Product: Internet Income University
Founders: Kevin and Darin Blue
Price: $30 one time payment for lifetime access, (or completion of 1 trial pay offer) + upsells!
Website: internetincomeuniversity.com
Rank: 20/100
Introduction to Internet Income University
Internet Income University, or simply IIU, is a training community that claims to teach you the basics of online marketing through the affiliate model. While the affiliate model is a great place for beginners to start, they encourage you to do so by promoting their products and services – which you are going to need to pay to promote.
The initial “no sales pitch” approach is quite luring and makes it seem legitimate and trustworthy at first glance. However upon joining you’ll find the program really isn’t much of a ‘university’ at all. It’s more a giant sales pitch that tries to take advantage of newbies and get them to buy a bunch of overpriced products and services they really don’t need to start out in affiliate marketing.
What training and tools are provided?
You’re encouraged to use their F.A.S.T. Income Plan:
1) Fast Website Setup – You‘ll be encouraged to pay for their overpriced web hosting plan at $20 per month if you want their “free” website.
2) Affiliate Income Streams – Encourage you to promote their endorsed products and services and you need to PAY to promote these.
3) Scalable Advertising – They want you to pay for their overpriced SEO services for as much as nearly $500 per month (totally unnecessary).
4) Training & Support – Does offer basic training and community.
Basic training including videos and PDF files are included with your membership. They offer web hosting but you need to pay $20 monthly, a keyword tool you’ll need to pay $97 for, as well as promoting their products for monthly or one time fees.
Want to join an entirely free program to learn online marketing, without the annoying upsells?
Who is IIU for?
They say it’s for beginners, but I wouldn’t recommend any beginner start with this program. I actually wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
What support is offered?
There’s a community of 4,000+ members but very few are active within the community, so you may have a hard time getting your questions answered.
Pricing
They say it’s free to start upon completion of a trail offer, but most of the offers are paid offers that if you ever cancel, you will lose your subscription to IIU.
If you chose this option, for example – you could access the IIU for a $1, 7 day trial of ‘ProtectMyID’. However in order to keep access to the IIU you’d need to keep your subscription with ProtectMyID.com … which is $15.95 per month.
The only entirely free offer I was able to find was with Swagbucks. You can opt to sign up and collect 450 Swagbucks, cash out for a $5 Amazon gift card and gain access. The thing is, not only do you need to be an entirely new Swagbucks user to select this option, it takes a lot of time and effort to gain 450 Swagbucks. Not very practical if you have no interest in doing Swagbucks activities.
Alternatively they offer a one time $30 fee for lifetime access if you don’t want to do a CPA offer.
+UPSELLS!
To get started with your “free” website, you’ll need to buy your domain and hosting from them. This will run you $20 per month.
Then you’re encouraged to earn through affiliate income streams… which they will encourage you do so by promoting their products and services. Not only that, but you have to actually pay to promote these. Let’s take a look at what they are:
- IIU’s hosting plan – $14.95 fee
- ‘Personal Development Plan’ – $177
- Keyword tool – $97 for access and promotion rights
- Weight loss program – $47 PER MONTH
- and now for “Scalable advertising” – meaning paying for their SEO packages
- … priced at $97, $296 or $497 PER MONTH!?
Now, granted you do not HAVE to buy these upsells, but they really go out of their way to push them in your face. It can be misleading for newbies who may not realize such things aren’t necessary for success.
Let’s say you bought their web hosting, keyword tool and wanted the rights to promote their hosting and weight loss product. Then you decided to throw in an SEO package since you have no idea how to SEO your new site.. that’d be nearly $300 for your first month with $164 in recurring monthly fees!!!
That would run you over $2,000 per year just on the low end of things…. This FAST plan is more designed to take your money – FAST!
Pros vs. Cons
Pros
- Basic training provided within their membership
Cons
- Not really entirely ‘free’ to join as they claim
- Too many upsells
- Encourage you to promote their products
- Some of their training is outdated for 2014, and you can find better training elsewhere around the internet for free
Final Verdict
I’m going to go ahead and recommend that you don’t join the IIU. While it may provide some basic training on internet marketing, it does so by offering a crap ton of unnecessary products and services to beginners who think they may need it to succeed. Not to mention, the training is outdated and the community is stagnent.
The affiliate marketing business model works great, but you shouldn’t have to pay for the privileges to promote anything. You can sign up for tons of affiliate programs for completely free, and be able to promote whatever you want. Heck, check out Amazon Associates… one of the largest and most successful affiliate networks and no fees to join or promote anything.
If you want to better option for learning without all the marketing BS and upsells, check out my #1 recommendation.
-Wendy
Owner, SurvivingAfterCollege.com
Leave a Reply