ABOUT LEE MCINTYRE (AUTHOR OF THE UTILITY BENEFITS AUCTION)
Lee McIntyre is a teacher who has already successfully sold digital products online in the teaching niche. Although Lee has only been operating online since 2006, he is a real success, selling over 600 copies of his first internet marketing e-book, Auction Profits Unleashed, during pre-launch alone.
ABOUT THE AUCTION PROFITS
Auction Profits Unleashed explains how Lee McIntyre uses eBay to generate leads for digital products and squeezes every last drop of value from the site. Best of all, Lee explains how to automate the entire process. Topics covered include:
– Why is eBay an Internet Marketer’s Best Friend?
– Finding an online market to serve!
– Creating a ‘Premium’ Digital Product !!
– Creating a sales page for your product !!
– Get an eBay account and get feedback!
– Use eBay to generate leads!
– Preparing your autoresponder to follow up on leads!
– Choosing a delivery method for your digital product !!
– Further developing your marketing funnel !!
Lee begins the e-book by explaining what a typical day as a school teacher entails for him. This is usually a 7.30am turn. M. At 6 p. M. At school, plus one hour of marking, four times a week. He does it simply to explain that if someone like him can find time to make money online, other people can too.
After this, he goes on to explain “Why eBay is an internet marketer’s best friend.” As you probably already know, eBay is one of the top ten “most visited” websites on the Internet. Additionally, eBay visitors are savvy shoppers, although critics argue that these shoppers are tenacious and bargain hunters. What may surprise you is that Lee agrees with these critics, BUT he thinks that makes eBay an even more attractive place to market your products. He believes that this bargain hunter mentality can be used to improve his sales. Lee then sums up her thoughts with a story about her grandmother (and her bargain hunting tendencies) and how her grandmother can actually spend more money while trying to get a bargain. Overall, I liked this chapter and found it to be a very good response to critics who say the market for digital goods on eBay is dead. I particularly liked Lee’s example involving his grandmother and found it to be a good conclusion to the chapter.
In the next chapter, Lee goes on to discuss “Finding an Online Market to Serve.” It begins by stating that while you can make a lot of money on eBay selling your products, there is even more money to be made if you follow up on your customers and sell them a premium digital product. Following this, Lee continues to discuss how to research potential demand for a digital product, using the weight loss, credit repair, and classroom management niches (a niche that Lee has already been successful in). It then goes further and shows readers how to evaluate the potential of a digital product in a specific niche with multiple tools including; Overture, eBay, ClickBank and Google. This chapter contains good information. I found the section where Lee explains the difference between determining the demand in a market and the demand for a digital product in a market very revealing and helpful. However, I think Lee could have been a bit more concise in explaining his ideas in this chapter.
In the fourth chapter, Lee goes on to cover everyone’s favorite topic; ‘Creation of a premium digital product’. It begins by explaining the different types of digital products that you can potentially create, and then indicates which type of digital product is your favorite. Below, Lee covers the three basic options available to you if you want to create a digital product (which I unfortunately cannot list here). For each of the three options, Lee explains the pros, cons, and makes suggestions on how you would go about creating a digital product using that method. It also indicates how you think each option should be best used. With such a popular topic as creating digital products, there will always be other texts that cover the topic in more detail. However, in this chapter Lee has a good punch, providing some very helpful advice for those creating their first digital product and covers all the required bases. Overall, this chapter provides an excellent, concise, and informative summary of a potentially complicated topic.
After this, Lee goes on to cover “Setting up a sales page for your product.” When I read this chapter, it reminded me of many of my own experiences creating my first sales page. The first very valid point Lee makes in this chapter is NOT to do everything cheaply. Based on my own experiences, I really agree with what Lee says here because if you do everything cheaply, then you and your products look cheap. He then goes on to cover the actual wording of your sales letter. Lee provides readers with a basic ten-point template of what to include in a sales letter, and then provides some more general writing tips to readers. Then he finished the chapter with some tips on formatting his sales letter. Overall, I felt that this chapter was not as strong as the others within Auction Profits Unleashed. The ten point plan is a good template to follow when writing your sales letter, but a lot of the information is quite subjective and I didn’t learn anything meaningful after reading it.
In Chapter Six, this is “Getting an eBay Account and Getting Feedback.” This is a fairly short chapter and for anyone who has been using eBay for some time, it will contain little new information. Some basic tips for comment handling are included, but nothing I don’t know about.
After this, Lee goes on to describe how eBay can be used to generate leads. I cannot reveal the actual method he uses here because it would reveal all the secrets behind Lee’s e-book, and that is not what I intend to do with these reviews. However, I can reveal that it is a very valid method to generate leads and that I use myself. Overall, this is a really crucial chapter and contains some great information that I would recommend that everyone take action on. I lost count of how many times I’ve heard the phrase “The money is in the list,” but the frequency with which this phrase is used just goes to show that generating leads is key to online success.
Once you have your leads listed, you need to follow up with them and that is exactly what Auction Profits Unleashed covers in the next chapter. First, Lee covers the two autoresponder options available to you; a self-hosted solution or a third-party solution. Explain which one is their favorite and why. He then goes on to finish the chapter by covering how he would approach follow-up communication with customers. Again, I found that Lee makes some good points in this chapter, but it is a very subjective subject on which everyone has their own opinion. Overall, this section acts as a good guide (which can be modified based on personal preference) for people looking to start their first mailing list and autoresponder series.
Following up on this, Lee goes on to discuss ‘Choosing a delivery method for your digital product’. I personally use My Digital Dispatch for my digital delivery, but Lee covers both E-Junkie and DLGuard in this chapter. As I have no experience with these two products, I cannot comment on how good they are. However, Lee goes into great detail explaining both systems and even includes screenshots. Although I have not used these two products, I know that when selling online it is important to automate as many tasks as possible, including product delivery. In this chapter, Lee explains how to automate product delivery in great detail, and overall it is a very useful chapter, containing great information, that can be easily followed and implemented.
In the final chapter, Lee discusses “Developing Your Marketing Funnel Further.” In this section, you suggest additional ideas for benefiting from the leads you’ve acquired from eBay. This section contains some useful tips that will allow you to generate additional income from your listing and is a good conclusion for Auction Profits Unleashed. The information in this chapter is not innovative, but it is practical and easy to implement.
In conclusion, Lee has done a very good job with Auction Profits Unleashed. If you are selling on eBay and using the site only as a sales platform, then you are missing out on a great deal of additional income. With Lee’s ideas, you can maintain your eBay sales while generating additional sales in the future. The writing style is very easy to follow and the use of screenshots to explain Lee’s ideas is also helpful. Best of all, once set up, most of Lee’s ideas run on autopilot. As an eBay seller, Auction Profits Unleashed comes highly recommended and I give it my own personal stamp of approval.
GOOD POINTS
– Detailed step-by-step instructions with screenshots really help. You can implement the information as you read.
– I really found myself relating to a lot of Lee’s examples, which allowed me to really connect with the information from Auction Profits Unleashed.
– The level of success that Lee has achieved in such a short time online shows how effective his ideas are.
– I was particularly impressed with the way Lee broke down the topic of creating his own digital product. It can be a difficult topic to cover, but Lee has made it really easy to understand.
BAD POINTS
– I feel like Lee could have been a bit more concise in covering certain topics.
– Some of the material covered (like writing a sales letter) is quite subjective. I got the impression that it was Lee’s own opinion and not what has actually been shown to work.
– I found the section on getting started on eBay and getting very basic feedback and didn’t learn anything new.
HOW I WON FROM THE AUCTION PROFITS
I already sell my own premium product on theebookcavern.co.uk, so I am already implementing many of the ideas that Lee covers. One thing I plan to act on is the information in Lee’s final chapter ‘Developing Your Marketing Funnel Further’. I feel like it’s an area that I’m not making the most of right now.