Product Name: Your Eight Steps
Product Owner: Richard Weberg + Brenda de Reus
Advertised Price: $14.97/month (other payment options available)
Other Costs: $25/month, $20/month, + more
Rating: 25/100
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What Is It?
Send out biz op offers to an email list through various email marketing methods.
Short Review
There is nothing new about Your Eight Steps. The website is a very basic members area that (attempts to) teaches you to build an email list and promote offers to your list.
The training is far from complete, and the support system terribly lacking. There’s no reason to pay a monthly fee for this type of product, and $147 (lifetime membership) is way over priced. Personally, I'd recommend starting a simple WordPress website and marketing affiliate products on it for a much more reliable way to earn money online.
Before You Buy
The website was very easy to sign up for, and I was able to create a free account without handing over a credit card or phone number.
In the introduction video were are told over and over again that this is something unique because “it just works”. We are shown 10 minutes of screenshots of how much Richard Weberg is getting paid by programs he promotes, but he spends very little time explaining what he actually plans to teach us.
You should also know that Your Eight Steps is heavily entangled with Pure Leverage (GVO), and MLM company that I have already written a very negative review of.
Technically, you could build a list and do the steps outlined without using the Pure Leverage autoresponder, but you the way the training is set up, you are encouraged to use theirs.
Cost options of Your Eight Steps
What I Liked
I was very surprised that I got through the whole training without paying anything. The only downside is that I would only receive 20% commissions instead of 90% that Elite members get.
They also divide the training into two paths, for people with money to invest and people without money to invest. There wasn’t that much of a difference since the cheaper version still requires you to pay $25/month (and possibly $15/month for a Your Eight Steps account), but I think it’s somewhat useful to divide the training this way.
The most positive thing I found about the members area is that they didn’t use high pressure or deceptive sales tactics to get you to upgrade. This is very rare in the Make Money Online industry. Weberg and de Reus were very clear about what they offer, how much it costs, and how it compares to other levels of membership.
What I Didn’t Like
Too Much, Too Fast
By step two we are already talking about list building and signing up to Pure Leverage. Whoa. Hold on there buddy. How about explaining how the whole process works?
If you are a complete newbie, you will be lost by step two, because there are no baby steps or hand holding here. This product is very much for someone that is familiar with MLM and list building, but hasn’t found any success yet.
The Money is NOT in The List
One thing I can’t stand about internet marketers is their worship of list building. People repeat the same old rhetoric about how the money is in the list and it’s the best way to make money online.
It isn’t. I don’t make any money from email marketing, and I do internet marketing full time.
List building can be very difficult and expensive, and may take you several months before you start earning money. It’s just like any other type of business.
YES, you can make money from it. Yes, many people do. But email marketing is not the magic pill or virtual ATM that professionals trying to sell you a list-building-product make it sound.
GVO And Pure Leverage
This is a pretty famous company in the MLM world because they have an autoresponder that allows you to spam people without consequence.
Legitimate autoresponder companies like Aweber, Mad Mimi, and Mailchimp do ban a lot of “biz op” emails like MLM because they are so notorious for spam and deceptive marketing.
I do not like Pure Leverage because they are an MLM company and I think their marketing is very deceptive. Whether or not their autoresponder is legit is undecided. Some people have commented on my site saying it’s legit. I’ve seen other comments that say the delivery rate is terrible and the website is buggy.
Is this the type of company you want to associate with…a rich guy who flaunts his wealth to “prove” MLM works?
You’ll have to make a decision on who you believe there. But if you've been around this industry long enough you will know that MLM people gravitate towards the same autoresponders for their email lists. This is because those companies spend a lot of time and money to messing with IP addresses that send out the emails so that you can get your MLM email spam through the spam filters. I personally received over 50 emails from PL in less than a month after signing up for their program.
Wow, what a headache!
The Easy Road Reaps No Rewards
One theme that seems to recur throughout Your Eight Steps is how “easy” the system is. The is exemplified in the “done for you blogs” given to paying members of Pure Leverage.
I can personally guarantee you that NOTHING that is “done for you” will ever rank well in Google, let alone make a sale. If you are using done for you content on your website, you are wasting your time. If you are using a free website from PL to post these blogs, the same is true.
In the introduction video we are told over and over again how Weberg gets paid every week. But he fails to mention all of the work that went behind creating that passive income. I will admit that although I don’t like MLM, and I don’t make money in email marketing, people do make money this way.
But it takes a long time, and a lot of people fail along the way.
Quality Issues in Members Area
The members are of Your Eight Steps is very basic. So basic in fact, I am surprised that they charge a monthly fee for it. Why would I pay recurring fees for static information?
But quality issues don’t stop with just design issues. The video recordings from Brenda de Reus sound like they were recorded with a potato. I was very shocked to see that de Reus wouldn’t spend about $100 for a decent recording device, and that Weberg would actually approve that level of training in a business that he’s a part of.
It reflects VERY poorly on the both of them.
Traffic Generation
The methods of traffic generation are pretty simple: Spam. We are shown 5 methods of traffic generation:
- Traffic Exchanges
- Safelists
- Solo Ads
- Banner and Text Exchanges
Traffic exchanges are possibly the lowest quality of traffic that you could find on the internet. You are essentially paying someone to send traffic to your site from an unknown source. Most of the time these are people from developing countries like the Philippines and India that are paid to click on your site.
Safelists are free email lists that you can send your offer to. Where do these emails addresses come from? No one knows. Some are people that submit their email address to receive an incentive (not interested in your offer at all). Other emails are scraped off the internet using illegal software.
Solo ads are when you pay someone to send your offer to their list. Solo ads are almost exclusively used in the “make money online” communities as a way to spam out their million-dollar-systems to as many places as possible.
If you send your offer to a quality list, these can work. However, a quality list will cost you a pretty penny, and people with really great lists simply won’t share them. Why would you?
Facebook can be legit advertising, but you are either going to have to pay for ads via Facebook advertising, or harass your friends and family to buy Pure Leverage. This sounds like a quick way to reduce the number of friends you have in FB.
I haven’t used banner and text exchanges, but anything with the word “exchange” should probably be avoided.
Sub Par Support
The main issue I have with Your Eight Steps is the method of support. A typical ticket will take 24-48 hours to respond to, so even for simple requests or issues, you can expect to wait a day. It's also unclear who you are talking to, whether it's the owners or outsourced support.
If I’m paying a monthly fee to access the site, I would expect a better support system. They do mention something about a Skype chat, so to be fair, I haven’t tried this yet. I will try it and update my review. But I can certainly guess that they won’t be on call 24/7 and that there is going to be a limit to how much support you can get via phone from these two.
At 8:30 PM no one's on. What if I need help?
*UPDATE: I Snooped the Skype group and Weberg seems to be on the ball, offering plenty of personal advice. +points. I still stand by everything else I said in this review, but kudos for personal assistance. I don't think a Skype group is the most efficient way to do this however, but something is better than nothing!
As mentioned above, if you are a newbie, you will no doubt be lost in the training here. Without an easy to access to personal, I really don’t think Your Eight Steps is going to work for a lot of folks.
I personally mentor people in the affiliate marketing arena and I sometimes exchange several emails or private messages with folks in a single day. Sometimes I hang out in a live chat forum and chat to people for an hour or two about their businesses. I also know that the live chat I'm used to is running 24/7, and you can community with other people on the site as well as the owners. The support system they have set up isn't that bad, but it's certainly not an industry leader.
Loose Ends
There are a few more things I haven't addressed in the review like my view on squeeze pages, and some of the specific content in the trainings. However, I don't want this review to drag on, and I hit on the main points I wanted to. I know that someone will chime in and say, “But but but, you didn't USE it. You can't review it!”. My review is based on my own opinions resulting from my experience in the online marketing industry.
Final Review
A legit concept, poorly executed.
Whatever type of product you decide to promote, it's VITAL that you generate leads to grow your business.
But let's face it, "parties" are boring, and no one likes the annoying Facebook friend who's always promoting a biz-op.
That's why I use this lead generation system. Learn how to generate leads outside of your circle of friends and family and discover what it means to truly own your own business, rather than just be a cheerleader for one network marketing company.
Nathaniell
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