InternetTycoon Review - Kenny Goodman, Scam or Legit? InternetTycoon.com

[Clinton]

InternetTycoon launched a new program. I thought it worth checking out so I headed on over and took a peek. My comments below. Would be great to get your feedback.

The program claims to offer a "Step-by-Step Process That Lets (sic) You Buy High Value Websites At Rock Bottom Prices". They'll also teach you, they claim, how to "'Flip' Those Sites To Hungry Buyers For Big Profits!"

This is where I started getting a bad feeling. But I was on the site so I clicked the play button. The site promises information and tools to assist, fair enough and, "most importantly, a vibrant and inspirational community..." Ah, a competitor forum! And it's vibrant already? Fantastic! The video does all the classic, text book sales routine. You know the drill - by inflating the opportunity and the obstacles you can make your help in removing those obstacles seem more valuable.

Unless you've been off the scene for a while you'd have noticed that All Internet Marketers Are Buying Up Websites and Domains like they are going out of fashion

I haven't been off the scene and, no, Kenny, I haven't noticed this.

Now is the time to start because there are so many undervalued goldmines out there

So many that you have more time talking this nonsense than buying those goldmines up?

I've known about Kenny Goodman from InternetTycoon for a while. I was quite surprised to see he has been joined by Justin Gilchrist (flipfilter on these boards) of Flipfilter.com. I hadn't previously associated Justin with that kind of MMO marketing. Kenny's refers to Justin elsewhere as "The King of Website Trading" and says, "there isn’t anyone on the planet who knows more about this Market than him." (I did listen to a bit of the interview and Justin, I must say, does come across as genuine and a lot more realistic while Kenny plays the BS expert. Apparently, the whole industry is lacking in "three pillars" e.g. "genuine information" ... and Kenny will provide them for you).

Both Justin and Kenny are the 'real deal' - people who have spent over a decade combined immersed in their field - buying, renovating, flipping and leasing 'Internet Real Estate'

I've probably spent more time doing this than both of them put together. And I don't hold down a day job in a B&M business to be on the safe side. Long before they even got into this market, I've been doing it full time. I don't see what they see. They're either some very smart visionaries, or I'm losing my touch. But, if they have so much experience, I'm surprised they aren't aware that

1) There is massive more competition in the market to buy sites. Literally thousands of new buyers have entered this space as a result of numerous previous such courses. It is difficult to overstate just how many new buyers there are hunting for good buys and that severely reduces opportunity
2) The number of worthwhile new properties coming up for sale - across all prices ranges - has increased, if it has, by a tiny miniscule number in comparison
3) Cold calling/emailing webmasters with feelers to see if they'll sell is becoming less and less effective as most of them have already been emailed numerous times by others with similar pitches
4) The same with other non-Flippa routes to independent contact
5) As for Flippa itself, it has seen a massive drop in volume. Flippa is facilitating less than 50% of the dollar value of sales they were doing last year. This is a big deal - you've got thousands more buyers chasing a pool of websites for sale that's less then 50% of what it was a year ago! Flipfilter is the stats man, I'm happy if he proves me wrong.

Or are they fully aware and misleading their readers just so they can sell some product?

The site ends with the classic low entry offer - $1 for a week and if you forget to cancel, they'll automatically bill you $99 for every subsequent month. It's a legitimate marketing tactic, I suppose, but I can't help feeling there's an element of exploitation with any business using this method as marketers know that some people will forget to cancel their recurring charge after the first $1 payment.

Some of the tools look like they could be useful - and it may be worth signing up to test them - but the claims, including that there are "millions of hidden gems out there" and that there's still plenty of opportunity to flip sites for a huge profit, claims similar to those made by the so called "Internet Investment Summit", make me a bit nauseous.

A forum like this, the premier forum for discussion on website buying and selling, stands to gain from increased interest in the subject so I should be supporting all these new products, right? But, unlike these marketers, I'm not interested in making a quick buck so I can call it like it is:

That ship has sailed, guys. Aren't you conning the gullible now?!

Reader, what's your take?

[mikeb]

A forthright opinion Clinton! - That in many places that would earn a defamation take down notice from the scheme sellers - but it is the debate that is needed.

For those who do not know him, Kenny earned his stripes in property then web lead generation sites (like cash for property) before becoming a king of domaining,, also being a pioneer of domain leasing and renovating dropped PR domains. If references matter, he is vouched for by Ed Dale, whose opinions I respect and who invited him to speak at a number of conferences , which gives some credibility. He is credited with for example with brokering the "biggest domain deal in europe" at one point, but I have no idea what the domain was in that case. And that is the problem. There is precious little tangible evidence of what he has ever actually done which is shrouded in a veil of secrecy so the jury is out on how successful he actually is.

Privacy is fine in my view until the day you want to start selling a system to copy what you do, at which point my view is you must put some of that history in the public domain to be credible.

The problem is there is a noticeable absence of supporting numbers for either of them presented as part of the sales letter, in terms of actual transaction volumes and profits either have done, which is a red flag to a buyer.

I know this may sound strange to some. But I have been trading websites for 2-3 years and I had not even heard of Justin till recently, so how does that make him the undisputed king of this turf?

I am a cynic like you. It is generally when a system for making money stops making money so well, that the owners of it start trying to make money selling the system which becomes more lucrative than following it.

So If I have an interest it is the same as yours: - the tools - something to take the effort out of finding sites to buy, which as justin remarks is a low success rate thing that needs perseverance, which sounds like a voice of experience to me, and importantly the harder the game becomes the more important that tools become.

But if I owned the tool would I want to sell it? No thanks! - I would use it and then sell the sites!

Jury is out. I am tempted to sign up for a dollar to try the tool.

[Kay]

Great posting, Mike. Thanks for the background. I hadn't heard of Kenny before, although I've 'met' Justin on here and like him.

I am tempted to sign up for a dollar to try the tool.

My feelings exactly, so that's what I did. Obviously I'm sceptical but I'm going into it with an open mind. Even if it doesn't make me rich I'm sure I'll learn some useful things in the process. Despite my experience in other areas of Internet business, I've never used Flippa, or been successful at flipping anything except pancakes. It'll be interesting to see if they can make a competent and successful website flipper out of a complete rookie like me.

[KenW3]

There is a 47-minute Internet Tycoon webinar available on YouTube, posted March 30th, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=Lc9F34yJQS8

[Andrew]

As for Flippa itself, it has seen a massive drop in volume. Flippa is facilitating less than 50% of the dollar value of sales they were doing last year

This assertion is not based on reality - I'm guessing the author is going with the "vibe" rather than evidence. As I've mentioned earlier, our about page at https://flippa.com/about states we hit almost $31M in sales during 2011 in bullet four. We're well on track to beat that this year.

I can appreciate that long-term website buyers feel there are more buyers out there to compete with now. However, artificially trying to give the impression of a depressed market to fix this is not an appropriate way to proceed.

[David S]

Kay, and anyone else who signs up and tries the tools, will you report your findings back here? I'd love to see a review of what you find.

[Clinton]

This assertion is not based on reality - I'm guessing the author is going with the "vibe" rather than evidence.

I've provided as evidence your various public statements on finances and I've explained my calculations. I may have made a mistake and you are free to deny the claims, but any such repudiation would help us more if you took up my invitation to explain where my calculation is wrong (or if some figure you disclosed previously is now considered an error). But do it in the other thread, please.

[flipfilter]

A forthright opinion Clinton! - That in many places that would earn a defamation take down notice from the scheme sellers - but it is the debate that is needed.

....

But if I owned the tool would I want to sell it? No thanks! - I would use it and then sell the sites!

I'm always open for debate, and personally expect nothing more (less?!) from Clinton.

It's a solid course with a $1 trial - no drip feeding, no previews, just a full week long $1 trial. I'm sure it wont be for everyone, but for those who see value, they'll stay and those who don't would have just got the most value they ever will from $1.

Mike - I own two tools that are around researching and buying sites. I use them myself but I doubt having even 48 hours in a day and tripling my budget would even make a dent on trying to buy and manage every good site for sale out there. There's no need to keep things secret - there's plenty to go around.

Deal Trojan is a new tool, still in beta and still needing more development but it's a functional way of finding and managing the process of buying sites directly from their owner. If that alone isn't worth the $99 in time savings then I'll quit now.

Clinton - you're a whole different issue all together - my amateur psychologist side thinks you have serious little man issues (that wasn't a jibe about your height btw - more a reference to your Napolean complex)

The $1 trial isn't about hoping people will forget to cancel - in fact, I'm seriously upset that you would be two faced enough to imply I'm trying to make a living by deceiving people having known me and my ethical stance on all this for the last couple years. For 70% of the time, you're actually a nice person and a relatively intelligent guy, so I really don't understand why you feel the need to attack anything which doesn't fit your personal idea of what's right - do you not have anything more productive or positive that you would rather do, like blogging or writing something to help newbies benefit from your experience?

I love this forum without a doubt; there's great people here and always good discussion, but in two years of being here it's unfortunate I can count the number of people on two hands that are still around and actively posting; I do however need to get toes involved when it comes to counting the number of good people that have bad things to say about you and your obsessive need to court controversy to keep the limelight at all costs.

There are many good people that should be in here giving the community the benefit of their knowledge, but are reluctant to, because sooner or later they'll be caught in petty *****ing, rather than discussing how to make money.

You seem hell bent on drawing me into your p!ssing contest, but I believe it's simple. Anyone that has doubts should read the stuff I've wrote either on my blog or the content I've created in Internet Tycoon. Likewise, look at my posts I've made here and see if they make sense. Personally, I care my ass off and put time into the things I write and I hope people reading it will see that.

This is my last post on this thread and I've said to you in a previous thread (which was another petty waste of your and my time), less b!tching and more working is the answer - this has been twenty minutes where there are several better things I could have done, so I'm off to follow my own advice.

Justin

[mikeb]

With respect Justin, the forced continuity business model has got a lot of bad press to the point of substantial FTC attention and scrutiny in the US as Clinton rightly states, for exactly the reasoning he used. So if you decide to use that business model, you open yourself up to exactly the observations he made: so less of the "ad hominem" attacks which have no place in critical reasoning, and attack the arguments not the man.

I notice you failed to take up the substantive points I made either, that for as long as you and Kenny are doing your own thing, then it is sensible to keep your trading data concealed. The day you sell yourself as an expert and successful , you must put that evidence in public domain that you actually are an expert and successful in the sales letter asking for money.

I have lost count of the "gurus" who have started to believe their own press about being experts, whilst having little substantive business behind them. I can think of at least two assumed to be "world class" experts who talked a good game on blogs and articles who went bankrupt in the last year or so, because they had no business except telling people they were "A list" marketers. Sure they had done some of what they claimed they made money at. Not enough to give them financial freedom. So when the course and conference revenue dried up with the credit crunch, so did their livelihoods.

The response on "budget" and "time in a day" as the reason to share the tool do not ring true If it is a successful process, you outsource it, and if it makes substantive revenue there is no budget constraint.

The actual fact is your decision to do this is not altruism, and certainly not at the price.

Ergo the simple logic is: you think you can make more and more consistent money investing your time in selling how to do it, than investing the same time in doing it, which with a sensible guess at membership levels unlikely to exceed hundred(s) puts a low expectation on what you are earning from "doing" it, otherwise you would value your time more highly.

Tools are only useful if they work, and depending on who wrote this, that may be a cause for concern too.

The point I (and Clinton) makes is a simple one.

It is simply expressing the reasonable doubt and cynical attitude customers must use to evaluate whether to do this, and the fact that the day you decide to "sell your expertise for making money" you had better be prepared to show the evidence that proves you are actually making money, and also that the opportunity STILL makes money, and it is not being sold for the usual reason that margins are now so thin, that it is better to sell how , than actually do it.

Smoke and mirrors is no longer good enough.

There is not a single example that proves your tool has ever found anything at all of merit.

Nothing personal. My comments are neither negative nor positive.
Just simply stating - If you want to sell it , prove it works, and prove you made money from using it.

[KenW3]

I've always greeted this type of education with skepticism based on the experiences (partially) detailed here. There are good products, but I cannot comment on either of the classes mentioned above. I think a monthly fee is better for assessment of a product, instead of a large one-time cost, as it allows a student to change their mind. I've known of Kenny Goodman since signing up for Domainface.com in January of 2011, and Justin and FlipFilter.com since becoming a member on EP. I will admit my business has benefited from the use of both websites. I use and trust Market Samurai, and they thought so much of Goodman's Domainface.com website, they incorporated it into their software.

I understand the concerns expressed, and do recognise a variance in market perceptions. I do not buy and sell websites, so perhaps I am unqualified to submit an opinion, but I am qualified to speak on education and seminars. I know full well some market areas have become more difficult, but there is a very large business marketplace not being addressed online. I also believe existing opportunities to make money buying and selling businesses, whether online or off, will change but never become obsolete. I've bought and sold B&Ms; Markets may change, but the underlying principles seldom do, and I do not know what is being provided to students of these courses.

Justin, I respect your post, and thank you for taking the time away from business to put forth your observations. As to your reference to Napoleon: In my years, I have learned to respect the Napoleon personality as indicative of a take-no-prisoners approach to building successful businesses. These are the people I will make special effort to get over to my side when possible. I don't see this as being possessed by management on this board, and would prefer more of this approach.

The term "Napoleon complex" has been used in scientific research on the phenomenon of smaller organisms acting aggressively towards larger organisms. In contrast to the many examples of larger organisms acting aggressively towards smaller organisms in the animal kingdom

Napoleon sought power, war and conquest. I don't see that description as any different from business and corporations; I respect the intent - it's honest! While losing is educational, winning is just a whole lot of fun The most motivated often cannot be stopped, and there is both danger and opportunity in that mindset. I don't get in the way, and often try to position myself and/or businesses to benefit from the inevitable domination. I would like EP and its management to possess more of the mindset, and use it to abolish the garbage that exists out there. Some of that stuff really p!sses me off, so it's always tempting to maintain that thought whenever some new seminar comes along.

I owe everyone on EP an apology for posting that YouTube link above. I watched the whole thing, and will absolutely guarandamntee you that I have no patience for the puerile crap heard in the 47-minute video linked to above. That was a waste of everyone's time watching and listening, but members must admit the link did help because it served to vividly demonstrate expected content. Justin, based on your posts and help you have given others here, this video was not the same quality.

While I gauge a sales pitch by how much is learned, to experience the educational quality of the product being sold, this sales pitch was not directed at anyone who knows what they're doing. Neither the sales page, nor video, appear to represent any of the knowledge these two guys must possess, if they can run a DomainFace.com and a FlipFilter.com.