From the category archives:

Keyword Research

Review: Alexis Dawe’s “Desperate Buyers Only”

by Josh Hohman

grade a “A MUST HAVE for anyone creating info products or brainstorming new markets.”
Price: $97.00
Link: Desperate Buyers Only

Overview:

This is an expensive book, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better instructions for creating a successful information product or for brainstorming new markets to enter. Equally valuable, the book comes with a free phone consultation with Alexis - that’s worth more than the price of the book.

Pros:

First of all, this book will not outline all of the steps you need to get an internet marketing project up-and-running, but then again, Alexis isn’t really trying to accomplish this. What she is doing is showing you her playbook of how she has used a laser-beam strategy to generate healthy passive income day after day and year after year.

I’ve seen surprisingly few internet marketing books that address market selection and/or product creation. Alexis addresses both exceedingly well. If you’ve run out of ideas (or never had one to start with) about where to make money online, or were wondering how to make the leap from affiliate marketing to selling your own products, then this is the book for you.

Second — and this is the real gem of buying Desperate Buyers — is the free phone consultation with Alexis that accompanies the purchase of the book. I had Alexis provide feedback on a sales letter for me, and I was really impressed with the level of detail in which she critiqued my sales copy. She suggested both strategic and tactical changes to the letter that I still re-use in other letters to this day. This in and of itself was worth the price of the book. She was even nice enough to give me a second follow-up consultation for no charge (although I did end up sending her a token of my appreciation via PayPal for her great advice).

Include pages 7-26 and pages 87-93 in the Keyword Research tab of your binder. (huh?)

Include page 94 and pages 27-33 in the Content Development tab of your binder. (huh?)

Cons:

Alexis’ book leaves out a LOT of details if you’re looking to comprehensive book on starting an internat marketing biz. And that’s just fine by me. Others, such IttyBiz and Caroline Middlebrook do a good job of filling in the details of getting your site set-up, and customers in the door (so to speak).

Another con is the singular focus of the book on short (and I mean s-h-o-r-t, i.e. 10-20 page) reports. I would have a hard time justifying charging someone $40 for a 15-page manual created largely from publicly available information, but Alexis seems to have a constant stream of happy customers using exactly this strategy.

Where to Get It:

Non-affiliate link: Desperate Buyers Only


{ 0 comments }

Review of “IttyBiz SEO School”

by Josh Hohman

grade a “Easy-to-read resource for beginners looking to learn the essentials of SEO.”
Price: $39.00
Link: Itty Biz SEO School

Overview:

Naomi Dunford decided to re-release her popular SEO School ebook this week, and if you’re new to SEO, or are confused by all of the more technical SEO books on the market, then this is your lucky day. Naomi distills a confusing topic into an easy-to-read 53-pages that will get you off to a solid start if you are looking to learn SEO. A must-read, in my opinion.

Pros:

Naomi’s writing style is entertaining to say the least (she curses like a drunken sailor even in her writing), but she knows her stuff. I know, because I’ve paid her over 4-figures just to call her and bounce ideas off of her. I bought the book when I was about 4 months into learning SEO, and I still didn’t have a good grasp of the big picture. This book set me squarely on the path to learning SEO.

I like to think of Naomi’s book as the “course syllabus” for the rest of your SEO education - which is why I’ve chosen to review this book first. You will not learn everything here, but you will learn the basics in a structured way, so that you can be intelligent about going out to find more granular information on a particular topic.

Without this book, my approach SEO would be a lot less organized and structured than it is today. In particular, 3 chapters are must-reads:

  1. What to Rank For: Naomi does a great job explaining the process of finding a profitable niche. More importantly, the book tells you which keywords you absolutely do NOT want to go after for a particular niche. The competition section is great as well, and goes into detail about how to evaluate your chances of ranking for a your keyword phrase.

    2. Include pages 15-24 in the Keyword Research tab of your binder. (huh?)

  2. On-Page Optimization: this chapter walks you through the process of optimizing your site for a particular keyword step-by-step. I have since found more detailed explanations of each step, but this is what got me started, and it is still an excellent resource to have.

    3. Include pages 25-33 in the On-Page SEO tab of your binder. (huh?)

  3. Off-Page SEO: I like this chapter because it is the best overview of off-page SEO that I’ve found. You will not learn everything you need to know here, but this will provide a solid foundation from which to build.

    4. Include pages 35-40 in the Off-Page SEO tab of your binder. (huh?)

Cons:

If you already know a lot about picking the right optimization keywords, and on- and off-page SEO, this is not an essential book for you. You’ll learn some new things for sure, but nothing is earth-shattering here. Having said that, I still read the keywords section from time-to-time because it is the best book on the topic that I’ve seen.

Where to Get It:

Click Here to Learn More About IttyBiz SEO School

Non-affiliate link: IttyBiz


{ 0 comments }