Marketing vs Spamming: The Fine Line
That line is not so fine. Its actually a big bold line, and one we need to stop ignoring – or worse: straddling. The purpose of this post is to draw that line clearly, and let you decide which side of it you’re going to stand on.
Spamming is a legitimate way of making money online. Before you raise your eyebrows and unsubscribe from ClickNewz, hear me out. Spammers are actually some of the wealthiest internet marketers in the industry. I’m not just referring to the junk in your Inbox, but also to spam in the search results…
For the rest of us, spam is both annoying and frustrating. Not only does it clutter our work space and hinder our time management process with additional tasks (filtering, deleting, finding solutions, etc), but it also creates a bit of a hurdle for achieving top search results in some niches.
When it comes to SEO (and marketing in general, in my opinion) there are three hats. Black Hat takes quite a bit of skill & knowledge and includes things like cloaking and link spamming. White Hat is ethical marketing practices, such as writing quality content and gaining quality relevant backlinks. Grey Hat is very obviously… somewhere in between.
Most online marketers end up falling there: “somewhere in between”. While nobody likes to be considered a spammer, many of the marketing strategies that are taught are certainly not “white hat”.
Black Hat marketing is a very active business model, requiring constant testing and updating to keep up with changing algorithms. The investment is high, but the return on that investment (ROI) is equally high.
White Hat marketing also requires an investment of time and energy, but with long-term results. Instead of chasing down changing algorithms and recovering from “Google slaps” you are more likely to enjoy stability and automation than your dark counterparts.
Grey Hat marketing usually comes into play when White Hat marketers try to take shortcuts. These are the people that want a legitimate business model, but with a get rich quick mindset. That cant be blamed entirely on the marketer, who is very often new to the playing field, as these ‘grey hat’ strategies are taught heavily by some of the more seasoned marketers.
Unfortunately the results from those strategies might be great in the beginning, but are usually short-lived. What little success you achieve from grey or black hat marketing will leave you scrambling to recover when it no longer works – and sets you back at square one.
Are you spamming?
NO – If you submit your blog or website to relevant niche directories, adding value to those directories with your listing, you are not spamming.
YES – If you submit your blog or website anywhere and everywhere that will accept your submission for the sake of getting keyword-rich one-way links to your site, then you are spamming.
NO – If you use social bookmarking sites to bookmark and share relevant information from a variety of sources, you are not spamming.
YES – If you own multiple accounts on various social bookmarking sites, and only bookmark your own posts/sites on each of those accounts, you are spamming.
NO – If your primary objective is to develop content and offers that contribute to your target market, you are not spamming.
YES – If your primary objective is to make money, regardless of the ultimate impact to the market, then you are spamming.
Consider whether your quest to make money online contributes value to the web, and to the people you reach online. Or if your quest is simply to get rich, regardless of who you hurt or annoy along the way.
If you want long-term profitable results and a career that you can feel good about, dont straddle that line. Consider these points in everything that you do to build and promote your online business.
Best,
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Lynn,
You have a typo, “get rick quick mindset.”
Is it possible you still have Rick Butts on your mind? Just kidding.
LOL – more likely is that my fingers are cold on this chilly Tennessee morning
Thank you for catching that!
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.
Lynn,
You are right there is such a fine line and often someone may be spamming without even knowing it. Thanks for putting the Are you Spamming? Lets people know what might and might not be considered spam.
There is a line between spamming and good marketing. For the newbie internet marketer whose enthusiam is overwhelming, that line can be a fine line….
But the to the experience marketer, that line is nowhere near fine, it is very bold, some people just choose to cross it anyway.
You’re right…the advantages are short lived
There coulda been a bunch of different titles for this one Lynn, good work
Wow, I had no idea. Oh trust me, I know all too well what SPAM is because like everyone elses email, mine gets full of crap too. Thanks for the interesting read.
It’s so true that in the beginning of trying any online venture, you may not even realize that you’re spamming because you’ve seen so many advertising messages blasted at you constantly and feel you’re just adding to the group.
As far as making money online is concerned, there’s nothing wrong with earning a living with this kind of business model, but if you basically sell-out and do nothing but try and take money from everyone you meet without offering any form of quality content, then yes, you’re spamming and are doing this for the wrong reason.
I didn’t know there were so many different types of spam. I thought “spam” was the junk that I get in my email inbox trying to sell me stuff I don’t want!
Sure there’s email spam, Jerry – but there’s also physical mail spam, phone spam, social media spam, search engine spam… and even “door spam” if you count the people who knock on my front door to sell me something without invitation!
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.
I like the one about “door spam.” That was very original.
Follow me @deannatroupe on Twitter.
Unless you own a website for recreational
purposes most of us are here to make money, and as you mentioned black hat techniques certainly can bring in the bucks.
With that in mind I think the choice to be white, grey or black hat is largely a matter of what you yourself are comfortable with and what it is that you would like to be know for.
sometimes we stuck on “spamming like” mail to promote our new business, even we using someone else to send the email in exchange of some prize, that’s what I have thought
[...] The one that I was most interested in she called “Marketing vs Spamming: The Fine Line“ [...]
I think Lynn is very right to take “door spam” and all the other crap into account. The problem is not so much some little marketer trying to gain visitors and attention and a bit of love… the problem is the overall “spammy” mindset of our society that is largely based on “creating needs” and selling useless crap to people who do not actually want or need it…
Hi Lynn,
How do you classify links that are placed in blog comments or in the main body (not sig file) of a forum post?
Thanks Lynn. I’m a newbie and these lines can be complicated for us I think. Good work.
Follow me @tzdelar on Twitter.
Hi Lynn,
Very interesting read. I like the white/grey/black examples you give.
Josh
Hi Lynn
Very nice article but, I do somewhat disagree with the “Its actually a big bold line”. I feel it is a thin line that isn’t always straight but curved.
In today’s world oursourcing has made it all to easy to hire someone to do our writting for us. I know as a fact that ghost writers will write articles, blog posts, testimonials, and even term papers (thats scarey).
I feel that if an article or posted content is relevant and useful to the subject/niche it has served it’s helpful purpose. Then it is up to the publisher/marketer to decide how it will be published.
The use of multiple accounts doesn’t change the content. Should it matter to me who wrote the information I read that helped me decide of my own free will to either purchase or not? As long as I the buyer am not held captive I can still purchase from anywhere I choose.
Now if, I’m hijacked or had affiliate stealing software installed on my PC without my knowledgable consent then the marketer is operating in a non-ethical way. By “knowledgable” I mean not buried in the super small fine print of some cool tool software license agreement that I downloaded.
Anyway, at the end of the day business is still a competitive arena and the objective of the business is to earn a profit. Anything else would be considered a hobby.
Al
hi, my name is mike, i just become your follower in twitter, nice article and it does make you wonder in which category you are in.
mikerambling
Nice article. One thing I’ve found as an owner of multiple websites is that it’s very easy to become sucked into the whole world of black-hat marketing.
For instance you often see people post comments on marketing forums about how much money they’re making, and if they’re actually making more than you it can be extremely tempting to join them on the other side in the pursuit of higher profits.
Good post, our SEO is terrible. Perhaps for reasons you describe?
Very good and clear way to see what side of the line you’re on.
Well I agree it is a hard one to judge but here is an example for you to pass judgement on. Is this spam or enthusiasm and the need to spread the word?
Here is a post I just put on another SEO blog:
SEO I believe has to be the key to online success as adwords are now way too expensive.
But what if you do all the SEO stuff and it works but your site conversion doesn’t work for all the traffic you now have?
Site design is such a subjective thing and how do you know if, when you decide what to use and do, it works or not really?
BUT it is so important to get it right as if you do it’s worth a fortune and if you don’t it could cost you a fortune.
I am so happy that I have discovered this web marketers tool for example and I am just so excited to have finally found a tool like this I can’t begin to tell you!
It is free for a good single site owner user and you only have to pay if you use it on more than three sites.
Without a doubt it is the absolute best tool I have ever seen or used and because of the free test I got I am now using it on everything I do.
It is so insightful I am now going to redesign my sites (with confidence!) as finally I can see what needs doing because of this tool.
I can’t say more than that except that if you have a site and you care about getting it right then you really need to consider this tool http://budurl.com/musthavetool
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So what do you say?
My believe is that I found a product we should all know about as it is such a difference maker to REALLY know what people do when they hit your site and to have a chance at tweaking because of the evidence you see..
If that is spam then there is something wrong with the world
You put it very clear. Once I heard about a technique to make sure you focus on visitor experience and value. It said “do not start monetizing your website until you have at least 30 pure content pages”. Also, do not submit it to directories before you have 30 content pages. I know this calmed me down.