Comments on: Lies And Statistics

By: make extra money online

make extra money online — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 04:13:42 +0000

I agree that it is very misleading when people just highlight the gross income, leaving out the many expenses.

I stated almost day one on my blog that all of the income will be put back into building my domain portfolio. So, I still haven’t cashed out a red cent ( started blogging 4 months ago ). I have been making a little here and there, but I just reinvest it.

Ben

By: Hostgator

Hostgator — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:32:20 +0000

I notice that even now its fairly normal to find advertisements in the papers about people holding “seminars” on how to make money off the internet , usually failing to note costs involved while emphasizing on the raw money made.

Stats will always be finetuned to support an arguement, or exaggerated in some way. Just part of marketing i guess.

By: Bohol

Bohol — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:09:23 +0000

Nowadays, a lot of online marketing would tell you a lot of lies like saying you can earn a certain amount of money but in fact, they are just putting those words to attract people to click they sites but nothing is really there. I sure hope someday we can get rid of all those sites giving false info.

By: SF Apartments

SF Apartments — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 06:44:34 +0000

I agree that is is easy to present misleading statistics to make almost any argument. However at least when people are using statistics to make a point I much prefer that over their limited experience. Statistics can at least be a jumping off point for a discussion and for me personally I’d rather here number or figures than someone’s opinion. I don’t put much stock in opinions, numbers and figures have a hard time lying even though they can be bent to your will.

By: Lawyer Marketing

Lawyer Marketing — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:39:49 +0000

Want to know how I avoid the hype? Particularly for big-ticket items. I don’t purchase anything from anybody….if I made more money than them the prior year.

You should hear the silence on the other end of the phone when you ask to see their returns.

Tom

By: Property Addict

Property Addict — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 08:18:05 +0000

Stats can be very misleading and manipulated to suit any sales pitch, though it is possible to have a higher percentage of conversions it is a lot of work. Suppose you had site A, that sold cups and saucers, had the standard contact, home and about us and 2 optimised pages, one for selling china cups and one for saucers. If you target each page to 1 or 2 (popular/wordtracker) keywords then the traffic you get, will be specific and generate a higher conversion rate. Site B with 300 product pages would bring in much more traffic, as it potentially has 300 more landing pages which will each get picked up for a multitude of keywords. If they are both equally optimised in terms of incoming links site B will bring in much more traffic to the site and likely generate more revenue, but the conversion rate will be much lower than site A. This is because the multitude of keywords it’s being picked up for over its 300 pages. Some of which will be relevant and many that won’t.(If you have a large site just look at your stats and to see some of the bizzar keywords that your site will get picked up for, each of which will contribute to lower your conversion rate (the + side of the extra pages is your site should also get picked up for a larger pool of relevant keywords)).

Khaled

By: Business Website

Business Website — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:16:07 +0000

Great example of the reality of statistics. For the whole story, it’s always a matter of what you show and tell.

By: Directory Submissions

Directory Submissions — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:15:42 +0000

It’s only statistics that are lies but I think there are a lot of sites that post fake testimonials…what’s worse is that some of them even read like fakes, they dont even sound genuine!

Sameer Panjwani

By: investing for beginners

investing for beginners — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:22:29 +0000

you left off one other probably cause for such huge checks. MULTIPLE sites. I have talked to a supposed ‘guru’ or two and they tend to have 100s of sites. literally 100s. with each pulling 1-2 dollars a day it is entirely plausible to net 5 figure checks every month without buying traffic.

By: Singapore Italian Restaurant

Singapore Italian Restaurant — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:57:10 +0000

We will definitely do a check before engaging a SEO / SEM company. Statistics are used in the support of a sales talk in the business world and it is quite common that data is often manipulated.