Before going anywhere with this review, I think it would be appropriate to thank Shawn Collins. This book was sent to me by Shawn after telling him over Twitter how much I would like to read this book. He gave me that opportunity and overall I definitely enjoyed the book. Still though, as with any books, there are some upsides and downsides to what was inside. Please allow me to start with the upside.
You don't have to read Internet Marketing from the REAL Experts straight through. I thought this was a very unique approach to a book. Usually, to completely understand the last chapter of a book you have to have read all the previous chapters. With the way that each "article" was separated from the previous, you could literally go to the topic you were interested on and read it from there and never miss a beat. Are you interested in "Search", then there are articles directly related to that topic and you can go straight there (which happens to be towards the back of the book) and begin there. I found myself going back and forth between topics that were of interest to me.
Internet Marketing from the REAL Experts is great for slow readers. I am sure that by now Shawn Collins is probably wondering if I would ever respond about how well I liked the book. The fact of the matter is that I am a person of doing and not just a person of studying. I think that is what separates a lot of the great internet marketers out there. Those who simply read but never put what they learn into practice never make a dime. Still, I try to balance the two but that often leaves little time for me to study and read what others are doing. I have picked up countless books and started reading them. I would lay them down after I felt like I was not going anywhere without actually completing them. This book was different for me though. It was a great "Restroom Reader". The small articles in there meant that I could pick it up and read it for 10 minutes, sit it down, and pick it back up the next day without losing a beat. Slow readers will feel as though they are getting somewhere with this book.
Internet Marketing from the REAL Experts literally means REAL Experts. There are numerous books on the market by people you have never heard of. You can particularly look in the electronic book genre of making money online and find that people who have no clue what they are doing are out there writing books. One of the best things about this book is that there are actually names in it that I recognize. I have been in the Internet Marketing industry for a couple of years now. There are people in this field that are widely known and respected in the industry. The vast majority of the internet marketing experts I have grown to respect have added value to this book.
Internet Marketing from the REAL Experts touches on a huge spectrum of topics. This book is not just your average internet marketing book that spans about 60 or 90 pages in length. This is a lengthy book with tons of content in it. What you will find is that you can literally think of almost any topic that relates to internet marketing and you will find an article in there. One of my favorites was written by Shawn himself where he talked about the software he uses to create his podcasts. I am likely going to be looking into it and referring back to his article sometime in the future as this is something I have thought about getting into. I liked the fact that something as small as this would be included in the book. You are not stuck reading countless pages on the same topic. The Editors did a good job of ensuring that each article gave something a little bit different. Although this book took numerous peoples content and combined it, each "Expert" had something a little bit different to say. That was wonderful so that I wasn't reading the same thing over and over again!
I felt that not all Experts in Internet Marketing from the REAL Experts were giving as good of information as needed to the reader. I suppose there are some people there though that need a good "pep talk" to keep them motivated. I felt that there were probably too many articles that would fit this category though. My approach to reading this book was to read three or four of the "articles", then sit it down and go back to work and maybe later reflect upon what I had read. The problem for some of the articles is that on usually one of the articles I didn't really see a true value in it. They weren't offering solid tips or tricks, it was more of a pep talk. This was somewhat frustrating. I felt that maybe some of the Experts wanted to have their name in the book rather than spending a good amount of time providing value to it. I would say I came across this in as much as about 20% of the book.
I personally could have seen more valuable tips being placed in Internet Marketing from the REAL Experts. This could obviously be combined with the above paragraph, but I thought it probably deserved its own for a different reason. While I think there were several things in this book that could be valuable for anyone regardless of where they are at in their career in internet marketing, it was tailored more towards a specific group. I feel like the person who would get the most benefit would be someone who wasn't all that familiar with one of the major topics in the industry. For example, if you have a good Twitter following (good in social media), but aren't familiar with how to get more organic traffic from the search engines, then this book would probably be more for you. I guess I consider myself more of a jack of all trades. My biggest downfall is that I try to do everything myself, but it is also probably my biggest strength. I know what quality service looks like if I were to outsource anything I needed done. I'm not easily scammed. However, this book will assume that you know very little on each topic it covers. The truly valuable tips that I found for me seem fairly scattered out and inconsistent. Some Experts really gave a lot of value, others didn't.
Overall I really enjoyed this book. The book is super inexpensive for the amount of content inside. You're looking at less than $15.00 right now at Amazon. For that price, I would recommend it to anyone. Like I said, I'll be referring back to this book at some point I'm sure, and that speaks for its value. If you are relatively new to the internet marketing industry, this book would be great for you. An existing expert may not be able to see the same value in it though.
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