Nothing will ruin your online business faster than being misleading or dishonest with people.
About eight months ago an online friend of mine decided she would start her own traffic exchange. She asked me to help her and because she had helped me in the past I readily agreed. I promoted her traffic exchange heavily and signed up almost 400 new people for her in 4 months. She did not pay me directly for doing this but each time one of the new people I signed up bought something from her new traffic exchange I received a commission . But out of the 400 or so people I signed up only 7 bought something from her. That is less than 2% and based upon my other experiences with traffic exchanges 2% is an incredibly low number.
At one point during this time frame my friend IM’d me and asked how I was getting so many new people to sign up. Now she had asked me this question many times in the past but I never really answered her but on that day I swore her to secrecy and I told her about a good website where you can post affiliate links and people will sign up if they are interested. The site was just one small place I use for this purpose and luckily it was the only place I told my friend about. I say luckily because as soon as I told her about this site she IM’d another person she knows and told him about it. I knew this because within 20 minutes he posted his link on the same site.
When I asked my friend why she gave this information to the other person after swearing to me she would not tell anyone, she at first denied it but then said she may have let it slip but not on purpose. It got me wondering so I decided to check my payments from her and found out she had shorted me $29.00. I asked her to check the money she owed me and she said without looking anything up that she was sure she had paid me everything she owed me. I told her I checked my PayPal account compared to what she owed me for my referrals purchases and it was short $29.00.
Then my friend did something right out of the new Fox TV show, Lie to Me.
She did not go and check her payments to me or anything but immediately said she would credit my account the $29.00 and that’s what she did. The fact that she immediately credited me the money without checking told me she had lied to me. She knew very well she owed me the money but was hoping I would miss it. If she was unsure she would have gone and checked.
All of this made me question just what kind of friend I had. I naturally started to wonder about the under 2% purchases made by my referrals. Was my “friend” playing games with my referrals and denying me commissions she could then keep for herself? The under 2% purchase number was incredibly low, especially for a new traffic exchange. I decided I would no longer promote her traffic exchange. If you cannot trust someone’s honesty online you do not want to do business with them because it’s just to easy to get scammed online.
Apparently I was not the only one wondering this. My “friend” had built her traffic exchange from nothing to over 3,000 members in 4 months who were surfing over 40,000 pages per day. Today, just 4 months later, her traffic exchange has hit the skids.
Whereas she used to get over 300 new members a week, she now is lucky to get 20 new members in any given week. And her pages surfed total has dropped from 40,000 to below 10,000 pages per day now. Obviously the doubts I learned to have about her honesty and trustworthiness are shared by many others.
Image via Wikipedia
Nothing will ruin your online internet business faster than being dishonest with people. Nobody wants to do business with people they cannot trust. This is especially true online where people can cheat and scam you in an incredible amount of new and ever growing ways. When doing business online the old adage that honesty is the best policy still applies.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 am
Very well written and excellent point. This honesty extends to other areas as well. While I use a pen name for my Triond publications, I am honest about my age and my gender. I have observed sufficient cases where dishonesty in these areas can also cause problems.
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:55 am
agreed! another very needed article. misrepresentation will catch up with you eventually.
March 23rd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
You are so right in what you say, it’s never worth being otherwise.
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
The truth is always the best policy. One lie will lead to another and you will soon be so mixed up you wont remember what you first lied about. I know someone who does that and nobody believes a word he says.
March 24th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
This is a nice one. Hope this will motivate people of corrupted mind from losing a big deal for a smaller one.
Wherever you consider life, honesty is always da best policy and we really dont have any other choice indeed!