Muslim Internet Marketing – Who Can You Trust?

Yes it’s the six billion dollar question alright. Over the last few years the Online Business Bandwagon has begun to resemble an overcrowded Indian train in rush hour and now Muslim Marketers have caught onto the  smell of easy money and are targeting the growing Muslim Entrepreneur community like there’s no tomorrow. But with the growth of Muslim Internet Marketing who can you really trust?

Now we’ve all heard the sale spiel; Give up your day job and work from home, Earn six figures in six months, No experience required, Listen to our past successful students, Become an eCommerce wizard and so on. The list is endless (and now extremely boring too).

The Muslim Online Marketers pushing these tactics also use another subliminal message in their sales pitch. They are suggesting that the only reason they are doing this is to help you, their Muslim brothers and sisters. It’s not about lining their own pockets but about helping the Ummah become financially independent.

The non-Muslim pitch for these same programs is usually along the lines of “I’ve made so much money using this system I’m now going to help you make money too” maybe with a touch of “for a limited time only” or “only for the first fifty applicants” thrown in.

The logic behind both scenarios is the same; they need to get you to trust them. The traditional approach to building trust used to be the old ‘rags to riches’ sob story. You know the one I mean. ‘I had no money and was in a dead end job, the bills were piling up, the kids were going hungry, I had to sell the car, the wife left me, yawn yawn yawn’

The reasoning behind this was that it touched a nerve with the reader. The likelihood of the reader also being in one of these positions was extremely high because that is the reason they were reading this in the first place. If they were financially happy they wouldn’t need a make money quickly scheme. They would read it and think “well if this guy can do it so can I, where do I sign….”

For the Muslim market gaining trust is even easier. All they need to do is have a Muslim name, a beard, throw in in a few religious connotations and the job is done. Many Muslim listeners will sign up based just on these criteria – that is so scary!

But Why?

Now that’s the question you have to ask yourself. Why are they doing what they are doing? Why are they offering what they are offering?

Well it’s not rocket science I can tell you that much for free. The primary reason for anyone offering you any kind of Online Marketing or Internet Marketing course is simply money. And before you get all excited I mean money for them, the sellers, not for you.

Whatever they tell you in their fancy speeches or long winded sales pages if they are not making some serious money from these courses then they just aren’t worth setting up, however genuine the content may be.

It may be true that these guys have made some money by doing the same thing they are teaching you to do but that was at a time when that particular market was new and lucrative. As the market became saturated and profits went down they then decided to maintain their income stream by teaching you how to make money in that very same market (obviously without any mention of declining profits and risks involved).

That’s not to say the information they are providing is not valuable though. A lot can be learned from these gurus however it is up to you to decide if this information is worth the price tag being asked. Especially when a lot of the basics can be learnt for free these days.

Here’s a simple example. Mo the Marketer is offering his latest eCommerce Home Business Course at just £1500 aimed exclusively to stay at home Muslim mums to help them work in the privacy of their own homes (that’s the niche he has targeted). He has setup a super looking website and has an amazing advertising campaign going with videos and emails galore.

Let’s say he has spent £30,000 on this campaign and yes, to most, that is a scary amount of money meaning he must be serious about helping these poor stay at home mums set up a home business right?

No, not really. Out of the thousands of mums targeted he ends up with one hundred signing up to his course, that’s a grand total of £150,000. Take off his overall costs and it leaves him with £120,000 profit with no other costs. The course is online so can be accessed by any one of his students at no extra cost to himself.

Out of the hundred mums around sixty will make no money, thirty five may make a little money and maybe out of the remaining five, two will make enough to be persuaded to write a testimonial on the website.

Even if there are two Mo’s in partnership on this course that is still £60,000 profit each. And six months later he/they will be back with another similar course targeting another niche Muslim market.

The profit margins are entirely down to the course providers and it is up to each individual to decide if they are happy to purchase the course or not. For some the £1500 may be worth every penny as they have learnt loads and to others it may be a complete rip-off. The decision is down to each individual.

So, Who Can we Trust Then?

There is no list of names here for you to ponder over but what you can do is a simple sanity check on anyone offering a course:

Can I afford this course? If this answer is No, then that is all you need to know. Walk away right now and don’t look back.

If this Marketer was so successful in what he was doing, why isn’t he doing it now? By all means ask them this directly (and let me have the answers too!). My educated guess is because they make way more money selling the course than actually doing the course.

If they are still doing the course themselves are they giving you exact details of their company, what they are selling and all profit/loss incurred? It makes sense to know this as you will soon be doing the very same thing. In my experience they are usually extremely secretive about their own ventures into the same market.

How credible do the testimonials seem? At first they may seem really credible however delve a little deeper. Are they contactable and happy to provide their business model details? After all there is no point saying this course helped you make thousands but then refuse to divulge how and what you are actually selling.

What is the guarantee? If a course takes approx. six months to show any results and you are being offered a 30 day guarantee then that is about as useful as an umbrella full of holes. Also are the risks of losing your investment or making no money mentioned? If not, why not? Ask them.

In fact the key to any credibility is found by asking questions. In my experience the response, or actually the lack of response, says it all.

The unfortunate reality is though that we live in a world where instant results are desired and the risk of losing money is overshadowed by the ‘dream’ of making a six figure income as sold by the Marketer.