Back in the early days of this blog, I made a silly video with some friends — Pat Flynn, Nicole Dean, and Willie Crawford — where we cast ourselves as heroes in a Star Wars parody fighting the “evil forces” of internet marketing. It was a joke, but the underlying point was real: there has always been a tension between ethical marketing and the shady tactics that give our industry a bad name.

That tension is still here in 2026, and if anything, it has gotten more complicated.

The Dark Side of Internet Marketing

You do not have to spend much time online to encounter the dark side of this business. Fake scarcity countdowns that reset when you refresh the page. Income claims that are wildly exaggerated or outright fabricated. Products that promise push-button riches with zero effort. AI-generated content farms designed to game search engines rather than help real people.

These tactics work in the short term. That is why people use them. But they erode trust, burn customers, and eventually catch up with you through refund requests, bad reviews, and platform penalties.

The Case for Ethical Marketing

Here is what I have learned after building an online business since 2007: the marketers who are still around after a decade or more are almost always the ethical ones. They built real relationships with their audiences. They recommended products they actually used. They created genuine value before asking for a sale.

Ethical marketing is not just the right thing to do. It is the better business strategy. When your audience trusts you, they buy from you again and again. They refer their friends. They defend you when someone questions your recommendations. That kind of loyalty cannot be manufactured with clever copy or manipulative funnels.

A Simple Test

Before you publish any piece of marketing, run it through this simple filter: would you be comfortable if your best customer saw exactly how and why you created it? If the answer is yes, ship it. If the answer makes you uncomfortable, reconsider.

The internet marketing space needs more people committed to doing things the right way. Be one of them.

For more on building an ethical online business, listen to the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.