INTRODUCTION

This is a brand new launch (11 Nov 2015) of a list building program that had a lot of success for the developer the first time it was released. I do not know the differences between the two versions, so I am going on the word of the creator Jimmy Kim who says this is a revamped totally different product.

Here is what I can say to now, having no review copy access…Based on what I have discovered, I have to “award”  it a decided tepid “ok, but” verdict for my readers. It is not a scam, but has remarkable similarities to MLM programs I have been in before, many of which ARE scams…

You as a reader are interested in whether this program can help you and whether you will have any success with it. Well that is exactly what I will give you my opinion on…

Please see below…

SOFTWARE NAME:

Build My List (Developer Jimmy Kim)

PRICING:  

Front End Offer =    $48.00
One Time Offer 1 = $97.00
One Time Offer 2 = $97.00

MY RATING:

Of Some Value  – 6/10 Score

WHY THIS RATING? SEE MORE BELOW…

I wanted to be fair and honest for viewers that stop by here when looking for straight and honest reviews of products, services, or tools that they may be considering to purchase and use in their own online marketing businesses.

Without access to the product itself, I had to hunt what the product actually provided, I signed up as an affiliate intending to offer the product to my subscribers, because let’s face it, without traffic and a list all the herculean efforts you make on your content, video or other marketing efforts, you are not going to make money.

So in my mind there is a need for such programs that the new marketer can use to help in that process. There is a plethora of such offers out there, and the price to participate in them ranges from almost free (to start) to many hundreds or even thousands of dollars for the unwary…

But, how effective are these programs, and are they intended to provide value to you as a client or are they intended to suck more money out of you over time, and get you to focus on selling to others what you bought, trying to get your money back? What is their focus? Are they working for you or for their own pocketbooks?

These are questions we all need to ask ourselves when looking at any such offers that we are bombarded with daily in our inboxes. Just as you signed up to get that offer, you want others to subscribe to your list, because then you can send such emails and make money too…

This is why I was attracted to the Build My List program, and I am sure that is why you are here now reading this..The thing is, is the program worth the money? Will I learn something, and if I buy the upgrades, will I get a return on investment (ROI)? These are more questions you should have…

Let’s dig in then and see what we have here…

General Program Description

There are three level of the program, the front end offer, the pro upgrade and the Elite level (So there are two “One Time Offers” or Upsells). As stated above the entry level provides fewer benefits than the other levels. Let’s quickly go over each…

Front End Offer – Entry Level ($48.00 USD)

There are five training modules, all in a video format, plus an intro video in this package.

They include (in addition to the intro video) training on:

  • Traffic (Free and Paid)
  • “Business Wizard” training
  • Offers Section
  • Send Lane AutoResponder
  • List building
  • Additionally you get…
  • Three free months of Send Lane Auto Responder service, a tool to create landing pages (point and click)
  • Daily “power calls” with Jimmy Kim (I assume)
  • Giveaway eBook called “Build My List” that you can use to attract prospects to sign up to your list
  • In the traffic training, you learn about Clickonomy, FB Ads, Free Traffic, Reddit, and a private FB group for fellow Build My List members…

OTO #1 – Build My List Pro Level ($97.00 USD)

You get everything mentioned above plus the following:

  • 30+ Done For You Funnels
  • 30 Templates Used by Jimmy
  • Headline Creator Software
  • Additional Training
  • 100% Commission on your sales of Build My List program to clients

OTO#2 – Build My List Elite ($97.00 USD)

Here is what you get with this level, in addition to what you get in the basic offer and Pro upsell:

  • Priority Support
  • 10 Weekly Coaching Sessions
  • Business review of your website by Jimmy
  • Paid Traffic discounts through a couple of paid traffic sources
  • Lifetime access to “Urgency Timer” tool
  • VIP Support Desk

My Evaluation of What You Get With This Program…

In looking at the basic package, it appears that you get some basic training in the subjects mentioned, and some pep calls on a regular basis from a real live person, and 3 months of access to an Auto Responder service I am just hearing of (may be new?).

You also get a giveaway product (how convenient – the giveaway is an eBook promoting Build My List), and guidance on how to set things up. It does not appear that you get any access to a domain, a web hosting service, a web site building tool, or a landing page tool with the front end package.

I have not heard of nor used the auto responder provided, but if it is similar to the others out there, there likely is the capability to create landing and squeeze pages, which normally is available at an additional monthly charge to the basic service (which for three months is free). It is not clear which is the case with the program.

That MAY be an additional charge you will have, as you will have for obtaining a domain, a hosting service, a WordPress theme for your website, etc. So be ready to spend more money likely in addition to the price paid for the program…

So you get the concepts on how to do things, but not all the tools you will need to do it. Even with the upgrades some of the above items are not mentioned as being included. If you are new and do not know how to use WordPress nor how to build a website and optimize it (SEO) for search engines, you can forget getting organic (free) traffic.

The 30+ landing pages and the ones used by Jimmy are, my guess, related to the pushing sales of the Build My List  program  to other new marketers that are looking for some clear guidance on how to get started, a plan or framework that will lead to success…

If you use these provided landing pages and autoresponder only to drive traffic to the Build My List sales sites the best way would be to use PPC (Pay Per Click) through Google, FB, or Twitter.

I am not sure how much the training is provided on such paid marketing strategies, but unless you know what you are doing, you can waste a LOT of money trying to sell stuff using paid ads of any sort.

Is This Legitimate?

Let’s talk about the commissions first. Most commission programs are set up to benefit both sides of the transaction, the creator/developer and the receiver.  Often the afiliate marketer will get 50% of commissions from a sale, a good amount.

The normal process for this is that an affiliate marketer requests and gets approved to sell the program and using his lead list, does so. Both sides win in this situation. I signed up myself and was willing to work under these conditions.

But what if you want to hedge your bets as a developer and “weight the roulette spinning wheel” so to speak in your direction? How could a developer do this? Let’s say I am getting a 50% commission to sell his upgrade. For every one I sell, he makes half…

That buyer from me, in turn,  can learn how ro set up a landing page and autoresponder, pay to get traffic, and sell the same program on to others, and if they then buy the OTOs , my buyer will realize 100% of sales (It is not clear if the buyer keeos 100 % of all offers or only the upsells). That is quite attractive and it sounds like you could make thousands.

That buyer pays for that privelege upfront though by paying  the cost of the upgrade(s). If he is new, likely he will seriously consider the second upgrade at an additional $98 too.

If he does not take action after spending that money, or he has limited or no success selling the program to others he will have lost that money. There will be a percentage that will buy both upgrades, no doubt.

Also there will be an even higher percentage that will never sell one item of this product after spending their money! This is an unfortunate reality. Unless new marketers get a complete path to developing their online marketing program, they grow frustrated and quit, having spent money instead of making it!

The developer, on the other hand, realizes up front $24, $73 or $121, AFTER paying me the same from a $242 total sale (remember I get a 50% commission) depending on what my buyers selects. This money is already in his pocket, and mine! That is good, but perhaps short sighted. That could be a buyer that will be lost forever if they continue to experience frustration and quit the business.

Not only that, what this program teaches, in large part, with the provided program, is very single faceted. The focus is to have the buyers go out and sell more of his product (at least with the upsell this is true, not necessarily with the front end offer), not to learn the business in detail.

So why does this selling strategy work for the developer and why would they use it?

By appealing to a need or a frustration a new marketer is experiencing,  a developer can, under the guise of helping people learn how to build a list, sell such a program to them.

Then he can have those buyers promote it on their sites, using their own domain and hosting (with no costs), and get more exposure through the sites. But the buyer still does not have access to a complete system of online marketing, so may not have the success that was promised….More frustration…

Bottom line is the developer makes money tapping into this frustration! He offers a plausible solution for this…

To make it seem sweeter for the front end to the the buyer, that upgrade at a $98 USD price tag allows them to keep 100% of any sales for themselves – sounds mighty attractive!

This concept sounds good, until you realize that with other affiliate programs you pay nothing to have the privelege of selling their program to your lead list. To be fair, you will incur expenses such as a site, domain, and etc.

So this developer strategy works bottom line and the developer makes his money tapping into this frustration! He offers a plausible solution for this…and sells…

Let The Buyer Beware

With many such programs, the concept seems so easy and workable, and it addresses the need for solutions for the prospect. Once the prospect becomes a buyer, after a period frusration rears its head once again…Why no sales????

Not only that market saturation becomes an issue very quickly in such a scenario, over time there are many people selling the same thing you are. You are all chasing the same sets of buyers (you hope they are buyers – if you are not targeting paid ads, you are throwing money away). Let’s not forget you don’t even have a list to sell to!

The attraction you are providing to the prospective subscriber/list member is the Build My List eBook. Basically you are enticing them to buy into what you have bought into and are seeking to make your money back on, and if that buyer buys, he is doing the same, and so on. All the while though this is a partial picture of what online marketing consists of and does not address all the steps needed to have a viable progam!

So let’s go back to the eBook…If this giveaway (promise of assistance in getting a lead list) does not entice them (remember they will have seen the same offer many times) you have little chance of getting them to subscribe.

I have not seen the ebook nor the landing pages, but there are a thousand similar programs out there, so they would have to be very attractive…More likely is that the viewer tunes out the offer or once he clicks on it, quickly sees what the program is and clicks elsewhere…Lost forever to you, unsuspecting seeker of a list!

CONCLUSION

I could go on and on, but basically I believe this program does have some value for the prospective buyer out there if they are new to the market and want to get some training on how to get started in the business.

They should be aware however, that this is not a comprehensive program that will teach you all the ins and outs of online marketing, and you will have many questions that likely will not be able to be answered in a daily call.

Things like how do I get a domain, what WP theme should I use, what about SEO, how do I select a niche, what about social marketing and PPC, and and and….You get my point…Frustration, disappointment, feelings of failure, and lastly anger may set in…

VERDICT

So at the end of the day I cannot say that Build My List is a scam. It is not. However, the value provided for the money spent likely could be better spent on another comprehensive program that gets you started properly on the path to a viable online marketing program.

I have a review of such a site/program here

===> WEALTHY AFFILIATE REVIEW <===

Without going into too much detail, let me show you a head to head comparision of the two. You can easily see why I say that although it is not a scam, there are better alternatives available to you, and with NO money laid out up front! Click the button below to see what I am talking about here. Good luck to everyone and have a great day!

 

 

 

 

 

13 thoughts on “Review – Build My List 2.0

  1. Hey David,
    Great review of Build My List, I love your writing style! Very easy to read and honest too. I’m curious though, it seems to me that BML only gives you the usual landing page and autoresponder to help with conversions. How exactly do they help us build a list? We need to find our own traffic don’t we? If it comes to that, I think Wealthy Affiliate is a much better choice

    1. Hi Riaz,

      Yes you are exactly right! If you look through the training they provide, it is rather thin on how to build traffic. They instead focus on paying for traffic (note the discount for some paid advert sites). Theirs is a very basic teaching program that leaves out so many essentials to have real success with online marketing.

      We both know bases on what we learned at Wealthy Affiliate that unless you know what you are doing, you will have little chance of getting a return on investment for PPC. Add all the things together and overall I think these sort of programs do a disservice to the reputation of online marketing. It is no wonder that many people look at the market as a scammer paradise.

      I see this same phenomenom in the offline business world. They throw money at Google and FaceBook without targeting their potential customer base, and they get very little in return for those dollars! This program does have some value, as I said, but for the money spent, the prospective buyer can get a better deal elsewhere. Wealth Affiliate is likely the best, but there are other programs that would be better too I thnk.

      As you can see, I absolutely agree with your assessment that Wealthy Affiliate is a better deal.

      Thanks for the compliments by the way, stop by again please. Oh yes sign up for my CLICKS magazine, the first one that is going live today! Read more about it here: http://davesweney.com/clicks-magazine-free and subscribe to my page, it will be delivered to your inbox!

      Cheers

      Dave

  2. David,

    I must admit at the beginning of the article it sounded like a to good to be true offer. But thanks for breaking it down even further to the benefits for newbies versus a seasoned vet of MLM. But agree the money might be better spent on training material that will give you more detail.

    1. Hey M8!

      Thanks for stopping by. If the new marketers get this program they will feel spome sense of accomplishment initially likely. They will see that they have a landing page and an auto responder set up, and they will feel ready to conquer the world.

      Imagine how they will feel 6 weeks later when they have made no sales, they see a few others making some and talking of it on the FB group site, and they will be ready to quit, ready to say that online marketing is a sham…

      I hope that some of these people see this review and instead of spending their money on such a program, which is not a scam, rather is liimted in scope, they give Wealthy Afiliate a whirl and see what it can do for them!

      Cheers!

      Dave

  3. The way it is explained by you is really great. Reading through your side gives me the idea that WA is the best one or at least one of the better ones.
    But I do have also an issue of getting traffic and still not sure how to increase on that front.
    Any feedback would be great or is it only content content like Kyle is saying, because after a while I am also not sure what to write about.

    Thanks

    1. Hi Cees,

      Thanks for your comments, I am glad you were able to understand my take on this program. Wealthy Affiliate is definitely the best site I have found so far for learning how to properly set up your affiliate marketing business. As you say, the internet is big, so there may be others, I just have not seen any lol…

      Getting traffic is aleays an issue I think, because this is the conduit to getting conversions, sales and commissions. I have seen hundreds of sites and eBooks and programs that all claim to have the secret to traffic. I have been disappointed hundreds of times too hehe…

      Everyone has psychological triggers that cause them to take action of one sort or another. Sometimes it is a action for good, sometimes not. Here we would like to have the readers subscribe to our mailing lists, because using that medium we can then start a communication eschange with them, gaining their trust and confidence, and when we offer something that is of valiue to them, they will act and buy…

      I am just finishing a post on a new web based app called Commission Gorilla. This is such an app that plays into the psycho thing I mentioned. People like to get something free. They of course want that “free” to have value so they feel they got a deal.

      This app does just that by providing bonuses to landing pages you send them to and that you can expand on in your emails. This is later in the lead list process, but to het them initially on your list it is similar…Give them something of value in return for their name and email.

      There are so many ways to do this nowadays. I just reviewed a new app that pops up a video, then a preset chat site opens and takes the viewer through a series of questions that when answered provide a mass of information compared to the opt-in landing page of name and mail…

      In any case, to get new leads/list members, I would try to get together something of value and post it as a giveaway in return for the registering with you. Here is a trick I am using: I have started to distribute a monthly online and offline marketing magazine called CLICKS to my subscribers anf clients only.

      This magazine is chock full of articles, tips, tools and timesaving tricks that business owners can take action on to improve their operations. Immediate impact possible! If you want to read more, check out my write up here: http://davesweney.com/clicks-magazine-free

      Please stop by and have a look at the coming write up of Commission Gorilla, which will be found on http://davesweney.com/5- ways-commission-gorilla-helps-you-go-bananas…There is a lot of other information on how to nurture the list members you have and handle now subscribers…

      Other ways to get traffic include using Twitter, FaceBook, Google+, and LinkedIn in conjuction with your site to get views on your site and subscribers. You could explore using paid ads, but I would really get to know how to go about that prior to spending a lot of money.

      One quick way to get leads fast is to prepare a digital product, and sell it through an affiliate sales site like JVZoo, ClickBank, Jaaxa, FlexOffer, or other. You can offer a good affiliate program where affiliates will realize better than average returns on commissions for them offering your product to their lead lists. When something sells, you have the best list ever…One that is full of buyers!

      Just a few ideas, come back for more, and sign up for my CLICKS magazine when you have a chance!

      Cheers!

      Dave

  4. I looked at your review and thanks, I did not buy the program. I had heard about the product and read some other reviews that were obviously promoting the product so the writer could collect a commission. Only positive positive positive.Your is much more objective.It is refreshing to see someone be real with a review! Keep it up!

  5. Good review on Build My List. I tried that product and was also not satisfied. I got a refund, but I wish I had seen this review prior to getting it i the first place. Spot on review!

  6. Good review. I wish I had seen it earlier, I wasted money on theis. I will look here next time I am considering buying a product, I like that you are objhective in your review.

    1. Ho Odette, Thanks for the positive comment and I appreciate that you will stop by again. I always try to be objective when I review a product….Note that most of the ones I do review are ones I use myself….The scam and negative reviews are minimal, because thete are a lot of other sites that focus on these…I am more interested in getting the ones that will help all of us with our online marketing programs…Cheers! Dave

  7. I have heard about many online business owners experiencing massive success from building lists of newsletter subscribers because they can “create money on demand”, as they prefer to call it.

    Build My List sounds like an OK program to make some money online with. But I don’t like the fact that I will have to invest in to additional tools and there are also membership “upsells.” But having said that, the programs doesn’t seem too bad when it comes to the cost.

    However, Wealthy Affiliate seems like a far greater choice for building a biz on the internet.

    Neil

    1. Yes, Neil, you are right I think. This program involves a person spending too much money for the payback in my mind. You can build organic traffic over time without spending a lot of money…Also, as you will learn in the Wealthy Affiliate training, PPC is a better way to spend money for clicks/views/sales. ,and have a better result as you fine tune your advert campaigns…Appreciate your feedback, and stop in anytime! Cheers Dave

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