True confessions of an internet marketing product reviewer...

1. Confessions of
an IM Product Reviewer
The Mysterious Marketer.com

2. Foreword
Hi! My name is Allen Walker, professional internet marketing product
reviewer and online entrepreneur. You may or may not have heard of me from
various sources, such as from some of the digital products I create, or from some
of the product reviews I write that you will often see dominating the #1 and #2
spots in Google during big launch weeks.
Well, I used to be very active in promoting product launches as an
affiliate, occasionally getting one of the top 10 spots on the JV leader board.
However, I have quit that for the present moment and I spend most of my time
creating products of my own now. Other than that, I still do product reviews on
great products which I have gone through, sometimes on not so good ones as
well. You can read more about the products I review on my blog.
The reason why I wrote this report is because I often get emails from
customers asking me for advice about whether this is a good product, or whether
that is a good product, or whether they should buy this or that, or whether I
have any recommendations for them if they are planning on going into a
particular business model. Well, as a professional IM product reviewer, I do go
through a lot of products on a daily basis normally. On average I go through 2 to
5 products a day, many of which I find very beneficial to the knowledge, though
recently I don’t spend all that much time going through products these days.
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3. The purpose of this report is to give you some solid advice which would
benefit you when it comes time to buy that next product, or if you are ever in
doubt as to whether a purchase should be made. Don’t be in such a hurry to buy
every new shiny thing that comes out in the market. Learn to spend your money
wisely, and not always on impulse, for they say that a penny saved is a penny
earned…
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4. Table of Contents
Foreword ...................................................................................... i
The Dilemma of IM Products ............................................................. 1
Too Many Birds in Sight ................................................................... 3
The Types of IM Products ................................................................. 5
Money Making Models ..................................................................... 8
What’s a Good Product? .................................................................. 11
$2000 Product versus $100 Product ................................................... 13
Conclusion .................................................................................. 15
Resources.................................................................................... 16
Copyright 2010 Allen Walker, The Mysterious Marketer
By reading this document, you assume all risks associated with using the advice
given below, with a full understanding that you, solely, are responsible for
anything that may occur as a result of putting this information into action in any
way, and regardless of your interpretation of the advice

5. The Dilemma of IM Products
People often have a lot of problems when it comes to buying IM products.
One of the reasons for these problems is that there are just so many of them, all
promising different things, all covering different aspects, and all offering to solve
different problems. There are so many people who go buying product after
product, looking for the one magic bullet that’s going to solve all their
problems. The end result is that many fall into large amounts of debt, with
wasted money and no results to show for it at all.
There are definitely no quick solutions to all the problems in the world. If
you are looking for a magic bullet to solve all your problems, then you’d better
stop and get back to the basics. If you want to start earning money online, and if
you want to get the results that you’ve dreamed of, then you’ll just have to weed
out those problems one by one, starting with the root problem… YOU!
If you are someone who goes around purchasing product after product
with money that you don’t really have, or find that you get one too many
products that you are not satisfied with, then let’s get down to the problems that
you have first. These problems probably include:
1. Thinking that there is one magic bullet to solve all your problems.
2. Thinking that buying product after product is actually helping you.
3. Buying product after product without actually doing anything at all.
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6. 4. Getting lost in the IM dream with no way of waking up.
5. Wandering aimlessly with no sense of direction.
6. Cherishing shiny, glittery objects rather than cold, solid substance.
7. Thinking that all of your problems can be solved externally.
Many of the problems that people face in their online business is
something that comes from within. In other words, they are their own worst
enemy, causing themselves to fail over and over again without any redemption in
sight. That is a really difficult situation to be in.
If you want things to change, then the first thing you’ll need to change is
yourself. Let’s talk about why you’re going after too many things without an end
in sight…
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7. Too Many Birds in Sight
When starting your journey in building up an online business, it would be
prudent for you to have a clear focus and goal. And when you have that clear
focus and goal, figure out the path you want to take to get there. There are many
different internet marketing products covering a variety of different topics. If
you spend the majority of your time skimming the surface of thousands of these
topics without getting good at any particular one, you’ll have a rough journey
ahead. It’ll definitely be really tough for you.
Before you begin, ask yourself about the type of business model that you
want to focus on. There are many different ways of earning money online, and
the type of path you choose will determine your business model in the end.
Focus on getting good at this business model that you have chosen for yourself,
and you will find yourself spending less effort and getting more results. Every
time you buy a new product, you should probably ask yourself if that product
will contribute in any way towards the particular business model which you are
working with.
If not, then it will take you a lot of time just to learn that new shiny thing,
and the results you get may not even be that good in the end. Stick with, and
concentrate on the business model which you have decided for yourself, and you
will find your focused energy breaking you through to success much sooner than
you anticipated, as does often happen when a sharp knife is focused on a piece of
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8. paper. Using a spoon to break through a piece of paper is much tougher, I can
tell you that…
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9. The Types of IM Products
Before we proceed, let’s talk about the different types of IM products that
are out there. There are products that focus on traffic-generating techniques,
products that are focused on creating good offers or products of your own,
products that tell you about productivity and self-development, and products
that teach you about technical aspects of the business.
If you can sit down and create a simple list, you will be able to categorize
the different products that you have into different types, and this will also help
you in the future when you decide to buy a new product. There are many ways
to classify IM products. For example, I can give products a classification based on
the following basic categories:
1. Technical products
2. Traffic generation products
3. Offer-related products
4. Conversion improvement products
5. Self improvement products
That’s just a basic overview, but almost all IM products can be fitted into
one of the five categories listed above. Let’s take for example, a product on
SEO. That product could be labeled as a traffic generation product, because SEO
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10. is a method for driving traffic to your site. A product on creating eBooks would
be an offer-related product because it teaches you how to create something that
you can offer to your customers in exchange for money. A product on
copywriting would be a conversion improvement product, because better copy
means better conversions. And so on and so forth… And there are even
products that fall into more than one of the above categories because they teach
more than one of those topics, like a product on affiliate marketing in general.
We’ll go into how you can use this categorization in the next section. But
before we move on, I’d like to give you one more way that you can categorize
IM products, and that is based on time and money. This is how you can
categorize products based on these two important resources:
1. Products that only help you earn more money.
2. Products that only help you save more time.
3. Products that help you earn money and save time.
People often say that time equals money. This is not really true as you can
always get more money, but you can never get back the time that has been
spent. But for the purposes of this classification, let’s look at both of these as
totally separate resources. Time is time, and money is money…
The reason why I have classified IM products like this is because there are
people who are doing an online business who have time to spend, but they have
no money to invest. There are also people who have the money to spend, but no
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11. time to invest. Furthermore, there are people who have neither the time, nor
the money to invest in an online business. All of them require different types of
products.
There are products that teach you how to make money online using free
methods, but conversely you have to spend a lot of time. There are also products
that teach you how to spend very little time, but put a lot of investment for
earning money, like courses that teach you outsourcing or how to use paid ads.
And there are products that teach you how to make more time, like time
management courses. Products that help you earn more time and money too are
usually software or services that automate processes for you.
So when purchasing a new product, it is often a good idea to weigh
yourself in terms of these two resources. Do I have enough money to spend for
doing the methods in this product? Do I have enough time to spend for learning
these new methods or applying them? If you don’t have the time or money for
something new, then just use what knowledge you have instead of wasting
resources unnecessarily on something that won’t get you back more time or
money.
Ok, let’s go onto the next section where we will talk about how we can
use the five product classifications that were previously discussed.
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12. Money Making Models
Almost every business model falls into the basic equation of:
Traffic → Offer → Conversion = Money
In case you didn’t know, offer means what you are giving to your visitors
in order to earn money for yourself. Traffic means the amount of visitors that
you can send to the offer. Conversion means the amount of visitors you can turn
into buyers.
Earning money online, or even offline, is easy as long as you remember
this basic equation. Now, there are a million different methods you can employ
for each step of the equation. There are so many ways you can drive traffic to an
offer, there are so many types of offers you can use to make money, and there
are so many different ways to improve your conversion rate. However, because
of the vast number of different methods, people tend to get stuck or overloaded
with information.
There’s no need to go all out and buy every different product on every
different type of traffic generating method there is. Just simply becoming really
good in one or two is all you need to succeed. If you focus on one and keep on
doing it, you will become great at it eventually. And once you reach that stage,
you will probably be able to send traffic to any type of offer and turn them into
buyers. Traffic is probably the hardest step in the equation. For the offer part,
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13. you can use your own product, or you can promote other people’s products. For
the conversion part, if you are promoting other people’s products, just find a
product that converts great. Or else, learn how to write copy for your own
products.
Success in your online business is nothing but this equation. Of course,
you may have to learn some technical stuff, like setting up a website. And you
may have to learn some time management stuff to keep yourself productive. But
once you have this equation under your belt, you will be able to make better
decisions when buying products. So, ask yourself about which of the pieces in
this equation you are missing when you go out to buy a product. Am I bad at
generating traffic? Am I bad at creating a good product? Like I said, you don’t
need a million different ways to do everything. Just one of each is enough.
Let’s take me for example. My traffic generation method of choice is SEO,
and I concentrate on nothing but that for driving traffic. There are hundreds of
different ways of doing SEO, but I just use one method. It took me a while to
learn, but once I got there, I kept getting good at it. I know something about
social media, videos, press releases, Twitter, and all the other fancy traffic
generation techniques because of all the products I’ve reviewed, but I don’t
really use them. I just stick with SEO, and it’s been great for me.
Offers are relatively easier to deal with. I mostly promote affiliate
products and get commissions, or I use Adsense. It’s simple, and I don’t think a
lot about it, just making sure to promote good products of course… When it
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14. comes to conversions, I just target people who are on the verge of buying, so I
don’t need to do much. I don’t know much about copywriting either. :P
So, just take one method for each part of the equation and run with it.
Almost every IM product is just a variation on the different parts of this
equation. If your traffic generation method of choice is social media, then just
stick with social media. Don’t waste your time or money on a new SEO product
that will take you time to learn from scratch. Unless you are already using SEO
as your traffic generation method and think that that new product would add to
the method you are currently using, then go for it. Remember the five
classifications of IM products we talked about earlier? If you take every product
you have and classify them accordingly, you’ll know how they fit into your
business now. Whether you need that new product or not is much clearer for
you to see…
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15. What’s a Good Product?
Well, now that you know what type of products you really need and what
type of product you shouldn’t be wasting your extra time on, how do you tell
whether a product is good or not? You know that you have no idea on how to
generate traffic, but are not sure whether this new traffic exploding course is
going to be worth your money. So what do you do?
First thing is that you need to set your definitions straight. How do you
define a good product? I have customers coming to me sometimes, asking me
whether this is a good product, or that is a good product. Well, it’s hard for me
to say for sure, because I’m not always sure about what people’s expectations
and tastes are.
There is a saying that goes, “One man’s garbage is another man’s gold”. So
it’s really not easy to simply say whether a product is good or whether it is bad.
It’s mainly a matter of personal opinion in most cases. Instead of asking whether
a product is good or bad, people should most probably be asking about whether
this product is suitable for them when they are trying to reach such and such a
goal.
Of course, that’s not to say that there are no bad products. There are bad
products that don’t work, but still, as I mentioned, often the definition of a bad
product can get into a grey area. It might be a product that blatantly lies in the
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16. salesletter and delivers to you something completely different from what it was
talking about. Or it might be a product that tries to get you into an impulse buy
by trying to keep the salesletter hush-hush and then you get nothing worth your
time after you purchase.
But you probably shouldn’t be buying on impulse in the first place. Before
you start becoming successful and getting your hands on a ton of money, you
should probably learn to use your money more responsibly in the first place. ;)
Here’s a great article on how not to get caught up on that impulse.
Before you purchase a product, make sure you do the due diligence and go
through all the reviews first. Oh, and make sure you really need that product in
the first place.  Another great way to overcome impulse buys…
When you get the urging to purchase a product, take a step back and think
to yourself first. This product costs a hundred dollars. If someone came up to
you right now and gave you the choice to have either that product or a hundred
dollar bill, which would you take from them? If you’d rather take the hundred
dollar bill, than that product is probably not something that you would value
after you bought it anyway…
Click here for an insightful video on products and marketing…
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17. $2000 Product versus $100 Product
I sometimes get this question from my customers as well. So and so
product is coming out and it costs $2000 and is packed with content to the brim.
However, there’s another product that does the same thing and it costs $100,
but it has less content. Which should I buy?
Firstly, if you are just starting out and you don’t have the room for taking
risks and failing, don’t buy anything you don’t need. Secondly, for $2000, I’d
expect that there was so much content in there that I wouldn’t be able to finish
applying everything until ten years later. Long story short, it probably has a lot
of content, but I seriously doubt you would be able to use even 10% of the
principles in there, much less all of it. Of course, then again, just 10% might be
enough to make you more than double your money back, but that’s not for
certain.
You might be better off purchasing the $100 product, if it’s a useful
product, and spending the rest of the money on outsourcing the process
completely.
Another reason why so many people don’t do as well as they should is
because they cherish style over substance. They prefer the sexy and advanced
methods that sound cool over solid traditional methods that get the best results.
Sexy and advanced methods do work, but if you truly want to have a successful
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18. online career, then building yourself up in the basics is the most important step.
Every professional sportsperson knows that the basics are where it’s at, and if
your basics aren’t good enough, you will reach a standstill at one point in time.
The most basic methods are often the most powerful ones, and the ones
you should take advantage of the most. Instead of looking for new advanced
techniques that you can learn, think of how you can improve on your basics.
People often buy a lot of the time thinking that they can learn something new
that they never heard of before. In actual fact, there is no new information and
most new products released and just simple variation based on previously known
methods.
Those methods may make life easier, or they make it harder. But that is to
say, when you purchase a product, don’t be too fixed on the mindset of getting
something new out of it. You may learn something that you may never have
heard of before, but if you have a very broad background in the field, you
probably won’t.
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19. Conclusion
This wasn’t meant to be an extremely thick report with all sorts of
groundbreaking information that you wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere
else. Instead, this report is meant to be short and sweet, highlighting some of the
key points that many of us are unaware of when purchasing IM products.
Many of us wander about without a clear sense of where we are going, or
why we are buying what we buy. I hope that this report has helped to improve
your understanding of the different types of IM products, as well as given you
some useful info on making the right purchasing decisions. To some of us, this
information might be obvious, but to others it may just be eye-opening…
Cheers,
TheMysteriousMarketer.com
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20. Resources
How to Write 400-Word Articles in 5 Minutes or Less…
http://www.thewritingart.com
How to Generate 400 Quality Backlinks in Just 2 Minutes…
http://www.flashbacklinks.com
The Fastest Way to $10,000 a Month…
http://www.theinterviewcashmachine.com
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