I am angry, really angry, you know that anger when you want to smash a cup off the wall or scream really loudly, that’s how angry I am and it’s been buIlding up for the past 12 hours. So hopefully this post will help me calm down.

I thought I’d seen it all in IM, unwritten products selling for $2000 then being rolled out over 10 weeks to give the outsourcers time to write it (happens more than you think!) Version 3 of a book selling for $197 when it’s the same as the original that sold for $37. As I said I thought I had seen it all but last night I saw a new low.

There was a product released last nIght that cost $2700 it was promoted by the usual suspects. Unfortunatly it was also promoted by people who should know better. One even had the cheek to point out all the considerable flaws and inaccuracies in the marketing and then still couldn’t resist adding a link to it.

So it seems the price of a marketers soul Is $1350 which Is probably less than a good escort for a night in San Diego, I know who I think has more class

So why have I got such a downer on this product, well it encompasses all that Is bad in IM. You see the product Is about creating software and it comes on the back of an Iphone app that was created by the marketer in question. it initially made him $2000 after his cousin sent details to his list (it’s a bIIIIIIggggg list), they also offered a bonus report about how they made the app to people who bought the product. it was 6 pages long (with lots of graphics!)

Of course they didn’t mention that in the $2000 they had to pay 30% (or 40%) to apple and the development costs were $1700

So we have an app that sold purely beacause it was promoted by a big marketer, that gave it momentum so it might have made more sales, Frankly I am not interested.

We have a 6 page report and we have 2 marketers .

I can Imagine the conversatIon,

Hey Dude, Your hair Is looking good today, long hair suits you.

Thanks Dude, I’m trying to look like you Cuz..

Cool.

yeah cool..

Know what we haven’t released anything for a while , it must be our turn soon..

Let me check the dIary… Holy S*** Dude we are supposed to release something in 10 days time..What are we going to do

I know, do you have that 6 page report you wrote last month, lets use that, we’ll add a load of videos , fill it full of fluff add a few webinars and market the bejazus out of it.

But we’ll never finIsh it in tIme…

No problem we’ll roll it out over 5 weeks that way we can get the money fIrst before we have to do any work

Good Idea Dude..

Right you go and make the launch series, remember to put the best stuff into the launch videos, I’ll get the guys… Let’s go to work (queue reservoir dogs music)

So what do you need to do to make software…

First rule is remember that you’ll need to support it…you will need a support desk

Find a good programmer who has experience.

Expect delays …programmers live it their own alternate reality

test, test test again, it needs to work on all sorts of different hardware configurations.

After that it’s just like releasing any products, you need JV partners and to build a buzz.

I am currently creating some software myself, it’s not an easy task despite outsourcing everything.

Finally everytime I write somethign like this I get comments along the lines of ” you are only jealous that you can’t sell products for so much” Part of that is probably right I’d love to be able to sell a product at $2000 or $3000 but i also like to be able to sleep at night and know i’ve given value in my products. So thanks very much but i’ll take a good nights sleep over a millionaire lifestyle any day.

However If you want to spend $2700 then i’ll happily fly to your home and sit beside you and walk you through the whole process…I might even buy you a beer… Now that that other product say that!

Ohh One other thing, it’s a 5 week course…the refund period is 30 days , they’ll save what they think is the best stuff until last.. Do The math!

Now having got that off my chest I actually feel less angry!

Normal service will be resumed on Monday have a great weekend.

I  love it ever few months when a obviously overhyped crap product comes out as it allows me to clean out the lists of who I receive emails from. I recently got a huge deluge of emails about the Clickbank code. So I checked it out. The problem was the further I dug the more obvious it became that the sales letter was the biggest lie since ….well since the last big lie.

If I can spot that after less than 10 minutes research it means that the people promoting it..and there are lots either A) know it’s a poor choice to promote it and don’t care about their subscribers or B) Don’t care enough about their subscribers to do a bit of research.

So lets look at the obvious things that they should have noticed.

1. The headline…. Clickbank newbie makes $48,000 in his first Month

This product is by Michael Jones  ( it’s not really but we’ll come to that later!)  A bit of research would have shown that Michael Jones Had a product out late last year called Cracking The Adwords Code And also a product on clickbank called The Adwords Manifesto   So hardly a newbie!!  He’s been using the same methods in the book to rake in thousands a month If you believe the other products..

2. The fact that he already had a product on Clickbank that was hyped by other marketers surely doesn’t mean that those $48,000 worth of sales came from that product does it???  I’ll let you decide!

3. Ok so who is Michael Jones  Ok so according to all his sales copy he is an Ohio man…. really? since when was Ohio part of Israel? From reading various posts in different forums I beleive that Michael Jones is an alias for Roy Oron & Maayan Marzan. The Two have had a string of products over the past few years. Just search on their names and you’ll see pleanty of negative comments.   The Voice of Michael Jones is provided by a Voice Over artist from Ohio who advertises on Elance. So The Ohio Connection is sort of correct.

The product itself is just a rehash of other products and a rewriting of “Michael Jones” other Adwords products…  Basically find a product on clickbank, spend $500 a day on adwords and wooo hoo we are rich…. or possibly heading towards bankrupcy.

You’ll find that every month or so a product comes along that is hyped by loads of people usually this means that it’s payign good commissions not that it’s good. In the Past year i have found only  ahandful of products that I would consider worth promoting. One of those was a very similar product to The Clicbank code called Commission Blueprint If you want to get into adwords then i would recommend that. Personally I’ll be sticking with Article Marketing

Be careful out there,  and unsubscribe from those lists!!

I got an email from someone who is just starting out in internet marketing having been made redundant, she was persuaded by an email from a “guru” to pay almost $500 for a product that would show her how to create a long term income. Unfortunately this lady didn’t even know what ftp was.  Now for once I don’t hold the guru 100% responsible for the situation (shock!!) I am big on personal responsibility at the moment but this does show that you need to be aware that sometimes no matter how good a product sounds it may not be suitable for you.

There are two distinct type of internet marketer that you come across in the internet marketing niche.

Type one is what I like to call the “List Whore” these are guys whose whole focus is selling stuff via their mailing list, often they can’t even be bothered to write the emails they send out and just use the ones that the creator of the product had written for his JV partners. Avoid these unless they actually give good information that you can use.

Type two is the type I call the “Sharer” these are guys (and girls) who maybe create their own products, and have blogs and try to spread the knowledge they have accumulated over the past few years. You’ll very rarely find their blogs or products being promoted by the list whores. I have had personal experience of trying to get a product promoted by the List Whores and they are usually happy to promote your products if you fulfil one of the following criteria,

a) You are prepared to sell your product at an outrageous price so that they get a decent commission
b) You have a big list and agree to sell their next product no matter how bad it is.  (This is the IM equivalent of a circle jerk!)
Needless to say I didn’t get wordpress goldmine promoted by many of them!

Now at this point someone is going to write a comment below and say that I am just jealous of successful marketers, not so. You can be a successful marketer without selling your soul and peddling crap to your lists, just look at Frank Kern, love him or hate him for being an uber cool  guitar playing surfer  dude ,he constantly supplies good useable products and great advice.

So what should you look for if you are going to follow a marketer…? I am open to suggestions here but this is what I think.

If they create products they should produce books and products based on what they do. Not all people worth following or reading create products but they are still worth following for the insights they can bring.

They should only recommend products they have tested and used and found to be useful (I think I only found 3 or 4 products worth recommending last year)

They should be approachable and happy to spend time answering your emails (as I write this I have one of my forum members sat next to me having 3 days of one to one mentoring  let’s see Andrew Fox do that!!)

They should be realistic in their expectations,

So how do you find these good guys, here are some recommendations for you to help you get started. Go to these guys’ blogs and have a read, if you like them then bookmark the blogs.

Jennifer Ledbetter – PotPie Girl  http://www.potpiegirl.com (ok Not strictly one of the Guys but well worth reading)

Dennis Becker  http://www.5bucksaday.com/index.php

Chris Pearson  http://lostballinhighweeds.com/

So thats it for this post, got some new studio equipment arrived today or tomorow so my next post may be a video post…until then good luck