It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, and my wife and I are working hard to get that income back, partly through IM and partly through ecommerce sites.

These are very different beasts, I believe, and the IM arena is overloaded with products.

As you all say, the problem is that so much is promised, but most sales pages fail to point out that you have to work to get the money. It may be “set and forget” to a degree, but there’s no magic button that you can press.

A lot of the ebooks we’ve bought have been good, a lot have been average, and a lot have been bad (to the point we’ve asked for a refund because of the poor quality).

The biggest obstacle, in my opinion, that stops IMers making money is lack of focus – they spend more time buying ebooks and software than reading the stuff and, more importantly, putting it into action. (And I’ve been guilty of that too!)

You could pick any one of a number of book, such as Day Job Killer or Duvet Dollars, to name but two, and make money, but the secret is not to get distracted by the latest products, that seem to be launched almost on a daily basis.

Well, off my soap box (for now)!

When he first got into IM, I was there. A few months later, he launched his own IM training. A few of us were going…’what? how much is *he* making from IM to do IM training?’.

Nearly a year later, he’s claiming to be making huge amounts from IM…but it’s not clear whether it’s from IM only or from doing several IM trainings.

I’m saying this to ask people out there to get a perspective: things aren’t always as they seem/are marketed.

On the other hand, I have bought many products that I feel like have really taught me a lot of valuable information about particular Internet Marketing topics that I was interested in.

The problem is that so many products are sold as “the oppurtunity of a lifetime”, instead of being sold as a piece of educational material to help you in a particular area of business.

Another problem is that people don’t make a budget for their learning. Don’t spend all your money on these products. Maybe spend 10 percent of your profits on learning new stuff, not 110 percent.

This kind of reminds me of the show American Inventor and what some people had sacrificed for their inventions. It was pretty sad to see how much people had given up to pursue their dreams on that show.

At the end of the day, business is still business whether offline, online or based around blogging – you have to find and fill a certain need/want for a target audience. It has to make a revenue and profit.

As with any business venture, there’s nothing like doing the hard yards of research to see whether your idea is feasible before going for it. Research the market, the competition etc.,

Take blogging for example: thorough research would be going to Darren’s ProBlogger and reading evertying he has written for the past 18 months. If you can’t even give that much time up for your business then you sholdn’t really be doing it.

I think with these sales pitches for ebooks and other e-products people have to be realistic and think straight:

Hypothetically, if I can say: “My Product xyz will make you $1,234,000 in 60 Days” then why would I want to give that information out – wouldn’t you want to keep it secret and do it yourself.

Sadly, there are lots of gullible people out there and it has always been that way – even before the internet. It’s just that too many simply want to believe the dream.

Take most of the headlines of the sales pages of each product. They’re so convincing that people seem to think that it’ll be easy making a few million dollars in a few days. But if the internet mogul’s tone down their sales pages then they would be losing sales!

Personally, I have only ever bought one ebook for a very small amount of money. But after seeing that it was completely useless, I vowed never to buy such a product again. I understand that there are some fantastic ones out there (Adsense Videos, your Six Figure Blogging Darren) – but still I’d rather use the money I save on more practical solutions.

Darren and Greg, do either of you buy many of these products? Do you think that they actually make a difference to your online businesses in the long run – and are they worth their money?