I received a lot of emails with that (almost identical) subject title last month. My inbox is being flooded with the word free lately, it’s driving me insane! Free this, free that, grab your freebie here, your freebie is almost gone! 99% of them aren’t free however! Granted they don’t have a monetary cost attached, but they do require my name and email address in order to obtain what ever it is they’re giving away, which to me, isn’t free.

With my inbox count growing by over fifty emails a day, it has to be a pretty good offer to get me to pass out my address to someone new these days.

After seeing enough capitalized FREE ACTION PLANNER attention seeking emails (seriously, it’s like a bunch of deprived children all with their hands up), I decided to take a proper look. I have to say, not too bad! When you’re trying to make money online, it’s crucial that you avoid as many distractions as possible. To avoid distraction, productivity is key. Simply put, productivity is anything that makes your working life easier. Productivity does NOT include spending your time on Twitter or YouTube unless watching The X Factor is included in your course outline. (I really should take my own advice here… Twitter… baaad!)

What this action planner attempts to do is help you prioritize your time when you are working on those projects that you simply must get finished. I say attempt only because it can’t actually do the work for you, so it’s up to you to follow what you’ve written down. I tend to use my diary for marking down not only what I want to do for the day, but also what I have done already. This allows me to sit down at the end of each day to see what I’ve accomplished, handy when my brain has died and long forgotten what happened 15 minutes ago.

The action planner is a 72 page document that basically has a page for each day where you can list tasks you want to complete along with a few other tips and info. You print it out, and photocopy it until you have twelve copies – one for each month of the year. (If you’re one of those stationary/perfectionist nuts like me, you can get it covered and bound at your local printing store. I do that to any good ebooks I buy, I’m really quite crazy that way.)

At the end of the month there is a section where you can summarize all your key achievements and review your time spent. This will allow you not only to feel pride for what you have done but also see where all your interruptions are coming from. You know… Twitter, emails, twitter, catching up on blog posts, random link clicking, twitter, facebook, that great commercial on TV and…um… twitter?  In reality, the whole thing is what you want to make of it.

Download your Action Planner by clicking here!

This makes a nice change in blog posts doesn’t it? A freebie AND a good review! Don’t worry, Friday’s is choking on it’s sarcasm…

Over the course of 2009, there were a few products that had me salivating at the mere thought of how awesome they appeared to be. Unfortunately (and frustratingly), the two main ones I invested in turned out to be less than impressive with regards to following through on their pre-launch promises. One was even bad enough for me to spend more time and energy fighting for my money back than I did using the product in the first place. Mostly due to its price tag as well as it’s complete fallacy in what it promised. As you can probably imagine, I’m a little more skeptical when I come across the ‘next big thing’ that makes me go wow now a days.

Even though we’re only in January and I’ve got a whole year ahead of me, I think I’ve actually found my first “wow” product. Even as skeptical as I am, if it delivers and does what it says, then I agree with the current labels of “game changer” that are already floating around.

Video Marketing. I get that it’s the current way to go, but I just can’t do it. I hate the sound of my own voice, and the thought of putting my actual self in front of a camera makes me feel sick, literally. No big dreams to be a movie star when I was little and like most females, I can be extremely self critical which doesn’t help.

But, video marketing does work, I understand that, and of course there are other ways to make use of it without putting yourself out there for the world to see. A lot of videos out there are nothing more than PowerPoint presentations or images put together with Windows Movie Maker. I know, because that’s how I created the ‘teaser’ video for my Cash in Members product.

Ironically, a funny thing with me is I don’t actually tend to watch that many internet marketing videos, not when it’s related to promoting a product anyway. I watch a few, but it has to be a pretty good reason for me to keep watching. I have the attention span of a gnat most days and tend to be juggling too many things at once to really sit down and concentrate on something for more than a few minutes. That’s probably just a ‘me thing’ however, I can be a bit odd.

I think the main reason I prefer the written word to a video is because you can’t really ’skim’ a video. I find myself thinking “yeah yeah, sounds great but how much is it going to cost me?” With a sales page, I can scroll to the bottom and decide if it’s a price worth continued reading, or if it’s out of my price range and I can leave without wasting more time.

When I clicked a link in one of my emails recently and it took me to the Easy Video Player page, I had stop for a split second. At the bottom was a comment by Michael Fallon:

“WOW! Imagine having an opt-in form inside your video! This is going to be massive!”

Ok, you have my attention. We all know 2009’s catch phrase by now – “the money is in the list” – so when I see that this video software supposedly allows you to place your opt-in code directly inside a video, I’m going to stop for a moment and investigate a little further. After plugging my details into the website, I am taken to the next page with a behind the
scenes preview video. Going against my general nature, I click play and watch it.

All I can say is: Impressive.

Not only can you plug in your Aweber opt-in code, you can embed Paypal buy buttons, have the video redirect automatically to another website, use a splash image at the start and a few other handy little tricks. I’m starting to believe the claim that this software is set to change how Video Marketing works.

I’d love to be able to share the video with you all here, but the guys running it aren’t that silly… you have to opt-in and watch it over on their site.

This is probably one of the few times I would recommend doing it too. In fact, the first real big recommendation for this blog. Special. If you currently utilize video marketing, or you’re wanting to, then this could be an extremely handy tool to use and jump ahead of your competition. Yes, I was that impressed by it. Check out here: Easy Video Player.

Now, the software doesn’t physically launch until January the 12th, but if you sign up now as an ‘early bird subscriber’ you supposedly get advanced notification and the ability to get in and grab this before anyone else. There are also rumoured to be limited copies at the one time fixed price, although I have no idea if that’s a sales ploy or not so don’t quote me.

One of the emails I got said they would be switching to a monthly fee system once the first (what ever number) are sold out… which does raise an eyebrow as the behind the scenes video clearly states it’s a once off purchase and there would be no monthly fees. Hrm…

There are going to be limited copies at the small one time price (After they are sold out we will switch to charging month fee’s to use it) so you will need to be quick on Jan 12th to get your copy at a ONE time price if you want to avoid paying monthly!

The only thing I can be sure of is that my inbox will be bombarded with sales emails offering a wide variety of bonuses in order to buy through their link. Not only is there a nice commission attached to it, there’s prizes to be one for who ever refers the most buyers and they ask you for your list size in order to promote it. Even the welcome email informs you the ‘big guns’ are getting involved:

(It’s set to be a big launch with some big names such as Mike Filsaime, Sam Knowll, Rhys Davies and many more already on board to promote!)

Course, I’m not exactly sure attaching the name Mike Filsaime to your product is as useful as it used to be right now. Seems there were a lot of upset people when he released his 7 Figure Code ‘for free’. Even checking how people are finding this little blog via searches I see phrases such as +”mike filsaime” products +disappointing +”misleading” and mike filsaime bait and switch. Ouch.

I’ll be watching with curiosity to see how it all pans out. At the moment I’m not hugely into video marketing, so no decisions on if I will or won’t purchase it. Then again, everyone knows what YouTube is, that Google gives video results when you run a search and of course, combining the two is free. So maybe this is the exact right time to get into video marketing to promote either my product or affiliate ones…

As I said, I’m not one to rave about a product normally, but regardless if you plan on buying this or not, I highly recommend you at least check out the videos provided. It’s free to watch, you just have to have an email you’re happy to share. The Behind The Scenes Video tells you what it is, and there’s a new one for affiliates called The “Affiliate Video Funnel Technique” which shows you how you can make use of it if you’re only doing affiliate marketing. So this isn’t just for product owners.

I’ve got everything crossed for these guys that it all works exactly like they claim, if it does then it will be a fantastic tool in your marketing toolbox. Unfortunately I find it hard to drop my guard completely after being burned pretty bad last year.

Check out the videos:

Easy Video Player

P.S. I must admit, I find Josh Bartlett’s voice really easy to listen to.

P.P.S. I have no idea what the price is going to be unfortunately… sorry.

Updated

The release price is a mear $127 total. That is all you pay and you own the product for life. It’s stated at the bottom of the website however that this is a temporary price and will rise to $127 a month.