Immediate Edge

I’ve mentioned Immediate Edge a few times more than a few times in my posts, but never really explained much about it and why I think it’s so good. If you found this page from the Thirty Day Challenge you need little introduction to Dan Raine and Ed Dale, but you may still wonder why it’s worth paying nearly $100 a month when you get so much for free in the Thirty Day Challenge.

The Immediate Edge is a membership site that teaches internet marketing and aimed at those who have moved beyond the basics and want to really get ahead. In that respect it follows on directly from the Thirty Day Challenge (I think I’ll just write 30DC from now on) and is ideal if you have made some sales online but want to be able to give up your job and live of internet marketing. Yes, it is possible, that’s almost what I did – I quit before I had decided what my next career move was when I moved to Barcelona in 2001 and then started internet marketing.

Ed Dale is well known in internet marketing circles – first he sold his websites for around $5 million, then he got together with Frank Kern and formed Ultra Underachievers to teach internet marketing. He and Frank ran the 30DC for the first 2 years until Ultra Underachievers was disbanded. As well as being affiliated with all the top internet gurus you can imagine, Ed has a course on buying and selling websites (Dominiche), plays the guitar and is the guru of gurus when it comes to using video and social networking for internet marketing.

Dan Raine first came to my attention with the 15k challenge. The result of a drunken bet was that he had to make $15k in a month with capital of just $150; if he didn’t make it he’d have to wear a pink thong. The short story is that he lost – by some $500!

Still, you can relive the moment where he wore the pink thong (if you can bear it), below. BTW that’s Ed presenting.

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Anyway, these guys know what they’re talking about. Not only do they know what they’re talking about, if you follow their advice you’ll be 12 months ahead of the herd – other internet gurus are teaching what was on Immediate Edge in 2007 now!

Time and time again, Immediate Edge has been ahead of the crowd

OK, it’s time to give you some concrete examples:

  • When I first came across Ed in May 2007 he was already talking about the value of Twitter. Most other internet marketing gurus are only getting it at the moment – May 2008!
  • Other marketing gurus couldn’t see any value in Facebook and are only starting to get it now. The Immediate Edge video course on Facebook dates from 2007.
  • One of the cornerstones of Immediate Edge (and 30DC for that matter) is testing niches on Web 2.0 sites. Other internet marketers are only realising the value of this approach in 2008.

Ed and Dan keep telling us that Immediate Edge is where you’ll find what the internet marketing gurus will be teaching next year – and it’s true.

Why’s that important? Well, by giving yourself a year’s start over the other 99 percent of internet marketers you have the chance to practice the techniques taught inside Immediate Edge before the competition really gets up to speed. And when they do… you’ll still be able to out-market them as you’ll already have experience. As Ed Dale says – it’s like taking a gun to a knife fight.

OK, that’s enough of what I like, it’s not all good:

  • Some of the teaching is project based, can be much too infrequent for my liking… and sometimes just fizzles out.
  • Sometimes the projects don’t flow – we’ll be told the game plan, but by the next update it will apparently have been changed.
  • There is no forum to get a quick answer to questions – the Q&A sessions can be very irregular, but to be fair they sometimes last 3 hours.
  • There is no hand holding inside – when you first arrive it is daunting, but you simply need to focus yourself and look at the wealth of information available AND apply it to your niches.

I can live with those issues I have, so no problem.

Other reasons for joining are that anything they tell you to do has been thoroughly tested; they run hundreds – if not thousands – of tests in their labs to find out what works and what doesn’t. Put the head of the Immediate Edge labs – Rob Somerville – and Dan Raine together and the results can be spectacular. Just look at the Gtrends technique that was from a session with them together and they recently got together at Beechworth in Australia to fine tune a brand new keyword strategy involving one of the latest buzzwords – latent semantic indexing, or LSI.

Once again this is months ahead of the pack and at the moment you can only find this strategy inside the Immediate Edge.

What else do you get for your money?

Isn’t that enough? It should be, but there is more:

  • The Edge Networker takes care of that boring social bookmarking for you. All you have to do is enter the details once and it gets automatically submitted over a period of time so as not to get flagged as spam.
  • Free software to add squeeze pages with massive opt in rates.
  • How to use video on your webpages to add value to your content.
  • An irregular newsletter packed with info, tips and strategies – often running to 20 pages.
  • Q&A sessions with Ed and Dan
  • Updates on strategies as the game changes
  • A complete course on writing copy.
  • Audio interviews with the top internet marketing gurus.

Anyway to sum up, if you’re new to internet marketing then you won’t be doing yourself any favours by joining Immediate Edge – go and take a look at the Thirty Day Challenge first and when you’re ready you can take another look at Immediate Edge.

If you know the basics and want to move up to the next step, or if you’re an experienced internet marketer who wants to remain ahead of the other 99% then I definitely recommend that you join the Immediate Edge.