The “Instant Niche Expert” Fraud

Hello, Internet Marketers! How many of you have heard this before:

• Find a “hot” niche market where people are buying stuff.
• Spend a few hours doing research and collecting information.
• Label yourself an “expert” because you now know more than 98% of the population.
• Start creating the products for your product funnel, from your giveaway PDF to your high priced coaching program.
• Cash the checks.
• Realize you are in over your head and sell the business to somebody who knows the market and the topic.
• Lather, rinse, repeat.

OK, the line in italics isn’t usually part of the formula, but I added it anyway. Truth is, a lot of people are told to sell the business to get their profits out of it, then move on. That’s what they’re told. My subjective, unproven truth is that most of these people who sell let out a huge sigh of relief once they do so because they realized that they aren’t experts, that they aren’t fooling anybody, and they no longer have to worry about “The Emperor’s New Clothes” (Wikipedia it if you don’t know what that means).

This type of marketing is borderline fraud, in my opinion, because you end up selling high priced garbage to the public that you have no business selling. You aren’t an expert by following this system; you’re a beginner who has done a bit more research than most will do, and passing yourself off as an instant expert just isn’t right.

Take my field: computer security. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years and hold a whole bunch of certifications, including the CISSP, GCIA, and Security+. I think I know garbage in my field when I see it.

Once I picked up the private label rights (PLR) to an ebook on home computer security. I set out to re-write it so that I could use it in my business. There was just one problem: The thing was such a putrid pile of garbage that I couldn’t use it. The writer obviously didn’t know a worm from a trojan horse but was trying to pawn this sucker off on unsuspecting people who were following the “instant expert” formula. Sadly, people were undoubtedly selling this book to unsuspecting consumers, many of whom thought that they were safe after doing what the book said to do. Very sad.

It takes a long time to become an expert at most things; if it didn’t, everybody would be an expert and there would be no premium price on your products and services. As I learned from Brian Tracy, your ability to get paid for your skill depends on the demand for that skill, how well you do it, and how difficult it would be to replace you. That’s why cleaning tables at the local mall food court doesn’t pay as well as the job I hold — and that’s why you aren’t an expert after spending a few hours surfing the Internet, researching a topic (unless that topic is “How To Clean Tables At Your Local Mall’s Food Court” — and even then you’d probably get parts of it wrong or leave out important things…). If you got to where you are after only a few hours of dubious research, it won’t be hard to replace you.

I suspect that some of my Internet Marketing colleagues aren’t going to like this post too terribly much, but I’m making it anyway. There’s a huge difference between knowing more than most people and being an expert. Yes, you can help people with what you do know (and there’s nothing wrong with earning a living from doing this), even if you are not an expert, but trying to pawn yourself off as an expert just hours after discovering that a topic exists is unethical.

And here’s a tip for you, FTC: Start cracking down on these self-proclaimed “instant experts”. In my opinion, doing this will help you clean up the Internet a lot faster and better than trying to enforce your new affiliate and testimonial rules.