You may have come across the phrase, the ‘silent e’ of Internet Marketing, but what does this mean?

Let me tell you a story. Many years ago the TV program Sesame Street had a song called ‘Silent E’ that was all about how a single letter, that isn’t in itself noticed, can completely change both the pronunciation and meaning of a word.

For example, adding a silent e to can makes cane – something else entirely. Putting an e on the end of star turns it into stare. The point being that one little letter has a big impact especially on the following words.

Internet Marketing

There are silent e’s all over the place, none more obviously than in Internet Marketing.

The silent e for Internet marketers is the initial of the most important word you need to learn and embrace if you want to enjoy long term success.

When seminar audiences are asked to shout out what they think the e should stand for, the answers are many and varied including, entertaining, educational, emotive, energising, earnings and ebooks tend to be the most popular choices, but there are many more. The real one is sadly, very rarely mentioned.

It is the word Ethical.

Yes, it even deserves a capital letter in bold!

Running your business according to ethical principles is so obvious, but so often ignored. It seems that as soon as some marketers get a small bit of success under their belts, their ethical compass starts to go astray.

They come to believe that anything goes if it makes a dollar especially a fast buck.

You only have to look at the sales letters used to promote many of the big launches in Internet Marketing. They are full of lies and half truths. Many will begin with the promise that only a specific limited number of the product will be sold – a limitation the vendor has no intention of sticking to. This is a tactic called scarcity.

The first thing these particular breed of internet marketers do in their interaction with you, a potential new customer, is lie to your face. Where is the ethics there?

Then they will show you ‘proofs’ of their earnings, either outright stating, or strongly implying that those earnings have come from doing what their latest book teaches. The reality is that if the earnings are real at all and many are just photoshopped fakes that refer to the vendors last ebook sale and have nothing to do with whatever dubious method they are trying to peddle.

Internet Marketing Ethics Anyone?

Behind the scenes all these serial product producers have agreements with each other to promote each others’ products  usually with no questions asked, they call it mates rates. The result is that you get the same pre-written pitch email from everyone. And an endless stream of content-free emails that are only sent out to sell.

And they wonder why their lists are getting unresponsive and their subscribers are leaving them in their droves!

Eventually their ethics-bypass becomes all too obvious.

Many of the serial internet marketing garbage producers are getting so worried about the damage they are doing to their own reputations that they are starting to launch new products under fake names. So the how to make money online with affiliate marketing now would read something like:

Internet Marketing Strategies To Google Your Way To Instant Wealth In Two Seconds Flat Without Any Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Or Traffic!

It makes you wonder why they don’t get the message that it doesn’t matter how many fake names they can think up, a bad product is always going to be bad. Why not spend more time and effort making a good product that they can be proud to launch in their own name and have an ethical internet business?

Maybe that way their shot-to-pieces reputations can begin to be repaired? These internet marketing types do not seem to get it that with the social media sites like Facebook and Twitter reputations can be destroyed through adverse comments going viral in a few short minutes.

Internet Marketing by Online Marketers

The trouble is that once on the dark side of the ethical divide, it seems incredibly difficult to claw your way back into the light. Very few online marketers seem to manage redemption completely.

It may seem old fashioned or fuddy-duddy to talk about ethics where marketing is concerned. There is an enduring view that all is fair game in salesmanship. For many years online marketing has been a bit of a lawless wild west, internet marketing for cowboys as it were.

Thankfully, government bodies like the OFT in the UK and FTC in America are starting to act on the bigger excesses and are legislating against others. Truth and honesty may stand a chance in the future.

Unfortunately though, governments don’t step in with a gentle touch, they wade in with sweeping new regulations that are often way more than is needed, using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, or invoking the equivalent of the internet marketing nuclear deterrent.

The result is that even the ethical marketers are caught up the ensuing witch hunts  and are blitzed as well as the bad guys.

In my humble opinion, ethics are not an optional extra, or something that you turn to after a lack of them gets you into trouble. Ethics are the bedrock of building a real business online and the heart of the reality of the matter is that people do business with people in whom they trust.

Put the silent e of ethics at the center of all you do online as an internet marketing company and you’ll never have to earn trust , it will be yours for the taking in the internet marketing space.