Morality In Internet Marketing

Recently I saw this thread that was teaching others how to resell online courses:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/m...aked-courses-avoid-if-youre-sensible.1260490/
A lot of people were calling him out as a "scammer", saying that this is fraud, that you need "untraceable" proxies, you can go to prison or get sued, etc etc.
I'm not a lawyer therefore I'm not going to talk about the "consequences", but I've noticed a weird pattern.

People that were calling him out as a "scammer" and a fraud were still downloading/publishing leaked IM courses in BHW, downloading nulled themes from ThemeForest, downloading nulled plugins for their WP website, and are even watching pirated movies/TV shows and playing cracked video games. All of these are exactly the same as the method above - piracy.

I saw a guy saying this in the thread:

Nope, its not allowed and will not be any soon, BH IM and BH are not the same, Gaming the system and scamming people are not the same

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Here's where the weird pattern starts, at least for me.

People consider adult dating CPA (which is WAY more scammy than the method above imo), sweepstakes, fake game hacks, cloaking, nutra & finance niches, push ads, CC submits, Clickbank's product scams & more "Blackhat IM", while reselling leaked IM courses is completely blackhat and a scam, even though there's a dedicated section for it here in BHW.

The reality is (at least in my opinion) that a lot of niches in IM for non internet marketers look like a scam for others, while for IMers it's just part of the grind. Where does it cross the line for you?

What do you consider "Blackhat IM", "Blackhat", and "Whitehat"?

Activate said:

The reality is (at least in my opinion) that a lot of niches in IM for non internet marketers look like a scam for others, while for IMers it's just part of the grind. Where does it cross the line for you?

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The lines are sometimes blurred between 'black hat' and scamming (which in no way is tolerated here).

Game the system, not people.

ContentExpert said:

The lines are sometimes blurred between 'black hat' and scamming.

There's a difference though, we 'game' the system, not people.

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How are you gaming the people with reselling online courses? They get it for cheaper & they get the content, you earn money, the only one that is losing is the course creator AKA the ‘system’, don’t you think?

But when selling nutra pills from Clickbank or selling them a BS online course from Clickbank you gaming the system?

Activate said:

How are you gaming the people with reselling online courses?

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I believe you misread my post:

ContentExpert said:

Game the system, not people.

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My response was speaking more in general too rather then to the specific thread you referenced.

By that, 'gaming the system' (system being G) means using certain techniques to rank online and so forth.

You may as well have started a thread about religion and politics, lol
(controversy)

all hail panther our leader praise be. - covered both

cannot disscuss since it's just a matter of prespective.
no need to mention that mose of those course creator is fake guru, and more scummy.
( a lot people got scammed to debt, some even loss $50 grand or more, they use brainwash technique, and even make a cult lol)
pretty sure one of the fake guru with short temper, hire social army to attack that guy

You know i've been thinking about this since i started selling clickbank products recently. And coincidentally i have to take a university course on ethics and moral this semester.
Since there are no regulations and punishments in place for doing any of these "scummy" things, if you dont do it, somebody else will. So it all comes down to your personal view on ethics.

I think as long as it doesnt cause a person any harm you're free to do whatever. Certainly there a ALOT of clickbank products I wont ever consider advertising for, but what if the product offers a cheap alternative for a very costly procedure that might or might not work? There is either potential to save alot of money or lose just a little. So if you substract the potential harm from the potential gain you have a net positive. Also applying the product cannot cause any harm to the physical body. That is how I decide what to sell and what not

Soranozori said:

You know i've been thinking about this since i started selling clickbank products recently. And coincidentally i have to take a university course on ethics and moral this semester.
Since there are no regulations and punishments in place for doing any of these "scummy" things, if you dont do it, somebody else will. So it all comes down to your personal view on ethics.

I think as long as it doesnt cause a person any harm you're free to do whatever. Certainly there a ALOT of clickbank products I wont ever consider advertising for, but what if the product offers a cheap alternative for a very costly procedure that might or might not work? There is either potential to save alot of money or lose just a little. So if you substract the potential harm from the potential gain you have a net positive. Also applying the product cannot cause any harm to the physical body. That is how I decide what to sell and what not

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Does it cause any physical harm? I guess we'll never know, perhaps it can cause harm to some people, or maybe the pill doesn't do shit and it literally has nothing inside. You can never know what's inside with these shady companies.

It's all a matter of perspective, of course somebody else will do it, but do you want to be that "somebody else"? I can pretty much guarantee that the people who buy these products aren't satisfied with their purchase.

On the other hand, you can't really get to the top without doing shady things right?

Once again, it's all a matter of perspective.

Morality? There is no morality. There are a million examples.

- Facebook limiting ad accounts or even blocking them without proper reason
- Google publishing updates, without any explanation, and destroying the income of businesses just by a blink of an eye
- Again Google for limit or suspending Adsense/Admob accounts just right before payout (happened to me!)
- Receiving a fucking LIFETIME ban on Google Adsense (how are they justifying a lifetime ban?!?!?!)
- PayPal limit accounts or holding funds (or basically destroying cashflow for businesses)

And these are just from the big corporations.

I don't want to start talking about the XYZ fake gurus on YouTube, which are promising shit just to sell a course for $497. Don't get me wrong, a course can be very helpful, but honestly, I think 90% of these guys selling Shopify courses etc., never had a successful ecommerce business running by themselves. Fake gurus. Wrong teachers. I would be happy to scam a scammer.

For myself: Yes, I am happy to take advantage of the Google Adwords $500 coupon without paying a cent, because they didn't care when they suspended my account and gave me a lifetime ban just a few hours before they had to send me $4k. I don't play after the rules anymore. In fact, I did play after the rules, but now I am trying to take advantage of them in the best possible way.

Activate said:

Does it cause any physical harm? I guess we'll never know, perhaps it can cause harm to some people, or maybe the pill doesn't do shit and it literally has nothing inside. You can never know what's inside with these shady companies.

It's all a matter of perspective, of course somebody else will do it, but do you want to be that "somebody else"? I can pretty much guarantee that the people who buy these products aren't satisfied with their purchase.

On the other hand, you can't really get to the top without doing shady things right?

Once again, it's all a matter of perspective.

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A lot of the products are what you call "churn and burn" right? Basically selling a bad product without giving a shit about long time costumers and service. Selling people hopes and dreams or "easy ways out". But the truth is people want these products. They sell like hot cakes. Are you the dumb one for taking a moral standpoint and getting "exploited" by people who give less of a shit? They are making all the money while you grind for pennys trying to be "a good person".

It really is a complex issue. Like you said if you want to make some money in this niche, you have to do what some people might consider shady. Heavily depends on your own perspective.

Soranozori said:

A lot of the products are what you call "churn and burn" right? Basically selling a bad product without giving a shit about long time costumers and service. Selling people hopes and dreams or "easy ways out". But the truth is people want these products. They sell like hot cakes. Are you the dumb one for taking a moral standpoint and getting "exploited" by people who give less of a shit? They are making all the money while you grind for pennys trying to be "a good person".

It really is a complex issue. Like you said if you want to make some money in this niche, you have to do what some people might consider shady. Heavily depends on your own perspective.

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Exactly! The people who are buying these products, after all they're the ones who are working for the guys who are doing the shitty shady stuff right? Do you want to join them?
Like we both said, it's all about perspective.

Forget about morals in this business. It's all about persuading/manipulating people to give you their money. If it also helps people that's good, but we all do it for our egoitistical profit, not to help others with something. Everyone who talks BS about caring about others, win-win situation and all that super cute stuff is lying to you and to themselves (such an hypocrisy). I was also an idealist before, but real world changed my perspective.

As you say; matter of perspective.

But I feel like game hacks and content locking overall is fine, since the person doing it 9/10 doesn't lose any money, just 5mins of their time.

Re-selling "cracked" courses is scummy, yes. But in that particular case I feel it's even good, cause the scums writing those courses are fake gurus that "scam" people out of millions of dollars. If somebody sells it for 1/10th of the price AND don't upsell the customer a bunch of bullshit, then that's better, but not good.

DunderMannen said:

As you say; matter of perspective.

But I feel like game hacks and content locking overall is fine, since the person doing it 9/10 doesn't lose any money, just 5mins of their time.

Re-selling "cracked" courses is scummy, yes. But in that particular case I feel it's even good, cause the scums writing those courses are fake gurus that "scam" people out of millions of dollars. If somebody sells it for 1/10th of the price AND don't upsell the customer a bunch of bullshit, then that's better, but not good.

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The game hacks niche sounds relatively whitehat when you think about it - you only waste 5 minutes of a kid's time, right?

Well, it depends on what you promote imo.
CC submits? F*cked up, and they're all pretty tempting for children (in case you don't know, after 2 days they charge you like $35/mo with hoping that you won't notice). Pin submits are also pretty much the same but they get into your phone bill instead. Sweepstakes? Pretty much a bunch of children submitting their real life info (after the email submit) which will then be sold to hundreds of companies, less immoral than the others but whatever, you get the point.

The only thing I'd agree with you on is CPI, since it's just downloading an app, 100% harmless.

Forget "morality", game hacks has that kind of "myth" that it's harmless for kids, but when you dig deeper it really isn't, it all depends on what you promote.

Activate said:

The game hacks niche sounds relatively whitehat when you think about it - you only waste 5 minutes of a kid's time, right?

Well, it depends on what you promote imo.
CC submits? F*cked up, and they're all pretty tempting for children (in case you don't know, after 2 days they charge you like $35/mo with hoping that you won't notice). Pin submits are also pretty much the same but they get into your phone bill instead. Sweepstakes? Pretty much a bunch of children submitting their real life info (after the email submit) which will then be sold to hundreds of companies, less immoral than the others but whatever, you get the point.

The only thing I'd agree with you on is CPI, since it's just downloading an app, 100% harmless.

Forget "morality", game hacks has that kind of "myth" that it's harmless for kids, but when you dig deeper it really isn't, it all depends on what you promote.

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Yes, very true. Although that's why I said "9/10 times" because most people just do sweeps/CPI. The others don't convert very well...

Go Greyhat.

Do whatever you feel comfortable with that's my perspective. If you choose a more risky method be sure to CYA.

nakamura said:

Morality? There is no morality. There are a million examples.

- Facebook limiting ad accounts or even blocking them without proper reason
- Google publishing updates, without any explanation, and destroying the income of businesses just by a blink of an eye
- Again Google for limit or suspending Adsense/Admob accounts just right before payout (happened to me!)
- Receiving a fucking LIFETIME ban on Google Adsense (how are they justifying a lifetime ban?!?!?!)
- PayPal limit accounts or holding funds (or basically destroying cashflow for businesses)

And these are just from the big corporations.

I don't want to start talking about the XYZ fake gurus on YouTube, which are promising shit just to sell a course for $497. Don't get me wrong, a course can be very helpful, but honestly, I think 90% of these guys selling Shopify courses etc., never had a successful ecommerce business running by themselves. Fake gurus. Wrong teachers. I would be happy to scam a scammer.

For myself: Yes, I am happy to take advantage of the Google Adwords $500 coupon without paying a cent, because they didn't care when they suspended my account and gave me a lifetime ban just a few hours before they had to send me $4k. I don't play after the rules anymore. In fact, I did play after the rules, but now I am trying to take advantage of them in the best possible way.

Click to expand...

I would suggest for anyone discussing morality in IM (or in business for that matter) to read this post over and over, period.