Internet Marketing Index
I’ve just been transferring my private and business life from one laptop to another. Another 18 months has gone by and diminishing disk space, available RAM, intermittent hiccups from the old machine all led me into reaching for my credit card again for the newest and shiniest that the plastic will bear.
As I have been setting up the new machine I’ve also been spending time de-cluttering the desktop and trying and failing yet again to make sense of the overflowing contents of my hard drive. Far too often it is a case of ‘What is that?, followed rapidly by ‘Why did I buy it?’ followed yet again with ‘Why haven’t I done anything with it?’.
All questions that are symptoms of the inevitable clutter so many of us get into as we strive to make our mark in the internet marketing world. Then by pure good fortune I stumbled across a tool which is rapidly turning into a lifebelt for me in sorting out my business and my laptop at the same time.
The tool, Alex Goodall’s Internet Marketing Index, is a pre-organised mindmap of Internet Marketing knowledge applied to a proprietary mind mapping software. A Viewer version of the mind mapping software is included so the IM Index is a self contained product.
What is different in this case is that the Internet Marketing knowledge, subjects, niches and all the other ways of categorising and considering your ragbag of ebooks, software, downloads, scripts and other ‘useful information’ has been organised by a world leading expert in knowledge management – who is also an internet marketer. So you not only get his overview of the entirety of the internet marketing field but also how it should be best organised for ready access and use.
This knowledge of being in the hands of a real expert gives you a comfort feeling before you start though granted you would want to see some proof of his expertise before taking it for granted. The intro videos on the sales page go a long way to providing that. The concept behind the Internet Marketing Index is immediately blindingly obvious as well as the certain knowledge that it would take you years to implement anything anywhere near as effective as the ready made tool that is the Index.
Alex’s ‘show and tell’ video demonstrates the structure, the content and the method of use so you have a complete idea of what you are buying before you hit the ‘buy now’ button. I knew I was going to buy it only half way through but I continued to watch to the end as I was so intrigued to see what else he had to show.
Download and installation are easy with a comprehensive Installation guide in .pdf format. As usual, these days, you become a member of the website where all the support originates together with downloads and affiliate membership. For such a stunningly useful tool that is focused directly on the hungry internet marketing crowd the potential for affiliate sales for this relatively new product is obvious. (why do you think I am writing this!?).
The IM Index opens and extends as you follow the branches and subdivisions. I found I rapidly developed a working method of opening and closing sections as required. Frankly, there is so much of it that if you leave it all open for easy reference then you can quickly become disoriented. Yet it is only when you see the extent of the Mind Map that you begin to realise the massive breadth of information that we have set out to assimilate, learn and execute in our search for the internet marketing nirvana.
It is worth noting that Alex has been a good internet marketer – each channel of the mind map includes a Recommended Resources section. Naturally enough, these are pre-populated with affiliate product links. I mention it simply so that you are aware – and as a great example of taking every opportunity in your own products to incorporate either links back to your own sites or to affiliate products that can earn you commission for years to come.
Though you should also be aware that your own search on your favourite search engine may turn up equivalent products that you might consider. There is no knowing from a single link whether an affiliate link is a true recommendation of quality or simply the best paying affiliate link off Commission Junction.
But what’s the real benefit of the IM Index product? Previously, I used to organise my purchases and other information into different folders for Content and Software, then put each product into its own folder (in case it contained multiple files) and file either by product name or by author depending on how well I thought I was likely to remember either. Then snippets of text, conference notes, swipe files of good examples of web sites etc went into a folder of Strategies. So the success or otherwise of locating useful information depended more on my ability to remember what I had – in which case I was quite successful at locating it again – than on any ordered method of keeping all that knowledge.
With IM Index, everything goes into the correct ‘pigeon hole’ of Internet Marketing knowledge. Whether it be a product, strategy, notes, examples or whatever. So now, whenever I am looking for something, I think of the niche area of internet marketing I am considering and go look there on the visual Mind Map. The advantage, of course, is that I not only find what I am looking for but also all the other associated knowledge that I have accumulated over time – but never previously made use of.
Of course, as a by product, IM Index is also a great illustration of all the areas of internet marketing that you have not even touched yet!
Highly recommended!
(Note: as at May 2012 this product no longer seems to be available. In fact, I eventually came to the conclusion that simply being consistent in organising your content into a folder structure was more reliable (and cheaper!) However, Alex Goodall is still worth checking out as a proven academic who thinks about the problems we face.
