The Brutal Truth about Internet Marketing Products

I learned a long time ago the importance of working "smarter, not harder"
and it's been a valuable life lesson. Therefore, I am constantly searching
for ways to minimize my web site building and internet marketing
workload without diminishing my returns. Internet marketing software
along with other marketers knowledge and experience put into e-books
are great ways to accomplish this and have saved me countless hours
of manual labor. There are truly some great tools out there. The problem
is that for every great tool you find, there are 10 pieces of garbage
available with great testimonials and 5 star reviews.

If you've spent any time trying to find honest reviews of internet
marketing products, then you're well aware of how frustrating it can be. I
have spent thousands of dollars on well-reviewed crap to find the few
gems hiding out there. There are basically two key factors at play that
cause the majority of the confusion, or, well, more like total bias.

The largest roadblocks to finding honest marketing reviews are affiliate
programs. Don't get me wrong, I make a lot of my living from affiliate
programs, so I'm not trashing affiliate programs at all. The problem is
when you're being paid well for every sale you make of a product, it's
real easy to get caught up in favorably promoting the product and forget
that someone is counting on your opinion and spending their hard earned
money based on your recommendation.

It goes without saying that when you read a review of something, you
logically assume and expect that the person who wrote it has some
knowledge of the product they're reviewing. At the very least, you
expect them to be more experienced with the product than you are. The
sad truth is, however, when it comes to internet marketing reviews, more
often than not, the reviewer doesn't even own the product and many
times has never even used it. They join the affiliate program and are
provided with plenty of pre-written reviews and testimonials for the
product along with pictures, etc, that get immediately posted to their
website as though they wrote it. Don't believe me? Highlight 2 or 3
sentences of a review you're reading and run a google search on it...

Now, even if you don't find any duplicates and the review seems real, it
still doesn't mean the reviewer has any experience in marketing or has
ever used any other product to compare it to. So, the bottom line on
independent product reviews is to do your homework and make sure the
reviewer has some knowledge of the product.

The second key factor contributing to biased reviews is the buddy
system that has has developed in marketing circles. This system is made
up of well-known and semi well-known names in the marketing arena.
Nothing spells trust like a big name marketers glowing testimonial
accompanying your sales page or a personal recommendation sent out in
a trusted marketers newsletter to thousands of subscribers.

How many "known" marketers sent you a raving review of the recent
John Reese product that came out? That product sold over a million
dollars in one day and the people raving about it were nothing more than
joint venture partners who raked in a small fortune by getting you to buy
the product.

Internet Marketers market things... It's that simple. They craft great
salesletters and create the perception of insane value and necessity in
the product they're selling. It's what they do and how they make a living.
Remember that next time you read about a product that you just know
you have to have because it's going to solve all of your problems and
make you rich.

As several honest marketers that I respect have said, "There is no
golden ticket or product that's going to make you rich overnight with no
work involved on your part." It just isn't going to happen. It takes a lot of
work and persistence to create a great living online, but it's certainly
do-able.

Don't fall for every new product that comes along and don't believe
everything you read. Do your homework, visit forums, search out real
reviews. There are great products out there that will make your life a
thousand times easier, just make sure you don't blow your budget on a
bunch of crap and come up broke when the real thing comes along.

Brad Ritter is the owner of WebMarketingEdge.com - a site dedicated
to reviewing internet marketing software as well as Ebooks
and Marketing Services. He has been marketing online for 5 years.