There were a lot of visits to my original Jeff Paul post today. His infomercial Shortcuts to Internet Million$ is on CNBC today. And just like everyone else, I can’t stop watching it! They grab your attention.
I read that Jeff Paul was a leading Direct Marketer in the 90’s. Direct Marketing is when a salesperson calls you to offer you a “no risk” trial of a service or product. The catch is that if you accept the offer, you have to do something to cancel after the trial period expires. The sales people know their game well and can fast talk and confuse a person into accepting the offer.
Shortcuts to Internet Million$ shows testimonials on how $135,000 a month of income changed their life. This tactic directly addresses their targeted market segment’s hopes and dreams of a better life. They target the naive, the financially illiterate, the gamblers, the poor and the desperate. It’s like a lottery ticket except laws ensure that you know what the odds of winning a lottery really are.
Jeff Paul is very vague on the success rate of his program. “Countless others” have achieved instant wealth without computer knowledge. They could work a little harder on their counting since it’s probably less than 10. Even the Johnchow.com blog – Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul – doesn’t make $135,000 a month. And John Chow has computer knowledge and, surprise, internet knowledge!
There are accounts of people signing up and then being pressured to buy more Jeff Paul products. People talk about paying sums of $5,000 to $8,000. My friend, the one whose father bought the Paramount Marketing Group Online product in error, shared this insight:
A lot of people avoid confrontation. They would rather agree to buy something than to say “no” to a pushy sales person.
She’s right. And that’s what makes this a lucrative biz.
Here are some of the best articles about the Jeff Paul experience:
Also, you can avoid the high pressure sales tactics by buying the Jeff Paul books on eBay.
Watched item ending soon 
The testimonials are fake though. One guy in the testimonials who claim to have made over $400,000 is actually Jeff’s business partner and an internet marketer himself. You might have heard about Shawn Casey.
Shawn Casey doesn’t need Jeff’s system as he already makes that kind of money already.
As for the upsells, they are going to try that – not much in selling a $39.95 product on tv but no one is going to expect that. Pushing sales on people is another thing and they should stop that especially when the prices are out of the range of the average target audience for this kind of product.
Comment by Keny Luger — January 12, 2008 @ 3:08 am |
That’s interesting to hear. I wonder what testimonials from randomly selected users would sound like.
How much does a 30 minute informercial cost to run on a cable channel like CNBC?
Comment by estreet — January 14, 2008 @ 6:55 am |
Why do people fall for these obvious scams? Are they that stupid/desperate?
Scams like Jeff Paul’s work only because people are greedy and lazy. As much as I hate assholes like Jeff Paul, I don’t have much sympathy for the idiots who fall for it.
I saw his infomercial again and decided to google it to see how many people actually fell for it.
Comment by Alan — May 17, 2009 @ 2:09 am |
Interesting post. I too have watched the Jeff Paul infomercial several times and it has scam and Get Rich Quick Scheme written all over it. Sad that there are so many people falling for his scam. The websites that Jeff Paul gives you would be useless, because they would be the same as websites given to thousands of other people. The search engines would penalize your website for duplicate content. Jeff Paul is the Don Lapre of the 2000’s
Comment by Chris Hecker — October 7, 2009 @ 12:29 am |