The opinions expressed in this post are my own. They are based on actual events that happened. Some of what is written is my own, subjective, and personal reaction to those events.
I needed help with a product that I had purchased from Joe Cooper (of 1AffiliateSite.com) some time back. Every contact / support link given for both the product in question and for Joe himself were broken. Kaput. Emails sent to him bounced.
In other words, he was untouchable (and no, I didn’t send a letter to the postal address listed in his emails — so perhaps he wasn’t completely out of reach, but for an online product, don’t you think that having an online method to contact the product owner is reasonable?).
Guess what just popped into my Inbox? Yes, an email from Joe Cooper, and a golden opportunity for me to unsubscribe.
His father wrote a fiction book some time back. I purchased a copy because Joe wanted a good thing; he wanted to give his father a #1 ranking for the book on Amazon.uk. Hey, why not — I thought — I think that Joe was doing a good thing for his Dad, so I bought a copy. Honoring your parents is a good thing and demonstrates the kind of character that I like to see.
That was the last I heard from him until now, when his father has another book that he’s about to launch.
Fool me once, shame on you… Fool me twice, shame on me. No “shame on me” for this one. I’m not buying the book and I’m sure not going to stay subscribed to any of his mailing lists. I suspect that I am not the only person who will respond to this email as I did.
While I think that Joe wants some good things, I am not at all impressed with the way he has hidden himself from potential customer service issues. While I was not happy about not being able to get the support I needed (which caused me to cancel a very interesting project), I was content to unsubscribe from his list, put the incident behind me, and move on. But since he has “suddenly” shown up once again, acting as if everything is just as fine as fine can be, I feel compelled to write about my experiences here in case somebody else should ever have questions about him. To me, this is a perfect example of abusing your customer list and quite frankly, I don’t like it one bit. Or I at least dislike it enough to blog about it.
Another possible explanation might go along the lines of what we far too often see in the Internet Information Marketing arena nowadays: somebody smells the money, releases a lot of products, doesn’t plan for the support issues (all they hear is “build a list of buyers and hammer the dogsnot out of them with offers to buy more stuff”), and then panics and hides because they either can’t — or don’t want to — deal with the support issues and the 1,001 other things that go along with running a successful business.
If this is the case with you (even if you’re not “Joe”), the answer is to face your problem, fulfill your obligations, learn your lesson, set up a support system that doesn’t require your presence 24/7, and factor the cost of support into future products. Don’t try to run and hide — and above all, don’t run and hide, only to show your face again the next time you “need” something from your list (even if that “something” is good, like honoring your parents).
It’s all part of the growth process; we all go through it (at least the successful marketers) and we can learn a lot from it IF we face up to it. I’ve seen a lot of “young gun” marketers do this very thing who, in turn, accept their responsibilities, seek wise counsel, work through their problems, and emerge victorious on the other side. I really like and respect those who take this approach.
Remember, this is just a biased account of my personal experience with Joe. Your experience may be different. My instinct tells me that Joe isn’t a bad person; he just did some things that got out of control and he didn’t know how to respond, so he just ignored them and cut himself off from his customers. Nevertheless, it takes a lot of nerve to send another email, asking for me to once again buy something…
