A couple weeks ago, I wrote a post over at my other blog about a similar situation as the one I’m writing about today.

I recently joined an online course and was immediately presented with two free audios. I did what I always do and googled the people who were speaking in the audios. One of the speakers had a wonderful website that offered free audios. I signed up and received access to the free audios. Simple. Just like the process should be.

The other website also had free audios advertised. That website, however, did not make the process of requesting them simple. I did request them, but they were not provided. I was told that I had to PURCHASE the audios. Now, me being me, I made a little video of my experiences. I’ll post that below for you to see. (ed note: I’ve removed said video and will explain why at the bottom of this post)

What you need to realize, if you are going to do business online, is that your potential customers see what you do. They see it and they can blog about it and make videos about it and tell the world all about your bait & switch scams. Bad word of mouth travels fast, but nowadays on the internet – it travels way faster. Bottom line…never promise anything you are not willing to deliver. If a customer comes to you and says they didn’t get XYZ and they show you proof that you offered it, GIVE IT TO THEM.

I highly recommend anyone who is considering doing business with Penny Sansevieri (or Sanseveri as some spell it) watch the video below and decide for yourself if this is someone you want to do business with or not. It’s sad that there are people like this in the world today, but there are and they are all around us. Many times, they come highly recommended by some other “guru” who doesn’t care that they are a scam artist. Many times they don’t consider things like promising free stuff and then not delivering it a scam. But it is!!
Feel free to comment below about the video. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Also, if you know of other bait & switch scams like this, let me know. I’ll be happy to expose them for you. We have to stick together and tell these scam artists that we are NOT GOING TO STAND FOR IT anymore!!

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UPDATE:

I deleted the video because Penny Sansevieri contacted me personally to apologize for the links in her site that went nowhere. She is in the process of redoing the site as I type. I look forward to seeing her updated site at http://amarketingexpert.com when it is ready.

You may ask – why not just remove the post? I’m not removing the post because the content is still relevant. If we expose these things one at a time, maybe we can change the internet mentality one at a time. You never know.

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Make it a great day!!

You will NEVER – NEVER be successful if you can not follow simple directions. You will NEVER be successful if you cause the person you want help from to get caught up in an endless email loop trying to schedule a time to talk to you. When I run across people like this, I don’t even bother replying. I don’t need to beg for business and I don’t need to chase you down and make you work with me.

Why would I do that? Why would I turn away business? It’s really very simple. You can’t pay me enough money to help you have success. No matter what I do, you will never be successful because you can’t follow directions. I’m really doing you a favor by not taking your money until there comes a time when you can do a simple task. If you want help from someone, read every email they send you. Make sure you understand what is being asked of you. DO THAT. Don’t do something different. My business works because I have set boundaries and I have a set way of doing things. If everyone schedules appointments with me in a different way, my business would not work and appointments would be missed. Learn from that.

Bottom line – if you want to be successful in business, learn to do simple things that are asked of you.

I am totally shocked when I see websites that were built by so-called professionals.

Here’s an email that I received recently:

Hi Roxanne,

I came across your website after doing a search on the internet. I see that you help local businesses get listed on the internet. I own a construction company in (city/state removed). 4 years ago I paid a guy $2500 to build a website for me and do what he said was optimize it. He told me that everyone has a website and if I get mine now I’ll be ahead of the game. My website is (website removed). I did the test you have on your website. I googled construction in (city/state removed). My website isn’t anywhere on the first 5 pages. I gave up looking after that. Can you help me?

Sincerely,
(name/company removed)

This is SAD!!! I went to the website in question. Here is my response to this gentleman:

Hi (name removed),

I took a look at your site. It is actually a nicely built website with great visual appeal. However…the old saying “If you build it, they will come” does not apply here. The search engines use a number of different criteria to decide what sites to list when someone does a search. One thing they look at is the coding behind the site. I looked at the coding behind your site and the person who built it knew nothing about coding the site for the search engines.

I’m sure this all sounds like a foreign language to you at this point. Unfortunately, the bottom line is, 4 years ago, you paid a guy $2,500 to do a $500 job. There are many people who think they know what they are doing, but in reality, do not. Your website (if he had done his job properly) should have been listed in the search engines within a month and (again, if he had done his job properly) should have netted you well over $2,500 in business over the past 4 years. The website was not coded properly and you have not had that additional business.

Fortunately, I can help. I would love to discuss this further with you. You are about 15 minutes away from me. Can we meet at (place removed) for coffee and discuss your options? I know you are entering your busy time, so if you can give me 2 or 3 specific times over the next week or two that work for you, I will make one of them work for me.

I look forward to talking with you.

Warm Regards,

Roxanne Green
Internet Marketing Consultant
315-236-2119

I am appalled at how someone can take that amount of money from a person and basically do next to nothing for them. He did design a great looking site with lots of photos of the construction. However, photos do not get picked up by the search engines unless THEY are properly coded. Naming them img1, img2, etc… will not get them picked up.

If you have a website for your local business, do the test HERE. If your website doesn’t pass the test, contact me for a free consultation.