The Internet Marketing World Cup – A Rebuttal

The following email was sent to me by one of the creators of The Internet Marketing World Cup.

I told them I would consider updating my previous blog entry based on what he shared with me.

After further consideration, I thought I would just let IMWC’s point-of-view speak for itself.

With that said, here is the entire email sent to me. It is thoughtful and I admire the IMWC team for proactively contacting me and seeking to explain their project.

I don’t see a need to comment any further. Here’s the email…

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Hi Joel,

Thanks again for taking the time to hear us out – it’s truly appreciated.

Below are the points you addressed in your blog and our comments about each but, before getting to that, I want to explain a little of what we are trying to achieve through this project.

I think that what we are trying to do can be summed up as follows:

Getting people who know how to make money online (from scratch… no JV lists, no websites they had prior to the competition, no existing mailing lists, etc. That’s the whole point – equal opportunity for everyone… after all, there’s no sense in having someone with a list of 50,000 people compete. The whole idea is having someone showing people how to build a list, not using one they already have (this is covered very well in the competition rules and having them prove it through an audited competition.

Rewarding them with cash prizes if they rank well and, of course, providing them with a revenue share from sales of their systems sold through the IMWC’s online store which will go live after the competition ends.

So, the top 20 finalists will walk away with cash prizes, an on-going revenue share and a place in our REA program – there’s more on the REA program (which I think you also misunderstood) below as a response to one of your blog comments.

Everything that the top 20 finalists get is explained here.

The end result: competitors make money (potentially, a lot) – not just from the cash prizes but also from the rev share, clients can buy systems proven to make money (not because a vendor says they make money, but because a transparent and audited competition showed they make money – remember that competitors screen-record everything they do for 2 whole months), and we make money in the process… everybody wins.

As you can see, we’re trying to produce something that everyone’s happy with and everyone benefits from. This entire project has been built around the concept of “finally bringing stuff that works to the market” and giving consumers of IM products a breath of fresh air – an escape from all the junk, hype, misleading advertising, empty promises, etc.

I believe that 90% of people selling IM products make their money from the sale of the products rather than from what they teach. Who suffers? The consumer does. We want the consumer to get “how to” education that genuinely shows how to make money by doing what’s described IN the product rather than FROM the product itself.

We’ve been going to trade shows, getting big sponsors, hiring staff (currently a team of 9 people), training them, working around the clock for months now and investing close to half a million dollars (without seeing a glint of income yet) because we truly believe in this project. If you knew my partners in this project and I then you’d understand how “quick money” is the last thing on our minds and a world away from who we are.

Will the project work? I really hope so because it can be something truly beneficial to everyone involved – competitors, clients, affiliates, and, of course, us. You might not believe this but, if the project works, my satisfaction will be based more on the fact that we brought real value to a market that’s become a den of iniquity rather than the money I’d make from this and that’s why I’m putting my heart into this project.

So, that being said, here are our comments to the blog post:

The whole point of the competition is for the creators to make money

Even though this is a business, making money isn’t the whole point. We already know how to make money… this is beyond making money – it’s about providing real value in a corrupt industry. It’s about selling valuable products backed by REAL proof and produced by REAL people (not fictitious characters using the same “proof” we see for every other IM product). This project represents a lot of challenges for us, a lot of dedication, a lot of commitment. There are easier ways to make money than this (with less risk) so, if that was our main purpose, we’d have chosen them and not risk months building the project and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars without even knowing for certain that it’ll work.

You say “it’s ludicrous” that we want to bring internet marketing systems to people who need them most.

We really see it as priceless – value that we’ll add to the market. Anything people eventually buy from us will have been proven to work and there are people who need proven methods to make money online, to develop as Internet marketers. Unfortunately, they all end up spending a lot of money and buying products from marketers who, most of the time, only care about a quick buck and not educating people properly.

I can understand your initial skepticism because you didn’t know who was behind this project. It’s clear that when you wrote the post, you thought this was just some weird project; but it’s not. We’re professional marketers and if we say we aim to bring value to everyone involved, it’s because we mean it.

About the R.E.A. Program:

“And there’s the rest of the plan unveiled.

Let me translate.

“If you promote our contest enough, we will promote you.”

What we have here is a traditional “If you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours” scenario.

This is totally incorrect – this is what the R.E.A. program actually is:

The R.E.A. program is nothing but pure value for the finalists. You can read more about it here. We’ll help them get well connected in the industry, reinforce their knowledge and make sure they have a successful career. What do we earn from that? Nothing. It’s simply a case of helping them and helping the IM community identify trustworthy sources of information over and above the sea of scammers.

We’re helping them achieve what we believe in: transparency and credibility. After finishing as a top-20 ranked finalist, we want to help them further by getting their names out there – making sure people know who they are, how credible they are… and all so that they can leverage it and apply it to their own personal careers as IMers to distinguish themselves from those marketers who don’t do things professionally.

So, we invite them to appear on our radio show… get them to contribute content to our newsletter, invite them to conferences we’ll be doing, etc. – all with the purpose of helping THEM further THEIR careers, gaining authority positioning and getting them introduced to key players in the market, network, etc.

It’s also very important to see how the competition rules are there to provide transparency and equality. In fact, they’re TOUGH rules. They aim to ensure that no-one has an unfair advantage over the others. What’s the point, for example, in allowing someone with a list of 200,000 subscribers to use that list in the competition? What value is there in allowing someone who can create a product in 2 days then get a few JV friends to mail out for them and make 20, 30 or 40K profit? The average person who’ll buy our products doesn’t have a list of 200,000 subscribers and doesn’t have those JV partners! Whatever competitors use in this competition must be what the average person has access to as well, and that’s what the rules are all about.

“Nothing to lose?”

Qualifying for everything we offer involves no risk – it relies on logic and rational commitment.

How about your time if you don’t win?

This is a competition and, as such, you must expend some effort and skill if you want to compete and finish in a good position. That applies to anything in life, I suppose.

For example, how about someone’s time spent on a project that doesn’t work later? They invested their time with an expectation of returns but, without trying, how do they know for sure? As the saying goes, the only sure things in life are “death and taxes” ☺

For competitors, this is a project like any other. Work hard, invest time and effort, be committed and you might be successful with us – that applies equally to any project they might undertake.

How about lost revenue that could have been earned developing your own business?

If a competitor wants to achieve a measure of greatness then they have to stop focusing on the small stuff and look at the bigger picture I think – the reality is that very, very few people are going to be earning even a fraction of what they could make with our help, so investing a few hours per day for 2 months is potentially a very good ROI for that time.

Let’s look, for example, at someone going to college to study IT rather than jumping straight into the job market. They’d have lost “revenue” during those college years. Is there any guarantee that they’ll get a prime IT position when they graduate or will they end up as just another college graduate looking for an IT job that pays enough to cover the bills?

I think that people actually do have a great chance of success with us – if you consider that only 100 entrants will be selected to compete, that gives every one of them a 20% chance of being a finalist – an extremely high possibility.

In fact, we don’t just have tough rules, we have a tough qualification process too so, if someone qualified, it means they know what they’re doing and have a good chance of success in the competition. If you have some time, access the competitors’ area to see what they go through before anything actually happens, and how professionally we’ve structured that process.

Bottom line, people who have a low chance of success won’t qualify to compete in the live competition phase so won’t have spent / wasted much time at all.

What about your leads that you are handing over to the creators of the contest?

Competitors aren’t handing any leads to us.

Entrants are there to compete, not promote. They’re building their business within our competition structure and it’s still their business, with their leads, once the competition ends. We’re here to help them develop their business securely, monitor that they do so within the boundaries of the IMWC’s rules, audit the results, etc – not to rip their new little business from their hands at the end of the competition. What’ll be sold later is the 2 months of video recordings (showing how they achieved what they did) plus a series of PDF manuals, blueprints, etc.

In other words, no-one’s handing us any leads at any point in time. If visitors to the IMWC website decide to opt in to our forthcoming newsletter then that’s another thing altogether.

“I can’t see big name marketers participating in this contest for a number of reasons I have already addressed.”

We actually don’t want them to participate because it’s key to the project.

We don’t want people who can leverage their huge success (mailing lists, JV partners, established sites with traffic) into winning – that’s the whole point of the competition and covered in the competition rules. No-one can have an unfair advantage over their peers but that’s exactly what would happen if we allowed big marketers to take part.

The objective of this project is for people buying our products to be able to actually implement what’s taught and make money. Can someone starting from scratch implement a strategy used by a “big” Internet Marketer with a huge mailing list that they used it in the competition? No ☺

A perfect example of that is the World Internet Summit – those “seminars” were publicized by promising to take a random member of the audience and show them how to make several thousand dollars “from scratch” within 2 days. Having picked their “lucky audience member”, that person got to sit on stage for the remainder of the seminar, watch the presenters show the audience a pre-prepared website with a 20,000 word sales page, was told that the 3 presenters were going to email their huge, existing lists that evening to offer video recordings of that seminar and, the following day, the lucky person was given a check for 50% of the online sales… a great marketing ploy but 110% NOT replicable by anyone in the audience!

Well, one thing will come out of it.

The creators can build a significant list which they can then use to make more money.

I can tell you that my partners and I have huge lists in very profitable and specialized niches. I, alone, could easily make 4 times more money by hitting them hard, 6-7-8-9 times per month (like most marketers do) but I’ve NEVER promoted something to my lists more than twice in one month – most of the time, only once – that’s the reason why I’m the top affiliate (always!) in any promo I take part in – this can easily be verified by Dush as 90% of our work is with CB.

Yes, we’ll build a big list from this project but certainly not to mail it with promos every other day. In fact, we’ll rarely promote any other products than the ones found in our own online store (products that stem from the competition).

Personally, my view of mailing lists is very different to that of many marketers. I believe in building a relationship with a list – providing it with real value (many times, value that others charge money for) so that I “earn my seat” in their inbox, so to speak.

As you know, the email was sent by mistake which is why there was no name in it. Daniel Katz (previously VP of an Internet company that was bought by McCann Erickson a few months ago) who we hired to manage the project and a full team under him will soon be on the website. We planned to do that much sooner but the schedule of work over the past few months just didn’t allow us the luxury.

The About Us section, actually titled “Meet The Team” is being finalized right now but was already being developed before you mentioned it on your blog.

At the end of the day, we want people to know us and judge us for who we are and what we’re really doing. A lot of effort has been put into the project and we just want a fair chance to make it work ☺