If spending $97 on an ebook is a major financial commitment, don’t read any further

Ok, for the rest of you lets get on with the review…

• There is no hype in the sales letter
• There is no hype in the ebook
• There is no hype in this review

Another Web 2.0 Social Media Ebook?

After you read the sales letter that is probably the impression you will have, and in fact you will still have that impression shortly after you start reading the ebook.

Here are some interesting facts for you

Pages 56 (+bonus guide on video, crib sheets and tables)

In fact those few references that were included were mainly in facts and figures like usage data.

So What is this Ebook Talking About?

Traffic Secrets

Whilst many people don’t appreciate the value of ebooks, claiming that the information is out there if you look for it, or join and participate in various forums, that isn’t strictly true.
We live in an age of information overload. Quite often different ideas and new ideas take a long time to rise to the surface, or never make it, not because the ideas are not valuable, or supported by hard evidence.

I often see “specialists” in SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing) claim that their methods and expensive services can work in virtually any market place.
I am not going to dispute those claims, but that very statement tends to drown out other methods that could be equally effective for traffic generation that might be equally, or potentially more suitable for certain markets.

Traffic Strategy

The fundamental value from this ebook is that it challenges you to examine your social media marketing strategy, and optimize it for best effect.
This is nothing to do with writing better headlines, or coercing top users at Digg, Reddit or Netscape to add you as a friend and to plug your content.

Whilst Laura’s intention was to target the ebook to beginners in social media marketing, in many ways consultants in social media marketing should read it because it will place a new perspective on information and strategies you think you already know.

Professional Writing

Laura has written a lot of ebooks as a ghost writer, and this isn’t her first outing in publishing an ebook in her own name. This ebook oozes quality production with footnotes on almost every page and links to resources that back up the data and strategies she proposes.

The professional tone may also be one of its shortcomings – The Stampede Secret isn’t a light refreshing read, or suitable for people who prefer information in short 400 word chunks.

To get the most benefit you really will have to read through the ebook a couple of times taking notes – in some ways it reminds me of some of the more serious marketing reports you might receive from Marketing Sherpa.

Recommended Audience

Ideal

You are already making money, and probably think you know everything there is about SMM. You might even skim read the ebook once and think there is nothing new, but if you take the time to sit down and read it slowly a couple of times, you will pick up a new perspective.

• Marketing consultants
• Blogging consultants
• Business owners in niche markets
• Owners of Virtual Real Estate in Niche markets including blogging networks
• VCs and Angel Investors
• Researchers
• Journalists

Possible

Beginners who have tried SMM for their niche websites and blogs with little success, and who have money to invest to accelerate their learning process.

Don’t Buy It

This isn’t an ebook showing you the secret route to success and instant wealth. This isn’t something you should spend your last meal ticket on for that one chance of financial independence.

If the price of the ebook is more than you would spend on a night out, think again.

It will probably take you 3 hours to read this ebook unless you have been studying various fast reading techniques – if 3 hours of your time is worth less than $97, this ebook probably isn’t ideal.

You Can Find This Information Elsewhere

I honestly haven’t gone searching for all this information elsewhere, but I am sure somewhere among the millions of pages of content that are created on the internet every day, you would find at least 90% of this information. The value is in the way it is collated and presented.

Just as an example some of what is discussed in the ebook you could find on my blog, and potentially in more depth, especially in regards to things like tagging. Laura even quoted from one of my articles and linked through, highlighting that people should read the article, and the valuable discussion afterwards.

Unique Information

Analysis of one of Laura’s niche sites in a very competitive market (Acne Treatment) with real proof of traffic numbers from Quantcast – not just screenshots.
This isn’t a high traffic site, it is very much a simple niche website, running on WordPress that anyone could create and generate some income – I wouldn’t expect Laura to expose her most profitable sites.

Discussion of traffic strategy – some social media consultants charge $5000 per day to help you formulate a social media marketing action plan. Most of the consultants concentrate on the search engine optimization benefits, and not how to participate in social networks to find real customers.

How to Write an Ebook – whilst this isn’t one of the lessons taught, the production quality and style is something to learn from.

I am going to finish off with a few select quotes from the ebook that don’t give too much away, but at the same time highlight how much different the overall perspective of the information is.

If anything is going to hold you back in being a fore-runner in the new web, the need to measure and record every click or movement to and on your site would be the culprit. The internet is changing at such a rapid rate that controlling and metering every change you make has the potential to stall your success.

Uptight control and playing it safe is seldom the stance of a pioneer. It is the pioneer who wins in profits, fame and visitor traffic – not the followers and whiners. I am not guaranteeing success by any means, nor am I advising you to risk your life savings on some promising new start up, but I am saying that the occasional ‘play your cards or go home’ attitude is one of the keys to success.

Web 2.0 is a very creative, innovative and fluid environment. Most Web 2.0 sites cannot be put in a box and measured in any consistent and reliable fashion – they are simply too young. There is a level of intuition at launch, an element of change and growth throughout the life of the web property, and yet another level of intuition used for assessment when determining a reasonable sale value.

Conclusion

No hype, no bonus, though if I do see enough interest and sales I might write up a supplement to the ebook going into some of the topics in more depth, especially on the benefits of tagging.
I would probably make that available free to all Laura’s customers.
I may even go into some of the topics that Laura has missed – Web 2.0 grows at an alarming rate, and there is a limit to how fast you can research strategies enough to be able to offer conclusive proof.

Disclaimers are unheard of in most ebooks, but Laura takes this to a new professional level, this is just part of it.

Information within this report may be speculation and are therefore within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of 1995 and contain verbiage such as ‘expected’, ‘anticipated’, ‘estimated’, projected’, ‘believed’ or variations of those.

I have actually been chucking a few emails backwards and forwards to Laura over the last couple of days, and I thought I would include one small excerpt.

You know you really rock! You don’t even ‘know’ me and you’ve given me so
much of your time. It’s a dying art in our world.

I am not going to include my exact reply, because it mentioned names of people that if internet marketers were actively using LinkedIn, would certainly appear between myself and Laura as shared contacts, and over the last 2 years I have certainly dropped by her blog a number of times.

This comment also shows the benefit of “paying it forward” and the value of providing information for free to eventually reach your goals.

There are quite a few expert marketers who normally charge their clients a great deal of money who I correspond with on a regular basis, simply because they have gained value from what I have offered for free.

One of the bonuses that Laura provides is some very specific email support – she states that she will answer 2 emails from her customers, and highlights the importance formulating those questions to receive maximum benefit. She is not going to exclude pleas for help, and win / win relationships can develop to extend the level of help provided.

I have always been happy to answer emails regarding the products I review both before someone makes a buying decision and afterwards, or you can just ask here in the comments.

I gained a great deal of value from Stampede Secrets. I might not realise that value immediately because I already employ many of the strategies and techniques discussed, and it is hard to quantify the effect any changes might have on my income.
Reading the ebook has certainly helped me highlight the action I should be taking to revitalise some of the niche websites I have had for a long time and hardly ever modify, because each is bringing in a small trickle of income.
Laura has helped me realise that it is possible to employ a few extra traffic strategies for these niche websites that could turn the flow of traffic into a gushing fountain.

Disclaimer:- I am one of the few people who received a free review copy of this ebook, possibly because I offered to take a look before publishing, that Laura reads my blog, and because she quoted me in the ebook. To be honest I might not have purchased the ebook just based upon the sales page. That is the value of affiliate marketing in pre-selling, or explaining the benefits of a product in an ethical manner

You can easily achieve what you want with Google Reader, as it is possible to share tags.

The following is IMHO (in my honest opinion) and IANAL (I am not a lawyer)

It would be advisable you choose your content extremely carefully based on the copyright of the fed items.
Only use sources you can trust to own 100% rights to the material they publish. If they are using licensed content, either articles or images, refeeding content might be a copyright issue.

If you do offer republished feeds, you need to decide to use full content or only excerpts. Just because a feed is provided in full for a reader, might not mean the owner of the content supports the use of the full feed content for another website.

I have read even Google pay companies for syndicated content. Why shouldn’t you have to respect copyright as well?

Should your refeed be indexed by the search engines? You don’t want it to be regarded as a splog.

If you intend to undertake refeeding, I would also suggest you should do it from a feed reader that is not your primary reader. There are lots of services that provide RSS feeds of personal data, and it might cause problems if you refed content you didn’t want to, or even worse, information you were privy to, but was not public knowledge.

Be very careful if you decide to monetise the site where the content is eventually published, as even a link through to your primary domain could be looked on as commercial.

When I first discussed the problem with sharing content with Google Reader, it was pretty much ignored.

My second post on this subject did receive some more attention, notably Robert Scoble, and I would like to thank him for at least opening up some discussion on the subject.

I have been accused of being “RSS Police”, when in fact I am looking for some controls to be introduced to determine the way content can be shared, that would actually make the arguement for RSS Syndication stronger, not weaker.

Now I have mentioned Mike Filsaime’s Death of Internet Marketing Report. I used an affiliate link, why throw money away if someone is willing to pay you to send them traffic for a free report? I did very clearly disclose it was an affiliate link, and the amount I expected to earn from my recommendation wouldn’t even cover the cost of writing a single paragraph about it.

So here is another link to the report, this time it is straight to the primary domain. I make no money from this link, and I can only track it through Google Analytics. (If you click it in an RSS reader, I will never know)

The Death of Internet Marketing

Here is a link I make one buck from. It also gives me an indication that at least people click on the link.

From that data I know that 14 people clicked my original link, and only one person was smart enough to sign up and possibly read a report that could change the way they look on copyright and RSS feeds.

That is SAD!

I spent probably more than an hour writing my original recommendation to read the report, those 14 people obviously hadn’t read it, but only 1 person was willing to give their email address.

I am spending much more than an hour again to encourage you to download it. I don’t have a massive readership, and some might have already read the report (I really hope so).

I am spending this time to help those 13 people who clicked through last time, but for some reason didn’t trust my recommendation.

My reason for promoting the ebook was nothing really to do with making one buck, or the cyclic nature of marketing. I have experienced that for years in the computer games industry, and even Mike’s “Skulls concept” is very similar to a developer/publisher relationship for games development.

Mike might release the report in the future in a way that doesn’t require an email address. Then again, releasing reports into “the wild” without some method of following up and making corrections might be looked on as irresponsible. Actually he has made some changes since the initial release (mainly typographic), the report is up to version 1.4 now.

Don’t forget to also read the Paypal Report, it is a good read.

The Ideal Way to Deliver Such Content

RSS is a way to deliver content that a user chooses to subscribe to. There is no way to spam your RSS Reader.

However publishers of content need some way to suggest content shouldn’t be shared, or possibly prevent it being shared. After all, some content you are expected to pay for.

RSS Authentication is sufficient to protect the original source of content. We just now need a way for the copyright of content to be respected.

I can’t think of any business that promoted an easy way to share email with your friends.

Once RSS can be labelled as private, then innovators will be encouraged to offer a feed-burner like service for subscribing to private content, either by RSS, or a gateway to email.

Readers of the content would have enhanced privacy, with the option to unsubscribe at any time, and even with email delivery, the provider of the content wouldn’t need personal information unless payment was required.

The Danger in a Growing Trend

Can you afford to defend yourself against a DMCA claim? Some services might be able to claim “safe harbour”. I am not sure that would apply for individuals.

Please refer to previous articles with possible solutions for sharing RSS via reblogging, and also suggestions on how feeds could be protected in some way. Make sure you read the comments as well.

I hope the time I have invested in writing this post proves worthwhile, mainly for those 13 people who are scared to give their email address to someone.

p.s. the email subscription to this blog is with Feedburner, and totally private. All I receive is vague open rate statistics, and not access to your email address.

I have read all 59 pages of this free report. It certainly isn’t junk, and it shouldn’t be ignored.

Mike Filsaime goes into great depths about how things are going to be changing in the Internet Marketing arena in the coming years.

This report is full of statistics and discussion on why certain types of websites have been successful, and he gives real examples of the type of sites that will be successful going forward.

He even points out services he will continue paying for, because it would cost him a huge amount of time and money to switch over to another solution.

So the content is very good, and if you read it, and take action, it will make you money.

Towards the end of the report, he goes into 2 very personal, and in some ways embarrasing situations Mike found himself in regarding copyright infringement.

I was already aware of one of these situations, in regards to legal documentation, and I extrapolated that out a little when I recently highlighted potential copyright problems if you share RSS content.

But he has actually been caught out twice. The second time all he did was display a graphic on a website sometime in the past, and the usage was discovered by the company who owned rights in the images.

If you are at all serious about what you are doing on the internet, I highly recommend reading his report. Not only for the insight into what might be successful for marketing in the future, but also to read about his very real copyright problems, and how much it cost him to resolve them.

Read The Death of Internet Marketing

It is quite possible you have seen other people promoting this free report, and you felt it was just another “me too” report, similar to the “Death of Adsense” report that caused such a stir just a few weeks ago.

Mike is using a similar technique to get the word out. The content within the report is insanely valuable, and I agree with a great deal of what Mike has written.

Mike actually skirts around some of the things I am working on with my own large project, but is certainly unaware of what I am looking to create.

It is not often someone gives away what could be a number 1 best selling ebook for free.

Disclosure: I will receive a small payment ($1) if you sign up to download Mike’s free report, and most likely he will send you the occasional email regarding his other products in the future. Mike Filsaime is one of the few Internet Marketers whos mailing lists I sign up to with my primary email account. It is always interesting to watch what he is promoting, but also how he is promoting it.
The tags I have used for this post give some indication of some of the contents, and also hint at some of the unwritten topics it can also affect.

It looks like a great service, especially because it is free, and I have lots of domains to monitor that I might not visit personally very often.

I would love to see Widgets for other services.

It is another service that provides RSS feeds of valuable personal data I am sure you will want to share.

The RSS Feeds are not protected by RSS Authentication, thus you can share them from Google Reader.

Even if you had RSS Authentication, you could still share the data from other RSS Readers without any warning that it is data you might not intend sharing.

RSS is not just about sharing blog entries. The potential of RSS is much greater, but some level of automatic flagging of feeds “noshare” needs to be implemented.

One good way to use the Montastic data might be to add the RSS feed to the Admin of all your WordPress Installations.