At it’s most basic, my review-process for online marketing products consists of three elements:
- Scrutinize
- Implement
- Evaluate
Scrutinize
I read the book, watch the videos, install the programs or whatever else is included in the product I’m testing. I take notes, make sure I get all of the important advice out of the product and make sure I understand it’s premise as clearly as possible. I also take note of whether there are upsells involved, how many e-mails I get after signing up for a program (and how spammy these are) and how much time it takes me to work through all the material provided. The scrutinizing is the easiest part of the review-process.
Implement
Whenever possible, I implement and make use of the product I’m testing as much as possible. The goal is to see how well the product works, as objectively as possible. Obviously, the implementation step wil vary greatly depending on what I’m reviewing. For example, if I’m looking at an article-generating software program, it’s very easy and straight-forward: I make a series of articles with the software, distribute them and see how they do compared to hand-written articles. With how-to style ebooks and videos, implementation can be difficult. The more concrete the advice, the more objectively I can test it. If there’s clear-cut advice I can apply to existing or new campaigns of mine, I will basically follow the author’s suggestions to the letter, even if I personally disagree with them. There are, however, certain exceptions:
- I will not follow any advice that has me risk a large amount of money, where I feel it’s not a “safe bet”. I.e. I am willing to make investments, but not stupid ones.
- I will generally not buy further products within a product I am testing. It’s common to find upsells (“now you’ve bought my ebook, why don’t you also buy this super-bonus package!”) and affiliate links to “recommended products” within any given get-rich-quick program. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this, but to keep a review on track, I will stick with just that one product I am testing. I think this is also fair, because the sales-pages will generally have you believe that the advertised product contains everything you need to become Internet-rich (more on this here).
The important part here is that I really take action on the advice given, wherever possible. This allows me to make a good evaluation in the third part of my review-process.
Evaluate
To evaluate a product, I measure how much time I spent working with it and report on all the effects I saw from implementing it (change in traffic, earnings, expenses etc.). Of course, I also pay attention to how well the product is put together, whether it’s easy to follow and understand, whether it’s aimed at beginners or experienced marketers, how easy it is to use (software), how well it’s written (books) and many other factors. The evaluation, like the rest of the review process, is dependant on the type of product I am testing.
As a general rule, I simply do my best to test each product thoroughly and objectively in order to deliver a review that is as useful as possible to you, the reader.
Ratings
Each product is rated for several factors. Here, I’ll explain the details of each rating:
Fluff-o-Meter:
Needle to the right is good.
The Fluff-o-Meter informs you about how practical and usable a product is. Is it packed with hard-hitting, well-explained advice that works? Does it include step-by-step instructions and concrete, tangible examples? That will make the Fluff-o-Meter’s needle go all the way to the right. Is the product padded with lots of unrelated information (you know how some books will go on and on about how good the book you just bought is? That’s padding.)? Are the same statements repeated again and again? Is the advice largely generalized rather than specific? That will lead to a high fluff-rating.
In short, the two main factors influencing the Fluff-o-Meter are the amount of actual advice vs. padding and whether the advice is vague or concrete.
Spam-Factor:
Lower is better.
The spam-factor tells you how badly your inbox will be spammed after signing up for a product. This rating is dependant on the number of emails received, but only to a limited degree. After all, if daily reminders or updates are part of the program, there’s nothing wrong with that (if this was specified on the sales-page). What matters most for the Spam-Factor is how relevant the emails are and how many of them are a sales-pitch for another product.
Scam-Scale:
Lower is better.
The Scam-Scale rates the scammyness of a product. Now, this is quite difficult to really nail down. The factors I look out for include, but aren’t limited to: fake time-constraints and other measures to put pressure on the buyer, promises on the sales-page that are clearly not kept in the product, promotion and sale of “empty” products and websites (e.g. sites consisting of scraped content, plastered with ads, cheaply cobbled together crap as upsells,…) and actual, downright scams (i.e. attempts to steal money). Note that I do rate “pushy” selling as scammy, but not regular selling. There’s nothing wrong with selling, as long as it’s done reasonably. Also note that there is a difference between a scam and a bad product.
Overall Rating:
Higher is better.
For the overall rating, I take all factors into account, including the time and money spend, profits made, how well the book is written/videos are presented/program is structured and try to create a good, bottom-line rating. This is the least-important rating, in my opinion. What matters is all of the details of the review and how well any given program fits your personal taste. I still want to include an overall rating, so that you can quickly get an impression of a product even if you don’t have the time to read the entire review.
So, there you go. That’s my review-process laid out for you. Now there’s just one little thing left to discuss…: Ethics.
Ethics?
Yes, ethics. As I have mentioned in other articles, one of the big problems with airquotes-”reviews” is that they aren’t trying to review the product, they are only trying to sell it to you (via their own affiliate link). In that case, my reviews don’t have affiliate links to the products, right? Wrong. They do, because I wouldn’t mind making a bit of income from RichQuickReview.com. The way I see it, I have three options concerning the affiliate-links:
- Don’t place any affiliate links anywhere on the website.
- Only use affiliate links for the good products.
- Use affiliate links for every product I review, regardless of quality.
Option number one would be the “cleanest”. Having no financial interest whatsoever in any of the products would, to a certain extent, “prove” that my reviews are objective (I’m once again using airquotes here because it’s not like such non-affiliated reviews couldn’t also be exploited…). Downside: No money for me.
Option number two is the fishiest of them all. Here, I might be tempted to give high-commission products better reviews or to needlessly bash some low-commission products to improve my “credibility”.
Option number three is the one I choose for RichQuickReview.com. Every product will have it’s affiliate links on this site, no matter how good I deemed it to be in my review. I will gladly bash the crap out of an unsatisfactory product but still provide an affiliate link to it. And really good products will also be linked to via affiliate links. This way, at least the playing field is level.
So, how can you know you can trust me?
You can’t. Not by looking at whether I use affiliate links or not, anyway. I don’t want to go to great lengths justifying my affiliate links anyway because when you read my reviews, you will see that they are real reviews. There’s no two ways about it and I don’t have the slightest intention or interest to manipulate my reviews in order to get more sales. I’m just not that kind of guy. You’ll see, when you read my reviews; I’m sure of that.
Non-Disclosure
Here’s one more thing that I need to mention and it also has to do with ethics: I will never reveal the exact methods and techniques described in a product I test. I will, of course, give you a general idea of what each product is about and what it covers, but I will never go into too much detail. For example, I will tell you that the product offers advice and strategies for using PPC marketing and I will tell you whether it is good advice or not. But I will never list the actual tips and tricks given in the product. The cheesy way of saying this is that I will not reveal the author’s “secret”.
Even if I think a product is rubbish and even if I disagree with everything it says, the creators of these products deserve to get a fair treatment and I will not compromise the work that they spent a lot of time putting together.
That’s it for now.
