IMMania.com

I joined “PPC Classroom” on the day it launched - September 25, 2007. I can easily remember that date because it’s my dad’s birthday, but anyway, I was sitting in front of my PC refreshing the sales page in order to qualify for the “fast action bonus”.

I’ve waited until now to write up a full review of PPCC in order to let all of the dust settle. And there has been quite a bit of dust to be settling.

I should start off by saying there was one reason and only one reason why I committed to shelling out $500 for PPCC, which is the most I’ve paid to date for any kind of IM info or software product, and that reason was Jeremy Palmer.

No other reason.

I was first introduced to Jeremy back when he first released “Quit Your Day Job” aka “High Powered Affiliate Marketing” eBook, which included free membership into the forum he created for the eBook. I was also privileged to have won and received a free one hour phone consultation with Jeremy at that time.

Right from the get go, I found Jeremy to be a very caring and energetic person, more than willing to go out of his way to help people struggling to get a foot hold in affiliate marketing. This was quite evident from the time he spent on the phone with me as well as all the time he spent on the forum answering numerous questions from the members there.

I know it’s an overused cliche when referring to someone who does right by the IM community, but it truly applies to Jeremy Palmer — he’s truly one of the “good guys“.

However, not everyone who purchased PPCC had the benefit of knowing anything beforehand about the quality that Jeremy delivered, so I will attempt to be as objective in this review as I can.

It should also be pointed out that Jeremy partnered with Anik Singal of “Affiliate Classroom” in this venture. Hence the expansion of the “classroom” theme.

I always suspected that Jeremy was not completely sold on marketing info products to the IM community and he had stated in the past that what he made from QYDJ was just a very small part of his income when compared to what he did with his own affiliate marketing efforts. The time he invested in QYDJ probably canceled out any of the remaining monetary profits.

So I was a little surprised to see that he had teamed up with Anik, who is someone more focused on the info product side of IM. I had been on Anik’s list for a while and eventually unsubscribed for the usual reason I unsubscribe from IM mailing lists — the value to pitch ratio was low. Nothing personal, just my policy.

Anyway, this review I can tell is going to be long — I tend to ramble on as it is, but there’s a lot to tell with this story.

PPCC was true to form as far as over-hyped IM product launches go. The IM community had been whipped into a frenzy, all the JV partners were in place trying to out trump each other with “insane” bonuses. Jeff Walker’s “Product Launch Formula” was being followed to a tee. This really didn’t feel like Jeremy’s influence and I wonder just how comfortable he was with the entire process.

As far as a major product launch goes, PPCC tripped right out of the starting gate.

Some of it was not the fault of the launch team as their servers were hacked on launch day causing delays in ordering. There was also confusion as to the terms for the members only forum. I got tripped up on this myself. Many customers were surprised that the members only forum carried a monthly membership fee of $49.97 after the free 30-day trial expired.

I learned from other students of PPCC that it’s wise to save a copy of the sales page for future reference on these kinds of details. But heck, I was so intent on getting in fast that I didn’t even bother with that.

Since the outcry was so loud on this point, the decision was to extend the free trial to 90-days.

Things continued to be rocky during the first few weeks after launch. There was a delay in getting the physical course materials mailed out to students and the Boot Camp Webinars conducted by Jeremy Palmer were set to begin shortly.

After more outcry from students that not having a chance to read the training sections prior to the Webinars would put everyone at a disadvantage, it was decided to put these sections in the members forum as electronic downloads. I can certainly understand the reluctance to do so since this opened up the materials to be freely distributed across the Net, but it was the right call.

I can go on in further detail about additional glitches with course fulfillment, delays in Webinar recording, and so forth, but I should summarize what the result of all this was and where I stand on it.

No matter how screwed up things seemed to be getting I just repeated my calming mantra:

“It’s Jeremy Palmer”

That’s how much faith and goodwill Jeremy has instilled in me and a lot of others.

Unfortunately, it looks like Anik Singal was forced to bear the brunt of students’ wrath and frustration.

I should point out that after a few teleseminars with Anik for PPCC and also watching how he took personal responsibility for a lot of the glitches in the forum, I have nothing but respect for Anik and know that he’s honest and is looking out for his customers.

However, a lot did go wrong with the launch of PPCC and in delivering on some of what was promised in the selling of the product. I sincerely hope that Anik has learned some very valuable lessons from all this and will apply them to any future ventures.

It is very clear to me that Anik is more than just an Internet Marketer or even just an info-product creator. I’ve been around entrepreneurs and CEOs of small technology companies for most of my career and I can see the best qualities of a true business leader in Anik. In how he deals with customers, presents himself publicly, his energy and creativity, and perhaps most importantly, in how he manages his team. He has a very bright future in front of him as a business leader.

So what did I really think of PPCC as a whole? My report card for it is below:

*Physical Course Materials - A+, very professionally produced, the course itself is somewhat basic, but both a great introduction to those new to PPC affiliate marketing as well as a good refresher for more experienced IMers.

The bonus list of Jeremy Palmer’s Affiliate Programs and Earnings for 2006, while interesting, isn’t as useful as it first seemed. It came as no surprise that the bulk of Jeremy’s earnings were from only a handful of programs and that many of the others were quite ordinary. Of course, I’d take his “ordinary” campaigns in a heartbeat. The bonus report came with the agreement that revealing any of the information in it would subject me to a slow painful death by water boarding.

*Boot Camp Webinars - B+, these were a series of 7 or 8, can’t remember exactly, Webinars that covered the 8 Sections in the training manual all conducted by Jeremy Palmer. Jeremy does a great job in presenting information clearly and also in taking and answering questions. Since these Webinars followed the course materials they were on the basic side.

*Bonus Webinars & Teleseminars - A++, these were a series of calls with several guests including Amit Mehta, Mark Widawer, and a few others in addition to one Anik did on CPA offers. Some truly fanastic information was shared on these calls and I have several pages of notes to prove it. These calls made the course fee worth it!

*Members Only Forum - D+, sorry but the forum has been a major disappointment. The bulk of the forum bandwidth had been taken up with student complaints and the overall mood was extremely negative. The forum is fairly quiet at this point since many students appeared to have canceled their memberships, but I still get little value from it.

*Jeremy Palmer’s “Optimze My Site” Software Script - Incomplete, this component was supposed to be a major selling point of PPCC and it has also been a major disappointment. The bottom line is that it wasn’t ready for release. As a programmer myself, I could tell this right away. Adapting Jeremy’s PHP scripts for general release was a major undertaking and factoring in all the different versions of PHP as well as myriad hosting companies and their specific environments, well, you have a recipe for a total nightmare.

I know Jeremy and his team put in a lot of long and tiring hours supporting OMS and it was also right around the holidays, so it had to be rough on them. I still haven’t installed the latest version, but will at some point once things settle down with the recent organizational changes at PPCC. More on these changes further down.

*Las Vegas Seminar - ?, I don’t know, as I didn’t attend. From what I can tell, most of those in attendance enjoyed it and to Anik’s further credit, when many asked for an additional free ticket for either a spouse of business parnter, Anik readily complied. DVD recordings of the seminar have shipped to attendees and will supposedly be offered to those of us who did not attend at a fair price.

OK, I warned you this was going to be long, but my final comments need to focus on where PPCC is right now and whether I would recommend it to others:

First, there’s no question that there were quite a few unsatisfied customers of PPCC. How do I know that? Easy, you just had to spend some time on the forum for the past 4 months. The expectations for PPCC were very high and that goes along with all the hype that preceded it as well as the price tag. Many just weighed their expectations against some of the frustrations and let downs they received and decided they didn’t get value.

I’m not one of them, but I can understand how others felt that way.

Despite protestations from both Jeremy and Anik, I still believe that in it’s original form, that PPCC was not for rank beginners. Though the training manual is a great introduction to PPC affiliate marketing, the bonus calls and OMS are probably over the heads of a lot of newbies. Heck, there were people who didn’t even have Web hosting. Sorry, but how are they supposed to host the OMS software? And there were others who didn’t even have an Adwords account. Need I say anything more?

At the other end of the continuum there were extremely advanced IMers claiming to do 6 and even 7-figures online. I guess when you have money to blow it’s always worth a flyer to see if you can pick up some tidbits here and there.

I think there were some who legitamtely felt the quality was not up to standard especially with OMS and the timeliness of delivering Webiniar recordinings and course materials. I’m a lot more patient than a lot of people and I can understand the frustrations many had with this. One of the important take aways for Anik is how to serve international customers - non-US, when delivering both physical items via the post as well as Webinars. Time zone differences and long distance charges hit these folks particularly hard. If you live in places like OZ, you pretty much got the shaft.

Finally there were those who probably felt that by merely laying out a big sum of money, that they were going to magically receive the key to endless riches. These folks will always be dissappointed.

PPCC essentially re-organized shortly after the beginning of the year. The big news was that Jeremy Palmer would no longer be the chief PPC trainer, but would instead sit on the newly formed “board of advisors“. Instead, Heather Paulson of the Paulson Management Group has been appointed to the position of “Education Manager“.

You can read the press release regarding these changes:

Since this press release, Jeremy Palmer has created a separate support forum for OMS. There has been some concern as to whether students who cancel their membership in PPCC will continue to receive product support for OMS. It had been announced that they would continue to receive bug fixes for free, but would not be entitled to feature upgrades.

However, this looks to have changed yet again, with a recent email from Jeremy stating that he is not longer involved in any way with PPC Classroom and was soliciting input in the form of a survey as what to do with OMS. The other big announcement form Jeremy is that he has now renamed his QYDJ eBook and is offering it for free. The QYDJ members forum is now open to the public.

It seems clear to me based on Jeremy’s recent actions and words that he’s going back to his bread and butter, which is PPC affiliate marketing and that he’s extracating himself from anything to do with selling info products. Jeremy of course knows what’s best for his business and most importantly, his family, which he was spending less time with while fighting fires at PPCC.

I wish him the best of success and happiness going forward. He certainly deserves it.

So in conclusion (finally), where does this leave Anik and PPCC?

Since Jeremy is no longer associated with PPCC the original sales material is sort of obsolete. That was the focal point, right? And my mantra - “Jeremy Palmer”.

That at least got me through the times of fear, doubt, and frustration.

Who or what is my saving grace at this point and why do I not cancel my $49.97 per month membership, which is on the high side for a memberhips site?

My new mantra:

“Heather Paulson”

If I can get access to just one case study that Heather has been providing each month, then it’s worth $50 a month to me. I’ve come to realize that if you want access to the brightest minds in a particular field then you had better be willing to pay for it. The case studies Heather has been sharing take SEM to an entirely different level. I’m not aware of any university courses in SEM, but what she teaches could very easily form the basis for such a curriculum.

Maybe Anik could actually build a true, virutal, accredited online university for Internet marketing someday?

Currently, membership to PPCC is closed, and there’s no word on when or if it will ever open up again. Would I recommend it if it did open up again? Tough question, especially in light of all those dissatisfied students. All I can say is that it was well worth it to me and it continues to be worth it to me.

P.S. The unamimous winner for best bonus for purchasing PPCC through his affiliate link is Amit Mehta according to an informal consensus on the members forum.

Tags: adwords, Affiliate Marketing, Anik Singal, Jeremy Palmer, membership sites, PPC, PPC Classroom, Products I Like

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