A major grouse I have with “shopping comparison sites” is that there’s often no “comparison” involved. They’re usually just a bunch of scraped data from affiliate datafeeds. There’s no “opinion” or comparison of the pros and cons of the product. Just a pile of digital trash on the information highway in my opinion.
It’s frequently the same case with Internet Marketing product “reviews” too…You know those ads that go:
“Is Product XYZ A Scam? Check here to find the facts!”
OR
“Don’t Buy Product XYZ Till You Read This Review”
OR my favorite
“An Honest Review of Product XYZ” (yeah right…)
If you head over to the page, you usually see a regurgitation of the marketing material, or just a listing of the product’s specifications, the price and maybe some bogus “bonus”…whoopee…
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In my past vocation as a tech journalist, I used to evaluate product and service offerings from the likes of Microsoft, Iomega, Diamond Multimedia, Creative Technology among others. The product reviews were subsequently syndicated on the newswires and online tech portals, so I’ll use the same methodology here as well.
What’s good and bad about PPC Classroom?
First off, the product is pretty comprehensive.
From the product graphic, it looks like:
- 4 manuals
- 7 discs (probably a combination of CDs or DVDs)
- At least 8 handouts
- Super Affiliate Jeremy Palmer’s “top secret” software tool for tracking ad campaigns across various pay-per-click search engines (a necessity once you are spending large amounts on PPC on a daily basis).
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Regarding the course structure, it’s geared towards newer affiliate marketers with topics on:
- An introduction to PPC and affiliate marketing
- Keyword matching
- Understanding PPC stats
- Finding niches and identifying hot demand
- Evaluating your competition and building your USP (unique selling proposition)
And the bread and butter of the PPC-affiliate marketing trade, affiliate marketing monetization strategies including:
- Direct linking
- Arbitrage/direct merchange linking
- Landing pages
- Opt-in (a hybrid PPC->email marketing approach)
- and evaluating the different categories of offers.
Intermediate level affiliate marketers will likely benefit from more advanced topics like:
- Complementary keyword strategies
- The keyword buying cycle
- Long end of the tail
- How to find emerging/undiscovered products
- Geo-targeting/time-based campaigning/day parting
- Keyword trigger/content trigger/hybrid strategies
- And a dissection of landing pages
Jeremy also chips in with his advanced tips and techniques, and emphasizes topics like ROI and bidding and positioning strategies.
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Although there’s lots of material to go through, it’s laid out in an easy-to-understand manner.
Is PPC Classroom a complete product?
Not likely. If anything, things change so quickly in the Internet Marketing arena that no single product will be able to contain “everything”.
Which is why Anik and Jeremy have set up a series of webinars and have a forum in the works.
If it’s anything like Anik’s previous Affiliate Classroom program, you can expect to have a flood of content and continuing updates.
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What I liked about the course content is that they’ve got a crack technical writing team to put the written materials together.
The concepts are explained in an easy-to-understand and sequential manner and are a stark contrast to the barely comprehensible manner in which most “make money online” books are written.
If you’re looking for a few quick and dirty tips to make a few quick bucks from your typical $47 or $97 ebook, PPC Classroom will not be your cup of tea. In fact, you’d probably find that there’s way too much reading involved…
If instead, you’re looking for a great resource to start building an online business, PPC Classroom is certainly worth a second look.
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I’m not directly promoting PPC Classroom.
If you’re interested, you might like to check out this bonus package that my buddy, Super Affiliate Amit Mehta has put together.
