But before I get into the review, I want to ask you a few questions.

1. Do you have even the slightest idea of how many outstanding free resources are available out on the web that can help you with all areas of your life?

2. Do you know where to find them and how to use them to your greatest benefit?

3. Have you mastered processing and organizing the information and communications you are bombarded with on a daily basis?

My guess is, your answer to each of the three questions is “no”.

Well, don’t beat yourself up about it. Few of us could honestly say yes to any, let alone all three of those questions.

However, there are some people who seem to have a knack for finding all of those sites and capitalizing on the benefits they offer. The author of the ebook I’m about to tell you about is exactly that sort of person.

His name is Derek Franklin and he’s actually a published author for Adobe Press. In case you didn’t know who Adobe Press is, here’s a blurb from their site:

“Adobe Press is a world leader in high-quality books for visual communicators and the
official source of training materials for Adobe software. Best known for the best-selling
Classroom in a Book series, Adobe Press publishes instructional and inspirational books at all learning levels.”

So he’s a technical writer for mainly non-technical people. And that’s what makes his
handbook such a gem.

It’s a 200-page PDF called the Web Genius Handbook that’s chocked-full of tips about how to use and find things on the web that you probably never knew about, but could really use.

And in the event you have heard about some of them, chances are you aren’t using them – at least not to their full potential.

It’s like cracking open a book on how to use Photoshop, a very complicated graphics program, but be able to understand and follow along with ease and quickly produce some beautiful graphics because of how well the manual is written.

This guide is much the same. He begins the massive handbook with chapter after chapter of insider’s lessons on how to use all the features of the Mighty Google.

And believe me, there are a LOT of features Google offers that can improve the way you communicate, locate and receive information, store and categorize it. In short, make life easier. This series of short chapters are an education in themselves.

Then he gets into RSS feeds, widgets, software applications, advanced information
searching using various search engines (not just Google), advanced keyword research
(perfect for entrepreneurs/marketers), free phone service, finding images, audio, video, news, articles, blogs, government archives, maps/places, etc., etc.

Though the handbook is weighted heavily toward Google, it provides a whole bunch of
links and “IQ Boosters” to other online resources.

And speaking of IQ Boosters, they are what he’s named his chapters – and there are 97 of them in this well-written and exhaustively thorough volume!

I can’t imagine anyone but the most geeky of the geeky among us not getting some real insights into the inner workings of the web – particularly finding what we are looking for – from the Web Genius Handbook.

And if you are doing business online, there are some real gold nuggets in here for you.

Regardless of who you are, if you use the information in this book, you’ll leave the folks who aren’t using it looking like they are still using typewriters – really.

File this under the “how to impress people” (including yourself) category…

In summary, this is one of the few ebooks I’ve bought (out of hundreds) that is so packed with useful information I honestly feel I paid too little for it.

And the bonuses he is including when you buy the book are worth more than he’s asking for the book itself.

I give the Web Genius Handbook my highest recommendation.

Russ

And because that is the case, I will probably review a whole lot more products than I actually recommend.

So, I feel it’s only fitting to write my first review as a recommendation as well! You’ll soon learn why.

What’s The Product?

It’s the very product that allowed me to construct this blog and configure it quickly and
easily – Web 2.0 Wealth.

Listen, I’ve bought thousands of dollars worth of internet marketing products over the last couple of years – more thousands than I care to count.

Maybe you have too?

Unfortunately, the majority of them ended up sitting on my hard drive collecting “digital
dust”.

Why?

Because of a term I call “value disconnect”.

I won’t get into it here, as I’ve already covered it extensively in another series of articles called “Membership Sites And Value“. I suggest you take the time to familiarize yourself with this term.

Anyway, maybe it was the excellent video tutorials.

Or maybe it was the pre-packaged WordPress blog theme, plugins and other additives.

Possibly the expert, responsive and personal support I got from the product’s author, Alex.

Actually, it was probably a combination of those things that compelled me to write this
review – and me being sick and tired of not getting anywhere online – up until now.

When The Student Is Ready, The Teacher Appears

This product includes pretty much everything someone wanting to set-up a WordPress
blog will need – excluding the domain name and hosting account.

The video tutorials are thorough, fast-paced (so you don’t get bored) and teach you how to set-up and configure your blog in a step-by-step fashion that I really appreciate.

As I watched, I’d pause the video, do that step, then restart the video. What a great way to learn and DO at the same time.

If you are a student that at least knows how to register a domain name, set-up a Cpanel type hosting account and FTP a few files to that hosting account, then your blogging teacher is here.

Even if you don’t know how to do that stuff yet, most domain registrars and hosts have tons of tutorials on those subjects and it’s not as complicated as it might sound.

What Else Comes With It?

I already mentioned the complete, ready-to-install WordPress package, including multiple key plugins.

I also mentioned the outstanding support Alex provides. In fact, he now has a growing
forum exclusively for his customers, where we interact, share tips and tricks and basically encourage and support each other.

I’ve already implemented several things I learned in the forum, which is probably worth
more than the product itself. Especially in the long term.

As if all that wasn’t enough for the meager price he’s asking for Web 2.0 Wealth, he also throws in five additional nice products as bonuses.

I believe that’s known as OVER-DELIVERING…

I’ll wrap this up now.

Blogging is probably the #1 Web 2.0 activity right now. Particularly for those who want to earn from the net.

And WordPress is the undisputed champ among the various blogging platforms.

With WordPress you can be found, indexed and receive traffic from the search engines and other Web 2.0 sites in as little as a day.

I don’t think any other web platform can boast such speed.

So, if you are really ready to get a “quality” blog up and running in the shortest time possible (and for the lowest cost), there is no other product or course I can recommend
more highly than this one.

I don’t have a rating system yet, but if I did, this product would receive the highest rating available.

Do yourself a favor and check it out. While you are there, read the testimonials. They
should give you a clue as to the quality and value this rare product offers.

Happy blogging,

Russ

This site has so much to offer, I’ve been a member for a few months now and still haven’t seen everything.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

* Hundreds of new MRR and PLR products (and not all the same stuff you are assaulted with every day)

* Paid access to at least 30 other membership sites (I lost count). These are NOT a bunch of those “Butterfly” sites that let you in for free and either give you part of the product and try to upsell you on the rest or try to monetize with a one-time offer.

* Many more membership sites are to be added in the near future.

* Several new products added every other day. You can preview the entire “vault” before you decide and see what’s been recently added.

* At least $1,700 worth of stuff is added each month like clockwork, increasing monthly.

* Major discounts on products that must be sold and can’t be included for free in a membership site – like 1 measly buck for most of them.

Example: Liz Tomey and John Hostler’s Automatic Adsense Blog Builder Software (retail price: $97) AND Google Adwords Advertising Made Easy ebook (retail price: $27) – for one dollar for the pair.

Or how about that new Peel-Away Ads software? You can get that for one dollar through this membership, too.

There are currently DOZENS of those deals in here. I’m talking about a gig of stuff for chump change.

* Recently added – generous full-featured hosting account included with your membership. You can host three (3) domains on his lightening-fast servers.

* Recently added – Your own personal JV Manager 2 Fantasos account where you can manage your entire business from within this one, Unselfish Membership.

Do you grasp the value of just this alone? If not, check out what John Delavera is asking for his Fantasos software – currently $2,997 (and what it does).

But the best part of this membership is…

* Members are asked to request specific products and memberships to be added to the collection. This is HUGE.

Already convinced? Go here – Unselfish Membership

Have you bought any resale or private label rights stuff lately? Ebooks, software, access to membership sites?

What if you could request that someone else buy it for you?

Would that appeal to you? It certainly did me.

And when I logged in to the site for the first time, I quickly realized I had previously spent a bunch of money on stuff he had already bought for the members.

I imagine it will happen to you too…

Oh well, can’t get that cash back, but from now on I’ll be saving mega-bucks on that stuff.

Nice.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you. This is BIG: If you are new to all this marketing stuff and don’t have your own site yet, this membership allows you to sell their (your) products for a 90% commission, using THEIR site.

How Unselfish is that?

Finally, the thing you’ve been wondering about since you started reading: “How much is it going to cost me?”

The monthly membership fee recently capped-out…

Yes, more than 600 members have already joined – on the way to a max of 1,000.

So, it’s just $47 a month – which is a major steal.

But as the membership continues to grow, The Unselfish Marketer’s buying power ALSO increases, while your monthly fees don’t.

When it hits full membership, you’ll be getting $5,200 worth of great products – EVERY MONTH – for your meager membership fee.

Ok, you probably want to go check it out now, so I’ll shut up and sign-off.

Go Here: Unselfish Membership

Be well,

Russ Guthrie
Gu3 Virtual Marketing
Publisher, “Conquer The Net” Ezine

PS: Oh, by the way, this represents not only an outstanding and continuous source of new products for you to use and sell, but also some recurring income.

Simply refer two members and your already dirt-cheap membership is paid for. And the folks you refer will love you for it…

The Most Unselfish Membership

PPS: Oh by the way, please don’t be put off by his salesletter. It may not be the fanciest, most polished document on the web (don’t judge a book by its cover), but believe me, the value this site delivers and the support Jay Kay provides to his members is unsurpassed.

Since this article is primarily intended for the consumers, rather than the marketers, I’m not going to try to teach my version of getting everything connected from the marketing standpoint.

But in a very similar vein, the consumer (who is or may become a marketer) sees the entire process from the other side of the fence, as it were.

And that’s the very place ALL marketers should begin! Seeing things through their prospect’s or customer’s eyes.

Ok, so how can a consumer – YOU – minimize or avoid buyer’s or membership-joiner’s remorse? And yes, this applies to all business-related purchases, not just monthly dues sites.

I’ve already alluded to one BIG key, but I’ll lay it out for you plainly:

1. Don’t join a membership or buy a product that you are not absolutely ready to fully use, read and profit from RIGHT NOW.

Example: If you’re joining a reciprocal linking membership, but have nothing to link to yet, you’re wasting your time and money.

So many salesletters use a scarcity tactic like “Only 24 Memberships Left! After They Are Gone, Our Doors Will Be Closed Forever!”

Don’t get sucked-in by that hype!!!

Either you need what they are offering RIGHT NOW or you don’t. If you are not ready for what they are offering at this very moment, pass on it, really. The world will still keep turning…

Why do I say that?

Because first of all, in my opinion, they aren’t very good marketers if they haven’t built their business model to be scalable. In other words, able to expand to accomodate constant addition of new members.

The only exception that I can see to this is personalized, one-on-one coaching. But in general, exclusivity is over-hyped, over-rated and over-priced on the internet.

An excellent example of a scalable business model is one of my favorite memberships: Article Underground. The business is now in Phase III of its growth, and yet the members in all three phases get unique, limited-issue Private Label Articles every month.

It’s a rock-solid model that can continue to expand into multiple additional phases if and when necessary – brilliant.

Oh, and Article Underground – at $97 dollars a month – also has one of the lowest churn rates in the industry. Clearly NOT a problem with value disconnect.

Secondly, next week someone else will probably offer a clone of that exact business model and offer memberships for a lot less than the one you’re worried about losing out on.

2. There are multiple review sites you should probably hit to see if a review on the product or membership you are interested in has been posted.

Examples: The Warrior Forum and Ratings Hub, to name just two free sites that enjoy great participation from a wide range of marketers and consumers.

3. You can Google (and/or Yahoo and MSN) the membership or product name, as well as the owner of the site to see what is being said. This can be very telling.

Just beware of the folks doing affiliate reviews who are only trying to make a buck, but don’t really say anything of substance about the site or product.

4. You can contact the owner of the site or product with questions about its suitability for you.

You may not get a reply right away (or at all), especially if the site’s in pre-launch or launch. But nowadays, savvy marketers also have a blog going strong to help create discussion and buzz.

Use the blog to ask your questions. Many of these sites will also have beta testers who are active in the blog or forum. They are a great source of honest feedback, since many of them are total newbies.

5. If the salesletter has testimonials, many of them have links to the people’s sites.

Check out their sites and try to contact them about the site or product of interest. If you do this, I’d suggest avoiding any of the so-called gurus.

Instead, contact the testimonial givers who are not already famous internet marketers. Not only are you more likely to get a reply, but it will be one that is far more useful to you.

6. If all else fails, there will most likely be a money-back guarantee for the site or product you’re interested in.

Some are two weeks, some a month, Clickbank products are 56 days, etc.

So, if you can’t get enough feedback about the membership or product from the previous five methods, you can always take the small risk of your time to join or buy and evaluate it for yourself.

Just make sure you immediately take the time to go through the whole thing if you can. If you wait till the last minute, you may end up missing the deadline for a refund and will be out of pocket however much the membership or product costs.

Some memberships only allow access to a portion of the material month by month, but most will give you full access.

If you find it’s over your head, too involved or simply not your bag, ask for a refund well within the allotted time. But please don’t be a “serial refunder”, as you may end up being black-listed by payment processors and marketers alike.

I believe if you follow these tips, you’ll be far less likely to end up with a case of value disconnect and a bunch of unused or unread products clogging up your hard drive.

Or worse, months of membership hopping with nothing to show for it but a hole in your wallet and a boat-load of frustration.

And while these steps will drastically reduce the chance of you wasting your time and money on something, in the end it’s up to you to do your research and decide how you want to proceed.

Russ Guthrie

I suppose at this point I should point out that in the great majority of these cases of “value disconnect”, it is not done intentionally.

What I mean is, hundreds of new and intermediate-level marketers are releasing new products in any given month.

It’s their product (possibly their first), they have a lot of time, money and energy invested in it, and are therefore quite proud of it.

And though they have a complete product, salesletter, email series, advertising campaigns and back-end all set up, they may have a lot of it wrong.

In other words, disconnected.

It’s kind of like a case of not being able to see the forest because of all the trees. They are so close to the process, they don’t see the flaws in it.

In short, they don’t really understand effective marketing.

Unless they’ve latched onto Dan Kennedy’s or Mark Joyner’s coat tails, chances are they are simply copying something they’ve seen on another site or read in a $47 dollar ebook.

So, what happens when someone copies a working, yet disconnected model?

They get the same results (more or less) as the model they are copying. In the case of membership sites, it’s the dreaded three-month churn rate.

Now, the other side of the coin is the customer who goes through the excitement-purchase-overwhelm-remorse-quit (with possible refund thrown in for good measure) model I described in Part 1 of this article.

Most buyers don’t really understand the buying process, much as the marketers don’t really understand the marketing process.

At least not in terms of avoiding or eliminating VALUE DISCONNECT that results in the “burn and churn syndrome”.

Just because a person can whip out their credit card and buy something, doesn’t mean they truly understand what just happened. Or what is going to happen next…

And just because the salesletter for a membership site said all the right things (or so you thought at the time), doesn’t mean that what is delivered on the inside will be as “push button easy” or autopilot” or “exponential” as it was presented to be.

Additionally, even though a membership site may actually provide the product(s), lessons, software, etc. it claimed in the salesletter, doesn’t mean you are at a point in your marketing development to fully use and capitalize on them.

Maybe you just think you are savvy enough and ready to learn and use the product and membership, when in reality, you are far from it.

A simple example would be joining a monthly software membership that promises vast riches when you don’t have a hosting account or know anything about how to set one up – let alone a website.

After a period of time, if you don’t figure out the other stuff, you’ll quit the software club (even if it’s great), since you don’t have your marketing machine anywhere close to being set up yet.

It’s not only a drain on your wallet, but also on your psyche, which is MUCH worse.

Hopefully, this has made some sense up to this point. And if you’ve personally gone through any of this, believe me, I can relate.

In the third and final segment, I’ll outline some of the ways you can avoid buyer’s remorse and the burn and churn syndrome.

Stay tuned…

Russ Guthrie

And you likely have also canceled your membership with some, if not all of them, within a short time after joining.

This constant turnover, known as the churn rate, is an ongoing problem for many membership site owners.

Although it is still profitable for the owner if people “churn” at the average three-month mark, it’s not nearly as profitable as them staying on board for six, eight or even twelve months.

The process of acquiring new members to replace the ones who cancel costs the owner both time and money – which cuts into their bottom line profits.

Why Do People Quit Membership Sites?

There are a bunch of reasons why people join and then subsequently quit such memberships.

But I believe it all comes down to a simple, yet complex word – VALUE.

More to the point, a disconnect in value.

What I mean is, either one of two things is happening when people cancel:

A. The site owner isn’t providing enough value (real or perceived) to the member for the monthly fee.

OR

B. The member is not at a point in their marketing career that they can fully utilize or appreciate the value that is being delivered.

This sort of disconnect happens all the time, which is one of the reasons why there are so many disgruntled junior marketers out there.

I would guess that about 80% of the time, it’s reason B.

But in those cases, the site owner isn’t completely blameless. Far from it.

Much of the problem lies in a disconnect between the marketing message or sales-pitch and the perception it creates in the mind of the prospect.

In other words, clever copywriting – heavily infused with hyperbole and promises of little work and much money – stimulates a strong emotional response on the part of the reader.

In a nutshell, here’s what happens:

They read the salesletter, it pushes all the right buttons and sounds like the very thing they’ve been looking for, they join, only to quickly find out that what WASN’T said in the salesletter was that there was a lot of work involved (that they were not prepared or equipped for), then fear and overwhelm set in and they cut their losses and quit.

And unfortunately, some membership site owners continue to create and promote salesletters that promise something just short of “one-click-wealth”, which results in a huge churn rate and an ever-growing population of unhappy junior marketers.

In Part 2 of this article, I’ll dig deeper into this issue and in Part 3 I’ll propose a few ways unwary junior marketers might avoid being caught up in the whole “burn and churn” process.

Stay tuned…

Russ Guthrie