Yet another year has passed us by, and with it comes another batch of annoying, frustrating and just plain piss-you-off Internet Marketing happenings — surely there were more than 10, so leave us your comments on what we’ve missed…

10. Social Networking

We hesitate to add this one in because social networking is bound to evolve into something that has more commercial value for businesses, but dammit if you didn’t waste untold hours in 2006 trying to figure out how to fit your sorry ass alongside thousands of teenagers who think they’re going to be the next hip-hop or grunge band. Lest I remind you that more than 1 giant internet marketer made a total ass out of themselves in 2006 tyring to get a handle on how to use social networking sites – Frank Kern, Ed Dale and Marlon Sanders come immediately to mind.  Your’s truly tried some things as well, hopefully their deeply buried in the bowls of Myspace, YouTube and Flickr never to reappear and haunt us in 2007.
9. Number of Emails With “Who Else Wants To…”

Really, I’m all for having a swipe file, not re-inventing the wheel when it comes to advertising and writing web copy, but seriously, this has got to be one of the tackiest, most hideous and least original headlines finding their way into PPC ads, Webpage headlines and emails boxes by the millions in 2006.  Who else wants to ignore the Who else wants to emails in 2007?

8.  Crappy Butterfly Marketing Sites

2006 was the year of Butterfly Marketing sites being launched according to a very specific model backed by automated scripts that were designed to suck users into a funnel starting with a OTO (one time offer), free membership site, with various back-end offers designed to make all the other work (not to mention the investment in BM) worth it.  Before everyone gets their knickers in a knot, this Annoying Internet Marketing Thing is not Butterfly Marketing itself which is a decent system and solution, but rather the crappy use of it by so many marketers.  You see, people still don’t seem to understand that you need decent products and services – that it doesn’t matter how good your marketing is, if you deliver crap, then don’t waste your time and everyone else’s along the way.  I recall in one case where the freebies at the “free” membership site were nothing more than advertisements, and were still better than the One time Offer.  There are no quick fixes, focus on creating your infoproducts or service offerings first, then worry about getting them to market.

7. Guru’s Who Won’t Open Their Kimono

It became more apparent than ever in 2006 that the Guru’s are often buffering their customers from current activities and results giving them information from at least 6-months ago instead of their current findings.  A key to making a guru a guru is testing, and lots of it.  Maybe a guru in 2007 will open their Kimono and let their customers watch over their shoulder as they test various scenarios – like Terry Dean used to do in the early days of Netbreakthroughs.

6. Mindless, Frequent Emails

Seems like everyone was touting the benefit of sending a barrage of emails to their customers in 2006.  Based on the so-called success of one big-name marketer, it became okay to drench your list in mindless tips and babble – where frequency seemed to overtake quality.  2006 for me meant more use of the Unsubscribe function than ever before.  Nothing’s worse than spam except the illusion of legitimate email.

5. Podcasts That Suck!!

Has there ever been a shorter trend?  Typically any new marketing trend takes the better part of a year or more to fade away, the rise and fall of Podcasts in Internet Marketing beat that by a mile.  Entering into 2006 there were hundreds of the little bastards, boring us to tears or hitting us over the head with an annoying 10-minute advertisement recorded into something resembling a tin fruit can.  I happen to like the idea of Podcasting, but you have to be interesting, on topic, informative and most important…brief.  Thankfully, 95% of these podcasts have gone the way of the do-do bird clearing the way for the few successful podcasts that actually do warrant our time.

4. The 60+ Minute Teleseminar

Does it really take 90-minutes to share an original thought and market your product or service via teleseminar?  The guilty party’s are many from some of the biggest names in IM, I’ll include their initials only to make the game more fun (AM, YS, RS,…), all the way down to the hundreds of other Internet Marketing business builders – can we all agree that the teleseminar trend in 2007 will be 30-minutes and get to the freakin point! The one exception to the rule are teleseminars with user participation (Q&A, Brainstorming, etc…).

3. Video Explosion – But How Do You Do it?

Seems like everyone is talking about video taking the Internet Marketing word by storm.  For some, the rise of video will mean better and higher priced products, for others video presents a new medium and opportunity to drive marketing messages and exposure.  Problem is, nobody is doing a good job of explaining how to produce videos, at least not in any sort of a cost-effective way.  We’re starting to see mega seminars, but their beyond the reach of most Internet Marketers and haven’t done a good job (so far) in bringing together the video production market with IM.  There’s still a great opportunity for someone to bring the knowledge of video production into the IM space in a big way for 2007.

2.  The “Big” Launch – Enough Already!

2006 was the year the Internet Marketing community became saturated with the “big” launch.  The annoying meter ran high for two reasons – quanity and quality.  There were too many big launches following the same herd mentality AND many of them were not worth the money they charged.  Of the big launches you invested in 2006, how many would of those IM’ers would you buy from again?  Aside from a few examples, not many is what many of our subscribers are saying.  I’m certainly not against getting good money for great products, but the level of manipulation involved with the Product launch process had an overall negative affect on Internet Marketing in 2006.  What’s next in 2007 – the REALLY big launch? The reverse launch?  Hmmmm….

1. Leading You In The Wrong Direction

With very few exceptions, 2006 Internet Marketing courses, training and hype were about everything BUT the most important thing to your online success – creating your own products and/or services as the basis of your online business.  Rich Schefren hit big by convincing people they needed better strategy, planning, business building and outsourcing strategies – massively important information but then failing to help people create value through creating their own products.  On down the line, everyone was talking about techniques, business models, marketing systems and technologies – yet the vast majority of IM’ers are still wondering what the hell to sell online.  You can bet we will continue our teaching and training on creating infoproducts in 2007, it’s still the best way to build a solid income, reputation, credibility and launch-pad for even bigger profits in years to come.

Honorable Mention:  Web 2.0

What the hell is it anyway.  It’s not a platform.  It’s not a standard.  It’s not anything you can put your hands on.  It’s not one single concept.  It’s not agreed upon by anyone.  Sounds like a perfect niche to make money on doesn’t it – may take you years to explain what it’s all about, and by then we’ll be on the Web 3.0 and Web 4.0.

Ok, so that felt pretty good.  No doubt we’ve upset a good deal of people here, but that’s what the Annoying List is all about.  Please comment on our choices and list your own – I’m sure with a concerted effort, we could easily come up with 50!

Jeff