You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but you shouldn’t trust everything you read on the internet, especially when you are researching a product or service you are interested in buying or using.
IMReportcard.com review
During the past few weeks I have made it a priority to evaluate my online business and the direction it’s taking. Part of my plan for the future is to delve deeper into affiliate marketing. As a result of this slight change in direction (AdSense is currently my main source of income) I’ve spent some time researching products that will help me on the way to achieving my goals.
Market Samurai was a no brainer, the Online Profits training course equally so, but there are other products out there that I think will be useful, but I’m hesitant to buy. And most of the time it is not the cost that puts me off making a purchase (most marketers offer a money back guarantee), it is the learning curve that comes with them or the fear of buying something useless, something that doesn’t do what it promises to do or something that could make a situation worse.
I am thinking of SEO related products here, such as social bookmarking and link building/boosting tools. There are loads around, but a lot of them just seem to be spamming tools.
A site I have started to use a lot when I am researching a product or service is IMReportcard.com. The site is updated daily and carries unbiased reviews of many products and services you see for sale in the Warrior Forum or elsewhere on the internet.
How IMReportcard.com works
Each product/service/person/website/business opportunity has its own page, the IMReportcard team composes a matter of fact post about the product and users of the site write reviews based on their own experiences of it. Reviewers can also grade the each entry on a scale from A to F.
From what I have seen it is remarkably unbiased and a breath of fresh air when performing any kind of product/service research. The only slight downside is that relatively unknown products tend to have very few reviews, whereas popular products have loads. This means that a product/service that is exceptional, but has never been adopted by the masses (perhaps only because of poor marketing), may forever remain underground.
Market Samurai
I have recently purchased MS and have been testing it on and off for the past few days. I like what I see, and judging by the 158 comments left on IM Report Card and the A- ranking achieved (top right hand corner in the graphic further down the page), so do many other people. In fact, at the time of writing it is the top rated product.
To see the full list of the top 25 products you have to register and log in.
There are other top 25 lists too – services, people, business opportunities and other sites. Alongside these lists I would like to see corresponding bottom 25s.
How a review page looks on IMReportcard.com
The image below shows what you see at the top of the review page. It contains some information about the product/service/person/business opportunity/site.
Underneath this is the blurb supplied by the IM Report Card team. It’s broken up into four sections:
- Product Description
- Detailed Overview
- Reputation
- Domain “Whois”
The rest of the page is filled with users reviews. Sometimes there are no reviews, other times there are many.
This is how a typical review looks:
This users name is Briluki, but see the bit of text underneath? That comes from Brilukis IM Report Card bio page and the links are dofollow.
As I only joined about a week ago I haven’t yet posted any reviews, so I don’t know what the traffic levels are like. But traffic and an inbound link are not the reasons why I recommend IMReportcard. I recommend it because I think it is one of the best sites I have come across for reading unbiased information about a whole range of products and services.
Do you know of any others? Please share them in the comments section.
Visit IMReportCard.com
It’s my first time hearing about IM report cards, and I think it’s very interesting. I’m seeing some potentials over their business model, in fact they can also turn into an affiliate network like clickbank and commission junction, well I think it’s already a work in progress. It’s good to know that communities like this are now being launched, seeing that more and more digital products are on the rise, and that alone makes it very hard for marketers to choose what products to promote. The good thing is that things online are getting much easier day by day :)
Regards,
Jason
I think a lot of the links in IM Report Card are already affiliate links.
The site has the potential to make a lot of money for the owners. It is a wonderfully simple business model that offers a great deal of value to the community.
Thanks for your comment, Jason.