Ever signed up for one of TheStreet.com's investor services? Then you've probably also received an occasional email like the one below.

It's a personal note from "Jim Cramer." And it uses the oldest sleazy investment marketing tactic in the book.

What's that?

Cherry-picking.

In an attempt to get you drooling about how much money you'll make if you pony up and buy a subscription, the letter describes a few amazing calls Jim has made in recent months. Goldman Sachs! Nike! GE! What the letter doesn't do, of course, is describe all of Jim's terrible calls.

This is what many newsletters (and investment managers) do: Tout their good calls and ignore their bad ones. And they do it because it works. But for anyone who takes their advice and clients seriously--as Cramer purports to--it's misleading and sleazy.

If you make 100 calls over the next month, about 50 of them will be good. If we wrote up the top 3 of them, we could make you sound like a market-wizard, too. And then you would be ready to start selling newsletters!

This, by the way, is what critics of the now-bankrupt-TheStreet.com-investment pro Lenny Dykstra said he used to do when marketing his own newsletter. He would close and exit the profitable trades and calculate his "returns" based on those. Meanwhile, he would just let the losers run. (Maybe that's what Cramer meant when he described Dykstra as "one of the great ones" in the business. Maybe he was referring to the newsletter-marketing business).

As we've said before, we think Cramer is a brilliant entertainer. We also have a lot of respect for his work ethic and breadth of experience and expertise.

But the pitch below isn't entertainment. It's marketing. And it's sleazy marketing at that.

Cramer always says his first priority is to help you make money. If he wants us to believe that, he can start by being more honest when he's selling you something.