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.

Traffic. When driving to work we all wish it would just disappear, but when running a website, we want to be choking on the proverbial fumes. Everyone who has a website no matter how big or how small, wants traffic. Even if you’re just a blog like me who’s intentions are set more on informing your readers than simply emptying their pockets, you want people to actually see what you’re doing.

When I started receiving emails about Perfect Traffic Storm and it’s promises that “I may never need to worry about getting enough traffic to your sites EVER again“, I was intrigued. Even though I don’t have all the sales pages, the review sites and more to promote in attempts to convert as many sales as possible, I’d still like to reach as many people as I can with this blog. Investigating a bit more however, I made some very interesting discoveries!

Take a look at the following two images and tell me what you see…

Notice the big red writing? Look similar? No, they look identical and so do the entire sales pages for both! Perfect Traffic Storm’s sales page is a direct replica of Traffic Python’s. So much so you could even call it a… clone! Oh why hadn’t I had this example when writing the Affiliate Clone X blog post lol!

The funny thing is, there’s nothing really wrong with either product – you promote the program to earn credits which you then use to promote your advertisements on other people’s websites. Obviously there’s a little bit more to it than that, but you get the general idea. The problem I have however, is I find it really difficult to sign up to (or stay signed up to) a product that completely rips off someone elses sales page.

I mean, you just have to check out both pages!! Seriously, have to!! Open them up in tabs and flick between then as you read down. While some of the wording, mostly with regards to the testimonials have been changed, the layout, bullet points and information is identical.

Pay particular close attention to the “Banner Statistics” image about three-quarters down the page, the one with the 19.5% click through and 29.17% conversion. It’s the same image! Check out the Impressions count, clicks and sales. The numbers are the same. The only difference is that Perfect Traffic Storm photo-shopped out the dates shown in Traffic Python’s drop down section and under the graph.

From what I can gather so far, Traffic Python was released in July of 2009, whereas Perfect Traffic Storm was released November 10th of 2009. I can confirm the second release as I have 51 emails informing me of such. The thing is, there’s different owners involved. Traffic Python is claimed by Brett Ingram, while Perfect Traffic Storm was released by Mark Lareau and Todd Gross.

As I said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with either program, and supposedly PTS has upwards of 20,000 members now, which has to mean something (perhaps just a more aggressive promotion). Of course, if you are wanting to use it to promote and recruit to your ‘downline’ so you can then promote other products to people, a higher membership count is a negative – less people to recruit. Although for promoting your own sites via the slide-in ad impressions on other network sites, then PTS wins over Traffic Python for starting you with 1000 free ad credits.

I figure I might as well use those up to promote the blog since I have them

My question (actually two) to you all is:

1. Have you used either of these products before and do you have anything you can share about them? And
2. What is your opinion on the copying of someone elses sales page?

P.S. They say everything comes in three’s right? Well I found the third!! Web Traffic Juggernaut has an almost identical sales page to both Perfect Traffic Storm and Traffic Python. Same layout and information, just some slight variances with images used. That said, Juggernaut is also owned by Brett Ingram, so I would assume that it’s either the first draft of what was then made into Traffic Python, or he just really liked that sales page and reused it lol.