Archive for the ‘New Products’ Category
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
There’s obviously a lot of people out there that knows little or nothing about Google, judging by the number of new products that has “Google” in their names. If there comes another product this year with “Google” in it’s name, I think it’s only a matter of time before big G’s lawyer comes a-running. Besides, I’ll probably stop reading mails or sales pages as soon as I see “Google” in it/them.
With that said, I did actually purchase “Google Snatch 2″ despite the quality of the original Google Snatch. Sure, the old one did contain a few gold nuggets, but I expect more from a product with over 100 pages said to contain “no fluff”. It wasn’t the original product I promised to review though, but the new and updated v2.
Google Snatch 2 is close to 150 pages, and the first thing I noticed which was (and is) driving me mad is the half empty pages. Placing a couple of paragraphs in the same chapter on separate pages of their own seems like a pre-sell thing for me (ie. the salespage claims a big page-count, when 25% of the pages doesn’t contain more than a paragraph or two).
Now, you might wonder why I seem so obsessed with such an unimportant tiny detail? Well, to tell you truth it’s mainly to make sure I have atleast one thing to complain about. Because this ebook is actually quite good.
You get a couple of really useful bonuses with the purchase as well, such as a number of blueprints and mind maps to help you follow through the various methods, step by step, exactly the way they are supposed to be done. “The Free Click Formula” and “Free Targeted Traffic” contain decent material, although they are aimed at newbies, and the mind maps can be really useful.
The first chapter goes through the basics of IM and affiliate marketing, and are followed by a number of chapters going into more detail on the various aspects of marketing online, such as Blogging, Social Networking, Video and Audio marketing, classified ads etc. It’s the perfect introduction and crash course on Internet Marketing for any newcomer wanting to learn more about making their first couple of bucks online. The knowledge gained in this product will have you in the game for a long time, and makes it easier to digest information in other, more advanced products.
As usual, if you are a seasoned veteran, this could quite possibly be a waste of money for you. I picked up a couple of things that I had forgotten, and I have to say that the list of “web 2.0″-sites for you to work your magic made the purchase worth it for me. If this list was sold separately on it’s own, I would’ve picked it up instantly.
All in all, if you are anything from a newbie to semi advanced this product will be a great addition to your arsenal, and the blueprints and mindmaps will be really helpful. If you are a seasoned veteran or consider yourself an advanced marketer I seriously doubt the few nuggets you will pick up would justify the price. Luckily there’s always the refund option if you don’t like it.
Posted in New Products, Reviews | No Comments »
Friday, August 15th, 2008
Article Marketing – Love it or Hate it? I think there are as many opinions on the effectiveness of article marketing, as there are actual marketers who either use it successfully, or have only tried it with mixed results. I’ve had my fair share of success as well as failure when it comes to marketing through niche-centered articles, and I sincerely believe in the concept as a powerful way to drive traffic, sales and affiliate commissions.
If you’ve been at it, successfully or not, you know that the success partially depends on what article directory you publish your articles in. eZine-articles and Go-articles probably being two of the most prominent ones.
High PR normally means faster indexing, and provided your keyword and keyphrase density is at a good level, you have a good chance at hitting good positions in the organic result lists on the search engines relatively fast and easy.
A well-known and frustrating fact for most article marketers, is the fact that many directories frown upon affiliate links in articles and resource boxes, forcing us to use various techniques that almost certainly cost us a few sales considering the extra hoops our readers have to take to get to the product sales letter.
You can now say goodbye to that frustration! Anik Singal recently launched AffSphere, an affiliate-centered article directory. Not only can you use your affiliate links uncensored, you also get awarded points and commissions on your referrals.
If you sign up today, you can also purchase Anik’s new report on article marketing. A solid, informative report that really should be sold at a much higher price. Yes, that’s my personal opinion.
Go check it out!
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products | 5 Comments »
Saturday, August 9th, 2008
I snapped this one up while it was still $9.97, not really sure what to expect from it. I’ve not been overly excited about Dylan Loh’s other products, but I figured I might as well give the guy a second chance when he’s selling valuable, secret information on how to become a top earner using AdWords and AdSense… Atleast that’s the impression I got when I read the salespage.
“How You Can Fuse The Power of Adwords And Adsense Using A *Sly And Sneaky* Formula To Crush The Gurus And Create An Autopilot Income For LIFE – Guaranteed!“
After reading this 35 page report, I think it’s safe to say that there is no new sly and sneaky formula revealed, that will help you crush any gurus.
Chapter 1: Getting Started
Dylan sets out to explain the basics, AdWords & AdSense, selling affiliate products, building AdSense sites, using PLR and MRR material and basic traffic strategies. It all turns into mess, confusing AdSense and AdWords, constantly claiming things “aren’t easy” just to turn around and say “it’s simple”.
Chapter 2: Getting paid
This is basically about affiliate networks – Clickbank, PayDotCom and 7DollarOffers (?). Nothing new here, and nothing that will help you become a top earner.
Chapter 3: Keyword Selection
I heard that this chapter was great, only to find it missing in the first copy I downloaded. After a couple of tries, Dylan sent me the updated report that had chapter 3. Only it wasn’t clearly marked out as a chapter, and wasn’t in the same order as the index page. I could’ve lived with it, if the info was good enough. Which it wasn’t. Again, brief explanations of concepts such as negative keywords, selecting keywords and basic Search Engine knowledge.
Chapter 4: Writing Your AdSense Sites
You get a quick run-through on AdWords Ads, landing pages, bids, lists and whether to advertise in the content network or search network. All this in a chapter that was supposed to be about creating AdSense sites. Confusing? You bet. Anyone new to Adsense and Adwords will likely be just as confused as Dylan seems to be.
Chapter 5: Monitoring your AdSense Sites
Again a chapter supposedly about AdSense, that turns out to be mainly about AdWords.
Chapter 6: Adsense Arbitrage
This is the only chapter I would consider good information. It’s nothing earth shattering, nothing new and no real solid information, but a basic description of what arbitrage is and why it’s risky. It’s only a single page, though, so although it’s good advice, it doesn’t quite make up for the cost of this report.
All in all, there’s no secrets revealed, and it’s likely to confuse more than help if you’re new to the game. “Secret Google Tactics” is a misleading name, and the report seems like it was thrown together in an hour in the middle of the night.
I consider this a waste of time and money, but your mileage may vary 
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
First things first, Eric did one thing I really like in this product. The main report itself is available at $0. Doesn’t cost a dime. Kudos for that. What he charges for is the two additional reports “AdWords Best Practices” on how to use AdWords better, and “Relationship Marketing” on how to better create a relationship with your lists, and the set of 26 instructional videos weighing in at around 2 1/2 hours tutorials of what’s discussed in the reports, both the free and the two additional ones.
The main report was good. Not great, but ok. Eric introduces what he calls his “Autopilot Money Machine“, which is more or less standard affiliate practice:
- Find a market/niche that looks profitable
- Examine the competition to find out what keywords and ads work best
- Set up your landing pages on their own domains or on free blogging platforms
- Set up your AdWords campaigns using the keywords and ads based on what works for the competition
- Track, test and refine your keywords and ads to find out what works and what needs to be dropped
- Rinse and repeat
Eric says he’s going to show us a market and exactly how he profits from it using his “Autopilot Money Machine” – and yeah, he shows a market. But that’s about it. There’s the basic overview of where to go to find niches, but nothing on how he chooses a “profitable” one.
Next there’s a chapter on examining the competition (find, spy, swipe) to find out what’s profitable using either Affiliate Elite or SpyFu, and finding keywords using Googles Suggestion Tool. Standard practice here too: use a broad phrase to find more targeted keywords and phrases. He also explains that you need a domain containing your main keyword or phrase, and how you shouldn’t have any ads or other distracting elements to make sure the visitor has only one action to take – clicking your affiliate link. Oh, really? 
Eric explains the philosophy (ok, not quite but i like the word “philosophy”) behind creating review-type landing pages, using his own xbox 360 repair landing page (XBox360 Redlight Fix #1 and #2 ). Those two are very good examples. I like to put in one or two products I give negative reviews on as well, to add to the “honest guy getting ripped off”-image.
The Affiliate Conspiracy is pretty much Affiliate Marketing 101. The videos makes the package feel more solid than I’m used to with these types of products.
The free report surprised me by actually being more revealing than most other free reports. There’s no question as to whether the report is meant to sell the full package or not, but it still provides enough information and instructions to be considered good learning material if you’re new to affiliate marketing.
I like the two additional reports, especially the report on relationship marketing.
The instructional videos covers everything from a short presentation of ClickBank to installing your own blogs, from using spyfu to building lenses and hubpages. He also shows how to build a multiple-page landing system.
All in all I think it’s a pretty decent package, and I’m confident that you will find solid information and learn quite a bit if you’re either new to affiliate marketing, or have already dipped your toes for a while but still not grasping everything in full. If you’re a seasoned veteran, this is not for you…
If you’re not quite sure where on the scale you are, visit the site and sign up to get the free report. If you skim it through and realise there’s nothing new to you, consider yourself a seasoned veteran
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products | 3 Comments »
Sunday, May 18th, 2008
I know you’ve seen them, and I know you have an opinion. Everybody has an opinion on the VirtualSmartAgents. My dad has an opinion too, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
First though, if you don’t know what VSA’s are, they are annoying little popup-windows simulating a customer service representative wanting to give you a better deal than the one present on the page. The popups appear when you are about to leave the page, or atleast they are supposed to… In some cases I’ve stumbled upon, the script is set to show the popup every time the mouse pointer loses focus on the current page (as in your mouse pointer slides away from the browser window), which includes when you click a link. Not good.
The better ones won’t popup until you’re about to close the browser window (or tab if you don’t use an older browser), or hit the back button… I find these friggin scripts annoying. REALLY annoying! I wouldn’t be caught dead using them. I heard someone discussing how the “AI” in these scripts could be improved. If you ever hear anyone talking about VSA’s and AI in the same sentence, please slap them and tell them I said “ARGH!”
There is no Artificial Intelligence in the VSA-scripts (there actually is a javascript/java experimental AI implementation, but it’ll probably take several years ’til it can actually be used as a service representative), there are a set of phrases (answers) that are triggered by certain keywords/partial phrases (questions) making the VSA seem almost human if you by chance happen to type in a question and trigger the script to deliver a correct answer. Try rephrasing it and it’ll answer you completely different.
So, where does my dad come into this?
My dad is 63 years old and got his first computer in ‘96 (not counting the computer he bought for me ten years earlier). I wouldn’t go so far as to call him savvy, but he knows what he needs to know to use it for both work and fun. Popups tend to confuse my dad, but most of the time he figures out how to close it if it doesn’t seem legit. My dad loves photography, and he’s a good photographer. I set up a test-page promoting a non-existant product and showed it to my dad.
He read the sales-letter and seemed somewhat interested, but said “I’ll think about it and check it out later” after bookmarking it. When he went to hit the back-button, the VSA popped up, alongside a notification window asking if he really wanted to leave this page, phrased in a way to make him believe he had to click “cancel” to leave the page. He got a bit surprised and clicked cancel. Then he noticed the VSA “talking” to him. So he tried to communicate with it, starting with “hello who are you” and he got the standard greeting phrase, and a discount+bonus pitch. He tried telling the VSA he just wanted to go back to Google, and got the same pitch again. After a while he got really annoyed and simply closed down the browser, after me assuring him he didn’t have to buy to leave the page.
If that’s how you want to get customers, then go ahead and buy a VSA. Don’t be surprised by the large number of charge-backs and refund-requests when people figure out what happened though…
If you prefer people buying because they want and need your product, just forget you ever heard about the VSA’s – they’re not worth it.
My dad’s opinion? “If that thing was real I’d give it a head-butt“.
Take care.
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products, Personal, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
I have no doubt you have received many promotions for membership sites the past year or so. You’ve probably also received numerous promotions for various products “teaching” how to become rich with membership sites … I have. I’ve also bought a few, and I’ve become a member of several sites producing and purchasing great new material for it’s members to use in their marketing.
Membership sites come and go. Some are great and get constant updates several times a month. Some simply stop adding updates after a couple of months. Others provide updates in a timely manner, but with crappy products hardly even worth reading yourself, much less promoting in any way, shape or form.
I’ve already mentioned Cody Moya a couple of times (who primarily refurbish Public Domain material that you are not “allowed” to resell if you cancel your membership), and Ian del Carmen is another one. Sure, they both update regularly (but some of Ians sites never produce any updates at all), but they limit the members’ rights so much it’s not even funny.
I’m a member of Liz Tomey’s MyOriginalEProducts. Last year was great. New products every month, high quality stuff. But then something happened. There were no products for september, october and november. So I wrote a comment on one of her blogs, asking if there were ever going to be any updates. Suddenly there were products for december, so I figured I should stay onboard. But there has been no products for January either, so my guess is she doesn’t take her membershipsites very seriously… A real disappointment, as I’ve always been a fan of Liz …
Another site that has been great since it opened, PrivateLabelMonthly, also took a nosedive and shut it’s doors for good this month. That is a real shame. I’ve built niche sites that produce income from their material for so long now, I feel kind of handicapped now that they’re gone. Where else am I going to get graphics, articles, autoresponder series, ebooks etc. in well researched niches ready to plug and play?
In June 2006 I became a member of a place called PLAS (PrivateLabelArticleSite) which seemed real promising at first. The members of PLAS were all supposed to get training on how to start our own membership sites selling PLR articles and ebooks. PLAS took a dive, many members were screwed over royally by Burton Clement by paying him $500 to become VIPs of the highest level never having to pay for the membership again. Burton took their money, together with most of the membershipfees, and disappeared. PLAS was reborn as 2PLR, and naturally I became a member of 2PLR instead. Netiher PLAS nor 2PLR ever delivered what was promised, so my PLR membership site died a slow death as well. 2PLR has now disappeared off the face of the earth as well.
A couple of memberships I’m still a member of, and will stay a member of, are the Rich Jerks membership and the Unselfish Marketer membership. Both these sites provide new fresh material regularly, sweeping the Internet for great bargains where rights can be passed on. I’ve also found a new supplier of unrestricted PLR articles (200 per month) and a supplier of PLR newsletters that I strongly believe will fill up atleast a bit of the gap left by PrivateLabelMonthlys’ death.
Enough about me and the memberships I’ve belonged to. What are your favorite membership sites? Which membership sites have been the most disappointing? Do you feel like you’ve been ripped off by any membership sites?
Tell me! I’d really, really like to know!
Posted in New Products, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Friday, January 4th, 2008
Amazing, isn’t it?
We’re only 4 days into the new year, and I’ve already received tons of crap-promotions.
One that disturbed me especially was a sale of 7 plr products… I feel pity for anyone purchasing that package as they will run into legal problems if they use it. The sellers of that package don’t have rights to resell PLR. I know since I’ve purchased PLR to all the products myself.
It kinda ticks me off that people don’t read the licenses for the stuff they re-sell. It’s not ok to sell illegal licenses. Not at all.
How would you feel if you purchase PLR to a product, and the original author suddenly sends you a mail threatening with legal actions if you don’t take it off the market and tell your customers to delete it? I’ve had it happen… Not fun at all. Others have been sued with no warning for selling products illegally…
Don’t fall for that. If you want to purchase a PLR-package that seems to come from different sources, mail the seller and ask if he really has the rights to sell PLR licenses.
Nuff’said.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and that your New Year-parties were as great as the one I visited
I’m introducing a new feature on my blog this year. When I find something I think is spectacular and I get re-sell rights to it (if I get the rights to resell PLR, I’ll do that as well), I’ll make sure to offer it to you as well. Make a habit of clicking the Special Blog-sale link up in the right corner.
The first deal is a report called “Facebook Social Ads – The New AdWords“, teaching you how to make money with advertising on Facebook. You get MRR to the package and it comes complete with graphics (jpg and psd) and sales-material.
Let’s make 2008 a great year!
Oh, yeah, the Affiliate Marketing 2.0 review is coming up next. I’ll try to have it available by monday. I’m still trying to catch up with everything I didn’t do over Christmas- and New Year-celebrations.
Posted in New Products, Personal | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 30th, 2007
So, I finally managed to get some spare time to read through the whole thing, and there are both negative and positive things to say about this ebook. Most of it is actually positive (yeah, I shocked myself when I just wrote that).
But let's take care of the negative parts first, shall we?
From the salespage:
The Jealously Guarded Secrets Of A Few Very Smart Underground Marketers… Learn Them All & Unleash Your Dreams!
That's not really true. They aren't exactly "secrets", and they aren't exactly "jealously guarded" either. It's true that the techniques aren't something you'd pick up your first month of dabbling with affiliate marketing, but if you know your way around the internet and know where to find the hottest search-trends, you'd figure it out yourself.
Yes. Two of the techniques involve Google Hot Trends. Not very earth-shattering or "jealously guarded". There are a number of products out that names Google Hot Trends as the place to go when trying to determine what you should market next.
The first one involves PPC. If you don't want to spend click-money, that's not for you. The second one involves adsense. If you want a couple of good adsense days til the hot search trend dies off, that's one for you
If you want to make recurring, steady adsense-income, build a content-site. Don't use blogger. I still like the way Alok describes these both techniques, so they made a good read. And technique 2 is very doable. But it won't get you any income in a couple of hours. 'nuff said about that.
Technique #3, called "Underground Niche Profits" – is neither Underground, nor will it make you cash in a couple of hours. It's basic knowledge for anyone doing any type of micro niche marketing. But if you don't do micro niche marketing, and hardly know how to identify a niche, much less a micro niche – this chapter makes for a solid read. But it won't make you quick cash.
Technique #4 involves placement targeting of your adwords campaigns. Anyone with a bit of curiosity and an adwords-account know where to find this. But again, if you don't know your way around adwords, this is a solid read, with step-by-step instructions and some tips on how to make it effective.
Technique #5 is all about piggy-back riding on product launches. Alok tells you where to find info on upcoming launces, how you could steal traffic by registering the right domain name and simply forward the traffic to the real site with your affiliate link. Then there's the blogger-way, the squidoo-way, and again the adwords placement targetting.
So. There you have the recap of what Project Quick Cash is all about. The only negative things I really have to say about it is that
1 – None of the techniques is really a "quick cash"-method. They are fast ways to start generating revenue, yes. But "Quick Cash" they are not.
2 – They aren't "jealously guarded underground secrets". But they are not common knowledge either.
It pleases me to say that this product won't get the "Crap warning" or the "Re-cycled crap"-warning, but it won't get the "Hot Product"-tag either.
I picked up a couple of tweaks that seems to work great so far, so I'm fairly pleased.
Will it be of any use to you? Well, if you read my recaps of each chapter above, and you recongnize and can easily replicate it immediately with success, then it's not for you. If, on the other hand, reading the recaps makes you think "I want to know how to do that" – it's a good product. It's for you.
The price? It says $77 on the salespage at the moment, but if you hit the "back"-button in your browser, you get a $10 discount. Sneaky? Yes. Fair? No. A smart tactic? Hell, yeah!
Now it's up to you to decide. I told you how to get a $10 discount. I'm not going to ask for a refund on this one, even though I do feel uncomfortable about spending $67 on something I only picked up a couple of tweak-tips from, that I only consider "a good read".
Here's my affiliate-link again (you can't blame a man for trying) if you want to check it out.
As always, take pretty much everything you read on a sales page with a large grain of salt.
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007
I got a couple of promotions for this one, so I thought I’d have a quick look at it. If you’ve been thinking of buying Lucid SEO, think again. It’s not anywhere near as good as the sales page wants you to think.
The sales page claims that SEO is a lot easier than most SEO experts and consultants wants you to believe. David, Tim and Roy are absolutely right. On the ground level, SEO is very simple. Basic SEO is just that. Basic. If you do things right, you’ll outrank the competition quite easily. But that’s only basic SEO.
It goes without saying that if you apply basic SEO to your sites, you will easily outrank those that don’t apply basic SEO. The fact is that most site owners don’t apply SEO to their sites, so you will have an advantage over those sites.
The author lets you in on such basic things as applying keywords to the title-tags, using <h1> and <h2> to emphasize titles and subtitles in the content, using the alt-property for images and links, properly applying keywords as anchor text for your links, and using meta tags for keywords and descriptions.
You also get some basic knowledge when it comes to off-site optimization (read: link-building) by using Free Directiories, Squidoo, blogs, comments on other peoples’ blogs, and using articles in article directories.
Then you get a quick summary of the things mentioned above, coupled with a roadmap to get you started doing the things you’ve just been taught.
Lucid SEO is quite worthless to be honest. Go to Google, do a search for seo +forum and you’ll get a lot more information, a lot better information and a bigger insight to what SEO is really all about.
If this guide was another $7 or $9.97 offer, I’d say “go for it”, but it isn’t. It’s $79 friggin bucks. It’s nowhere near being good enough to justify that price. This is complete and utter crap. I’m sorry to have to say that, but it’s the truth.
If you want to learn basic SEO – find an SEO forum and you’ll get a lot of good quality information on SEO – for free.
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products | 5 Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2007
I’m not really sure where to begin with this one… Is it re-hashed information? Yes and no. But it is available outside of the Google Assassin package. What you get, basically, is access to Affiliates Den, a set of tools to help with your PPC-campaign and online coaching to help you use the tools correctly. Affiliates Den is great, but you can get similar tools outside of the Den for free … The information in the coaching modules is also available in other products that doesn’t cost $67/month. That’s the biggest thing that really turns me off with this product. It’s a monthly subscription.
Now, if you are just starting out with PPC – would this be a good package for you? Actually it would. But if you’re just starting out, $67/month is not a good price. If you could get this package for a one-off payment of between $97 and $147, and get the coaching lessons (the blueprints) on a cd or something, it would be a great deal. But as I said, all the information is available elsewhere in single products that doesn’t cost $67/month. I’m sure the price has increased by now, and I know a couple of people who got in for $47/month. Of those, I only know one person who thinks he got a great deal :/
The coaching lessons are actually decent. But the information is not earth-shattering, and there are really no new tricks and tweaks that will set you light-years ahead of your competition.
The tools are ok, but similar tools (some actually better) are available on the net for free.
As always, Chris’ copy is excellent – in parts even brilliant, and I’m sure you’re going to go for your credit-card when you’re halfways through, but (and this is a big but) what you should do instead is put the copy in your swipe-file. Because that’s propbably the only good thing you will get out of this.
Chris is an excellent marketer, and he really knows what he’s doing, but when he claims he’s going to teach you his “secret” techniques, you need to take that with a grain of salt, because if Chris really has any secrets – he’s not sharing them. Not even for $67/month.
This is a half-decent package, but way too expensive, and the information is available elsewhere. I’m going to have to give this one a “re-hashed crap”-stamp. I really need to come up with some new graphics. I never expected to be torn in half this way
Posted in Latest Promotions, New Products | 5 Comments »
