Having a fairly high profile in the online world has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand it increases your sphere of influence and allows you to affect what many people are thinking or doing. On the other hand it sometimes attracts negative reactions and comments. You’ve probably heard the saying that if you aren’t attracting at least some criticism then you are doing something wrong. That’s fairly accurate and I think you will find that some of the people who you really admire have attracted criticism at some stage in their career.

The words ‘scam’ and ‘scammer’ do seem to be thrown around a little too liberally. Many of the people I have worked with or alongside have at some point been called various names and quite often the criticism comes from people who are frustrated with a lack of success, or disappointed with the support they have received and are looking for somewhere to vent. That’s not to say that scams don’t exist – there are plenty of people out there who are quite willing to take your money and give you nothing in return. A good example of that was the ‘ponzi’ scheme that landed Bernie Madoff in federal court.

Quite a few online marketing related products have attracted negative reviews, but generally speaking those reviews appear a year or two after the release of the product. That’s usually because the products or techniques have a limited shelf life for taking action. If you look at how the Internet has evolved over the past 10 years there is a definite cycle where a particular strategy works exceptionally well for 1-2 years and then the search engines make some changes or the focus shifts and the strategies that were generating income for everyone who was using them are now only working for the people who were quick to take action.

With that in mind, it really is important to take action straight away rather than waiting until the focus has shifted to other techniques or strategies.