Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

The large number of recalls this year, including the announcement by General Mills (GIS) today to voluntarily recall Totino's and Jeno's pizzas, underscores the importance of verifying the products or services we receive and promote from partners or joint ventures. You can check out the recall information here.

While it is tempting to celebrate the acceptance of potential partners to sell their products or services for a piece of the action, we do need to perform detailed due diligence of their offerings to make sure they're of the highest quality and add great value to the buyer.

This sounds simple and easy, but the temptation to accept anything to get you going is a mistake many beginners, and even those with experience in business make.

It can come about from the excitement of getting your first deal going, or you may be stuck on sales and have a need for a fresh product to offer your customers. Either way, we can't give up our due diligence for the purpose of making a deal: ever!

The recalls this year teach us that we have to watch out for ourselves, as the people providing the product or service may not be watching out for us.

We need to get to know the reputation and quality those we enter into professional relationships with. It doesn't matter what their policy is, get a hold of the product or service itself, and thoroughly go through it. It's far better to occasionally miss something doing things right, than to get everything, and pay for it later.

Our business reputations don't take long to get damaged, even if it takes years to build. Online marketing especially can lend itself to cons and low quality products. Make sure the deals you make are thoroughly dissected and checked out as to their quality. Check out what people say about the products.

I know it's also hard on the Internet to get quality information because there are disreputable ranters that exist to talk negative or evil about anybody. The best thing to do is get the product and use it or read it to see if it holds to your standards. Just make your standards are high enough to demand quality.