People to Trust...

I mentioned on the home page that one of the e-mail folders on my PC contains the incoming correspondence, e-zines, newsletters, promos etc from more than 60 separate “gurus” and their businesses. Now I have the basis for an opinion as to which ones are worth listening to … and which ones are not.

I also mentioned that I have a folder on my PC’s hard drive containing downloaded courses and reports and interviews I’ve either paid for, or received for free; in this there are sub-directories for each “source,” for example each “guru” I bought or downloaded from. There are 94 of these “named” sub-directories … and one that contains 29 other documents from people I decided didn’t even justify their own folder!

There are many more experts that I simply haven’t encountered ... either they keep a low profile, or else they focus on “doing it” rather than “teaching it,” or else they are simply specialists in an area of Internet Marketing I’ve not pursued. Some of the experts have treated me simply as a potential wallet. Their e-mails to me can be summarized as “buy this.”  Some had valuable e-mail offerings, but I just had to trim my list else I’d have spent whole days simply following through on their recommendations.

The names that follow are ones where, at worst, I feel their e-mail communications (be it by EZine, newsletter, or an e-mail telling me of a Blog posting) have been genuinely valuable.

And a few of them have achieved the ultimate: without having ever spoken to (most of) them, or even exchanged e-mails with them, I feel I know them, I feel we have a relationship, I feel they genuinely have my best interests at heart when they e-mail me. While all the ones I mention below can be trusted to offer great value, these few are the ones to study with a microscope.

John Reese. I was one of the people who paid almost US$1,000 to buy his Traffic Secrets course; one of the contributors to his achievement of selling more than $1 Million of product in 18 hours. Quite simply, John’s knowledge is encyclopedic, he’s got more common sense in his little finger than most people have in their whole body, he sees opportunities others don’t seem to, and he executes like a firing squad. Also: he shares. Listen to anything this guy has to say.

Jim Edwards. He, too, has more than $1,000 of my money, and it was money well spent. Jim has the knack of pitching his knowledge at the level of a newbie while teaching information that is often very advanced. He’s solid in e-Books, for example, and a leader in multi-media. He’s published know-how on the topic of Joint Ventures, and Affiliate marketing. I bought his Mini-Site Creator product despite already knowing a lot on the topic, and it was a smart move. I learned more, and learned things that saved me a lot of time. Jim, too, always over-delivers.

Paul Myers. I’ve never bought a thing from him, but I feel guilty about it (how’s that for a good posture to be in, from his perspective?) because I really enjoy his talkbiz news newsletter.  And, I will buy his List Machine eBook soon. Real soon.

Dr. Andy Williams: he just blows me away with the material he gives away. Some of his guides are the most-thumbed documents on my shelves; and I only print hard copies of things I’m going to want to take away and read again and again. If you sign up for his free newsletter you get a Wordtracker tutorial and a guide to creating Niche sites that are genuinely worth money.

Brad Callen of SEO Elite fame offers free material that is better than most of the pay-for material out there. If you visit his SEO Elite sales page you’ll be offered (pop-in) the chance to subscribe to a mini-course, “7 Days to Massive Website Traffic.” Do it! Then scroll about 1/3 of the way down his sales letter; you’ll find the opportunity to subscribe to a free Website Traffic Course that he claims is worth US$67. He’s wrong, it’s worth much more.

Ian Traynor has a quite remarkable and extremely valuable web site, Marketing Magic; once you subscribe, for free, you not only get an interesting newsletter on a regular basis, you also get access to his download library – and he has a TON of useful downloads in there, with new ones every month. I get access to a lot of freebies from lots of the experts, but I am always able to find things in Ian’s library that I haven’t found elsewhere, AND for which I can find a use. Highly recommended. 

Bill Hibbler sort of rubbed me the wrong way when I first encountered him. He offers a report that includes critical – but honest – reviews of the material developed and marketed by Corey Rudl. The problem being, I’d already spent more than US$1,000 on Rudl’s material and really didn’t want to read anyone’s comments implying I might be a damned fool. Even worse, I'd be paying to be told it! In fact, with an expanded perspective, I'm still satisfied I got great value from my purchases of Rudl's materials ... but I would not have spent my money in the way I did if I had read Bill's comments first. (One exception: Insider Secrets is still one of the two greatest introduction to Internet Marketing in existence.) By the way ... Bill's newsletter is pretty useful.

Jim Cockrum has opened my eyes to a lot of eBay opportunities, and his newsletter is one that I actually look forward to. There are usually ideas I’d never even thought of, and invariably after I’ve read his newsletter I find myself in discussion with my wife, usually me pleading to be allowed to dive deeper into the eBay world, she insisting I focus, focus ... she wins right now but I’m really looking forward to acting on Jim’s stuff much more in the future. It’s a mark of interest that I keep his newsletter coming despite my lack of activity in the eBay arena. 

Christopher Knight knows his stuff when it comes to every aspect of EZines’s, from getting names, EZine design, which days to mail, how to get past the spam filters, legal issues connected with spam ... and what he doesn’t know, he knows how to find out. He offers a worthwhile newsletter for anyone with any interest whatsoever in EZine marketing.

Jimmy D Brown’s products and newsletters are always interesting, always of value; and if you buy anything from him, in my experience he always over-delivers. Advantage Marketing Strategies is his top-notch, free EZine.

Perry Marshall is not only an expert on Adwords, he has a paid (monthly subscription) newsletter he calls his Renaissance Club membership; it invariably offers an unusual and valuable slant on business.

Jerry West is the single best-informed expert on Search Engine optimization I've encountered, although Brad Fallon and Brad Callen are pretty darned good in their own right. His newsletter is the gold standard for SEO newsletters.

There are many others I could mention; I've no doubt I'll have expanded this section a feew months from now.