Joel Comm is a Sleazy Marketer
Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by Nick Sullivan under Internet Marketing
Joel Comm, supposed, self-proclaimed AdSense guru recently released the 4th edition of his AdSense Secrets eBook series.
With this release he made a big mistake and slightly tricked people into paying for more than they had originally thought they were going to. He is selling the eBook at an impressingly cheap price of $9.95. Did you think there was no catch at that price though? Joel used a negative opt-out marketing technique which automatically had a box ticked for you to subscribe to his monthly newsletter for $29.95 a month.
Supposedly, and I haven’t seen it - the original format / layout made it very hard to spot this option given the 90’s like, vintage, super-long sales letter page with a small option you had to UNTICK to NOT subscribe to this service.
This is pretty sly marketing. Although, no doubt I’m sure Joel made a killing using this old fashioned technique which although not illegal, is very sneaky. The average user usually scrolls down fast to look for the buy it now button, if they’re convinced already that it’s worth buying. In credit to him, this is an option, not a requirement. So, as long a potential buyer did read everything carefully, they would / should of spotted it… it’s just not in most people’s nature to do so. And I’m pretty sure he knew that.
He’s now made a public apology for this ‘mistake’ and accepted it was a bad move on his part. As well as this he’s corrected the issue by clearly setting apart the two options at the bottom of the sales page. I don’t really take the apology as much though as he knew what he was doing and given how rich he is I think it was pretty sleazy to sort of trick people into paying for more than advertised.
To be honest, I’ve always thought his marketing looked sleazy. In the sense that it looks outdated and very 90’s like. Obviously his techniques, or rather, the techniques in which he employs work very well, this doesn’t justify a sleazy marketing move like this. He could of just been totally genuine and used the more modern, preferred method of an opt-in option for an EXTRA service. It shouldn’t of been ticked by default. The technique of having the box ticked by default has been used to negative effect before. Most notably by BearShare when they had the option to set their Google homepage as your default homepage ticked automatically. They had a bad reaction from it, just like anybody who has done it.
I think Joel should of anticipated people would obviously notice and it would invenvitably lead to a backlash. I’m nowhere near as experienced in this game as Joel Comm but even I wouldn’t use this outdated technique. Come on Joel, you’re better than this. I hope. I’m not going to even insult you as my readers by putting an affiliate link to his eBook in this post, buy something else 
(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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April 22nd, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I disagree. It’s one thing to have sleazy internet marketing practices, but making a public apology is really hard to do. The fact that you refuse to accept this is kind of bothering me, if a guy turns around and admits he was wrong, changing his policy along the way, you need to lay off and at least not start up more hateful bashing posts about him.
If you were in his position, I’m sure you would feel the same way.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Well I obviously do accept the apology, when I said I don’t take it as much I mean it’s not worth much considering he’s a very experienced Internet marketer who knows all about these techniques. So it was clear he was trying to get away with it and then it backfired.
And I wouldn’t be in his position because I would never try to trick a customer.
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:36 pm
At the end of your post you say you aren’t going to insult us by putting a link to the product in your post, but you did in fact put a link in the very first paragraph of the post…
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
No, I said I’m not going to insult you by putting an AFFILIATE link to the product. The link in the first paragraph is a direct link.