The IM Advantage - An Extra Edge For Smart Affiliate Marketers

If you have been doing internet marketing for any sort of time, then you've probably heard of Steve Clayton and Tim Godfrey.  Unlike other "gurus", these two are standup guys who make quality products that people actually use and like.  Some of their previous products include the Commission Blueprint series and the Niche Blueprint series which were each highly successful in their own right.  In this hub, I want to talk about their lesser known membership site called The IM Advantage.  Although it's been around for more than a year, it's just now being revealed to the rest of the internet marketing world.  It's full of some great tools, training and resources that will really give your marketing efforts an edge.  So in this IM Advantage review, I'm going to share with you what it is all about.

When you join The IM Advantage, you'll be able to access everything from the site itself.  When you first login, you will be presented with a welcome page that updates you with the latest updates to the site.  Every month, some new great content gets added.  For this month (March 2010), there's a really cool video on making a killing with Facebook and Youtube PPC.  If you've ever seen some of the videos that Steve does, you know that this is invaluable stuff.  Plus everything is up to date, so you're not trying out some method that got saturated months ago.

The first section on The IM Advantage site is the resource page. Currently there are 4 things here:

• Opportunity Database - High Volume/Low Competition keywords
• Cheap Clicks and High Volume Keywords
• Backlink Database
• Adsense Keyword Database

The Opportunity Database is really cool. Basically it has the top 5000 keywords that get at least 1000 searches per day and have less than 50k competing pages. These are niches you can enter right away, and make money fairly easily using the strategies outlined in the training. For people having trouble trying to decide what markets to target, this database is a wealth of awesome information.

The Backlink Database is also a great resource as well. To get your sites ranked on high in the search engines, you need to build links. This Backlink Database contains a huge list of high PR sites that give you do follow links. Plus Steve, Tim and their team have made sure that each of these sites will actually approve your links. What's the use of creating backlinks if they never get accepted? Each month, the team adds about 200 new domains to the backlink database, and as of March 2010, there are 2134 different sites listed. What's also cool, is that all the bad sites are weeded out each month as well, so you're never left with stale info.

These affiliate marketing tools that you get as part of your membership are simply amazing. They are my favorite part of the The IM Advantage and some of them I use every day. If you are already a Commission Blueprint or Niche Blueprint member, you may recognize some of these tools already. However, there's one tool exclusive to The IM Advantage that will really blow you away. Here's a list of some of the tools you get as part of IMA.

• Blog Blueprint - Automatic Links to High PR Blogs
• Link Blueprint
• Authority Hub Finder
• Keyword Blueprint
• Offer Evaluator
• Article Blueprint - Automated backlink building
• Ad Optimizer - PPC ad split testing made EASY
• Peel Away ad software - very cool little tool!
• FREE Hosting
• Hippojaw - Track your PPC campaigns!

Blog Blueprint is currently one of my favorite tools that I use daily to build links. Basically it allows you to write short articles with a link to one of The IM Advantage's network of blogs. These aren't just random low level blogs though. Each of the blogs on the network is a PR2 to PR5 site. When you login to Blog Blueprint, you are presented with a simple interface. The main screen shows all the articles you have posted so far. You can then choose to post a new article in the system. Unlike other systems, you don't need to post full length articles. The minimum post length is a 100 words, which is quite easy to reach. Each article can only include one link, but since you can churn these mini articles very easily, you can build up backlinks very quickly. If you do things properly, it's one of the best ways to get high ranked and highly relevant backlinks. All the articles are manually approved, so these blogs don't get filled with junk. As an added bonus, since these are highly ranked sites, your links get indexed by Google fast. A similar service like Linkvana will cost you $147/month.

The free hosting offer is pretty nice. You get hosting at Floathosting.com and it's about $150 a year value. If you ever decide to leave The IM Advantage, it turns into a $14.99 a month plan. They also give you a 30 day grace period to sign up with another host if you wish. Even if you already have your own hosting, it's nice to be able to host some of your domains on a different IP address. This is quite valuable if you do any linking between your own properties.

As an IM Advantage member, you'll also get access to some of Steve and Tim's older courses.  Sure some of the info is not up to date anymore, but there's still a ton of valuable to learn from them.  Here's the list you'll get access to:

• Mining Money Online - The best course for total beginners
• SEM Business Blueprint - A ready made, business in a box!
• Automated Traffic Blueprints - Free access to this $47 Ben Shaffer course
• Project Archimedes - Free access to this $97 Ben Shaffer course
• The original and complete Commission Blueprint course
  

Like I mentioned, new training is added each month to The IM Advantage site. The training is high quality and I guarantee you'll learn a ton from it. Here are some of the topics they've covered so far.

• Money Makers
• SEO
• Social Networking
• Buying and Selling Websites
• Email Marketing
• Article marketing
• Building your own products
• Copywriting
• Pay Per Click
• Landing Page Design
• CPA Marketing

The IM Advantage is not cheap, at $147 a month, but as you can see, the value you're getting from it is amazing. Just the Blog Blueprint tool itself is worth the price of admission IMO. As someone who has a ton of sites to promote, the tools provided by The IM Advantage are really effective and do the job very well. There's no way I could handle this work by myself, and outsourcing would cost way more per month. If you're still on the fence after reading this IM Advantage Review, at least take a look at the video that Steve put together that explains how everything works. I think you'll be impressed by it.