Scam or Valuable Resource? How to Evaluate a Product

By: Diane Eble
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:43:26
Print this article | Tell a friend | For publisher |

Rating:

 

Someone wrote and asked me what I thought of a particular person's "how to become a best-selling author" type program.

I do not want to name names, so I will not mention the specific program. Especially since I haven't had the opportunity to look it over myself.

However, in my answer to her I came up with some general principles that will help you evaluate anyone's program. Before you put down your hard-earned money on something that makes a big promise (as they all do), I suggest you do a little sleuthing.

1. First, ask yourself: Why do I need this product?

This may seem obvious. However, I confess that I have bought products just because I thought I might need them someday. What really happened was that I fell for some slick marketing.

To quote one of my mentors, Jimmy D. Brown: "Don't buy something because someone sought you out. Buy something because you sought it out."

If you don't need the product right now, for what you specifically need to know to achieve your current goal, file it into a "someday/maybe" folder and go about your business.

2. Pay attention to how the person markets the program--and how it affects you as a potential customer.

Is he/she using typical, somewhat high-pressured Internet Marketing strategies? This is not always a red flag, especially if the person purports to help you know how to market. A big part of making your book sell well is to learn how to use words persuasively (called copywriting). Important: Pay attention whether or not their approach would fit you. Can you envision writing that kind of copy for your book? Because that's what you'll learn from this person.

I respect Dan Kennedy as a marketing guru. However, his oeverall style simply does not fit me. I once ordered-and returned-a product from him because his approach does not work for me. (BTW, he did return my money-promptly and without question. As all reputable people will.)

3. Carefully review the "expert's" credentials.

In one product I reviewed, the "expert" apparently wrote one book, self-published. (How could I tell? On amazon.com, you cannot "explore" or "browse" the books, as you can with a "traditional" publisher. BTW, the media know this little trick to check credibility, too.)

It's not necessarily bad to be self-published. Except if the person is telling you how to get published by a traditional publisher, of course.

In one case, when I went to the person's author's page, I noticed he said he's the author of "several books," but what was named did not come up as books when I Googled them. They appeared to be articles (I didn't try to search each one). This tells me that author is "padding" his credentials. Likely, that's what he'd teach others to do, also. Would you feel comfortable with that? To me, credibility and integrity are crucial-especially when you're selling online.

If the product creator claims to be a "best-selling author," take that with a grain of salt. It seems to me everyone is claiming this. Look at the amazon rank. Does this suggest best seller to you? He may have gotten up higher for a short time with one of those amazon promotions. (By the way, those amazon promotions do not impress anyone "in the know" in the publishing industry, despite what people who sell that amazon best-seller programs say. Certainly it helps sales and can't hurt you to do such a promotion. Just know that publishers will look at longer-term sales to determine if you are truly a "best-selling" author.)

4. What about testimonials of people that supposedly used the product?

Are there any? Are they credible? The most credible testimonies contain a name, photo, and audio. Still, for all you know, these people could be all the seller's friends. Other clues: Is there a link to a site you can check out? (I often check out the web sites of people who claim to have made so much money from the copywriting techniques they learned in So-and-So's course. When I see that the copy stinks, I immediately write off that marketer's product.)

Is there some context for who the person giving a testimonial is? (For instance, on my web site you can Google the names of any of my testimonial givers and find out who they are, or at least find out where they're from--some of those who have bought "Jump Start Your Book" are not yet published, but we're working on it. :)

5. Guarantee.

What is it? For how long? Insider's tip: As a consumer, if you buy any kind of product that you can't check out ahead of time, you automatically, by law, can return it for a refund within 30 days. So a 30-day guarantee would be the minimum you should expect.

Note: If the product includes a service aspect-the person giving you his/her personal time-then there is some flex here. I once bought an ecoaching course in which the instructor coached us personally via email for 4 weeks, in addition to the course materials. The guarantee was that, if I did not think the program was worth the money, I could get a full refund halfway through the course. That seemed fair enough to me. (The course was worth it, by the way.)

I could go on, but I suspect you get the idea of how to dig a bit deeper into who a person really is, and how to check out a product or service.

Article source: Expert Articles