Bring the Fresh – Case Study Part 1

It’s been a while since I’ve been persuaded to hand my hard earned cash over for an IM training course, but after seeing some “number 1 spot, in a week, for a 12,000 a month search term” results I decided it was time to hand over the $97 and put the Bring the Fresh programme to the test myself.

If you haven’t heard of Bring the Fresh it’s the latest offering from Mike Long and Kelly Felix that promises to teach you how to get the much sought after hot spot on Google with SEO and a WordPress blog. There is an affiliate focus with either Clickbank or Amazon products being promoted. There are two levels to the programme; the $97 offer gets you access to the Core videos, and then there is also an advanced $67 a fortnight for six months option. I’m starting out with the core membership, if I make money then I’ll consider investing in the advanced programme.

First impressions of Bring the Fresh

The first thing I noticed when I logged into the member’s area was that both Mike and Kelly have published their cell phone numbers so that you can call them up. There is also a Yahoo Group where you can talk to the other members and a freephone line where you can call and leave messages about your successes. They also have an email address – and the email I sent this morning with a quick question was responded to promptly.

Good first impressions.

The Fast Start Guide

The first thing I did was print off the Fast Start Guide and have a read through (I prefer to read than watch videos). I was a little lost at first because Kelly uses some Football analogies to explain the theories for the course – being an English girl American football analogies are lost on me I think I get what he’s trying to say though. The guide talks about their backgrounds and experience and then also has a chapter on the reasons shy people purchase products and how we can use that knowledge to help us choose a product to target and then market it.

Half way through the guide the “practical stuff” comes out and Kelly walks us through choosing keywords using Market Samurai, setting up a WordPress blog, the settings that are required to meet the SEO requirements and then how to write the blog posts. There are then a number of traffic generation techniques covered – all of them are for “free traffic” but some involve paid services. There are four “must haves” and then another three “optionals”.

The Videos

I then moved onto the videos – there are a couple about market research (with some neat tricks for niche/product selection which I hadn’t come across before), a video that walks you through the site set up step by step (as per the Fast Start Guide) and then a couple about copywriting.

I’m not really a fan of videos as I prefer to read and learn at my own pace, but the walk through video would be perfect for newbies. The boys’ philosophy seems to be that you learn by watching their thought processes so there is a lot of thinking as well as “taking action” on the videos.

There are another 13 videos in the member’s area which look like interviews and then the guys talking about their past achievements. I’ll have to start on those tomorrow.

Taking Action

Keyword research is a nightmare for me. I think that I have a “perfect product” and then it turns out that there is way too much competition for the keywords I followed Kelly’s advise to the letter when selecting keywords in Market Samurai and after a good 5 hours I have a list of about 7 strong keywords, though a few of them are for the same product. Given the absolute duck I had promoting Clickbank products for SAC I have decided to focus on Amazon for this case study.

I’ve decided to pursue 2 keywords for now, interestingly one of them I wouldn’t have touched with a barge-pole based on the usual way I use MS but I am following the instructions to the letter so I took a punt and snapped up a dotnet domain for £6.

I then spent a couple of hours adding the domains to Host Gator, setting up the WordPress site for the first domain as per the instructions and also setting the traffic building in motion.

I am only using 2 of the 4 recommended traffic techniques and here’s why. Three of the techniques involve paid services, one of them I have switched out for a similar service that I already have a subscription for, another has a free trial available but I’ve been a member before so I just reinstated the membership and handed over the $47, the third service is $198 and out of my budget for now so I’ve skipped it, the fourth is free but is a Windows software and I’m on a Mac

I’m going to leave this site for a couple of weeks and see what happens, if needs be I might try some of the optional techniques too if my site needs a kick up the rankings.

I’m promoting Easy Set Pools – perfect for the summer

What’s Next?

I need to build the other site and kick off the traffic and then I need to wait and see what happens. I’ll be sure to keep you informed!