Internet Marketing, Ninja Style
written by Michael Kwan
Subscribing to all sorts of internet marketing blogs can only get you so far. By and large, most of these blogs cover basic information, rather than getting into the highly advanced nitty-gritty of true internet marketing. As you can probably imagine, it gets pretty complex and remarkably difficult to understand. So, what is a lowly marketer to do? Ask a ninja, of course. No, not this ninja. We’re talking about the Internet Marketing Ninjas who ordered up this review. And these ninjas definitely know their stuff.
Meet the Internet Marketing Ninjas
Reputation is everything. You could be a perennial expert in search engine optimization, but if no one knows who you are, then you might as well be yelling into a brick wall. I’m sure you’ve come across plenty of Internet marketing sites run by virtual nobodies, claiming that they have unlocked the secrets of the web and they’re willing to share these with you (for a small fee, of course). This is not the case with Internet Marketing Ninjas. These guys know their stuff, and we know them.
Internet Marketing Ninjas is comprised of “over a dozen of the top industry experts” and they’re more than prepared to help you learn “about every aspect of Internet marketing, from affiliate marketing to link building to social media strategies.”
Pictured above are Aaron Wall of SEO Book, Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising (and Quick Sprout), and Jeremy Shoemaker of Shoemoney. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The online shinobi also include guys like Bill Slawski, Jim Gilbert, Lee Odden, and more.
What Would A Ninja Do?
Reading through the blogs of Internet marketers is useful, of course, but that’s a lot of text to digest and a lot of archives to browse. When you sign up with Internet Marketing Ninjas, you gain access to a library of Internet marketing training videos and SEO tools. You can get a preview of some of these videos through the main page, but it’s only after you get membership that you can truly appreciate the power of these web-savvy ninjas.
For example, Andy Beal has three videos in the collection, providing over an hour of instruction about keyword selection, the long tail, latent semantic indexing, paid reviews, and so on. You can hit up his preview page to get a snippet of these videos.
The embedded player functions in much the same way as Google Video or YouTube. It was a little confusing at first, though, because all I saw was a big black block. I waited for a bit, thinking that the page was still loading, but nothing happened. Then, I inadvertently hovered my mouse over the black box and the playback controls emerged near the bottom. It works, but I would have liked if the media controls were immediately visible.
For Serious Marketers Only
With so many big names involved in this project, it’s obvious that Internet Marketing Ninjas offers a highly attractive package. You’re learning from the world’s best Internet marketers and they’re letting you in on what led to their success. Beyond the instructional videos, you also get a healthy complement of SEO tools — though they don’t say exactly what these are — to help improve your search engine rankings.
Sounds great, right? Well, Internet Marketing Ninjas isn’t for noobies, nor is it for anyone on a tight budget. Clicking the “order now” button, I was hit by this:
No, that’s not a typo. A one-year membership with Internet Marketing Ninjas costs nearly $3,000. That’s not a lifetime membership and (I think) you can’t download the videos for later viewing. All the videos are streamed from the site. I’d expect that more videos will be added as the site matures, so that’s why you’d want to keep your membership active… but don’t worry, the membership is on auto-renew.
Oh, and before you get any funny ideas, read this part of the terms and conditions
Individuals that are in any way associated with, employed by, agents of, working for, or affiliated with Internet search engines or search engine-affiliated organizations may not register to use this site, and may not use, view, or otherwise take advantage of any information provided to members of this site, including videos, tools, or any other material provided to members.
Non-Ninjas Need Not Apply
The Internet Marketing Ninjas landing page is pretty plain. There really aren’t any “sections” for you to enjoy other than the bios and their accompanying preview videos. That said, I appreciate this design over the more conventional one-page sales letters that we usually see. I guess these ninjas know what they’re doing.
And they’d better know what they’re doing if they plan on charging nearly three grand every year.
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(11 votes, average: 2.82 out of 5)
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John you should start a site like that and charge $2,000. That’d be a good deal. Imagine your monthly income stats if you did that.
Haha, most couldn’t afford it.
You could spend $3000 marketing your website and get far better results than watching hours of pre-recorded videos in my opinion.
Heck, you could get a Johnchow review every two months and still have money leftover. =P
While 3k sounds a bit steep I bet if you actually follow the advice of these Ninjas you’d make that back and then some.. These guys are making solid coin, they know how to get you making money with affiliate programs and a whole bunch of other things..
Like Michael mentioned in the review, this is not for noobs..
It all depends on the tools you will have at your disposal as well as on the information which will be made available (even if, personally, I believe in offering quality advice for free rather than having people pay for it).
Alan Johnson
I’d have to agree with that. $3,000 spent on just buying 125 x 125 ads one each of these ninja’s blogs would bring some serious traffic.
While I agree with you that buying ads is far better than spending 3K on a money grab, getting the traffic is one thing…developing a loyal following is another.
That part is up to you. You need to develop a good site, with good content. Uniqueness is a key. Carve out a niche.
The Mad Ape
Yes, you can’t spend $3,000 on ads and then send the traffic to a cheesy site. That certainly won’t work.
I agree about the affordability. Most people who can afford to shell out $3,000 a year for the training videos is doing pretty well already.
It all depends on how that membership helps you income-wise. If you spend $3k and end up earning 10x times that much as a result of using their tools in one year, your investment was a wise one. If you make less than $3k it was not, it’s as simple as that.
Alan Johnson
I won’t be surprised if people do that over this
I mean… how useful can this information be? I’m pretty sure anything they tell us can be found on the web somewhere right? 
While I’m in no way affiliated with the ninja’s, I did review the same product recently on my blog and I think the way to look at it is this. This is like having a major search engine marketing/internet marketing conference come to you. Granted, you don’t get the same networking opportunities, but you do get year long access to a ton of tools as well.
Dude
I reviewed them too. This venture is nothing but a huge money grab. It sucks up the wazoo. For $3000/year you should expect and receive professionally produced videos. This site is as unprofessional as they come. The production sucks so bad that I convinced that they have a typo in their pricing.
Further, based on watching every promo clip, the content sucks. There is no other way to put it. All of what they talk about is available for free and in some cases right off of their business blogs.
Anyone buying this program is a SUCKER!
The Mad Ape
Probably it will be a good idea.
Hi John. Just wanted to bring a small typo to your notice..Shoemoney’s name has been mispelled..overall a good post.
Shame it was Mr. Kwan because, John wouldn’t misspell ShoeMoney, since, he wears his t-shirts alot.
Hey Michael!
Would you say the $3k is worth it for what you saw?
Do they offer anything like a $1, 30-day trial or anything?
Is the material something you could actually get thru in a year or faster (slower)?
It’s a fascinating service and if you could propel yourself forward, it might be worth the $3k!
Pam Hoffman
http://seminarlist.blogspot.com
p.s. you quoted…
“Individuals that are in any way associated with, employed by, agents of, working for, or affiliated with Internet search engines or search engine-affiliated organizations may not register to use this site, and may not use, view, or otherwise take advantage of any information provided to members of this site, including videos, tools, or any other material provided to members.”
why do they put that in to their TOS? do you know?
I am assuming that it is so the search engines don’t penalize their sites/techniques (blackhat?).
I don’t think it has to do with white hat or black hat. Why in the world would you want the search engines to know what you do to rank better?
To cover future hiney. They’re making promises, search engine companies crack the whip every once in a while when promises aren’t fulfilled. False advertising is not legal in any state and search engine company eployees know jive when they see it.
Better safe than sorry. At 3000.00 a pop it would only take 333 members to make a class action suit worth a cool mil+
And what colin said, it’s like the stock market, not everyone can get rich… it takes people losing money for others to make it.
You can get rich if you know the technique and go for it.
I don’t think it has anything to do with a possible lawsuit. They don’t say that you’ll get rich by watching the videos or anything like that, they are just teaching strategies and methods. People understand that search engines change and something that was working before won’t necessarily work now. What advertising do you think would be false?
As long as they don’t make bogus promises about their product, a lawsuit is definitely out of the question.
Alan Johnson
That you are getting value or your money. That is a crock of shit!
The Mad Ape
Probably because they will be talking about how to pull off some search engine tricks…you know exploit flaws in the system to ones advantage.
The Mad Ape
Psst, I think it’s spelled Jeremy Schoemaker.
Grammar Ninja.
I’ll save myself $3,000 per year and read Shoemoney’s, Chow’s an Cow’s blogs, I think there’s enough there to get most people on the right track to earnings some serious cash.
I probably agree with that. Both are giving excellent advice.
I agree 100% that there is no shortage of great information on the Web, and that you can take advantage of it for free. How you use it and how you play the trial&error game is entirely up to you.
Alan Johnson
All the information is available freely on the web for everyone to read. People just look for the silver bullet.
Looking at your site, something tells me you haven’t learn much from this free “information”
Some tells me that you are an arrogant prick. That comment was uncalled for.
The Mad Ape
You are exactly right. Just read John Chow’s blog and save $3,000.
Lol you’ve got a little something on your nose there, mate.
John doesn’t talk much at all about SEO, PPC, or even affiliate marketing for that matter. Half the stuff posted here is off topic and will have no benefit to your site or blog at all.
I found this here:
http://www.johnchow.com/the-super-affiliates-guide-to-ppc-marketing/
which led me to a good ppc guide.
Good article on effective advertising:
http://www.johnchow.com/how-to-determine-the-effectiveness-of-your-advertising-campaign/
I downloaded John’s ebook here:
http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-may-2007/
Found a good article on bringing your blog to the next level:
http://www.johnchow.com/the-art-of-the-ramp/
Read a good post on income vs traffic:
http://www.johnchow.com/getting-traffic-is-half-the-battle/
These are all good on topic posts. That will be $500, I’ll send you my PayPal email address.
Guess you’ve not been reading this blog long enough
Check back in the archives
It will be interesting to see how successful this becomes at a price like that. Wow.
I’d have to agree with most of the comments so far. The money can be better spent on campaigns to promote your site. This type of education seems too technical for most bloggers.
Wow that’s almost as much as college tuition
If you were going to spend the money on college or the Internet Marketing Ninja’s training then I would say this program is probably worth it. Hmm, get exactly what you need to earn probaly $200K in a year for $3K or spend 4 years in college and come out with a $100K debt and no job. In that case, the choice is obvious.
Are you saying you can get the same education from this program as you can from college? Or are you saying you can get the same education from this program as you can from a $3K a year college? Because I would agree with the later.
Sorry I meant to say I would agree with neither.
A college degree is worth way more in face value than anything you can buy on the internet.
I’d have to agree with most of the comments in that I’d rather spend $3000 to promote my site directly than to pay to learn how to do it.
It depends on the funds you have at your disposal. If $3k represents your entire budget then there are definitely better things to do with your money.
Alan Johnson
Quick, someone give 50 bucks to whichever Ninja can slice the second set of keywords and second set of descriptions from johnchow.com! They’re killing me to still see when I snoop around!
About the ninjas - they don’t need to know what they’re doing, they just need to “appear” to know what they’re doing. Thats in marketing 101, section two paragraph 4 right before “a fool and his money…” no offense intended of course.
Will the money train that is internet ever slow down?
Pretty expensive, hey. Well, I would signup if all my sites are doing well. Too bad, still noob.
Ninja style, sound like sneaking around some people properties and take money from their house with ease.
A final thought - these guys, whom I am not putting down in any way, should have done like Brett Tabke and build up the sites rep a little before going for the quick 2995.00 in my opinion. It feels like a cheap tactic as it stands (and not because internet didn’t exist in the era of Ninja’s). Even Brett stops at 89.95 for webmasterworld.com and even then you don’t HAVE to subscribe to read most of the stuff.
I’d wager that 99.5% of the video stuff on the ninja site is covered on http://www.Webmasterworld.com with very little digging. If you don’t find what you want send Martinibuster a quick message and he’ll hook you up on your topic of choice. I hope i’m not placing a bullseye on my own back from my peers for speaking my mind here, but it is what it is.
I’d probably make sure the site returned a pretty good exact match search on “Internet Marketing” in Google before i rolled it out too. I stopped looking after i’d gone through the first 10 pages.
Just my 2 cents though.