Archive for the ‘Reviews’ 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 »
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 »
Monday, July 14th, 2008
I’m sure you’ve been hit by numerous promotion mails giving glowing testimony to the newest kid on the block, Google Nemesis. I’ve received far too many to keep track of, and I’ve also tested the service, because that’s basically what it is. A subscription based landing page service. A very limited one at that too, I might add.
What you get, besides the service itself (at a whopping bargain-price of $67/month) is two videos explaining how to use the service, two reports (How To Spot The Shadow Elite - about finding successful AdWords campaigns to copy - and Creating The Perfect Review Page - since the landing pages are in the form of review pages) and a free copy of Google Wealth Wizard, if you’re not familiar with AdWords.
There’s an upgrade available too, at an extra $47/month, giving you access to “DJK Blueprints” reports, which I’m guessing is a monthly service.
Google Nemesis is basically a service letting you create AdWords landing pages promoting ClickBank-products in the form of review-pages. That’s the first minus. Not only are you limited to ClickBank, you’re also limited by a worthless search engine for ClickBank products. Once you’ve created your landing page, there’s no way to go back and change products. You’re also limited in that your landing pages can only be for two- and three-product review pages.
There are only two templates available, in red or blue. Hopefully more templates will be made available, but you have no chance to set up your own templates.
All review pages by members are spread around on several different domains, but using your own domain for your landing pages is not an option. The only way to do that would be to use the redirect- or cloak-option from your registrar or webhost.
Imagine two hundred pages on one domain using the same template and footprints… It’s already a recipe for disaster, but if the two hundred pages are promoting similar products and bidding on similar keywords in AdWords, a whole bunch of them are going to suffer from the display URL limitation. Google only displays ONE ad from a given URL. So if you’re bidding on a similar keywords as another Nemesis customer, only ONE of you are going to get displayed, the one with the highest bid. If you were on different URLs, you could still be displayed if your bid was lower.
The editor used to edit the templates and fill in your text is very limited. You’re far better of using something else and then just copy&paste your review-texts.
I’m not really comfortable with giving out login information for ClickBank to anyone, and especially not to a script hosted by someone else. You need to do this in order for the statistics in the Google Nemesis dashboard to get more accurate numbers. The dashboard lets you see stuff like where your visitors come from, what keywords they clicked to arrive on your page, and the number of sales that can be connected to each keyword.
Google Nemesis is only hype. It doesn’t help you in any way with creating your review pages, in fact it takes me longer to create them in GN than doing it manually. For the statistics, if you use ClickBanks tracking id’s together with Google Analytics, you get statistics that are just as accurate as the ones you get from GN.
Now, if you don’t know how to create landing pages and track visitors, but you’re a master at writing compelling reviews and AdWords campaigns, you might actually find this service quite useful.
If you’re not a master at writing reviews and creating AdWords campaigns, it’s not for you. In fact, I believe you’re better off without it either way, but hey - it’s your decision. As far as I’m concerned, Google Nemesis is just a waste of time and money, but your mileage may vary
Parts of this review was added after reading another review that made some good points I didn’t even think of at first.
Posted in Latest Promotions, Reviews | 9 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 »
Monday, January 14th, 2008
I’ve promised you this review over and over again, and somehow I always end up having to set a new deadline for it Well, today I spent a couple of hours reading, watching, listening and then doing it all over again.
So what did I learn?
To be honest, not that much. In the ebook Ross recommends choosing other products than just ebooks from clickbank, and goes through the various types of affiliate programs you can choose between. He talks about cloaking links, and recommends one free service for link cloaking. This didn’t exactly feel like news.
Next, Ross explains how to choose the products you want to promote, and reveals Clickbank, PayDotCom, FreeIQ and 2CheckOut. Last time I checked, 2CheckOuts affiliate program was still in beta and not open for the public. And Clickbank? Ross spent the previous chapter explaining why eBooks weren’t the only choice for affiliate marketing, and yet he spends one page explaining how to choose products on Clickbank…. Making any sense?
Next comes the interesting part .. The “Web 2.0 Affiliate Tactics“. I almost started drooling when I came to this part…
Ross talks about Video Tactics for marketing, using other peoples videos and creating your own with Camtasia. He explains Squidoo, marketing wisely on social networking sites. If Ross had asked me, I could have written the social networking page in 4 words for him: “Don’t Spam, Network!“. Ooops. That was three words. Even better
There is one part of this ebook that I did find very valuable….
I’ve found that marketing through blogs is a very efficient method that works well for me. Ross also uses blogging for affiliate marketing purposes. He uses a method that differs quite a bit from mine, as Ross targets the Internet Marketing niche. His method is a very good method indeed, but I’m not convinced it is a good method in small niches where there aren’t 10 new products released each and every week I’m not saying it can’t be done, but when you’re out of products, you’re out of products. You might have to wait for a year to market a new product with this method. It’s still a good method, and if you buy the ebook, this is probably the best part for you too.
The last half of the ebook is about creating, launching and promoting your own product. While I very well understand how “finding affiliates to promote your products” can be seen as “affiliate marketing” if you disconnect your brain, I really wasn’t expecting half of this ebook to be about product creation and launching ….
So let’s talk about the other things that come with this ebook, shall we?
There are videos. If these videos had better sound (so I could at least hear what the man is saying without wondering if I’ve been pressed down a tin can) they would have been great. Ok, maybe not great, but if the sound was better, I could probably have found some value in them.
I got “exclusive mindmaps showing how to set up marketing methods for success”. These are great, but …. Yes, the dreaded “but”. I can’t print these out.. Even if I had a color printer, I wouldn’t be able to read them. The text in the bubbles is hardly visible, as the text is in black on very dark backgrounds… Not made for printing, hence not made for using.
There were audio interviews. I actually did enjoy some of them, like the interviews with Willie Crawford, Simon Leung, Andrew Wee and Tiffany Dow. Those were ok.
I enjoyed Richard Butlers’ report and weekly planner, and I had great fun listening to the 6-part audio course by Daniel Taylor. That guy is friggin hilarious 
If you’re still thinking of buying >> go here >>
And while you’re still here, I would really really appreciate if you click on this link and tell me what you’d like to see next
So, the first review for 2008 is ready, and I hope there will be many many more
Posted in Reviews | 2 Comments »
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