Tiffany Dow encourages folks to create a series of posts that all relate to progress using a particular product (you can see more about her WSO in part 1, here) and so, in the spirit of doing the right thing, here is a follow-up to my earlier post.

SNO Review SEO

I’m fairly sure by now, that Google doesn’t absolutely hate my site (faint praise, I know!). It’s been running for a few years, there’s a fair amount of content up on it and I’ve made a few posts every month – hardly a race to the finish line, eh?

As a result, I do see my posts appear quite quickly on the first page, they often hang around for a while and using the new author tweaks has also given them that shiny new “here’s me” picture when they do show up.

So, I was fairly pleased when my review of Cashing in on Shiny New Object Syndrome showed up on page one – mind you, you can’t get much more long-tail than a 7 word phrase 🙂 Imagine my joy, when it then disappeared off the map completely – I’m talking somewhere out beyond page 15. I got bored looking for it!

I worried that I’d been penalized for using an image with an SEO-style “alt” tag as the first thing in the post. Google seems to have taken to actually showing that alt text in the post summary if you don’t set the text explicitly in something like All-in-one SEO and I worried that it showed up as being too SEO’d.

Anyway, today it is back on page 1 and is up to slot number 3 without me doing anything to prop it up, so I need to remind myself to chill out a bit during the Google dance.

Is a WSO a good target?

All of that preamble brings me on to what I think is the biggest potential failing of the whole “Cashing In” idea.

In fact it may be a failing of the whole IM world in that regard.

That failing is this. If you are going to invest a load of your time and money in a WSO for review purposes, you have almost NO guarantee that the WSO owner will keep that thing running for longer than a firefly’s lifetime. Now, ideally, if you are doing a long-term review, you want the product available for sale all of that time (if you like it).

A case in point would be the recent CPA Superstars product from Kenster – I’m happy to supply opinions about the materials inside the course, but it’s highly likely that they will have closed the program before you even read my review.

How useful is that?

Not only that, but just say I get my review up mere seconds after the release. Well first, it will definitely be a facts only review, but secondly, what if Google decides to hide my post for a few days? All advantage is gone and it would have been a total waste of my time (maybe).

I’m not sure how to combat that problem with WSOs and the tendency for larger releases in the whole IM field to have very limited “windows of opportunity” means that they are very similar.

What it probably means is that the plan will only work for much smaller releases on the forum, ones which have a decent lifetime ahead of them. Unfortunately, these are probably going to be the ones which have less of a “blockbuster” launch and pricetag…..and we all have to eat sometime.

I suspect my long term view of Cashing in on SNOS will be that I’m reviewing WSOs as a service to my readers (not as a revenue stream in its own right) and maybe you’ll all love the reviews so much, you’ll buy other things from me.

Does that feel like a deal? Anyone want to tell me I’m living in cloud-cuckoo land?

Blimey what a mouthful! Tiffany Dow has released a WSO that she claims will help everyone with that constant burning need to buy more and more WSO’s but what a title to give it! Does WordPress even allow titles this long, we’ll have to see 🙂

The nice thing about the arrival of Tiffany’s WSO is that is fits in well with my promise last week to do more WSO reviews and after going though it, I have to tell you that I have changed my mind slightly on the whole “no affiliate link thing”. It sounds great to stay clear any accusation of making affiliate cash for good reviews, but this WSO has convinced me that there is at least one other person out there who is able to stay morally neutral while still making money.

As a result, affiliate links are back.

Tiffany was open enough to admit that she hadn’t spent a whole load of time on the sales copy for this WSO and it’s certainly not a mega-graphic extravaganza like some of the stuff being pushed on the forum these days, but she has obviously done the work needed to identify a clear audience on the forum and target them with this WSO.

Cashing in on SNOS (just to save my fingers) is a timely encouragement to serial WSO buyers to create reviews of purchased products as they are implemented. In a sense doubling the value of the SNO by forcing implementation and maybe making affiliate sales along the way. If the SNO comes up trumps and works, then you’ll also make money from the technique and your review will grow in authority because you’ve actually used the product.

Tiffany suggests carrying out the process (and there’s plenty more detail about the actual technique that would be unfair to include here) over a period of time and revisiting reviews periodically.

Circular Queasiness

In fact, she also suggests doing the whole thing to the “Guide to Cashing in on Shiny New Object Syndrome” and it’s at this point that I have to express a little queasiness.

I can see her point about it being good to get started somewhere and the fact that you have this WSO in your hands already makes it easy to use as a practice piece, but it’s not an ideal fit for an ongoing review – at least not in my mind.

Not only that, but in encouraging sales of her WSO, she only adds to the SNOS of others. That whole circular side of internet marketing is the one that leaves me worrying for the state of my soul sometimes. 🙂 I’m experiencing a similar angst with Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge at the moment. There’s no doubt it’s a great course, but every task is focused on creating internet real estate that talks about his course – using pupils to build his presence.

I’ve always struggled at fairgrounds on the rides that make me go round and round – never on the rollercoasters, so maybe I was always destined to hate this kind of incestuous selling. The ancient societies of the world used to call it Ourobouros – the snake that eats its own tail….I digress.

Anyway, if you do buy WSO’s on a regular basis, this is definitely an interesting twist on the process. I could see it getting to be really hard work if you buy more than one other WSO a day, but if you could get through the work of implementing each one as well as reviewing it, you’ll probably end up a wealthy bunny fairly quickly!

Summing Up

So where does that leave me on Tiffany’s product? I’m going to give it an 8-ish and the only reason it’s not a solid 8 is that I’m already “doing it”. I think the content is worth an 8 for someone that has never written a review before and the idea of forcing the implementation is excellent.

Here’s my totally unadorned, no pressure link if you want to check it out.