never before known to mankind. Every one is so simple you can do it even if you're not a salesperson and have no interest in selling. Every one these days seems to be coupled with a greater cause of some sort.

And every one of them makes the same stupid mistake and loses, I'd guess, a huge percentage of people who might be willing to listen to the sales pitch but who aren't willing to divulge their identity for the "privilege" of doing so.

It happened again today. A colleague of a good friend used his name to get me to read an email about this "opportunity." I read his email and was mildly intrigued, so I clicked on his link. The page I went to said, "We'll tell you all you want to know about this opportunity on the next page." To get to that page, though, I had to be willing to part with my email address and my phone number.

Right. I'm going to give someone I've never met and never done business with my contact info so they can spam and telemarket me to death for the rest of my life without my being able to do anything because they can prove a business connection between us.

Needless to say, I closed that window, deleted the email and now not only will I never respond to email from this individual again, I'm also telling my friend what happened when he shared my email address with this numbskull.

You want my email address? Give me something of value to earn it. You want my phone number? The price of infopoker just went up.

Grab a clue, folks. Why do you think your MLM programs are in the crapper? Why do you suppose most of the people who sign up for your program turn out to be losers and whiners? Because you're cutting out the potentially serious associates and colleagues at the front door, that's why.