Confessions of an IM Product Reviewer

The Mysterious Marketer.com

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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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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…

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

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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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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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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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paper. Using a spoon to break through a piece of paper is much tougher, I can

tell you that…

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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$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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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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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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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