There seem to be two trends I am encountering often lately in my marketing ventures.
First is the “forced continuity” tagged on to product purchases. It’s quite the rage and many customers are pretty rageful about it.
This involves a marketer selling a product from a sales page and then attaching an ongoing newsletter or membership program that the purchaser is likely to be unaware of. Most of the time, the language on the sales or order page that describes the continuity program is veiled in weird language or made to sound like something else or is altogether non-existant.
A recent example is Joel Comm’s Adsense Secrets v4.0. He was selling the ebook for around $10, which is a steal for the quality of information he offered. Lots of people jumped on the opportunity. What they didn’t realize was that in the bonus section, Joel was offering a free month subscription to his hardcopy newsletter, and they would ultimately have to cancel or be charged $30 a month automatically.
I was alerted to this arrangement before I even visited the sales page and I chose to make a purchase anyway. I wanted the book and I knew I could cancel the subscription and Joel’s people would honor it. (Joel might send too many emails, but he is honorable. I really trust that.)
Apparently that is not true of all marketers. I’m reading that many fail to cancel their customers’ subscriptions when they request to be let out. Not cool and a huge hassle for the buyer.
After an uproar, Joel has revised his offer and has now made the newsletter subscription an optional addition to purchasing his book. I may have been tempted to change the price of the book if I changed the terms, but Joel didn’t. The ebook is a steal. At least I’m enjoying it.
Two other programs interested me recently that also turned out to have membership fees attached ongoing but did not mention this part on the sales page. At least I couldn’t find it anywhere. These two programs are Players With Money and 4MinutesMoney.
I did invest in PWM and learned of the membership from the Clickbank receipt. I was shocked and felt duped. Now I have to decide whether to continue with the program ongoing or not. It looks fabulous, but it’s a monthly fee I was not counting on and don’t think I want.
What I’ve learned, hopefully, is to go over sales pages with a fine tooth comb before deciding to purchase, and then go over the order page with an even finer tooth comb. Take nothing for granted.
Another option is to quit buying products, but that’s no fun. I want to learn everything I can about affiliate marketing, site building, adsense publishing, and you name it. I enjoy the learning process tremendously.
Enough about that…and I’ll save the second trend for tomorrow (or sometime soon).
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