Customer Reviews

Multiple Streams of Internet Income: How Ordinary People Make Extraordinary Money Online, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

There really isn't anything new here other than the repairs of broken links. Any new ideas given are better presented in other materials. It really comes down to this: Robert Allen gave great ideas a few years ago, but others have come along since with better ideas and complete marketing systems for online success. I'd check out Call to Action by Brian Eisenberg instead.

BTW - I would give 5 stars to this book if it were a first edition so if you haven't read the first edition this is a good book to have, but make sure you read Call to Action as well.

Tom Carpenter, Author: Wireless# Certification Official Study Guide, CWSP Certification Official Study Guide, and Foundations of Effectiveness

Most of the basic concepts talked about in this book are dead on accurate. Most people who make money on the internet have multiple streams. That is, they do several things that generate income and pay more attention to the ones that pay them more money. ==He's also right in listing the various ways that you can make money on the net. These simply put come down to: selling a product, selling a service, selling advertising on your site.

But it's not quite as easy as he makes it appear.

First the internet is a communications medium, that's all. It is largely the replacement for direct mail - but if you've noticed, you are probably still getting a lot of advertising mail. That alone says that the internet hasn't replaced everything.

Second, means that you've got to find a product where there is enough interest to attract a lot of attention, but not so much that there is a lot of competition. You could sell a newsletter or some other kind of electronic publication. But where do you get the material.

Third the real key is getting a lot of people to come to your web site. And that means a minimum of say 10,000, and 100,000 is better. What do you think you can do that will attract that much attention.

Fourth, he is right in that e-mail is essentially free. But advertising e-mail is usually called SPAM. And people don't like SPAM. There are laws about sending it, and while he is careful to say that you should make up a list of subscribers (called Opt-In), what can you do that is unique enough to get 10,000 subscribers.

Fifth, you are realy going into the mail order business. It's a business like any other. You have laws that apply, the IRS wants to be your partner, and so on.

Conclusion, yes, it can be done, the general rules he lists are pretty good, but it's still starting a business and a heck of a lot of work. After all, if it was that easy, Mr. Allen wouldn't have to do all the work involved in writing a book about it.

I want to concur with the other reviewer. Ever since I gave my email address to Allen's organization, I have been inundated with spam for pharmaceuticals, stock tips, and genital enhancements - the same areas he teaches his students to sell. This is the first major spam I have ever received. I think he is farming out my email to his other students as some kind of incentive to them. Be careful - do not give your primary email to his organization!

The book has some decent facts, but I would be careful about using email techniques that alienate your readers!

I checked this book out at my local library thinking there might actually be something useful to help me diversify my online income. I was greatly disappointed.

Not only does this book repeat what just about every other book on earning money online talks about, but it also involves many things that could be considered SPAM and annoying practices. The author states he is against those practices and insists that his techiniques are fine, but I can't help but get a bit sick to my stomach when reading his tips.

Also, he claims its super-easy to make lots of quick money, but even with his deceiptful tactics, you will still need a good product (which he doesn't tell you how to develop) in order to sell anything worthwhile.

Please do yourself and the rest of the Internet community a favor and don't both with this book.

It's hard to take Internet advice from someone who tells me how to change my email signature in Internet Explorer. That's a browser, not an email client. He meant Outlook Express, but he doesn't know the difference. I was not impressed.

On the next page he listed a "very valuable site" which I used five years ago, and which has not been updated in five years and is, in all likelihood, defunct, though I'm certainly not spending $29.95 to find out.

Nothing I didn't know, and he obviously has no clue about the Internet. Wish I could get a job as his ghostwriter; you obviously don't have to check your facts.

This book is filled with stealth marketing and subliminal messages. It appeals well to people's need for instant gratification and gets people excited enough to take action, but that's about all it's useful for.

Robert Allen clearly has affiliate programs with organizations whose products are mentioned in the book. Many of the recommended companies/websites don't even exist anymore.

This book recommends strategies that will make you money initially, but will hurt your company's image, and hurt you in the long run. Again, strategies that appeal to peoples need for instant gratification, and sound like attractive choices initially.

Last but not least, Robert Allen will spam you like no other. I constantly get phone calls from out of state, from his organization, asking me to come to one of his seminars, and telling me how great he is. If he's so great, why isn't he charging thousands of dollars per seat for his seminars, and selling out in a matter of hours, like he says he does in his book...

Let me tell you 1st hand this guy is a fake. This guy is probably the biggest fake I've seen. The people he promises he's helping are the people he's actually exploiting and making all his money off of. The only thing he makes money off of is selling books talking about making money.

Allen's system is shady and manipulative. Very little value is being added to the world. There are millions of crappy websites out there just like his, why is he teaching and encouraging others to make more? It makes the Internet that much worse.

Reading this was an ENORMOUS waste of my time. Half way through the book, I realized that I didn't know anymore about making money online than I had before. All Allen does throughout this book is talk about how great he is and how he did this, that and the other thing. He talks about all these so called wonderful marketing strategies, when really all he's doing is promoting spam. I'm not even ON his mailing list and I'm getting [...] from him in my inbox. It's disgraceful. I do not recommend you waste your money on this book.

Master of self-promotion Robert G. Allen has plenty of ideas about how to use words and technology to hype yourself and your business. There's just one tiny thing missing from this forumula: He doesn't tell you how to get this great idea to hype.

He also manages to skirt the truth. For example, he talks about how he made an online offer that became an instant success in 24 hours. He leaves out the time he spent developing a website and the lists of interested prospects to which the offer was distributed. If we add in the time spent building up to making the offer, it isn't exactly a instant success story anymore.

It takes time and effort to develop a business. Allen can dress those facts up in hype -- he's good at it -- but the only business this book will build is Allen's. If your at the point where you have a good idea, a website, and prospects, Allen's ideas may be useful.

In today's economic climate it sure is a great idea to have multiple streams of income and no one tells this story better than Robert Allen. But for pure pragmatic strategy and analytical brainstorming on how to really make this work I prefer Scott Fox's new book, "Internet Riches". A serious book that has a straight forward plan that takes you step-by-step through the (not very) technical steps to a business plan, a new business and a new life.