Internet Sweatshops?
Perhaps more surprising is that most of you have probably already been suckered into one form or another of online sweatshop without realizing it. Don’t panic. I’m going to show you how this can work in your favor if you are aware of it and know how to take advantage of it, instead of getting suckered into doing someone else’s job for them.
To get a better understanding of this online sweatshop idea, let’s go back a handful of years to when I first got online and started encountering them. Most of these were missed entirely by the Newsweek article.
The first time it occurred to me that the Internet is a sweatshop, it was pretty black and white. It was way back when I first got online that I bought one of those “make money online filling out surveys” scams and discovered that lots and lots of companies were getting who knows how many thousands of people to fill out probably millions of surveys for pennies each. I was shocked to discover how awfully these companies were taking advantage of people and how gullible, or desperate, those people must be to try it. I got suckered into buying an information product about it, but I sure wasn’t going to waste my time working long hours for pennies and hope.
The next sweatshop idea that came along was forums. Forums are more of a gray area and I won’t pick on them too much. Most forums, instead of the example above where they just take and take, fall more into the “user generated content” arena and are a milder form of online sweatshop. If done well, a forum can even seem like more of a community. These little beauties can be challenging to run and moderate, but you can’t beat the user created content that increases the overall worth of the site day by day. But, a forum, and although many are, doesn’t have to be a sweatshop. You can create more of a community by offering incentives for people to make quality posts, or running contests and giving away prizes… or just by giving of yourself and being helpful. Mostly though, with forums, it seems that owners simply offer the company of others and little more. And, who’s looking for that? A: Those who don’t know anything about anything yet, and B: Those trying to sell something to those that don’t know anything yet. So, these forums become little more than a meeting place for hunter and prey, wolf and deer, shark and noobie, if you will, to interact, instead of any sort of community.
And then came YouTube and MySpace and other networking sites. These sorts of sites are the ultimate virtual sweatshops. Users get addicted even, to working for you, to building your content for you, expecting nothing or little in return. They can’t stop and they can’t help themselves. It is sites like this that are more the main focus of the Newsweek article mentioned above and I can see why. It has shocked me for years that people were so willing to work, to even produce whole movies, for free… or just for some sort of “Internet fame”. Whatever it could be, I’m still not exactly sure. They’re drawn to it like… [Insert disgusting metaphor here]. But, more power to them. Everyone’s glad they do it. My advice to you though… if you’re trying to promote a site or sell anything online… make sure you’re using these sites and not the other way around.
The latest and I must say, most annoying, of the virtual sweatshops is another thing that Newsweek missed entirely, the online intern program. When I first noticed the first of these I laughed out loud to myself because I already knew what a bad deal real world intern programs can be, getting kids to work for free because they’re kids and have no experience or the sense to say, “Hey, this isn’t a good deal for me.”, all for the promise of some sort of hands on experience or real world connections that may or may not really happen. Here’s yet another example of the offline sales sharks bringing their awful ideas into the online business world.
Now, I should say that if these Internet marketing intern programs actually taught you anything useful, it would be well worth it. But, the ones I’ve seen so far are simply ways for someone else to automate some boring task they don’t want to do anymore. And, what’s more… the task you’re doing and learning probably isn’t that effective for you to do on your own, unless you start your own intern program around it. What’s worse is I just heard rumor that there’s some new service being released that creates these “intern” sites for people. I suppose that’s a good thing though, because hopefully the more people that get suckered into working for nothing… the sooner everyone else will know to avoid such things.
So, what are the Internet marketing or online business lessons in all this?
I suppose there are a few kernels of wisdom in here for different people so…
The lesson for people who are new to Internet business is to not get suckered into working for free. It takes a lot of time to do the real work of building an online business and you literally don’t time to be working for someone else for nothing. It sucks to be just starting out and totally in the dark, and have little money to invest. I still remember it well from my own experience. But, you’d be better off saving up and paying for some decent information than working for free doing some menial task for someone else that effectively teaches you nothing. Why not just become an affiliate if you want to start slow? At least then you’ll be getting paid while you learn. Hopefully, these people will take all this talent in creating “procedures” and use it to simply educate their affiliates and other webmasters, instead of taking advantage noobies and taking master rights to their first product ideas on top of everything.
The lesson for webmasters and more advanced Internet business owners is that if you want your users to build your content for you, all you have to do is open your doors and let them in. They’re shockingly eager to do it if you have or provide the minimum of incentives for your target market. And user generated content is an awesomely powerful thing to have on your site.
But, as this article in Newsweek demonstrates, thankfully more and more people are catching on that they’re getting a bad deal, even if only from these video sites like YouTube. And, they’re having fun! I can’t imagine how jaded and angry things like these intern programs must be making people on a daily basis. Come on gurus! The last thing this niche needs is more jaded people thinking we’re all shady creeps. You should be battling that perception instead of making it worse.
So, what am I saying? I’m saying that we should absolutely take advantage of user generated content whenever possible; however I don’t think it’s a very good idea over the long term to be using and abusing people like some of these guys do. If you’re going to let people do your job for you… at least give them a fair deal and don’t make it seem like some Internet sweatshop.
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