I love email marketing. It allows you to connect directly with your followers, to segment them up and is not reliant on outside forces like Google shifting the goal posts.
The thing is, I’m not very good at it.
That’s why when I see internet marketing products saying that they can help me to improve my email marketing, I have to pick them up and take a look.
Some are good, some contain content I already know and some are pretty bad.
I recently picked up Instant Profit Funnel by Mark Wightley.
What is Instant Profit Funnel?
The product comprises of two systems to make money via email marketing. This is based on making squeeze pages (sometimes referred to as landing pages), which are designed to make your visitors sign up to your email list.
The Sales Pitch
The pitch for this product is typical marketing blurb: lots of bolded and underlined text, grand promises, and very little in the way of actual information.
There was nothing overly scammy about the sales page which is refreshing, though there was the usual unprovable proof of earnings, and unverifiable statements of how much Mark and his customers have earned.
The testimonials look real, at least more real than most testimonials I see, but there’s still no way to check them.
Purchasing Instant Profit Funnel
The product is an e-book and it’s designed as a loss leader, as the affiliates for the product actually get 100% of the money from it.
This is because it’s designed to get you into a funnel (oddly enough) and that’s where Mark makes his money, if you buy the upsells that is.
The first upsell is a video course of the same eBook you just bought, plus some added extras for $27. After that you’re offered the videos only for $17.
If you decide to buy one of those, then the funnel continues and the cost starts to increase with a monthly recurring fee for updated training for just $47, and finally a done for you funnel at $97.
Do you need any of that? Not really, though some people may get benefit from them, especially the videos.
Inside Instant Profit Funnel
The member’s area is fairly standard: you’re offered a lot of extras mixed in with the purchased products and of course upgrades to the upsells you didn’t buy to begin with.
The e-book comes with some added extras such email swipes, a checklist and a podcast of the course which is a nice bonus.
You get access to both the Instant Profit Funnel course and the Email Cash Funnel courses. On top of those you get a landing page builder plugin which is actually white labelled version a $19 product on Code Canyon. I don’t think you get updates though which isn’t ideal.
Instant Profit Funnel
A solid 56 page eBook, the text is nicely sized, has plenty of useful images and contains very little fluff.
The eBook covers finding a niche, autoresponders, products to promote, offers/bribes, squeeze page creation, high ticket offers, list setup, tracking, follow ups and traffic.
Of course, if you pick up any eBook on email marketing, it will contain most if not all of these.
However, Mark does offer some good information. For example in the niche selection section, he covers points on finding a solid niche specifically for email marketing that most other writers and product creators fail to advise on. It’s still common sense, but it’s nice to see written down.
The focus on the email marketing is very much a hard sell: you are being advised to email people basically daily.
This might well work as a separate website and system, but I wouldn’t advise you to use this tactic on an existing business website, it’s more likely to annoy your customer base than help.
If you’ve ever signed up to a “make money online” product yourself, and then received countless emails, it’s that style that Mark’s product promotes.
The traffic generation section has some interesting tips, but only covers a few methods and then only in brief which is a shame, as traffic generation is usually the biggest hurdle for most people.
It also seems a bit rushed. As an example he gives you 4 rules to follow for niche selection, but then actually only provides 3.
Email Cash Funnel
A longer eBook at 99 pages, Email Cash Funnel has the same formatting and useful images included.
This eBook is very similar to Instant Profit Funnel in that it follows a similar process (select niche, autoresponder etc).
However it goes into much more detail about how to set up a campaign in Aweber. It also promotes things slightly differently. Instead of focusing on 2 or 3 products it pushes 10 or more. The style of promoting also seems a little less hard sell and more focusing on the consumer.
I really liked the fact that Mark included several example emails that look like they would work.
There’s definitely more detail in this e-book, mainly with Aweber but also with creating landing pages.
The traffic generation section is also bigger and more detailed than the other eBook.
The Bottom Line
This products isn’t a scam, in fact you actually get a lot of value for money for the $7 bucks you initially outlay. Sure you have to navigate the upsells and choose wisely but overall the value is there.
The two eBooks you get as part of this purchase are very similar, yet they are also different enough to expand and complement each other.
If you have had success with email marketing before, then you may not get much out of these, but if your fairly new to it or have been struggling to make money with it, then there is a lot of quality advice in these 2 eBooks.
I didn’t like the hard sell aspect of the first book, but it’s been proven to work – if it didn’t you wouldn’t see it in your inbox every day.
Overall I was surprised by the quality of the Instant Profit Funnel & Email Cash Funnel systems, and would actually recommend it for a good grounding in email marketing.
If you are a newbie affiliate marketer or website owner, you know how hard it is to get traffic to your site(s). It can be disheartening when you write a brilliant blog post, publish it, and get no comments or even views.
That’s why High Traffic Academy initially caught my interest. High Traffic Academy is the creation of Vick Strizheus, the “King of Online Traffic,” who also offers group and one-on-one coaching/consulting sessions ranging from $5,000 to $100,000.
A guy who charges such hefty fees for his time and expertise must really know what he’s talking about, right?
So, Vick is now offering an online version of his coaching sessions, called High Traffic Academy.
What is High Traffic Academy?
High Traffic Academy (HTA) is a membership site, created and operated by Vick, that teaches its members how to get quality traffic to their websites. To this end, Vick offers video tutorials, webinars, e-books, traffic campaign examples, and select products.
The HTA operates on three basic pillars:
Website development
Here you learn to purchase a domain and hosting, create your landing page, and link your landing page to an email autoresponder. To this end, Vick gives you access to his landing page builder.
Traffic Generation
This is the meat of the program and Vick tells you of several paid methods that can help you generate traffic to your landing pages. The PPC methods are provided through his software programs and traffic exchanges including Offline Goldmine Traffic, The Penny Traffic, The Underground PPC Traffic.
There is also software that teaches you how to work with Google image ads (i.e., Secret GIA Traffic), software that tells you about buying email lists (i.e., Email Media Traffic), and software that teaches you about using banner ads (i.e., Banner Media Traffic). You are also introduced to CPA networks and ad swaps.
List control
In this section, Vick instructs you on what you need to do after you have paid traffic coming to your landing pages. For example, how do you get a customer to become a repeat customer? Vick also shows you a secret method for following your competitors’ traffic online and building your email list off of this traffic.
You get the following items with your paid subscription:
Email autoresponder
Click tracker
URL scarper
Sales page templates
Video/YouTube marketing tutorials
Social media traffic generation techniques
Lead capture techniques
Is HTA worth its hefty $997 price?
HTA isn’t cheap, and a full membership plan costs $997. Even at its occasional promotional rate, HTA still costs $197/month to get started. So, is HTA worth the money?
I say no, and here are my reasons why.
1. Vick focuses on traffic, not content.
The HTA training is focused almost exclusively on generating traffic with PPC ads, banner ads, image ads, etc. There is very little time devoted to creating a quality website and filling it with valuable content. In fact, Vick makes it appear that you don’t even need a website, just a bunch of sales pages.
Google won’t even index your site if it contains nothing but a sales page. You’ll get no organic traffic whatsoever if you don’t have content for your viewers to peruse. And therein lies to key to Vick’s methods…
2. The recommended methods aren’t free.
Vick tells you next to nothing about generating free, organic traffic by creating a quality website, publishing tutorials and videos, etc. He also says nothing about content SEO and how you can get your web pages to rank well on search engines like Google. The only SEO that’s mentioned is ad SEO (e.g., how to match headline and ad keywords).
However, Vick tells you quite a bit about how you should buy traffic and email lists. Most of the recommended exchanges and marketplaces just happen to be his own products, which he generates a profit from when you make your purchases.
3. You’ll be spending more than $997.
The full year membership to HTA costs $997. However, you’ll be spending much more than that after you shell out the $997.
Vick’s trainings and webinars are nothing more than dressed-up sales presentations where he attempts to have you buy paid traffic, paid email lists, paid ads, etc. Even though Vick claims that you’ll get really cheap traffic (“as low as $0.05/click!”), you’ll still need to spend money to generate that traffic.
Vick also proposes that you test out his traffic-generating scenarios within your PPC and ad campaigns. To complete many of these scenarios, you’ll need some really deep pockets. Furthermore, without an optimized website to back up your sale pages, you’ll be paying high fees to Google due to your low Quality Score.
4. Getting a refund can be tricky.
Current HTA members are complaining about their difficulties with getting refunds. For example, here is a complaint posted by Geoffrey:
5. The online reviews might be biased.
Several HTA members report being offered monetary compensation in exchange for a positive review of HTA just days after first joining HTA. It’s one thing to ask for an unbiased review and offer some kind of compensation, but quite another to pay for biased reviews.
6. Some of the material is outdated.
HTA members have made online comments such as the following regarding the outdated nature of HTA trainings:
7. Vick isn’t exactly innocent.
We found this YouTube news video showing his 90-day sentencing on a charge of grand theft in South Dakota.
We’re passing on High Traffic Academy
Affiliate marketers and website/product owners who don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on paid traffic, email lists and advertising won’t find HTA of much use to them. Also, HTA spends little if any time teaching about building quality websites that are indexed well by search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Almost every recommended method has to be paid for, and the commissions from those payments invariably go to Vick.
If you are interested in generating traffic and sales in ways that won’t kill your wallet, there are plenty of other quality affiliate marketing platforms out there, including Wealthy Affiliate.
Can you really buy into a world-class marketing funnel for just $7? That’s what Lead Lightning promises you when you click on its sales page, including ready-to-go lead pages and emails, a contact management platform, and impressive 85% commissions on product sales. You also get swipe copy, sales banners, commission tracking, and free training.
This nearly $850 starter package is priced at just $7:
So, does Lead Lightning live up to its claims?
What is Lead Lightning?
Lead Lightning is a marketing automation platform that automates several marketing activities for you, including sending emails, tracking clicks, prospects and conversions, and following up converted customers with additional products (often called upsells and cross-sells).
You also get access to a Facebook support group, tutorials, and training. The sales page showcases the program’s many benefits:
Supposedly, you get access to all these goodies just by paying $7 for a regular membership in the program.
That’s the front-end sell of this system. However, Lead Lightning also claims that it’s “a lead attraction machine” that “spits out daily commissions.”
Commissions from what, you ask?
From the sale of Lead Lightning memberships to others (ahem, your downline).
The following upgraded membership plans are presented by Lead Lightning, each with a higher and better commission payout:
Regular membership: $7
Payout: $6 commissions on new memberships.
Silver membership: $29.97/month
Payout: $15 monthly commissions on new memberships.
Gold membership: $53.97/month
Payout: $20 monthly commissions on new memberships.
Diamond membership: $147
Payout: $100 commissions on new memberships.
Platinum membership: $497
Payout: $400 commissions on new memberships.
If you haven’t guessed it by now, Lead Lightning is focused on selling one major product through its funnel: Itself. In all fairness, the program does tell you this up-front in its sales page:
Naturally, you won’t make $100 commissions unless you first purchase the Gold membership yourself. Likewise, you won’t make $400 commissions unless you first purchase the $497 Platinum membership for yourself.
So, the system technically costs $7 to start…but you won’t achieve its promises of big money unless you pay a lot more money later on, and also pay money for monthly memberships.
Is this investment worthwhile? I’m a bit skeptical, and here are some reasons why:
1. The “testimonials” are highly suspect.
Lead Lightning lists three testimonials from Richard Dwyer, Dotti Berry and Jeff Gardner as proof that this system is a great way to make money online.
There’s just one issue with these testimonials- the same individuals also provided glowing testimony in an email processing (aka, envelope-stuffing) scheme called Email Processing System.
2. Where’s the support?
When you go to Lead Lightning’s Facebook group page, you encounter five posts for Udimi (an ad platform), probably posted by an affiliate of the system…and that’s it. There’s no group discussion here amongst the 105 members. Any questions posed by fellow members get zip for an actual response.
3. Lead Lightning is a rebooted Power Lead System.
The Power Lead System, which was introduced in 2013 by Michael Price and Neil Guess, offered a similar marketing product and affiliate payout structure before it was dismantled in 2014 due to affiliate recruitment issues. Interestingly, the domain of that site was plsfunnel.com.
I’m not sure if Michael and Neil parted ways since that time, but Neil is now the creator of Lead Lightning. As for Todd Gross, the guy who introduces himself in the Lead Lightning sales videos, we’re not sure how he fits in.
4. A system with no product except itself is a pyramid scheme.
The creator of Lead Lightning props up the system as a way to market “your business” and the Lead Lightning product if you don’t have your own product. That’s a clever way to avoid litigation, I guess.
In truth, very little is discussed about how you can use the Lead Lightning tools to promote your own product, and there is much more emphasis placed on affiliate recruitment.
In other words, you’re not going to be researching niche markets to promote or studying SEO. No, your goal will be to email as many prospects as possible with spam emails and sales banners promoting membership in Lead Lightning. Although you might get a signup here or there, you’re far more likely to get in trouble for violating the CAN-SPAM Act.
5. Many of Lead Lightning’s marketing tools are free.
The customer management system that Lead Lightning touts as one of its benefits is nothing special- SuiteCRM and Insightly, for example, offer such a system for free. If you’re looking at an email system that can become an autoresponder, there’s MadMimi.
Sure, you’ll be stuck writing your own emails and ads…or for $5, you can hire someone through Fiverr to do that task.
In short, Lead Lightning offers nothing so extraordinary and powerful that it warrants paying nearly $850.
Having said that, you might find sufficient value for your money if you only pay $7 for Lead Lightning and resist investing any more dollars into this system.
Lead Lightning is a big ‘nope.’
If you are a marketing newbie and want to learn about sales pages, email autoresponders, etc., then Lead Lightning might fit the bill. However, as a long-term system, Lead Lightning is tenuous and may disappear at any moment, much like its Power Lead System predecessor. Furthermore, most of this system’s energy is focused on self-promotion and affiliate recruitment. You’re better off looking elsewhere for a long-term marketing software platform.
How would you like to make $80-$100 several times each day without having to sell anything or pay money up-front?
That’s the claim put forward by Martin Wilson, who offers a free online income opportunity called Zip Nada Zilch (ZNZ). The opportunity itself is listed through the URL Cash2Flow.
Once I clicked on the URL, I watched the following video where Martin introduces ZNZ, an income-generating system that is not only free to join, but which supposedly generates multiple daily payments of $80-$100.
Even better, this system requires no selling or network marketing- yet somehow directs multiple payments from third-party product sales into your Paypal account. This is shown by Martin several times in the following introductory sales video:
So, how exactly does ZNZ make you $80-$100 multiple times per day?
How ZNZ works
When you sign up to ZNZ, you are encouraged to sign up to sales offers and trials provided by merchants like Intuit, Direct TV, GoDaddy, etc. Once you sign up to a sufficient number of these offers and trials, you qualify as an Internet-based referral agent for ZNZ.
What does this mean?
It means that you can now access and use the ZNZ portal to make referral commissions by getting other people to sign up for ZNZ-presented offers. To this end, you receive a referral link and access to marketing videos. You can also create a free website through ZNZ to market the business and its affiliated merchants.
You are encouraged to post your referral link on your personal website, blog and social media network, and to even email that link to your subscribers.
There are two commission earning levels in ZNZ:
ZNZ One: At this level, you make a $20 commission from every person who signs up through your link and fills out merchant offers.
ZNZ BigCash: At this level, you make $60-$80 commissions from your sign-ups.
The ZNZ One level is fairly easy to achieve- you simply complete several free trial offers through ZNZ and you qualify to make those $20 referral commissions.
The ZNZ BigCash level requires an up-front investment of about $10 to complete a sufficient number of paid trial offers in order to qualify for higher referral commissions.
In effect, ZNZ operates as a high level affiliate marketing network. As one of its members, you promote ZNZ offers to people via social media, your website, etc. When those people sign up to ZNZ using one of your affiliate links, you collect a commission.
Is ZNZ worth your time (and money)?
Affiliate marketing is a viable way to make money both actively and passively. There are also many upon many products that can be promoted through affiliate marketing, including products that you yourself make and offer.
Unfortunately, ZNZ has limited potential as a long-term affiliate marketing system, and here are my reasons why:
The products hold limited value.
Many affiliate products have significant inherent value in and of themselves, so selling them as an affiliate is rather easy. You can publish a case study, for example, on how an educational program helped someone achieve success.
With ZNZ, however, the products are things like subscriptions to cable or hosting or video services. While ZNZ products aren’t junk, you won’t be creating quality content around them either. That means you’ll also have a lower possibility of ranking well in online searches.
You must complete sales offers.
To become a commission-earning member with ZNZ, you must complete free and/or paid trial offers that you would normally not fill out. You must then convince other subscribers to also fill out these offers.
If you want to avoid being charged, you must track when you signed up for your offers and cancel them before your trial period ends.
Compare this with being a subscribed member to a single affiliate product that you can test at will and interview others about regarding their experiences.
You don’t control the product offers.
Martin explains several times in his instructional videos that ZNZ’s offers change over time. This is bad for you as an affiliate because any content you create for the products is bound to become null and void after a period of time. Likewise, because ZNZ depends on third party entities for affiliate offers and earnings, it’s highly likely that one day, this site could fold up and close without notice.
The free website isn’t versatile.
It’s true that you get a free website through ZNZ- however, the website template cannot be customized and is of low quality. That means that online traffic will be tricky to generate and direct. Likewise, how will you generate landing pages, call-to-actions, etc. with a website that can’t be customized?
The Bottom Line: ZNZ just isn’t worth the hassle.
ZNZ is not a scam- but it’s also not worth the time investment as a major affiliate network. There’s limited product marketing potential, limited optimization for search engines, and limited versatility in sales messages. You are better off investing your time and money with other affiliate marketing platforms.
If you’ve been developing your email marketing campaigns and are wondering how to best approach your subscriber list and generate sales from it, please read through our review of Autoresponder Madness.
In a nutshell, Autoresponder Madness is a product offered by Andre Chaperon and has been around since 2009. So, there is quite a bit of history to this product, as well as content. As for Andre, he is and has been an online marketer since 2004.
What is Autoresponder Madness?
Autoresponder Madness (ARM) is an 18-lesson email marketing course designed for online and affiliate marketers who already have products to sell and have an email list of at least 1,000 subscribers. Granted, that shouldn’t stop other folks from signing up to ARM and benefiting from it, but the assumption here is that you are ready to go with subscribers and are looking to improve your Earning Per Subscriber (EPS).
Incidentally, if you are still in the process of list building, Andre offers the following free resource here.
Andre notes that many marketers make an average EPS of $1/subscriber/month. That’s a good earning rate if the marketer has a huge subscriber list; however, for those marketers with just a few thousand, or just around a thousand, this earning rate is too low to make a decent living.
Andre proposes that you can significantly raise your EPS if you emulate his email creation and broadcast tactics.
What are these email tactics?
1. Create customer personas.
Andre teaches you how to create customer personas, or avatars, in order to better identify your target customers and what they are looking for. This requires some general emailing (known as manual broadcasts) to your entire list- at least at first. Based on who responds to your emails, you immediately go into step 2.
2. Segment your list.
As your subscriber list clicks on your broadcast emails, you immediately segment those clicking individuals out of the general pool of subscribers. Those segmented individuals are channeled directly to step 3.
3. Create Soap Opera Sequences (SOSs).
Once you’ve collected enough individuals for your segments, you weave what Andre calls Soap Opera Sequences, or SOSs, to hook them into buying your product. SOSs are specialized emails that tell a story but leave the ending of that story for the next (and then the next) email. In this way, a soap opera-style email sequence is launched that keeps readers coming back to your emails as they are sent out on a regular basis.
As readers continually click on and open those SOSs, they become comfortable with you and your (eventual) offer. You are seen less and less as a marketer and more as a trusted resource.
Incidentally, SOSs are not for those email marketers who are reluctant to write- Andre holds up an example SOS that consists of 27 emails!
4. Create splinter SOSs.
Those subscribers who follow along your initial SOS and who eventually click on one of your offers are segmented into a new SOS. At this point in time, you know you are dealing with highly motivated buyers who are very likely to purchase your offer. Andre states that one of his splinter SOSs resulted in a 31+% conversion rate.
So, you direct these highly motivated buyers to a new SOS that focuses on the product they clicked on. That’s where you’re most likely going to get your amazing conversion rate, and even if you have just a few hundred subscribers.
What else does ARM offer?
1. Customer persona insights.
Having been in the online marketing field since 2004, Andre provides lots of insights into how people buy online and the psychological process they follow when doing so. He presents lots of examples here and how to take advantage of consumer psychology.
2. Product Launch Sequences (PLSs).
For one-off products that aren’t sold as a series or by subscription, Andre provides a blueprint on how to sell them via the Product Launch Sequence or PLS. He also teaches you how to intersperse your SOS with a PLS so that your subscribers are slowly drawn into wanting your offer.
3. Loads of case studies and example emails.
If you’re not sure just how to construct your own SOS or what content you should include, don’t fret: Andre fleshes out his 18-lesson course with numerous examples of how other marketers generated their SOSs and what copy they used. It’s very easy to see how this copy can be repurposed into your own emails and offers.
The Bottom Line
For online and affiliate marketers who already have an email subscriber list and want to squeeze more money from it, Andre’s ARM is an ideal fit. To be fair, the course does require significant effort from the marketer in terms of generating several detailed auto-responder emails and segmenting the audience. You will need to have an auto-responder program like AWeber, for example.
However, if you are looking to increase your EPS, then the ARM course may be just what you need.
In brief, it involves the sale of goods and services to potential and existing customers via email. These emails are usually sent by businesses, although at times those businesses may also outsource their email marketing to third party agencies or affiliates. If the email marketing is outsourced, the third parties collect commissions on email clicks and/or resulting sales.
Commercial email marketing has been around for some time now, or at least ever since companies and businesses started compiling email lists and sending offers to their subscribers.
The fact that this technique is well known among marketers had me scratching my head when I heard that Bob Patrick was offering what he called “The Secret Webinar” to introduce the “Secret Formula.” Bob’s Secret Formula involved none other than commercial email marketing as a work-at-home, online income opportunity.
Who is Bob Patrick?
This is Bob Patrick, an ex-salesman who used to sell soap door-to-door in New Jersey.
Bob Patrick was dissatisfied with his salesman job so he eventually saved up his money and bought a three family rental property during the real estate boom. In the process, he took on a $400K mortgage and went broke trying to keep up with building repairs.
While in Las Vegas, Bob met a guy who was an online businessman- this guy made money with Google AdWords. Bob tried his hand at AdWords and spent over $30K on Google ads. He started making a profit with those ads…and then Google changed the rules for ranking his ads. The lesson for Bob was simple: Don’t build your business on the back of another business.
This is the story you first hear when you start watching “The Secret Webinar.” Bob also spends a lot of time showing screen shots of his own and members’ earnings.
At least 30 minutes of the 90-minute webinar are spent on personal anecdotes, as well as earnings statements. Eventually, however, Bob gets down to business and explains what the “Secret Formula” is about.
What is the Secret Formula?
In Bob’s own words, the Secret Formula involves “tapping into a system that touches nearly everyone.” The Secret Formula does not involve forex, binary options or stock trading. In fact, the system “is highly profitable” and “anyone can do it.” Also, “with this system, the competition doesn’t matter.”
So, what exactly is involved?
Basically, the Secret Formula is about getting leads, sending emails to those leads, and then making money when the leads click on the emails.
How do you get leads? There are three options:
You build your email list. This is the most organic of the options, but it’s time-consuming and expensive.
You rent and manage email lists. This technique is only moderately profitable because you must split your profits with the list owners.
You buy email leads. You buy your lists once and profit forever.
Bob’s preference is for the third option and, to this end, he’s cultivated relationships with high caliber list vendors.
There’s just one problem with that approach- automated emailing platforms like MailChimp, Aweber, etc. don’t let you import large email lists. They also limit how many emails you can send each month. If you have huge contact lists, you’ll be paying a lot of money to use existing platforms.
Bob took this issue head-on by building his own email platform, which he calls Powermail Pro.
With this autoresponder system, Bon was able to connect with email servers including Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo, etc. He could also send limitless emails, often exceeding one million emails in a month.
What did Bob do with his personally built email autoresponder? He used it to send lots of offer-containing emails to his lists. Within those lists, some individuals clicked on the emailed offers. With every click, Bob made a few dollars.
Eventually, Bob had thousands upon thousands of contacts, whom he emailed on a steady basis and made a reliable income from too.
As a member of the Secret Formula, you also obtain email contacts and send “Ridiculous Money Promotions” from CPA or affiliate networks. Those emails are very general and apply to almost anyone. You make money when your leads click on the email offers or try the sample products.
Here are some example emails you would be sending:
Bob also emphasizes that the email autoresponder will soon have an optional plugin, called Auto Product Pro, that will help you create email templates and copy. As a Secret Formula member, you get all the following benefits:
What I don’t like about the Secret Formula
Bob Patrick emphasizes that there’s no way you can go wrong with his Secret Formula, but here are the points that raised my eyebrows:
You’re sending a lot of spam.
With this system, you’re sending lots of spammy emails that might get marked as such and eventually have your ISP banned. Also, the click-through-rate (CTR) on general and unsolicited emails such as the ones shown above is very low.
The leads aren’t qualified.
Bob states that members in his program get 5,000 10,000 email leads just for joining and then another 3,000 email leads each month. As far as I could tell, however, the leads that Bob provides aren’t qualified. In other words, there is no indication that the leads would be interested in offer X or Y. The source of these leads aren’t revealed and they may be just general emails.
Some of the program claims are over the top.
Bob claims that members are provided with unique benefits like instant acceptance into affiliate networks. As far as I know, affiliate networks provide you with instant access because they want your business. Clickbank, for example, or Amazon Associates, is not going to be picky about who works with it.
How does Bob actually make his money?
Bob shows his earnings report every few minutes during the webinar, but he never shows which promotions he’s actually running. Viewers of the webinar are left guessing exactly how Bob earned his eventual $768 by the end of the 90-minute webinar.
On a side note, many email autoresponder developers work directly with businesses to create and send their commercial emails. It may be that Bob is one such developer who makes most of his money from email marketing for his clients. If that’s the case, Secret Formula members could actually be paying to do Bob’s email marketing work.
The price of the program ain’t cheap.
Bob offers The Secret Formula for a one-time setup fee of $1,497 and $297/month thereafter. He states that competitors would charge $10,000+ just to get set up with servers and similar software. For this price, you get access to the email autoresponder, email templates, online trainings, and the email leads. There is also a member forum.
There are no refunds.
Bob says that he guarantees that you’ll make money using his system, but he gives no refunds. “It’s not for tire kickers,” he says.
Summary
While the Secret Formula program isn’t a scam, it’s a risky investment because you need to spend almost $1,500 to really understand the product. If you get a low CTR on your emails, you may end up spending a lot of time and effort sifting through your contacts and trying to figure out which ones are more qualified than the others.
Bob’s “spray and pray” approach to email marketing is not exactly data-driven, aside from looking at your results at the end of each campaign. Finally, for the amount of cash required, you may be better off just buying your own email lists and working with affiliate networks like Clickbank.
Company Name: Wealthy Affiliate Website URL:www.WealthyAffiliate.com Founders: Kyle & Carson Support Rank: 100/100 Community Rank: 98/100 Training Rank: 100/100 Tools Rank: 98/100 Website & Hosting Rank: 98/100 Value Rank: 100/100 Overall Rank: 98/100
An Introduction to Wealthy Affiliate
Wealthy Affiliate is my home for online business. But before I get into my personal views on the program and tell you why it is my #1 (by a considerable amount), let me give you my story.
I have been there, done that…with FAR too many products. If you are like me, you have sifted through more reviews of so-called “opportunities” than you would like others to know…and fallen victim to some of them. We all want to create something meaningful and create a business doing so…but the last thing we want to do is get “scammed” by another scumbag company on the Internet.
I totally get that.
This is why I am personally introducing you to Wealthy Affiliate (WA). Out of all the programs I have reviewed to date, this remains my highest ranked product. In fact, there isn’t a product or service that I have come across that continues to improve their service at the speed that Wealthy Affiliate does… always keeping their members (like myself) in mind.
Wealthy Affiliate was started back in 2005 by two guys by the names of Kyle & Carson. They were both affiliate marketers who had their own successful businesses online before starting WA. They felt they could give back and they were off and running with WA.
Since then (9.5 years later), it has evolved into the highest reviewed and acclaimed platform for creating and growing a business online. I can honestly say that I owe a good deal of my success to the Wealthy Affiliate community and I have been a part of this amazingly helpful and supportive community for close to 6 years now.
That is why I am biased. When I see something that is working for 1,000’s of others and is working for me, I tend to recommend it. In fact, I recommend it to my friends and family members who are looking to create a business online and my wife just left the rat race to start her very own venture online too.
I am very critical of any product or service online so you can best bet, every corner or WA has been explored in my 6 years. If there is a fault I will be sure to tell you. There isn’t….other than the fact that this Internet business stuff is highly addictive and so is the helpful, state of the art community at Wealthy Affiliate.
First, What Can Wealthy Affiliate do for YOU?
I get this question all the time.
“What exactly can Wealthy Affiliate do for me that other programs cannot?”
To be honest, that is a fair question and one I want to really dig into and explain here. Like you, I do my due diligence before investing any time or energy into something (in all aspects of life) and if it is not worth it, I want to know before hand!!!
There is an endless amount of crap out there in the opportunity world, a myriad of scams, and if you are like me, you have likely been slapped in the face by a scam or two (or ten) over the years.
That is one of the main reasons I created this site. To help folks avoid scams and to really show people the door to real opportunity and programs that can help. That happens to be Wealthy Affiliate.
Here are the main differentiating factors that make WA truly different than the REST of the stuff out there.
All inclusive. Everything you need is all in one place…finally. No upsells, no buying crappy ebooks and PDF’s. This is an education platform with all the tools you need to run your business, all the websites/hosting, all the support/mentoring, the training, and community you need to create and grow a business. No more buying “part” of the puzzle.
They care about YOUR success. These dudes care, but not just that, this is probably the most helpful “pay it forward” community I have ever been apart of. It is evident that this sort of passion for helping others starts at the “top” and it will be evident the second you step foot into WA.
They have been in business longer than any of the “other” guys. Something that says a lot about a company is how long they have been in business. WA has been in business since 2005 and continues to grow. I have seen almost every other company in this industry fail with their “churn and burn” products while Wealthy Affiliate continues to not just stay in business, but get better every day.
The community is second to none. You ask for help, you can expect it. There are MANY different ways that you can get help within WA, from the instant live chat, to the question and answer platform, to leaving your questions right within the training lessons. Expert help is there when you need it.
They continually improve their service, for no extra charge and ZERO upsells. Wealthy Affiliate is getting better with each update they make (there have been many major updates this year). I know they have big plans in the year ahead, they are constantly letting the community know about upcoming innovations and improvements that help folks like myself (and you) improve business.
It is very ACTIVE. In fact, on any given day there are thousands of people in the community that are getting help, offering help, and connecting within the members area. This energy is nice to see and makes every day an exciting one!
They make things S-I-M-P-L-E. As soon as you join WA, you are put through their world class training. They have spent years refining their training so that it is easy to understand, even for a newbie…but it covers concepts that are complex in a way that absolutely anyone can accomplish them. That is why ANYONE can create a business online, with the simple and easy to understand training.
Here’s an example of the easy to follow, actionable steps. Complete these and you’re well on your way to building your business.
They understand technology. Wealthy Affiliate is not just a “website”, it is one of the most sophisticated platforms in the industry. This sophistication is something that I feel makes it much more trustworthy. It is secure and they really do push the envelope with what can be done with technology, making your life easier. In other words, they do the hard stuff and make things that are typically difficult, a breeze. Take building a website as an example!
The Website platform is brilliantly simple, yet very powerful. When I built my very first website, it was an absolute nightmare…but that was before Wealthy Affiliate’s SiteRubix website platform. It is easy peasy to get a professional looking website up and running in minutes, not hours or days. Fully hosted as well which is a huge plus.
And you get to TRY before you BUY. You don’t have to part ways with a single penny to get access to this program. Wealthy Affiliate believes in their product/service so much that they are willing to give you access to a significant amount of it for NOTHING.
The Price of YOUR Success
Wealthy Affiliate is completely FREE to get a Starter account with (you can join here). I am not talking some lame, unsubstantial and useless free account. I am talking REAL training, REAL community access, REAL support directly from uber successful marketers, REAL websites, REAL hosting…you name it. You will actually be building your online business with no strings attached – NO OTHER company in the industry offers this.
Think you can’t build a website? Think again. It’s as easy as filling out this form…
Wealthy Affiliate has a Starter membership which I like to refer to as the “foundation” building membership. It will get you up and running in any niche of your choice (take any passion or interest you want) and set you up for a long and very fruitful career in the online world.
No experience necessary, but if you have experience that is perfectly fine as well. You are going to learn how to build your business in a way that leads to long term success. This is what I like to refer as the PROPER way, and the way I have followed since I became a member back in 2007. Building my business with long term success in mind has helped me create my full time online business (and it is growing with every year).
I don’t want to discredit my degree that I spent $40,000 to get at Penn State University (go Lions!), but I invested 4 years of my life into a degree that to this day I have never used.
My full time income and my livelihood are generated 100% from online income. My house, my vacations, my lifestyle are also generated 100% from my online income.
When I say that you can get access to the community and training platform…along with all of the tools you need to create and grow a business online for FREE, I am not kidding. No catches, no obligations.
What I do want to be clear about are the two levels of membership at Wealthy Affiliate and I just want to explain them both to give you a bit of clarity.
I always recommend people try before they buy…anything (if you can). You go to the store to try stuff before you buy it all the time, why shouldn’t you be able to do the exact same thing online? You can and that is why the Starter membership is so great.
You can be inside the community a few seconds from now, starting to build your business, hanging out with myself (and even the owners Kyle & Carson) and have access to a ton of goodies without even pulling out your credit card.
These include:
Access to Live Chat (instant help)
Interactive Getting Started Training
Ability to Network with over 230,000 members
Over 500 training resources
Two WordPress Websites w/ State of the Art Hosting
Ability to Ask Questions 24/7/365
Personal Access to the Owners
You Get to Hang Out With Me (how cool is that lol)
In fact, the free Starter membership alone is better than any other paid program in the industry that I have reviewed (even the ones that cost $1,000’s). I stand behind that and I stand behind the fact that you will fall in love with the community upon getting yourself a free account.
There is a Premium membership as well, but unlike almost every other product in the industry there are ZERO upsells. You are either Starter or Premium, there is no in between and the Premium package includes absolutely everything you need….the “key” to the ENTIRE community.
I literally run several successful businesses from Wealthy Affiliate Premium. So are many, MANY others.
I would compare it to being my virtual office. I get my education there. I get live weekly video classes there. I get my keyword and other business tools there. I get my websites and top of the line hosting there. I get support and mentoring there. I get to network there.
One price. I spend more going to the coffee shop every month than I pay for my annual membership fee at Wealthy Affiliate. The yearly membership works out to be $29 per month…which almost makes me cry when I realize I could have had a 112 year membership at Wealthy Affiliate instead of going to College!
If you want to see the difference between the two memberships in a nice little chart, you can check it out here.
It is totally optional to upgrade and your Starter membership is a “lifetime” membership, it is not a trial. You can upgrade at your own pace and when you are ready to take your business to the next level you may want to consider Premium.
There is a Defined “Recipe” to Creating Success Online…
There truly is a RIGHT way to build a business online and a WRONG way.
I would recommend the right way obviously and that is why I want to recommend that you consider the proven way I have have built a business online as your approach. This recipe is the way 10,000’s of others (if not more) have built inspiring business in the online world and continue to build businesses.
That PROCESS is what you will learn within Wealthy Affiliate and I am going to give you a brief overview of what is really going to be involved in YOU creating a business online. There are really only 4 steps.
The part I like about Wealthy Affiliate that most other companies really miss the mark is that they have simplified this process down to a science. They have a “Getting Started” training course that walks you through the exact steps and gets you taking action on them.
Here is a quick look at the process.
The reality of it is…if you can follow directions, you can build a successful business with any Interest/Passion you may have.
No different that cooking a recipe online, you take the ingredients and you put them together in a specific way and you create yourself a beautiful meal.
Well, Wealthy Affiliate does the exact same thing but with online business. You get the recipe to success, and they provide you with all the utensils and ingredients you need to build a business… not to mention you have access to some of the most successful folks within the online world within the community (that you can ask directly for help). Myself included!
You can take absolutely ANY interest that you may have and turn that into a business.
Perhaps you may not have an interest or a passion, that is OK. You are going to be given help on how to come up with your business idea within Wealthy Affiliate.
So, today, I want to give YOU a personal recipe to success:
Click the Get Started Here training button. This walks you through everything you need to know.
Set-up Your Account Profile (image/description). This naturally leads to 4x more help with the community.
Take action on the tasks.
Ask ME for help if you EVER feel stuck.
That’s it.
Do these 5 tasks and right before your eyes you are going to be building a business. It’s exciting, it’s fun, and you can build a business to any level of success that you are willing to “work” for. Yes it will take work. Tt took me work, but I have no doubts that within just the first few days at Wealthy Affiliate you will achieve more than you ever thought your were capable of in the online world.
I Am Committed to YOUR Success
The last thing I want you to feel is that you are in on this whole “internet thing” alone. It couldn’t be further from the truth and I am personally committed to helping you achieve success online and to help you if you ever get stuck.
Not a day goes by where I am not interacting within Wealthy Affiliate (including Starter members), giving them suggestions on their websites, networking and building relationships with them, and helping them with the problem areas that we all run into in our journey to success.
So let’s make a friendly little deal right now. I promise to help you and commit to your success if you take action on the tasks that WA gives you and the suggestions that I give you along the way. It is a win/win. I get the opportunity to help folks (which I love to do) and you get to build a successful business online.
I can’t wait to work with you! And before we meet within WA, one last thing…
My Final Opinion & Recommendations (Rating: 98/100)
I never push people to do something they don’t want to do and I sure as heck am not going to suggest paying money before you try something out first. It goes against my ethics.
That is why I want you to join the completely free Starter membership, it’s $0. You don’t even have to give any credit card details, just fill out your name, email, and username. Then presto, you have access to the most “elite” platform of affiliate marketers and internet marketers in the world. You will sense the unbelievable value and the helpful nature of Wealthy Affiliate as soon as you enter the community.
Upon joining, I will be in touch with you to welcome you to the community within the first hour of you joining and if you EVER have any issues with anything or are ever stuck, I want you to promise me you will get in touch with me.
I just wanted to throw this out there, if within the first 7 days you do decide to go Premium I am going to be offering you a bonus. I will tell you all about it when you get inside the community within my first message I send to you upon creating your free Starter account so keep a look out for that.
Lastly, I want you to drop me ANY questions or feedback that you may have. Also, if you have any personal experiences with Wealthy Affiliate and you want to share them, I would love to hear them below. Simply drop me a comment and I will be sure to get back to you.
Last week I was talking about a product for generating traffic that turned out to be less than ideal for generating traffic.
This week’s product is also about how to get more visitors to your site, and I’m hoping it stays on topic and is at least vaguely useful. The product in question is called Instant Traffic Mastery by Jonathan Teng & Venkata Ramana.
The Pitch
The sales page heavily focuses on both scarcity and how much of a bargain this product allegedly is. I understand why saying the product has a larger value and is being discounted helps improve sales, but why do marketers insist on using ridiculous figures? Apparently this product is worth over $997 dollars but he is only going to charge me $9.95? Who falls for this rubbish?
The scarcity tactic of saying it is only available for 7 days is combined with a potential price rise to squeeze you into a panic purchase.
As well as that are the usual heavy handed highlighting and bolded text, and proof of sales that may or may not be related to the effectiveness of the product (usually it’s a not).
Purchasing Instant Traffic Mastery
As mentioned, the product is only $9.95 but this is the edge of a sales funnel with plenty of upsells being sent your way once you head down the rabbit hole.
The first upsell is on a dime sale (it increases in price after every sale) and was $18 bucks when I saw it. The upsell is for a “done for you” traffic pack, which is basically a ready-made sales funnel.
The second upsell has a longer sales page, probably because it costs $67 dollars and is for a package of PLR content (articles, graphics, etc). PLR is something I always suggest avoiding if possible. While the graphics might be useful the content supplied will all need to be re-written anyway.
Next up is a “lite” version of the above PLR package at a mere $37.
The last upsell is something I haven’t seen in a while, and that is access to a membership site. The cost is OK in comparison to other membership sites, ($17 per month) but the problem with this is that it doesn’t teach you anything it instead provides PLR content twice a month… I wouldn’t touch this with a barge pole personally.
The Product
After navigating the swirling mess of sales funnel I finally arrived at the product membership page and I was slightly surprised.
Looking at the content list of the product it seems like they have packed a lot of information in here, with 50 separate items ranging from setting up a blog, through social media, building relationships, video marketing and more.
Quantity does not necessarily mean quality though.
Each item in the content list is a video, and each one is roughly 5 minutes long on average.
The videos all seem to be PLR themselves (I can’t be 100% sure but it’s my gut feeling and fits well with all the upsells) as they are labelled “50 targeted traffic methods for online business” rather than Instant Traffic Mastery.
PLR aside, the training is quite reasonable though it is obviously brief in its content.
The training covers a wide variety of traffic generation methods, some of them quite old school such as using forums, but the narrator is to the point about how effective/speedy they are; he isn’t trying to spin anything.
The traffic methods may not be suitable for pure internet marketers, as some methods such as press releases and getting into the local press just won’t work when your site promotes vacuum cleaners on Amazon.
As mentioned the content is quite brief. If we take the Pinterest and Others video, it’s 2 and a half minutes long and basically tells you that Pinterest uses images and videos and that you can add links, and that Instagram and Vine are options too.
On that note, the videos are at least a year or two old as they suggest Vine is really new and you can become an early adopter in your niche.
The Bottom Line
Instant Traffic Mastery is not a scam as such, but it’s not something I would generally recommend.
The content you get is quite wide and possibly informative, but it is brief.
If you are an experienced marketer you probably won’t get much out of this, though if you are new to online marketing, then there is probably something you can pick up from this.
Really though the information is quite basic: you are paying for an overview and for it to be collected in one spot rather than spending time trawling Google for information.
When you first start off in the world of internet marketing, you are likely to be unsure of what niche to get involved in and what products to promote. More often than not, more experienced marketers will either push you towards, or at least recommend ClickBank.
ClickBank is a product marketplace, mainly dealing in digital products like software and eBooks, where you can choose from a large number of products to promote.
As these are digital products the overheads are generally quite small, which means that they makers of these products can offer up a much larger slice of the pie when it comes to the affiliate commissions, on average around 20-50% of the sale price.
Though recently ClickBank has improved, it has had a history of allowing poor products on its list, though that mantle seems to have been taken over now by the likes of ClickSure.
The product I am reviewing today makes use of ClickBank. It is called CB Passive Income and it is a lead generation system that offers a way for you to generate cash from ClickBank products.
Another Push Button System?
The system is specifically targeted at internet marketing newbies and that worries me, because I do not believe that this system will actually teach you anything. Let’s take a sample of his sales pitch:
Imagine if…
You didn’t need to write or produce any content
You didn’t need to create any membership program
You didn’t need to create any products to sell
You didn’t need to come up with your own free offer
You didn’t need to write any sales letters
You didn’t need to pay for hosting or an auto-responder
You didn’t need to send emails at all
You didn’t need to provide any customer service or follow up
You didn’t need to research for what products or affiliate programs to promote
You didn’t even need to learn internet marketing!
Heck, with this program, you don’t need to do anything except for one simple task!
This is selling a pipe-dream. It is basically saying you can earn money for doing virtually nothing, and that just isn’t true.
The premise of the system is a simple and well known marketing ploy: create an email harvesting website that offers something for free in return for an email address; send that person emails with information and product promotions; earn commissions.
That is a tried and tested way of earning money online, I have no doubt about that. My concerns for this system come from the fact that the newbie will not be taught or learn about the ins and outs of how a mailing list works and they won’t have to face the learning and growing experience of trying and failing. Patric Chan, the creator of CB Passive Income will do it all for you.
This will lead to one major downfall: your income is in someone else’s hands!
You have no control over what the website looks like, what it sells, or what the emails contain.
You will also have no exact statistics on what emails did well, how many products sold etc etc.
You will also be at the mercy of Mr. Chan. What if he decides that today is the day, unplugs his computer and goes to live in Peru?
Push button systems sound glorious, and speak to our inner laziness (they do to mine all the time!), but in reality you don’t learn from them and you certainly won’t make a sustainable business from them.
A Simple Task
Of course if you did decide to purchase the product, there is “one simple task” you need to do, which is to promote the link to the website to get people to hand over their email address in the first place.
Lead generation, as this is technically called, is no easy task, especially for a beginner. In fact, I would say it is probably the largest stumbling block for any online entrepreneur.
Therefore, while it is great that the only thing you need to do in this system is generate traffic, it is often the hardest thing to do, especially when there is little reward for the user. Would you just give away your email address easily?
Perhaps I’m cynical nowadays, but I tend to want to trust the website first before doing so, which means I need content and lots of it, to prove to me this person knows what they are talking about.
Upsells
Due to the fact that most newbies will be lost at sea when it comes to finding traffic (after they have tapped out the family and friends resources), it is of course obvious that Patric has added some convenient upsells to his product. As you can see below this isn’t the “free” system that he insinuates in his sales letter
This is actually a clever way of getting you through his proverbial door, as most newbies will need that training to even start generating cash so will more likely sign up to his membership system which has a monthly fee of $47 bucks.
The Pro Version
You can pay Patric some more money and get access to the leads generated by the system. In other words, you can start to take control away from Patric and into your own hands.
The Membership Area
The training is provided by videos, and there are a lot of those to be fair. Content wise they are not too bad.
It didn’t rock my world, especially with the monthly price tag attached to it, but it is a reasonable selection of training resources suitable for newbie all in one place.
The Flip Side
I am by nature a little bit wary and conservative about the next big thing from the Gurus. I have been burnt too many times not to be.
That being said, I can see some usefulness in this product from a newbie standpoint. Internet marketing is a multi-skill endeavor; you need to learn various different things to different levels in order to succeed, such as copywriting, website creation, etc.
CB Passive Income does take most of that away from you, allowing you to focus on simply learning how to generate traffic. If used as a starting point it may actually be beneficial for some people. Others who like to be in the thick of it and have full control probably won’t like it though.
The Bottom Line: Is CB Passive Income a Scam?
It’s definitely different than most other money generation systems out there. I have my concerns about having that control taken from you, and how much you will learn about internet marketing in general. All of those “no experience required!” claims do not do the program any favors. I wouldn’t label it a scam, but I wouldn’t sing its praises from the roof tops either.
