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Business Ethics
Black Hat Marketing in the Web Templates Industry
There is a strange trend among some types of website template designers. These web template designers are venturing into Black Hat Marketing techniques when they label their designs in ways to entice non-suspecting good folks to buy their templates and/or try to justify a higher price. These types of designers are trying anything to get a toe hold on their declining sales. Having been around for more than 11 years we have seen this type of mindset countless times.
What does Black Hat marketing mean? Quite frankly it means anything that is not honest including but not limited to tricking people into doing whatever the webmaster wants them to do.
If you are a consumer than you know that honesty is always the best policy when you are trying to establish trust and grow relationships. As a consumer wouldn't you want to feel you could trust the merchants you do business with?
Template designers who mislead people into buying their designs often label their templates as:
- Adsense Ready Templates
- Adsense Compatible Web Templates
- W3C Validated Web Templates
- Affiliates Website Templates
- Full Website Templates (meaning a fully developed website)
- [insert other misleading Label or Niche here] Web Templates, etc.
Why on earth would a template designer do this? Well, here's why .....
It takes six times the effort and expense to find a new customer than it does to resell to an existing customer. If a template designer is consistantly coming up with what is technically called Black Hat marketing techniques to trick someone into buying your product, they are not establishing solid relationships with their existing or potential customers who visit their website. They might trick a customer into buying an overpriced or niche-labeled misleading product once or maybe even twice. But once the buyer figures out they have been scammed, the designer has lost their business and respect forever.
Although we are sure most template designers who intentionally mislead people into buying their designs are deep down good people, they are simply caught in a loop mindset and cannot seem to get out. Because they might have successfully tricked someone into buying a product one or twice, that momentary adrenline rush is addictive, and they cannot stop long enough to see that they are harming their business and their customers' relationship with them more than they are actually providing a valuable product or service.
If you suspect a web template provider is using Black Hat marketing techniques, let us know. We have a growing list (now over 16) of them, and we can help you decide whether their niche labeled designs are a value or simply a trick. Yes, we would love for you to buy our templates, BUT more importantly we dislike seeing good folks tricked into buying a product that is not effective nor affordable for their website's goals and target market.
Think of it this way. Would it be a Black Hat marketing technique if I took a Snicker candy bar, removed the packaging and replaced it with a wrapper that was labeled "Pet Owners Candy Bar", "Good For Your Website Chocolate", "Internet Marketers Power Snack" or "Affiliates Candy Bar" and then sold it to non-suspecting people for 10 times its original retail value? Of course!
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