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Are my Testimonials Fake? (7)

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Hey guys,

Does anyone know how to get trust badges? Not the antivirus or safe billing ones, but the company endorsement ones. The ones where you add the logo of a company in your niche on your landing page to increase trust.

Also, I want to add testimonials to my landing page, i know some people fake it, but i find that unethical; or do I? Should I break bad and fake it?
Is faking testimonials a good thing if your product helps people?

Thanks!

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First question, is it for affiliate products you want to promote or is it for your own product?

In case of affiliate products it would be unethical and you could also get problems like C&D or so but there are many affiliates doing such stuff.

When it´s your own product I wouldn´t do it at all because you have a much higher risk to run into serious legal problems there.

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I think it really depends on what exactly you are talking about.

Often on offer pages you'll see the logos of various mainstream news companies or industry journals with a small opaque "As seen on" text next to them - this isn't implying that those companies endorse the product, but rather than those are news outlets that have mentioned the product in an article. It seems to me the stricter ad networks allow this IF there is a hyperlink or source provided for each one, and that the less strict traffic sources don't care if there is documentation provided or not.

I also see a similar thing on affiliate advertorials, but with the small opaque text saying "Ads seen on" instead - this is basically just making the claim that ads for the product in question have been run on those sites (MSN, CNN, smaller industry websites, etc). This one arguably conveys more trust than is deserved, since its not very hard to run ads for something on a specific site via different native networks, etc, and for this reason a lot of ad networks don't allow these.

Finally, on the totally 'Blackhat' side of things, there are affiliates who will run cloaked landers that literally stick a CNN or Fox News logo on the website to try to fool un-internet savvy old folks into thinking they're reading a legit news source. This is usually coupled with a fake article stating that some famous person is endorsing the product (Larry King for ED pills, Kathy Griffin for weight-loss, etc).

So yeah, the above examples run from totally honest and whitehat all the way to totally dishonest and blackhat (and legally risky).


As far as testimonials it's the same... some advertorials or offer pages will include screenshots of actual reviews from Amazon or Trustpilot, often with a link to them in the bottom disclaimer area of the page. This is super legit and whitehat.

In the grey area might be an actual review you had written out in italics with quotation marks, but no attribution.

A little more grey area would be a "fake review" that is just sort of there for accentuation but which most people understand is fake, e.g. "Capital Life Insurance was so easy to deal with and I got a policy in minutes! I couldn't be happier!".

And totally black-hat and dishonest would be a fake review from a celebrity where you are, again, trying to fool low-information old folks who don't see through the deception. There's also the ubiquitous fake facebook comments you see on the bottom of ED advertorials, etc.


As far as which of the above you choose to do, it is partly based on what you feel is ethical, and partly based on what the traffic sources will allow. For my part I stay away from anything that's legitimately dishonest or illegal, but I think an "Ads seen on" image or a "XYZ Company was great!" quote is pretty harmless.

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I know it's unethical to fake testimonials. But if you know that testimonials will boost sales (fake or not) of your product - which is a white hat product that helps people - isn't then the ability to use fake testimonials and not doing so; shooting oneself in the foot?

I mean, the media do it blatantly all the time. They show fake ads, they hide ads that aren't on par with their bias. I mean, the waters are muddy, shouldn't we play in the mud a bit?

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If people do it, it's not per se a good thing and also not an argument to convince yourself for doing it. (and it surely will not help you in court). It's up to you how far you want to go, depends on your values, how you were raised, where you based etc.

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That bad? I wouldn't go that far to deceive people. However, I know a few prominent AM'ers that use such fake testimonials, ratings, comment bots, etc. They are well respected on twitter and have a huge newsletter following. Hell, even their newsletters are full of shit.

Two years ago, i bought a course from one of these fakers. Lost 200 euros on a basic e-commerce course which promised 10k a month, lol. It was clearly a course which contained the same value as a 15-minute YouTube video on how to set up a Shopify store.

I can't complain since that course inspired me to further educate myself in Marketing and Ecommerce.

Another question i wanted to ask: how are these people allowed to post screenshots of their 300K a month Shopify stores and other online businesses when it's clearly bullshit?

I see a lot of courses sold online for the whopping sum of $399 or even $499 on how to become rich and they all include these screenshots of said person's bank balance and shopify revenue with astronomical sums.

Those screenshots are clearly designed in Photoshop, but the point is, is one allowed to do this?

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I would focus on other stuff than the questions you ask above. Take the steps you can do instead of wasting time and energy on that. This forum is full of useful info, leave the scammers.

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