I've Tried That - We lose money so you don't have to!

I’ve Tried That reader Sabrina, whose blog, Sabrina’s Money Matters, is a great site for everything related to personal finance, suggested we take a look at Free Money Formula. I’m thinking, “You want me to opine about money? I’m the guy who went to purchase 4 brand new snow tires without idea one in my head as to how I would pay for them! I once paid over $400 in a month in bounced check charges. I’m the guy-” (These two little details are true. I was young and stupid. I’m older now.)

And at that moment, Sabrina sent me an instant message: “No, fool, I just want you to review the site.” She’s psychic, Sabrina. Watch what you think when you visit her. (Actually, you have to scrub your thoughts before you think of visiting her, which can be tricky. Anyway, I digress.)

If you take a look at the landing page for the link above, it looks in many ways like a pre-sell page. Free Money Formula promises to show you how to make lots of money from the internet using only free resources—a refreshing approach. It is indeed a presell page, but they’re not trying to sell you an ebook. They’re trying to get you to sign up for a free membership to Free Money Formula, which they say will soon convert to a paid subscription site. Since the domain was only registered on May 17 of this year, I can only assume they want a sizeable audience to test their materials with before they make it a paid site. Nothing wrong with that, in my view. It only makes sense to test something before you start charging or getting paid for it.

I signed up, fully expecting a sales pitch in my inbox or in the members area. I got a username and password, and what I saw pleasantly surprised me. No sales pitches, no adsense links, not even an affiliate link, just lots of good information. I take that back; there is one ad: for an international children’s charity. This is definitely not your customary internet marketing site.

The left navigation bar gives a broad view of the site’s content. Each link leads to a mini lesson on the topic or, as promised, to videos consisting of an in-browser slideshow and web demo. I watched the first video in the C.A.S.H. series, “Introduction to Internet Marketing,” which lasts about 15 minutes. The information was good, offering some basic insight into what internet marketing is and some of the tricks used by those pre-sell pages. Its only drawback is that the narrator speaks quickly in heavily accented English and is sometimes difficult to understand.

There are really two parts to this review: the part about the site and the information, and the part about the system the site promotes. I’ll have more to say about the system later, including some big red flags, but for now, the site and the information get a solid thumbs-up. In another thread, we and some commenters ruminated on what makes information valuable. Freemoneyformula.com is a good demo of the argument: it packages information conveniently and in a systematic way, making it easier to find, digest, and apply. I recommend you sign up and check it out for that reason alone. Again, I have some issues with the system the site promotes; I’ll discuss them in another post soon. But you can get some no-nonsense free education about internet marketing without signing on to their system.