Today I removed myself from several mailing lists of people I had a lot of respect for — people whose products that I have purchased and/or recommended to others, people who I thought were honorable and created good value through their lists. Why did I remove myself, you you may ask? I removed myself because all of them (including Jeff Walker himself) have bombarded me with e-mails about the Product Launch Formula before, during, and after its release on Tuesday this week. It is bad enough to get an e-mail or two per day from the creator of the program — getting one or two e-mails from each of 8 people per day for a week is completely out of control. (In fact, Jeff himself will probably send our 4-5 e-mails today alone because his program is allegedly closing tonight.)

Yes, I understand that you need to make money. Yes, I understand that you are an affiliate of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula and you stand to get a cut of the TWO-THOUSAND DOLLAR PRICE TAG on this thing if I buy it. The problem is that I used to have respect for all of you, which is why I was gracious enough to give you my contact information and trust the e-mails that you sent me. I have since lost respect for a lot of people over this product.

Here is why you have wasted my time and caused me to lose respect for you.

1. E-mail Overload

I have received over 45 e-mails in less than a week for a product I will not buy. Enough said.

2. Lengthy Videos

All these emails had a link to this page where there is a 30-minute sales video and a button that says "Get Started Today!" That is it. If I didn’t have 30 minutes to listen to this guy drone on, I could use the little progress bar to click ahead to the end where Jeff Walker (around the 27-minute mark) finally tells you that the program is priced at nearly $2k. Had I listened to all 30 minutes only to find out he was selling a $2k program, I would have been even more pissed.

I’m sorry, but someone who takes 30 minutes to get to the point really has no respect for my time and doesn’t deserve my business.

3. Hiding the Price

Not only it the price not mentioned until the end of that final video (and this is the 5th or 6th video of his that I have seen), it is not mentioned in ANY of those e-mails. In fact, you have to dig pretty hard around the internet to find the price anywhere, and all you can come up with is the price from a launch of an earlier version of the product.

4. Affiliates Galore

Do you know who is talking about the product? People who are going to financially gain if you buy it. There are very few independent reviews of it, and the course descriptions during the launch process are pretty vague as well. Do you really think you are going to earn my respect talking about "Jeff Walker, that Great Guy" instead of giving me an actual hard review of the offerings?

5. The Precedent

Will Jeff Walker make money from launching this program? I’m sure he will make something, and so will his affiliates — but the reason why I won’t be buying into it is because he is setting this precedent of building hype for his launch instead of building relationships. After all these e-mails, videos, and Googling I have done on this subject, what more do I know about Jeff Walker? Nothing much really, other than this is the 3rd version he has released of this product, he likes to just talk you through the slides you can download and read faster than he talks, and his products are rather expensive. I have also found out that he is now offering some sort of product creation course, although for some reason that I can not understand, you take this course after you take the product launch course.

Do I know what his coaching methods are? No. Do I know what his coaching calls are going to be like? No. Do I even know if I will like him? No. He even added some sort of limited-caller, last-minute Q&A session to answer last-minute calls before the close of the program tonight, but I shouldn’t have to rearrange my day and spend my valuable time researching his stuff so I can give him my money. If you want my money, you should try picking up a copy of Scott Stratten’s book, Unmarketing, and learn how to reach out and engage your potential customers.

Tell me, who in their right mind purchases something with this sort of price tag without any sort of test drive? Imagine going into a car lot and asking to buy a car. The salesman tells you "You have to buy the car and then I will give you a money-back guarantee so that you may return the car within 30 days if you don’t like it." This program is asking you for a $2k loan while you decided if you like the product (and he can keep your money) or if you don’t (and you can hope he gives you a refund as promised).

People, please. Common sense. Stop the info product overload insanity. Stop buying this stuff from people who engage in these kinds of tactics. Stop peddling this stuff if it’s going to make you look bad or you haven’t personally tried it yourself. Stop wasting all of my time. And please stop spamming me. This stuff is not okay. This guy is not the first person (or the last) to engage in these kinds of tactics — he just happens to be the target of this discussion for today because of his gratuitous spamming. So all of you, PLEASE JUST STOP IT.

I look forward to your flaming and comments below.

The Definition of Spam

When most people think of spam, they think of bulk emails with odd subjects, like “Enjoy your wanted meds” and “The most insane action”, but spam can come in many forms: bulk e-mail, unwanted/soliciting e-mail, junk blog comments, forum spam, text messaging from unknown senders, and so on. Simply put, it’s the abuse of electronic media to send other people something that they don’t want.

Spam comes with many costs that most people don’t consider. These costs can include:

• Wasted Time.
  I get several hundred spam messages a day. This means that I spend a significant portion of my workweek dealing with spam instead of actually doing productive work. If you multiply that by everyone else getting the same amount of spam, it adds up to a serious hit to our economy. Additionally, practices like spamming search engines, forums and blogs waste the time of the staff that have to deal with them as well as the people searching for information that have to sort through multiple pages of spam to find what they are looking for.
• Hardware costs.
  On an average day, I get 1-10 spam messages for every legitimate message. This means that my e-mail provider must give me at least 10 times the amount of mail storage capacity that I would require if I wasn’t getting any spam. This concept works across the board—blog and forum spam requires extra server space to handle the increased database load, text messaging spam requires additional infrastructure to handle the load, search engine spam requires additional server farms, and so on.
• Software costs.
  Developing software that can prevent and handle spam is expensive, and it must be updated frequently to stay ahead of the spammers’ capabilities.
• Payroll costs.
  Who handles all this spam? Your employees, from your IT staff right down to every user on your network who deletes spam messages from their inbox on company time.
• Theft losses.
  Malicious spam, usually in the form of phishing scams, is responsible for personal losses such as credit card fraud and identity theft. These personal losses also work on a corporate level for the fraud teams that handle these kinds of cases at banks, credit card companies, and other financial institutions.
• Legal fees.
  The cost of fighting spam through legal means, both criminal and civil, is paid both by private companies and taxpayers. Our government spends both time and money fighting spam that could be allocated to other resources.

The bottom line is this: Spam costs us all! So what can we do to prevent it and fight it?

Anti-Spam Technology

After updating and relaunching this site, I began to receive numerous spam comments on my posts. To combat this, I installed a piece of software based on CAPTCHA technology. The idea behind CAPTCHA is to use a simple task to tell a computer and a human apart. For the most part with blogs, humans are legitimate posters, and computers are automated spamming devices. I am using a piece of code called reCAPTCHA, which fights spam while also digitizing printed material! (I don’t have space to explain this here, so check out the link—it’s pretty cool.)

For your e-mail, many programs contain spam filtering. I use gmail for my e-mail servers, which does a pretty good job of spam filtering. The real problem with spam filters, however, is not the ones the filter misses that get through—it’s the accidental legitimate e-mails that the filter catches. I found that out a while back when I got PM from Rich Sloan in the StartupNation Community, asking me why I wasn’t responding to his e-mails. Apparently Google decided he was a spammer for a few weeks and was filtering out his e-mails! (I told gmail to mark them as not spam and it seemed to resolve itself, so the technology can learn.)

How to NOT SPAM Anyone, Ever

This blog uses FeedBurner to distribute posts in a newsletter-like fashion. To get on this list, you must sign yourself up and confirm your subscription. I use this same technology for a lot of my clients, and I can’t tell you how many have asked how to import their mailing lists into FeedBurner. The answer is this: You can’t. This is opt-in technology. Your users have to sign themselves up—you can’t just toss them on your list. This is the way it should be! Here are a few of my tips on how to not become a spammer yourself:

• Don’t purchase lists, and don’t sell your list.
  Building a list from the ground up is time-consuming but it is just a fact of life for businesses these days. Purchasing a list guarantees that you will end up sending unwanted advertisements to people who did not ask to be on your list. EVEN IF this practice is somewhat effective for you because 10% of this list buys from you, you have just spammed the other 90% of the people. (Refer to the costs above and quit being so selfish!) The only exception to this rule is if you are submitting material to an already-established list whose readers have chosen to receive information from you. An example of this is an opt-in list which asks its users if they would like to receive information from related 3rd party companies.
• Only send e-mail to people who expect it.
  The worst offense is people who send large attachments to unsuspecting victims. If you don’t know who the e-mail should go to at a company, or if they will be interested in your business/product/pitch/information, do your research or pick up the phone and ask!
• Don’t spam your friends.
  When clients of mine launch a new company, they often have a list of family, friends, former colleague and business associates that they want to tell. Go ahead and group your contacts and send each group a tailored message about your launch, but you only get to do it ONCE. After that, they can sign up for your newsletter or updates if they want to. (Encourage signing up by making it easy and giving them a valuable reason to do so.) If they don’t sign up, let it go.

For more tips, see the resources section below.

When SPAM Pushes You Over the Edge

To end this article on a slightly funny note, I think it’s worth mentioning a few recent extreme spam-fighting measures.

Our first comes from Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine, who got so fed up with spam that he decided to post a long list of people who have recently spammed him. The even longer discussion in the comments that follow is just priceless.

Our second link comes from a guy who was unfortunately given a very common name. So common, in fact, that he’s been privy to way too much information about other people. Read about it in Return to Sender.

Additional Resources

• Nine ways to combat spam
  Note: Writing your email as "name [AT] domain [DOT] com" really doesn’t work anymore. The automated e-mail harvesters have wised up to that practice.
• Best Practices to Help Prevent Spam
  with Microsoft Outlook
• Security and privacy 101: how to prevent spam
  from HP
• WordPress SPAM Tools
• Preventing Comment Spam
  from Google
• Proper Usage of Forums, Blogs and Mailing Lists,
  part of my 5 Steps to Marketing Your Website series at StartupNation
• Preventing spam on your website without using captcha