Rich Jerk Review

Who is the Rich Jerk anyway?

The Rich Jerk is creating quite a buzz on some of the marketing forums, because it was apparently written by kellyandsummer, the folks who sold the big affiliate website on eBay for so much money recently. I've seen speculation that the entire auction of the website was specifically geared to generate buzz around this ebook, and that would certainly be in line with the attitude behind the strategies outlined in The Rich Jerk.

The Rich Jerk sells for $97. I don't think that this is an outrageous amount of money to pay for solid information, but I'm not sure that this ebook provides enough solid information to be worth $97. The book is short at 40 pages, and some of the material is good, and some of it is only so-so.

What's in The Rich Jerk?

• How to make affiliate websites that sell like crazy
• Pay per click strategies that will kill your competition
• Search engine optimization strategies
• Creating your own info product to sell
• Buying and selling wholesale goods on eBay
• Websites you can make profitable right now (i.e. Clickbank review sites)
• Other online ventures to consider
• Recommended resources

The Good Stuff's in the front of the book

The section about how to make affiliate websites that sell like crazy wasn't bad. The Rich Jerk gives tips on how to write effective sales copy by appealing to people's hopes, their fears, and by establishing yourself as an impartial authority on a subject. The techniques given for accomplishing these thing probably work pretty well, although they're not what you would consider humanitarian. The attitude is more of, "Take the rubes for all they're worth, and do it fast."

The pay per click strategies section was good. The ideas for writing copy that stands out and gets click-through's were excellent. This section could have been improved by giving some actual facts and figures from the author's own campaigns, doing some split-testing between the ads he says not to write and the ads he says do write, but all-in-all, the chapter was good.

The discussion of how to make money doing click arbitrage, was excellent. I have every intention of acting on some of the tips in this chapter. The only flaw in this chapter was the list of PPC engines. Many of the PPC engines recommended have performed very badly for me in the past, so if you stick with the top tier engines recommended, you'll be okay.

The author includes a very good list of high paying keywords along with their average prices with the book as well.

The search engine optimization strategies section was a fair introduction to the subject that covered a surprising amount of ground. He covers black hat and white hat techniques, and his discussion of link building techniques was actually good.

This section could have been improved by explaining in a little more detail WHY these techniques worked, because some of them might not work in the future. If you learn how to think like a search engine though, you'll always be able to adjust. That context was what this section needed.

The Weak Stuff is toward the end of the book

The next few sections were the weakest parts of The Rich Jerk. I think the ebook would have been much more focused has the author stuck with the theme of making money with affiliate sites, but the last few chapters covered creating infoproducts, buying and selling wholesale goods on eBay, and there was some info about some other ways to make money online through some investment type opportunities.

The last chapter was a list of recommended products. These were all affiliate links, as were almost all of the other recommended links in the ebook. To me, this takes some of the credibility away from the product.

Final Thoughts on The Rich Jerk

The night I read the ebook I was upset that I'd spent $97 on it. After all, it was only 40 pages long, and about 10 of those pages were useless to me. And a lot of the other 30 pages was filled with stuff I already knew.

But when I re-read the book, I found a lot of value there. Anthony Robbins is fond of pointing out that sometimes all it takes is 1 new distinction, 1 new idea, to completely change your life. I think that implementing some of the techniques in this book will more than make back the money I spent on it. And in the end, that's all I can ask from an ebook, even one with as unusual a marketing style as The Rich Jerk.

I have mixed feelings about recommending this ebook. I think that affiliate marketing is something that can be approached responsibly and morally, and still be very profitable. I don't think that the attitude of "Let's victimize our customers" is more profitable than "Let's help our customers".

But if you can look past that at some of the practical techniques for making money in this ebook, I think you'll find it valuable.

A Couple More Lessons I Learned from The Rich Jerk

At one point I had doubted that this ebook was actually written by kellyandsummer, because frankly, every post I've ever seen written by them in a forum was polite and helpful, nothing like the voice of the author of this book. It seems clear to be that they're using a certain copywriting style for effect. I don't think it works 100%, but I don't think the author is the rich jerk that he claims to be.

If the speculation I've seen about the eBay auction of the website is true, that it was just a technique used to gather buzz around their ebook, then that would be the most powerful lesson that this book could teach. And you could probably extrapolate that from a few forum threads here and there.