By now, you’ve probably heard of IMReportCard.com, a site that provides reviews of popular internet marketing related products and then encourages visitors to share their own experiences with them.

On the surface, IMReportCard.com seems like it fills a pretty good niche. Who doesn’t want a impartial resource to check in with when you’re considering purchasing a new Internet Marketing related product? Who doesn’t want to read feedback and comments from everyday folks who have purchased and used the products?

The thing is, I’m a skeptical S.O.B.

That, and my main online businesses are in the body building and weight loss supplement industry, where it’s common for both retailers and affiliates to create “unbiased review sites” (which are nothing of the sort, of course) as a means to generate sales or referral income.

These affiliates frequently gloss over inconvenient truths and fail to question or investigate the retailer’s claims, instead parroting them and passing them on as “gospel” truth. I’ve made a good living over the past decade doing the opposite, because it’s both the ethical thing to do, and the only way to build long term business success.

So when I encountered IMReportCard.com, red flags started going up almost immediately…

Red Flag #1: Who is behind the site?

Anytime I come upon a review site, there are a few things I want to know before I read anything…

a) Who is running the site – names, faces and so on.

b) What are their credentials?

c) Why are they in a position to talk authoritatively about the products upon which they claim to be performing, in-depth, unbiased reviews?

d) Are they ethical and credible? For example…

• Is there any chance they could be glossing over various products’ deficiencies in order to increase the likelihood of earning a commission on a referred sale?
• Is there any chance they could be cherry picking the reviews they are posting to create an artificially positive or negative view of products which they may or may not be affiliated with?

On IMReportCard.com, we are not told any of this. There’s a lot of “we’re this” and “we’re that”, but not a single specific detail is revealed as to who is running this site and whether those people are credible or not.

Although I don’t have any proof of this happening here, in the supplement industry this is ALWAYS done to shield the indentity of the owners and the very obvious financial conflict of interest that always exists. It’s hard, for example, to maintain the illusion of being independent and unbiased in your reviews, when you manufacture the product that receives the highest ratings on your site. And in the weight loss product world, that happens ALL the time.

Red Flag #2: Where’s the FTC mandated affiliate earnings disclaimer?

In 2009, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission issued a directive requiring that web sites that promote products for a commission reveal the nature of their relationship with the retailer. In other words, if you earn an affiliate commission from any of the products discussed on your web site (and every link I investigated on IMReportCard.com appears tobe an affiliate link), you need to ensure your visitors are aware of the possible conflict of interest.

Yes, if you dig deep enough into the FAQs, you’ll see there is mention of “some” income being earned via affiliate programs (again, I haven’t found a product that was not linked to via an affiliate link), but the full FTC disclaimer does not appear to be present on the site… or if it is, it isn’t anywhere I can find.

Red Flag #3: Are the reviews REALLY unbiased, and are they performed by people with an intimate knowledge of the product?

To answer that question, I checked out IMReportCard.com’s reviews on three products I am intimately familiar with; Article Video Robot, Adam Short’s Niche Profit Classroom, and SiteSell’s Site Build It! (I purchased the first two, and was the Site Build It! Product Manager until 2006).

a) Article Video Robot: There’s nothing in this review that indicates the writer did anything more than read the product’s sales copy and watch the promotional video. This isn’t a review, it’s an overview of the product based on the sales letter. There’s no value added in this review at all.

What would constitute value added in a review like this? And what would be indicative of a review written in the best interest of a visitor? Well, you’d outline the product’s strengths AND faults, thereby demonstrating both your intimate knowledge of the product as well as your commitment to the best interests of your visitors.

In the case of Article Video Robot, I can tell you this; it does exactly what it says it does. It’s not all “roses”, however; large articles are tedious to convert, due to the small text fields you have to copy and paste your headers and paragraphs into. It also takes a lot more time than you’d expect; since you have to leave some breathing room on the screen, you’re constantly editing and modifying your material so it displays “just right.”

Yes, you can choose different voices to read your article, but most of them sound exactly like what they are; a computer. To get the video’s audio tracks sounding natural, you really need to read the text yourself. That takes time, plus the investment in a decent USB microphone.

And the videos you create aren’t exactly riveting. Sure, people like to watch videos, but this is more of a slideshow than a real video. And when it comes to video, folks have an extremely short attention span and expect to be entertained. After all, there is plenty of high-budget educational material available online, so you can bet your a** they’re not going to stick around to watch a bunch of words on a screen, read by a computer.

On the plus side, this tool makes it relatively easy to establish an online video presence – you can create a ton of videos, post them on YouTube, and reap the benefits of *some* additional referred traffic to your main site. And it’s low tech, relatively quick and requires no software like the stuff I ended up buying; Camtasia and PowerPoint for screencasts and Sony Vegas for video (at the same time, the monthly fee to use this product will add up pretty quickly!).

Anyhow, you see my point; when you read the above, you know that I AM intimately familiar with the product and I also know enough about IM and video marketing in general to be able to clearly outline the product’s shortcomings. If this was a review, at this point you’d be making a decision on whether to purchase based on a thorough assessment of the product – an assessment that can only be presented if you are intimately knowledgeable of the product.

Since the IMReportCard.com review does not present a thorough assessment, it can only mean one of two things; first, that the reviewer has not used the product his/herself, and is simply using available sales copy to write the review (very likely the case here), or second, the product’s less than favorable attributes are not discussed, because doing so would reduce the likelihood of earning a commission on a referred sale.

Very often on review sites, it’s not what is being said, but what is being left out of the discussion that is the main issue.

2) Niche Profit Classroom: Again, what’s the value added provided in the review here? Any visitor can glean 99% of the information provided in the review by reading the sales copy, or by signing up to become an affiliate and reviewing the affiliate promotional material. I’ve read several reviews of Niche Profit Classroom on the Net, and have been less than pleased by them. And like the other reviews I have read, the author conveniently leaves two fundamental detriments of this product out of the discussion…

a) That delivering the course information in video format only is extremely unwieldy, and time consuming. It’s also next to impossible to return to a specific video segment to re-review critical material unless you make detailed notes as you proceed; there’s simply no way to know which video contains what material. A PDF course outline would be an invaluable addition to this product.

b) That if you follow the course to its ideal conclusion, you will have to outsource and pay for the creation of an ebook for each niche you identify; that means a $300-$700 outlay for each project. That you are also encouraged to investigate and create products for multiple niches, since not all will be wildly successful.

Not so good if you’re short of cash.

And if you’re relatively new to Internet Marketing, and unsure whether you can pick and develop profitable niches successfully, you’ll want to investigate the IM money making opportunity without having to fork out a fairly significant amount of cash for each “experiment.”

3) Site Build It!: By now you’re aware that IMReportCard’s unbiased reviews aren’t really reviews at all; they’re a top level overview done by a writer who’s done little more than glean over the sales copy, glance at the affiliate material and perhaps watch the promotional video.

I include SBI! in this discussion, therefore, not to further emphasize this point (the review barely discusses the product at all), but to demonstrate something I call “journalistic integrity”, or lack thereof.

To me, part of “journalistic integrity” means you have to substantiate the comments and assertions you make in print with evidence, and cannot pass off hearsay and urban myths without addressing them accordingly.

In the sake of full disclosure, I have to tell you I was Site Build It!’s Product Manager until 2006, when a serious illness prevented me from continuing. I am therefore both intimately familiar with the product and the people behind the company – and never have I met a more passionate and dedicated group, all focused on delivering the best online business building platform possible.

You see, in the SBI! review posted on IMReportCard.com, the author says…

“Google the keywords, “Site Build It Scam”, and you are bound to find numerous listings both pro and con regarding SBI!.”

Yeah? So what?

The same can be said for ANY product in the whole freakin’ world.

If you’re an affiliate of any product sold online, you’ve quickly learned  to target “the name of the product” + “scam” as one of your keywords. Surfers have figured out long ago that “the name of the product” + “review” usually gets them a bunch of promotional hype, and very little in the way of substance. Add the word “scam” into the keyword phrase, and you’ll bring up genuine complaints and concerns, should they exist.

That’s what they assume, anyway.

In this case, the author references the complaints of Liz Sowerbutts, a woman who  has had nothing but terrible things to say about SBI! in the past. But as detailed in my full discussion here, Liz’s comments aren’t those of a disgruntled SBI! user; she and some unethical gurus orchestrated a link bombing campaign against SBI! to target this keyword (SBI! scam) and promote an alternative product.

All her arguments against SBI! are easily refutable (as you’ll see if you want to read my article on the whole sordid affair).

And who the heck is Liz Sowerbutts anyway? She ain’t Marlon Sanders,  and she obviously has ZERO ethics and credibility, so why would you provide her with a soap box on which to stand?

Anyway, let’s get back to the journalistic integrity thing.

If there were some truth to Liz’s comments (and there is not) and Liz was some sort of recognized and credible authority (she is not), and she was an SBI! user (again, no) then it might make sense to include her comments in an “unbiased review.”

Since it’s not the case, however,  including these comments serves no real purpose other than to raise doubt in the reader’s mind.

And by doing that, the author is very definitely displaying a bias against SBI! (remember, IMReportCard.com claims to be delivering unbiased reviews) as well as a complete lack of journalistic integrity.

The only way this treatment could not be considered biased is if the author’s asked the same question of every product; “is it a scam?” Yet I”ve never seen this addressed on any other review.

Red Flag #4: Where is the testimonials caveat?

Anyone hosting a site that posts user reviews has an ethical duty to inform visitors that none of the reviews can be authenticated, and that the results may be fabricated, exaggerated, and that financial conflicts of interests may be tainting the comments.

To be fair, there is a caveat in the Online Content section of the Terms of Use policy which states…

Opinions, advice, statements, offers, or other information or content made available through IMRC are those of their respective authors and not of IMRC, and should not necessarily be relied upon. Such authors are solely responsible for the accuracy of such content.

IMRC does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information on IMRC and neither adopts nor endorses nor is responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, advice or statement made.

In my opinion, this sort of material needs to be translated into everyday English and placed prominently on every single review page so people have this first and foremost in their minds as they review the material presented there.

How many people read through a Terms Of Use document?

How many realize that retailers can use services like MicroWorkers.com to hire people to post reviews on their services?

How many realize that none of the testimonials can be authenticated?

Speaking from experience, I can tell you that most do not.

So at the end of the day, where do I stand with this service?

I will admit I did find the feedback useful on a couple of products I considered purchasing. However, to really gain my trust, and YOURS, IMReportCard.com needs to address my very reasonable and straightforward questions starting with the BIG one…

WHO is behind the site, and why should I trust you with your reviews and recommendations?

Otherwise, it needs to be recognized as a plain affiliate site, and approached with the appropriate amount of skepticism.

Let’s face it, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular- not to mention the cheapest and easiest – money making options for anyone looking to the Internet to supplement their income. And yet, most affiliates fail spectacularly, the vast majority failing to ever earn a commission check or even refer a sale.

If you’re an affiliate marketer struggling to eke out a living on the Net, no doubt you’re doubly frustrated by the near daily bombardment of affiliate money making “opportunities” – all seemingly sent by some recently penniless college drop out who now earns millions working a couple of hours a day from an idyllic beachfront mansion.

Truth is, if you’re not making money in affiliate marketing, there’s probably a good reason for it.

Back when I started promoting affiliate products, I failed miserably too.

And I continued to do so until I discovered the key to earning referral income on a regular basis, as well as the trick to a high conversion ratio.

Before I continue, let me put one thing into perspective; while earning income – even making a living from referral programs – is well within your powers, only a select few marketers are going to get to enjoy those huge 4 and 5 figure Clickbank checks featured so prominently on the sales pages of the affiliate marketing gurus.

With that out of the way, let’s have a look at the most common reasons why most affiliates fail…

1) No Traffic: Promoting affiliate programs from a web site that does not have a solid base of traffic yet is a lot like putting the cart before the horse.

Suppose you have a page that PREsells some product or another. Let’s assume for every 100 people that arrive to that page, only 10 click through to your partner’s site. And suppose your partner has not-unreasonable 0.5% conversion rate. Theoretically, that means you’ll make one sale every 3 weeks – if the page in question receives 100 targeted visitors per day. Hardly enough to make you rich.

Unfortunately though, sheer numbers and conversion rates are no guarantees; you may never earn a referred sale, a fact likely attributable to the other factors outlined below…

2) You don’t know the products: In order to PREsell any product or service effectively, you need to be intimately familiar with it. That means you have to own it. There’s no other way to speak authoritatively about it, and your visitors will pick up on that instantly.

As an example, check out this diet review I did recently on UltimateFatBurner.com. Here’s the thing; whether this particular program interests you or not, there is one thing you can be sure of – that I have read the program and am familiar with it.

Arguably, it takes a LOT more time to do this than simply post a link.

I had to read the manuals and listen to the accompanying audio tracks. Plus write the review, so we’re talking an investment of several hours. But a review like this does generate referral income, and when you consider that it will continue to generate income as long as there is interest in the program, this really leverages your time. At the time of this writing, I figure this review has paid me back about $75/hour of time invested. And it has only been up a couple of weeks.

To put it another way, suppose we both sent 100 visitors to the sales site in question; you from a text link (“check out this great diet”), and me from my in-depth review. Who do you think will get the higher conversion rate? Uh-huh… moi.

3) You don’t know your audience: One of the most common mistakes made by newbie marketers is to make referrals based on the size commission payouts and  the strength of the various program’s abilities to convert visitors into customers. If you go to the ClickBank MarketPlace, for example, you’ll see there is all sorts of data provided to assess each merchant’s abilities to do just that.

But here’s the thing; in order to convert visitors into customers, you need to present them with products that meet their needs in a very specific way. If you don’t know who your audience is, and what it is they are after, you can’t provide them with “just the right” product. And that product isn’t necessarily the one that pays $50 per sale and on average converts 3% of its visitors.

You’re probably thinking… this is obvious. I know who my audience is.

Maybe.

It’s not as obvious as it seems. Back when I get started out with UltimateFatBurner.com I had a lot of people approach me about promoting exercise programs, online personal training, and membership sites where the goal was to track various parameters and get fit, and so on. To me, such programs were a perfect fit for my audience. They also reflected my own bias which was that diet and exercise – not pills – are the key to weight loss.

After all, my audience was definitely overweight. There were investigating options to lose weight after all. So I decided to promote some of the programs. I either purchased them or got memberships so I could review them and speak from a position of authority. I wrote my reviews, published and promoted them, and gave them prominence on the site.

The result?

Epic fail. Zero. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. No sign ups, no conversions, and ZERO commissions.

Puzzled, I scratched my head and re-reviewed all my PREselling material. It just didn’t make any sense. I had done everything right. I was familiar with the products and services in question. I was fair and balanced. Yet my audience could care less.

What the heck was going on?

It took me a little while to realize what it was: there was absolutely NOTHING wrong with my PREselling efforts.

But there very definitely was a problem. I’d transferred my bias (that diet and exercise is the best way to lose weight) onto my visitors, and failed to see their real needs. The fact that they were visiting my web site and reading diet pill reviews meant they had weight to lose, sure. But it didn’t mean they were interested in diet and exercise. In fact, almost the opposite; they were looking for the quick fix.

No wonder they weren’t interested in such offering! As you can imagine, this changed everything!

4) Un-targeted traffic: The less targeted your audience, the less likely you are able to divine their needs and wants and present them with products or services of interest. Simple, right?

5) You’re not taking this seriously: I know what you thinking; “this guy is an ass, of course I take this seriously.”

My first question to you then would be… are you making a real effort to PREsell your recommendations? Or does referral consist of a link that says  “click here”? Then I’d ask…

“…do you own the products or services you are recommending to others?”

If not, you are not taking this seriously. How you can expect others to purchase on your recommendation if you haven’t purchased the product / service yourself?

I’m not trying to be harsh here, but this is one of the fundamental and inarguable laws of affiliate marketing. Many newbie affiliate marketers don’t want to spend any money because they are afraid their investment will not pay off in referral commissions. The problem is, if you don’t purchase the product, you will never earn commissions – it’s the perfect Catch 22.

Frankly, not spending a few dollars is a poor excuse indeed. You need some “skin in the game” to qualify your commitment to the model. Without a financial investment, it’s WAY too easy to do all the wrong things and not put in the effort. After all, you’ve got nothing to lose… except your time, of course. Honestly… ALL successful affiliate marketers own the products they recommend.

Sidebar: There are always exceptions, of course. Some super-savvy marketers use low-cost pay-per-click ads to drive targeted traffic to relevant offerings; this is the only way you can side-step owning and knowing the products you recommend. Unfortunately, you still need cash to pay for the ads, and you really need to know what you are doing to select the right keywords to target the right audience. Otherwise… no conversions.

So if you’re not taking this seriously, maybe its time to do so. After all, what other business can you start with a few hundred dollars?

6) Your referral does not appear genuine: Nobody expects every product to be perfect, or to address every need. Your recommendations should be genuine. This includes pointing out the flaws in the product, should there be any. Your visitors aren’t idiots, and they may be wary of overly-enthusiastic recommendations that appear to be made in the sole interest of obtaining a commission.

For example, check out this review on UltimateFatBurner.com. Although I love the diet program itself, sometimes it gets a little long and tedious. So I make sure my audience knows what they are getting into. If they decide it’s not for them, I’ve saved them time, money and effort, and as a result they are more likely to respond positively to some other product.

7) You are not 100% focused on the needs of your visitors: If you are pursuing this business model because of the visions of dollar bills dancing in your head, you need to step back and re-evaluate things.

Becoming a successful affililiate marketer means your focus is on your visitor. It is about providing them with the right solution, even if that solution pays an 8% commission instead of a 40% commission.

You haven’t established a bond of trust with your visitors. This ties into #7. Being focused on your visitor means they will begin to trust you, and trust is another critical element of affiliate success. Your visitors need to feel confident that your recommendations are both credible, and made in their best interests. The best way to establish your credibility is with high quality content.

9) Your recommendations are all over the place: I still see it on occasion; recommendations for products that address back pain mixed in with links to deals on iPods, plasma TVs, DVDs on dream interpretation and so on. If you are guilty of this, stop immediately and re-read #3 on this list. Your recommendations must be in tight accordance with the needs of your audience.

Alrighty then… there you go. If you’re failing with your affiliate marketing attempts now you know why. Make a commitment to both yourself and this monetization model. Done properly, nothing leverages your time or pays out like affiliate programs do!

Good luck!

A few weeks ago, I put together a post on the growing popularity of online video. In it, I discuss how online video is exploding in popularity and why this surge of popularity has got me so excited. However, the majority of this article covers the logistics of video creation; what you need in the way of software and tools, and so on.

It doesn’t really address some of the really cool ways you can use video to leverage your web site, and its existing content. Since this discussion of video is near and dear to my own heart (I’m eager to find the best – and most efficient – ways to use it on my own site – UltimateFatBurner.com and Real-Customer-Comments.com), I’d like to share with you some of the more exciting avenues I’ve investigated, or am currently investigating.

When I decided I had to tap into the online video craze in late 2008, the first thing I did was to go looking for a “how to” manual; I figured there had to be a smart marketer out there who was already capitalizing on video, and who had documented the entire video-creating process in a manual (frankly, I’m the sort of person who figures if someone has already done it and perfected the process, why waste time doing the same thing yourself? It’s cheaper and more efficient to buy the manual than to learn new software and develop a system on your own).

After some major digging, I finally found both the manual and the marketer. The manual was called “Unleash An Avalanche Of Targeted Pre-Sold Traffic By Recycling Your Articles On You Tube” and it was written by Kevin Riley, an American Internet marketer who makes his home in Japan.

The concept of the manual is pretty self explanatory from the title; take existing material already in place on your web site, convert it into video format, “position it” (with the appropriate keywords and so on), upload it to the big video web sites, and divert “pre-sold” traffic directly back to your web site.

It sounded like a pretty darn good idea, so I thought I would give it a try.

After a little reflection, I decided I had the perfect article for the experiment, “The 7 Day Fat Burner Free Trial Scam & Why You Must Avoid It!” Since this article covers deceptive billing tactics, it would be perfect material to use to further establish the credibility of UltimateFatBurner.com and drive new visitors to the site.

So I bought the manual, and, following the step-by-step process documented therein, created my first video (which has received just under 18,000 views in a year)…

Needless to say, I learned a few things.

Converting a 400 or so word article into a video takes a lot more time than you think. Or at least, I thought. For instance…

• Your article does need to be re-worked somewhat, since you are now “talking” to the viewer. I found my article needed to be modified somewhat to make it seem more conversational and more like a video. I did not want it to seem like I was simply reading an article. I wanted to communicate directly with my viewer.
• When read in a relaxed and conversational tone, my article – complete with additions -  ballooned into almost 7 minutes of audio. If you view my video, you’ll see that still photos accompany the spoken narrative. To keep the viewer entertained, those photos must change every few seconds. That’s a LOT of pictures that need to be sourced, sized, and inserted into your video.

In other words…

Even when you factor in that this was my first video, and accord significantly more time to the creation process than would be necessary in subsequent productions, it still turned out to be a major undertaking. If I am really going to be able to leverage the power of video, I’m going to have to be able to use it more efficiently, and create videos much more quickly. After all, I still have to remain focused on the regular day-to-day elements of running an online business; creating new content and so on.

Accordingly, I’m now working on a new video based on my review of the “hCG Protocol” over on UltimateFatBurner.com. This time, instead of sourcing still photos for the video, I’m displaying the text on the screen, so the viewer can read along with the narrative, which will provide an overview of the presented text.

The text will change with the narrative, so there will be plenty of visual stimulation. So far, it has taken much, much less time to put this video together, although it’s tough to tell how well it will be received just yet. I’m hoping to have it finished this week, and will post a link here as soon as I do. That way, you can check it out and share your comments with me.

I really love the “converting articles to videos” concept, but really need a way to do it faster. This may work. We’ll see.

Despite my reservations, I can’t fault Kevin’s manual; I honestly couldn’t have put this video together without it. He really does show you how to orchestrate the entire video creating process – from “story boarding your video”, to sourcing images and audio, to the actual step-by-step process of putting it all together with the Camtasia software. If this – converting articles into videos – is something that interests you, I have no reservations about recommending his publications.