Pedro Sttau

The answer is quite straight forward, because he simply tells you NOT too, over and over again. And yes, in case you are wondering it’s the disclosure issue again.

Let me just give provide some of the background so that everyone knows what I am talking about.

First and foremost, I have nothing against Shoemoney, I am using him as an example simply because he is one of the most straight forward people I have ever seen in this industry, making it very easy to user him as an example.

Jeremy believes that there is nothing wrong with “subliminal advertising”; that ethically there is no wrong doing in delivering a shinny review of a product/service with the sole objective of selling the product through a hidden affiliate link. To put it more blatantly, the idea is pretty much “believe in me if you want, but take note that I might just be trying to sell you something”.

I must admit that my first draft for this post was a complete an absolute bash of the way Jeremy conducts his business. I won’t be getting too much into it, mainly because I was rushing myself to conclusions, but the apparent moral aspect of the issue is quite obvious… or is it?

While I wrote the post something in the back of my mind kept bugging me, and its all goes down to the concept of freedom, Freedom of choice to be specific.
It’s just too easy to criticize someone that has clearly always been so opened with his business practices, especially when one of these practices seems at a first glance unethical and wrong.

So if Jeremy is the first person to publicly admit to his user base that many of his posts are sales driven, is he actually deceiving anyone? Is it really “subliminal” when people have been given a prior notice?

I don’t have a solid answer for any of these questions, but they really raised a lot of questions in my mind and in my personal work ethics.

Lets say you have taken a significant time from my life and invested it in a Blog, you work hard to build the a brand around it, and work even harder to keep the content fresh and valuable, but most importantly, you provide all of this free of charge. So the question is, is it really unethical that you profit from any method you chose to deploy, provided you are not actively deceiving anyone?

There is no doubt that Jeremy’s blog is a fantastic resource of information for both beginners and for mature Marketers, and the amount of free information that he puts out there is fantastic, but there is definitely something edgy in delivering content with the purpose of selling something that isn’t being sold in a blatant and flagrant way.

Would you do it?

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