Can you make money blogging without spending money?
Theoretically, yes.
But if you don’t want to wait for years to develop your blog all on your own with nothing by sweat and tears, then sooner or later you’ll start seeking out some help in the form of ebooks, courses, plugins, software, etc.
Patience is not my virtue when it comes down to my business and I’ve become a sucker for great products that truly benefit me in my business.
My criteria for a perfect tool are simple:
- It has to save me time
- Or save me money
- Or both
- AND it has to bring me more profit than it costs
However, in one of my new “Sunday Coffee with Ana” posts I mentioned that there were plenty of products I tried in the past and would never recommend.
That hit the cord with many of you.
Don’t we all wish that somebody had the guts to tell us up front that a certain product sucks rather than shove their affiliate links down our throats whatever the negatives?
Well, I am more than happy to share what my top picks for “You’d better keep your money” products of 2010 were.
Here they are in no particular order:
1. RentAnEdu.com
This product by Russel Brunson sounded like a break-through in link building.
What if you could rent an .EDU domain and offer the links from that domain to any webmaster you wish on the condition of them linking to one of your sites?
Sounded like great premises; alas, it wasn’t everything they set it out to be.
What I didn’t like about it:
- They obviously rushed the product; their membership has a lot of problems they need to work out. I lost a day of their 7-day trial just trying to set everything up instead of promised 2-3 minutes.
- Their “how-to” videos don’t appear to tell the whole story. I am sure the creators are holding back some very important pieces of the puzzle to truly make it work – that’s no way to sell the product. You either tell it all or keep it to yourself.
- Because of the lack of true disclaimer of how the process should work, you are left to your own devices figuring out the missing pieces.
- After spending several days and $95, I got one link – not good ROI.
- You have to continue spending $95 per month to keep the links live.
Conclusion:
If you want to build links, you still need to do it the old-fashioned way.
This product resulted in a $95 loss and a cancellation of the membership.
2. Unique Article Wizard
If you read my recent Link Building: What’s Naughty, What’s Nice? post, you know what my problem with article spinners in general and this one specifically is.
The way it basically works is it submits your spun articles to a multitude of member-blogs, thus creating backlinks to your site.
What I didn’t like about it:
Other than the fact that article spinning is EXTREMELY time-consuming, most of the blogs that your article will end up on are low-quality ones. Many of them are even automated.
I also tried their “guest post” feature – I forgot what it was really called. That’s when you choose to accept articles submitted by other members in your niche. I ended up with a slew of poorly written content that even at the worst of my blogging days I wouldn’t publish on my blog.
Conclusion:
My website ended up slipping down in ranking due to UAW.
Eventually, I was $67 X by 3 months out of pocket and having to manually rebuilt some quality links to get my site back to the first page.
3. MLMLeadSystemPro
I still see the members “doing their thing”, trying to get traffic to their affiliate MLM Lead System Pro page.
You know how I know?
Because they all market it the same way, the way they are taught.
And that’s precisely why it’s not working for them. It’s a system and no “out of the box” thinking is required.
To be fair to MLM Lead System Pro, they do (or at least used to) provide some good basic training for internet marketing newbies. And that’s the only reason I would ever try them if you really desperately have to: for training. But stay with them for a month, learn all you can, and cancel your membership.
What I didn’t like about it:
- “one size fits all” mentality
- promote our business first and you might get a lead or two for your primary business – rarely happens
- everything is based on a multitude of affiliate offers they try to get you into during each training seminar
- there is no growth in the level of training
- it got too big
Conclusion:
You can get some good marketing training out of it, if you are willing to grow tough skin to the many offers they’ll put you through.
There are plenty of better programs out there.
4. YouTube Secret Weapon
If you are into video marketing at all, you must’ve heard about Julie Perry and Paul Colligan’s video marketing product.
It really does go in-depth as far as the basics of setting up a great channel, driving traffic to it, getting your videos seen, etc is concerned.
However…
What I didn’t like about it:
- You can learn EVERYTHING they are selling for $197 for free on their blog. As soon as you opt in to get more information, you will get a link to it. THAT information is priceless if you are planning on using YouTube as a part of your overall marketing strategy.
- The quality of videos was awful – I could make out half of the audio even though headphones.
- The entire course is very outdated even with their last update – YouTube has changed a lot since the course was recorded.
Also, I have a personal problem with Julie: I made a YouTube video teaching a couple of tricks from the course hoping to get some affiliate sales through it. However, Julie perceived it as me “scraping” her content and got my video banned from YouTube. As you can imagine, we are not too fond of each other.
Even despite that, I wouldn’t have recommended the course.
Conclusion:
I should’ve asked for refund, but missed the deadline. I am $197 out.
5. SEO Link Vine
This one is by Brad Callen and is similar to Unique Article Wizard.
I wouldn’t use it for all the reasons I mentioned above.
6. StomperNet
This one I had huge hopes for, but I think it reached its expiration date.
StomperNet is an SEO membership community that provides all sorts of SEO training.
It was very powerful back in the day when a lot of big SEO names were actively involved in it. But no more.
Now it’s just running out its course, still collecting money from some members who don’t know any better.
Here are some potentially good points about it:
- it DOES offer some incredible training, even though it might be just a bit outdated by now
- it does offer access to some tools you can use in your business, like Market Samurai, Traffic Geyser, etc
However…
What I didn’t like about it:
- the membership is a cool $197 – WAY more than I’d be willing to pay for it.
- yes, it does offer access to tools like Market Samurai. However, they claim that Market Samurai costs $147/MONTH, but in truth it’s $147 one time fee, plus you can get 35% off. So their numbers don’t add up. On top of that, once you cancel your membership, you won’t have access to Market Samurai any longer.
I recently got some of their Christmas offers and thought to myself “Why not try them out again; see if they spruced it up to make it worthwhile. Unfortunately, not.
Another reason I decided to try it one more time as a promise of a blog audit, valued at $297!
As you know I do very detailed audits on this blogs each Friday, so naturally I wanted to “check out the competition”, plus it’s always great to have another pair of eyes and ears.
What it turned out to be was a half-hour long conversation with a guy who didn’t have any particular qualifications other than that fact that he owned a website. Although very nice, he told me upfront that he didn’t know anything about blogging or my niche, but told me everything there was to know about his site.
What a waste of time.
Conclusion:
Good thing I am writing this now, since it reminded me that I still need to request a refund for this miserable failure of an audit and the membership.
Here are also some products that weren’t necessarily bad in any specific way; they just didn’t work for me:
1. ShoeMoney System
This system by Jeremy Shoemaker was simply too basic and my expectations were a lot higher for $497.
2. Keyword Elite and SEO Elite
Both by Brad Callen. I found there wasn’t anything special about them; plenty of other tools that do the same job better.
Marketing Takeaway
Well, and now you know. 
I am sure I forgot a product or two; I will let you know if anything comes to mind.
If you want to know what I DO recommend, check out my Top of the Crop: Best Internet Marketing Tools Best Marketers Use page.
I update the page regularly with new products I use and recommend and remove the ones I don’t feel are worth their money any longer – like I did with StomperNet.
I am sure you know by now that you can fully trust my recommendations as I am not out for a quick dollar, rather an honest one.
Are their any products you’d like for me to check out?
I’d love to know what they are!
I am always on the lookout for new ways to help me grow a stronger business faster and I certainly don’t mind sharing with you the results of my findings on ANY products.
One condition though: if I make myself a marketing product guinea-pig, you need to promise me that you would buy the products I recommend and you find a need and a budget for through my affiliate links. Deal?
Now go down to the comments to let me know your thoughts and suggest products you would like me to test before you buy.
{ 116 comments }