I don’t know why I bother, but every six months or so I splash out on an e-book by an “internet marketing guru” promising to show me how to make millions in exchange for 50 bucks or so.

My latest purchase cost me US$47 for about as many pages of mainly filler and very little killer. Indeed, there was nothing in it that you won’t already know or couldn’t find for yourself on countless sites where writers give away this and much more valuable information for free.

The thing is this e-book will no doubt shift a few thousand copies, bringing in the author tens of thousands of dollars as it does so.

This in turn will further cement his fame in internet marketing circles, allowing him to produce yet another e-book that will sell to those looking for a fast track to similar earnings.

One reason why I buy these e-books is for old time’s sake.

I’m actually a veteran of the mail order bookselling world of the 1970s and 1980s. Even as a kid I marvelled at the classifieds ads in the likes of the Exchange & Mart that promised to show me how to make my fortune. Before I had even left school I was publishing my own mail order magazine, helping “mail order gurus” sell their products - poorly printed get rick quick “reports” and “manuals” for the most part.

I’ve been tempted to write an e-book myself more than once, believing that I have genuine information to share based on my own experiences of making money online. And maybe one day I will do just that.

But the idea of simply cobbling together e-books for the sake of fleecing a few thousand souls on a regular basis just doesn’t appeal to me. I know too well that some of those souls are the ones who can least afford to be duped.

Most internet marketing gurus of today are actually no different to the mail order gurus of yesteryear. All’s that’s changed is the medium.

And they share the same secret of success which I’m about to share with you for nothing.

Build a cash-cow list of believers and milk it for all its worth.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Build that list and milk it.