So this time, let us business owners rant and complain about the customers. Contrary to what you may believe, customers are not all right all the time.

Here are the 7 type of customers that I just can’t put up with, ranked in order of annoyance factor:

7) The Freeloader

They send you an email asking you to explain the ABCs of online marketing to them, but the moment you ask them to attend your seminar they start cursing you. Somehow they feel that you “owe” them an answer, but in reality their questions are so off the mark that it cannot be answered unless they have a basic understanding of how online marketing works.

They want to meet you at your office to learn more about Internet marketing or selling online, but put a price tag to your time and you’ll never hear from them again. They sometimes also want to “partner” with you but have nothing to offer in the partnership.

This guy is number 7 in my list because there’s just so many of them around that I’m used to them. They’re not really that dangerous, plus it’s easy to ignore them.

6) The All Caps Guy

SOME PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS RUDE. IT IMPLIES THAT YOU ARE SHOUTING OR ANGRY. IF YOU ARE ONE OF THEM PLEASE LOOK FOR THE “CAPS LOCK” BUTTON ON YOUR KEYBOARD. HIT THAT BYTTON AND MAGICALY YOU WILL APPEAR POLITE TO EVERYONE YOU EMAIL. YOU WILL RECEIVE MUCH BETTER RESPONSES FASTER.

This guy is only number 6 on my list because I have to consider the fact that it could be a actual mental disorder.

5) The Bookworm

This guy knows everything about everything, or at least thinks he does. He will always interrupt your presentation by asking you off-tangent questions and very often answering them himself. He is up to date with the latest Internet news, and is often disappointed when you’re not.

Every bit of rumor is important to them, and they often spend more time reading and studying than doing anything else. I’ve met a few of the Bookworms in my life and I always ask them, “Do you have a website?”.

The answer? One the following:

• Not yet, I’m drawing up a strategy
• I’m not ready yet because I need to study more
• Do I need a website? But I read in Method X by Mr. Y blah blah blah..

This guy is only number 5 because I used to be like him, so I understand.

In time this guy will realize that you don’t need to know everything. You just need to know a handful of things and put them into action.

4) Chicken Little

When I do seminar I sometimes get that one extremely negative person, the “Chicken Little” who is convinced that the sky is falling.

For whatever reason, they are just skeptical about everything. It seems like they have failed (or got “cheated” in their own words) in more things that you can imagine, but I know the reality is that they have never really tried. Since they are naturally negative and has made no effort to change, they will always look at the negative side of things.

Everything is a “scam” unless proven otherwise. Guilty till proven innocent.

The problem with negativity is that it can effect the whole group if you let it go unchecked. An effective way to silence the Chicken Little’s is to not answer their questions directly in the event itself. Deflect the negative questions whenever possible, or else the whole crowd starts becoming negative and then you’re doomed.

3) The Devil’s Advocate

This guy attends your event and tell you how much all the other events suck. How he feels ripped off because they didn’t deliver to his expectations. He will go as far as directly mentioning their names and criticizing them publicly.

For me this is a dangerous customer. Tomorrow he could easily be talking bad about me to other business owners or Internet marketers. When this guy asks me “What do you think about Mr. XXXX”, I evade the question because I know that putting others down will not help me.

It’s a trap and a disaster waiting to happen.

I will try my best to persuade him not to get my products or attend my seminars, because The Devil’s Advocate is quite good at twisting facts and any deal you make with him involves selling your soul.

2) The MLM Guy (Darth Vader)

I can’t even count how many times I’ve dealt with the deceptive MLM guy. They call you up saying that they already have their own product and would like to see if you could work something out with them in a mutually beneficial way.

Since they have bought your products, you feel obliged.

Sounds great at first, but after a few minutes with the MLM guy you realize that he’s actually trying to recruit you into his MLM business.

The “product” is actually whatever the MLM company sells, and when he says “work together” he actually means “I want to recruit you”.

I really hate the MLM guy, simply because of the level of deception involved. Time wasted that I will never get back. Plus it’s quite hard to get rid of them as they don’t seem to take No for an answer.

This guy is only number 2 because unfortunately there is another type of customer who is far worse…

(Drum roll)..

The number one spot goes to..

1) The Evil Millionaire (Satan)

This is the type of person I hate the most, because they waste a lot of your time and makes life a lot less fun. In my business I often find people who are already successful in other businesses. They drive big cars, dress well and have all the latest gadgets.

But they want to get you to work for free. Under the guise of potential business opportunities, they get in touch with you and suggest that you work together. But the “deal” often involves you putting your time and money on the line while they do almost nothing and spend no money. They want to manipulate you, but don’t realize that you can see it coming.

Even when they do pay they try to squeeze every last penny out of you. In the middle of projects they change their mind, and you’re supposed to start again from scratch. They try to push you around, because in their mind since they have paid you money, you have to do what they say.

When dealing with people like this make sure you have a well-written legally-binding agreement or you’re putting yourself at risk.

I cannot understand why people like this exist, and how they became successful in the first place. They could have manipulated their way to short-term success, but in the long term their I Win You Lose mentality will win them more enemies than friends.

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It looks like the spammers found another way to bug your life, but this time with love. They now send you fake “greeting card” messages and I’m getting like about 30-40 of them daily.

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

According to Chris Pirillo:

How can you identify these messages?

• It use a generic name instead of your real name
• It asks you to visit a website that you’ve never heard of
• It tells you that you need to download some custom software
• It asks for your bank or credit card information
• It doesn’t list who the card came from
• It lists one of your friends’ names, but your friend did not send the card

Greeting card spam is not really nothing new. But like all trends, it comes one full circle.

No related posts.

I have talked about Swiss Cash before, and the post has got so many comments it’s probably the most popular blog post right now. And quite frankly, I’m sick and tired talking about Swiss Cash.

Then yesterday someone sent me an email about Swiss Cash again. This time apparently to claim that they just had their meeting cum dinner with a Mr B.B Ng.

A quote from the email:

The long anticipated grand dinner with Marketing director Mr. BB Ng. was held executively in the Palace of Golden Horses Hotel on the 10th Sept 2006.

There were some 30 over tables so estimated 300+ investers attending. Dinner started late and the speech by Mr. BB commenced only after dinner. His speech was short which primarily emphasized that the company is growing healthly as swisscash is finding its way to many countries in Asia including Indonesia, Taiwan, India, China and many others.

Personal questions by individuals where brought by investors to him only after his speech. to summarize some points that he highlighted during his off-stage Q&A, they are as follows..

I didn’t want to bother with this information at first, but it seems like the site has some audio FAQ sessions with rare information from the top guns in Swiss Cash.

It also has some pictures you may want to see.

ATTENTION: Just because I’m sharing this doesnt mean I want to try swisscash, so don’t send me an email asking me how to sign-up for SwissCash etc. Don’t send me an email asking if I’m interested to join it either. I also have no relations or even know the website owner, so please read & download at your own risk.

Here’s the page: http://www.netbizsolutions.com/swisscash.html

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1. SwissCash – What’s Your Opinion? I try to answer the questions submitted at AskGobala.com, but...

I was wondering whether SWISS CASH is reliable or rather a worthwhile investment? Lookt at SwissCash.biz, I found these:

• Average Investment Return – 20% per calendar month
• 300% Returns in 450days
• More Income for Financial Consultants
• Built USD78 million fund within 6 months of global launching
• Expected to hit USD1 Billion by 2007
• Principal guaranteed by Swiss Mutual Fund(1948)

I also found some screenshots of earnings and diagrams of how it works. Here’s the main idea of SwissCash:

By every month (30 days) of investment, you will get your monthly return based on the given percentage. You can withdraw or re-invest to gain more return. So, each investment of USD 100,000, you will get USD 300,000 in return! (USD 100,000 x 300%)

I have heard about Swiss Cash back in February 2006 but I decided not to get involved, even thought the promied returns look great on paper.

So I can’t answer this question, but if you do have experience with SwissCash, just submit your comment below.

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(thanks James)

You will find some people out there that take advantage of the fact that you know nothing about Internet marketing, and they will generally feed you these lies:

Lie: I can guarantee you the number one ranking in Google.
Fact: No one can guarantee a top 10 in Google or any other search engine, unless it’s for a unique term that no one is searching for (read more below)

Lie: World’s number one in blah blah blah “as ranked” by Google
Fact: Google does not rank or recommend anyone. They are a search engine. Even if you are number 1 in Google for a search term, it doesn’t mean that they rank you or your company as the best. It just means you have the number 1 position in the search engine.

Here’s one such claim of being number 1 in Google:

So how do you find out the truth?

First, go to inventory.overture.com and see how many people search for that term. If there is no search result, then this claim means nothing at all.

I can say that I am “ranked” number one in Google for the term “gobala krishnan”. Of course I am, because I am probably the only person with that exact spelling. Even if I am not the only person, it still doesn’t mean anything if no one is searching for “gobala krishnan”.

Now how difficult is it to get to number one in Google? Just go to Google, and type in the search term you want, surrounded by “” like the example below:

If there are less than 10,000 search results, trust me it’s very easy to get the top position for that search term. You can do it too.

Just create a new page and put the term, lets say “ohmygodiamnumberone”, into your page title, a few times in your page content, and once at the bottom of the page. Name the page ohmygodiamnumberone.html or ohmygodiamnumberone.php and link it from your main page.

Check back in 2 weeks, and I’m sure you’ll be number one. Click here to see if this page is already number one for that term.

So don’t be fooled by these claims, made by the most low life scammer to even some well-known personalities. Do your own research first!

-gk-

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