Those of us who spend our spare time on the Internet are exposed to unrelenting sales pitches for everything from clothes to books to health supplements to stock trades. Rather than the information, education, and entertainment we initially sought, we find we have entered an apparently unlimited yellow pages with colored, flashing ads exhorting us to pull out our credit cards and "Click Here."
Nowhere is this more rampant than in the field of Internet marketing itself. At the bleary-eyed end of a day on the computer, it sometimes seems as if everyone alive is trying to make a living online. If you still have doubts about the extent of the issue, get yourself a throwaway email address on Yahoo! or Hotmail. Then join a couple of safe list mailers. Your bulk folder will soon be stuffed with hundreds of e-mails, all trying to sell something and all guaranteeing that their product will absolutely solve your problems, make you rich, grant you the good life you have always wanted and all without breaking a sweat.
Who are all these people? They are your neighbor down the street, your uncle Jim, your daughter's fifth grade teacher, the store clerk who sold you a new suit, and the pleasant lady who delivers your mail. They are you and me and everyone we know. They are from all walks of life and all corners of the globe.
The Internet is truly democratic, catering to children playing with their parents' computer, to the poor reaching out through flickering dial-up or hunched over public computers, to adolescents blogging their inner turmoil, to business moguls amassing greater wealth through their imposing websites, to porn kings spreading their message of filth, and terrorists communicating their deadly plots.
In this mishmash of dreamers and schemers, how do we all fit in? Surrounded by purveyors of everything that exists, we are the buyers and the targets. We are the innocent victims of the unstoppable letters from Nigerian widows and their British barristers. We are the suckers who receive yet another notification of our enormous winnings in some non-existent lottery drawing. Our little in-boxes provide a conduit to the world and stuff - good, helpful, ugly, or sick - comes pouring in.
There must, literally, be a hundred thousand e-books in the vastness of cyberspace, training people how to market products, their own or somebody else's. A substantial fortune could be blown in only a few days by acquiring books, reports, videos, and software all promising a fast and effortless journey to easy street.
I'm not going to teach you to sell, or market, or promote yourself. As noted above, there are millions of resources on that already out there. So what will this book tell you? It will tell the slick sales reps and the marketing mavens and the irrepressible admen what the rest of us are looking for, what we want, what we like, and what we are going to demand.
