Derek Gehl’s Internet Marketing Center
Overview:
Corey Rudl was the founder and original owner of the Internet
Marketing Center. He started by publishing his own book called
Car Secrets Revealed. When a friend suggested he put it up
on the Internet, he responded, "What's the Internet?"
Eventually,
through trial and error Rudl built his sales to phenomenal
levels, and decided it was time to begin selling courses based
on the techniques he had developed over the years. The Internet
Marketing Center was born.
By the year 2005 it had grown to over $40 Million/year.
Over
the past few years Rudl had taken on a friend as a sidekick,
Derek Gehl, who had marketing experience of his own. The two
worked side by side.
Then in June 2005, about the same time I was forming this
website, a tragedy took place when Corey Rudl perished in
a car accident. Derek Gehl soon took the helm and over the
remainder of the year continued to grow the company to about
$57 Million.
I've
been fortunate to have developed a close working relationship
with some of the staff, though I haven't corresponded with
Derek Gehl himself, and they have been so kind as to allow
me to view nearly all the products in order to present my
reviews to you.
Positive
According
to Alexa, the Internet Marketing Center’s marketingtips.com
comes in second only to Ken Evoy’s Sitesell.com among
the big Internet marketing guru’s sites. That’s
an amazing feat.
On
videos, Derek Gehl certainly came off as the less slick speaker
than his predecessor Corey Rudl, and was often interrupted
and corrected by Corey Rudl. He never had quite the delivery
Corey had. However, over time Gehl has come into his own as
a powerful presenter in his own right.
The
IMC’s strongest areas of teaching are
• Email marketing
• Automation of your business
• Aggressive testing
Email
marketing is primary to Rudl's methods. By "email marketing'
he isn't talking about spamming, but mainly about building
a huge email list via newsletter (ezine) offerings, and permission-based
email advertising. However, in his earlier versions of his
“Insider Secrets” course he came under fire for
showing readers how to spam. That has since been cleaned up.
Rudl's
emphasis on automation is a point well taken. He acknowledges
that Internet marketing simply isn't an area where you can
work an hour or two a day and sit on the beach the rest of
the time. He knows your time will be at a premium, and he
encourages you to automate as many things as possible through
autoresponder, automated shopping carts and auto e-delivery
of products where possible. He provides an onslaught of software
for this purpose - which may well be part of the reason for
his emphasis on automation -- to sell you his software.
Aggressive
testing was at the heart of Rudl's own success, and he makes
no bones about telling you the importance of doing the same.
While pretty much everybody tells you the importance of testing,
Rudl made it the focus of everything. The biggest problem
with the way most gurus tell you to test, is that they encourage
you to try one thing (say a headline) for a time, then try
another, and see if your bottom line changes. But there is
an inherent flaw in this method, which Rudl recognized. Suppose
between week 1 and week 2 a magazine article features my site
or product (I should be so lucky). They are sending pre-filtered
traffic to my website, and my conversion rate is likely to
be better in week 2. My headline may actually be hurting me,
not helping, for all I know.
Rudl's
answer to this was to use testing software that concurrently
and randomly directs traffic to two different views of the
site, and allows you to compare the conversion rate at the
same span of time. That is much more scientific.
Unfortunately,
the IMC has no products specifically devoted to teaching testing
techniques nor any software for the purpose. This is a big
gap in their offerings.
One last very positive note is the newsletter – particularly
the earlier ones. Nearly all the teaching the company did
was echoed in the newsletter. These days it is more a sales
letter than an instruction letter, but the archives are still
available on the site and are a good free education.
Negative:
Corey
Rudl's and now Derek Gehl's back-end tactics have come under
a lot of fire. No matter what you buy from him, at rather
high prices no less, you'll quickly learn it isn't nearly
enough. If you buy a course, you'll be told you need several
expensive software packages. If you buy software, you'll need
to upgrade to the pro edition. If you think he's sending you
everything you need to know in a course, you'll soon learn
you "need" his course on the super secrets that
he himself uses, which he claims no other marketers will tell
you about. Back-ending is a valid methodology, and to be expected,
but when you get the feeling that you were tricked into something
you didn't see coming, you feel duped. That doesn't mean the
products aren't valuable - they are. But be prepared.
I
strongly dislike trickery, and there are several examples
of it on his website. For example, when you're near the order
link for a product, you might see an enticing line like "If
and only if you buy by (some date) you'll also receive (such-and-such)".
Guess what! The date will be today's date, no matter when
you go there. It's inserted by a script. That, to me is dishonest.
It's simply not true, because if I go there tomorrow, I'll
still get the same offer.
The
IMC’s materials are not particularly cheap. Of course,
neither are the materials of lot's of other marketers. As
I said earlier, I'm not saying they aren't worth it. If you
spend just less than $200 for a huge course, and only use
a couple of suggestions from it to garner and extra $2000
in sales, you've paid yourself back 10 times over. And likely
it will be many, many times that again if you use the materials
as you should.
There
are lot's of bonus freebies that come with Gehl’s products
- that's part of his typical method, and one he encourages
you to emulate. But you quickly get the feeling that the quoted
value is WAY over-inflated. It is, of course. The actual value
of a product is what you could sell it for, and few if any
of the prices he quotes would hold up to asking prices like
those. Again, it doesn't mean his products are bad. Just the
feel of the tactic.
In
general Gehl's copy feels pushy and somehow you don't get
the trust factor you feel from some. He's in it for the money
and you definitely "feel" the greed effect. That
does hurt his credibility a bit. Once again, I'm not saying
his products are worthless.
I've
been a bit put off by his poor email support. Please see the
details of it under the Support section below.
The
software the IMC sells hard is largely produced by his company.
But there are several very good competitive products that
work just as well, or better, for less money and which have
better support. I do not recommend most the software for the
price you pay. One exception I might make is the BeBiz package,
which I think has some value for the beginner.
A
recent tactic is that nearly every purchase is designed to
lead you into either an ongoing subscription or to the high-priced
consultation packages. This is an unfortunate trend in the
IMC’s lineup, in my opinion.
Affiliate Program
Derek
Gehl's commission rates are excellent and there are some who
have made a lot of money on his affiliate program. However,
there is some concern over the aggressiveness of the company
itself in marketing products to the affiliate's customers
rather than giving subsequent sales to affiliates. There is
no system in place to match returning customers to their previous
affiliate sellers.
By
contrast, for example, Ken Evoy's affiliate program awards
commissions on all futures sales back to the affiliate who
sold the first product - no matter where they buy them. There
is no such system with Rudl's company. However, since the
courses are so well respected and IMC’s quality is high,
one would be proud to carry his line.
I
have tested the affiliate program and found that about one
out of every fifty customers I send to his site will purchase
a product.
Site
Popups
There is one consistent pop-up on the company's site, and
that is the newsletter sign-up form. I get a little tired
of that thing dropping down in front of me every time I go
from page to page.
Free
Content
The
newsletter is certainly the main freebie of value available
at marketingtips.com. There is no repository of free ebooks
that I've been able to find. However, if you look around the
Web you will occasionally run into reprinted articles or other
works by Rudl.
He
also offers a lot of freebies along with purchases, but not
by themselves that I've found. However - don't miss the newsletter
archives.
Money-Back
Guarantee
All
of Rudl's materials have a money-back guarantee. There is
usually a 30-day time limit, except the Insider Secrets course,
which has a 1 year guarantee. I have not yet found a record
of a complaint about the hard products. In general I think
the name is valuable enough that they would try to protect
it by honoring the guarantee.
However,
I have heard a few complaints from my readers and from other
sources about getting refund satisfaction from the mentoring
program. Some who thought it was not the value they expected
have found there are disclaimers to what is or isn’t
refundable.
I
have returned a product that I decided not to keep and it
was promptly refunded. They were exceedingly nice about it
and didn't ask any questions. In fact I found them very pleasant
to deal with.
The
Better Business Bureau does say that one or more customers
remain dissatisfied, even though the company made a reasonable
effort to resolve the issue. At least it's good to know they
tried.
-
- - - - BBB Quote - - - - -
"The Bureau has processed customer complaints on this
company in its three-year reporting period. Some of the complaints
were resolved. However, for other complaint(s), the consumer
remains dissatisfied despite the company's reasonable effort
to resolve the complaint(s)."
- - - - - End BBB Quote - - - - -
Support
In
general, I do not have nice things to say about email support
at marketingtips.com. I wrote to them to ask about some missing
newsletter archives. Six days later I got a response saying
"I'll look into it and get back to you soon." Another
5 days and I wrote back asking, "what's the status of
this research." Another week later and finally I got
a reply saying they weren't available.
When
I joined the affiliate program I didn't get the introductory
email. Days later I started to get the follow-up email, but
still no information on my membership number, links, and such.
I wrote for help. Granted it was on Saturday. No response.
I wrote again on Monday. Tuesday arrives, still no response.
On Tuesday I called them. They asked, "What's you're
email address?" I gave the first four letters of my address
and before I got any further, "Oh, yes. You wrote on
Saturday," She said defensively.
"Yes
and also Monday!" I replied.
"I'll
get that letter out to you within four hours."
By
the end of the day - about 6 hours later I got an email saying
"In order for me to access your account, I will need
the email address the account is under. Unless you know your
affiliate number."
Sheesh,
you knew it when I called you!!!!! But I sent a reply with
the email address AND my membership number anyway.
Next
day I get another email saying, "In order for me to delete
your account, I will need the email address the account is
under. Unless you know your affiliate number."
Delete
my account? All I want is my stinkin' introductory email!
I sent the email address and account number AGAIN! I finally
had to call them.
Other
times I’ve written about various products so I could
review them properly. No reply days later.
I'm
not alone in this problem. I've seen complaints on forums
all over the Internet.
Folks
- learn something here!! For such a pundit of autoresponder,
why doesn't marketingtips.com use one for email support! Such
a major company on Internet marketing surely ought to have
a response ticketing system. It does not.
Over
two years ago I was told there was a ticketing system to be
implemented soon. It still doesn’t seem to be in place.
Mr.
Gehl - get on the stick. This is hurting you badly!
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