HELP. How does a newbie tell the difference between a good WSO and a not so good one?

But you are on several forums. Just not on those. Hell, I'm not even on half of them. The question isn't whether you're on these specific forums, but whether you're on more than just one.

Hi Mini Michael,

It comes with experience. Even with experience it's still very difficult to judge, so don't kick yourself if you find that you're not a good judge of a product just from reading a salespage and observing the other things.

The good news is that the best type of experience is by going a bit crazy and throwing out a whole bunch of different types of webpages, experimenting with tools and software, reverse engineering successful websites and analysing the results of your own experiments.

The point I'm making above is that those things produce validated results - IE - you see those results with your own eyes.

Even when you see the actual WSO product, you still don't know if any of it is particularly accurate.

So you can approach things two ways -

1. Less experimenting, more paying out to read stuff that isn't validated.

2. More experimenting, less buying.

1 is the hard way. 2 is the easier way, plus you're building a business at the same time and whatever you discover isn't necessarily common knowledge, therefore it may be more powerful plus you might be able to sell it later.

If you take approach 2 you can then go back to the WSOs, with experience, which means -

a) it's easier to look at related information (like the posts people make) and establish who provides good information and who is 'winging it' - therefore you buy less duds

b) you can ignore a large majority of the WSOs that sell tinpot ideas with vague salespages and titles like 'make $XXX in x days/weeks/months' - instead you hone in on the exact information you need, usually revolving around a specific skillset for long term benefit, rather than fads

c) you avoid buyer's remorse, refunding and duff info overload - which can be stupefying

Conclusion - by all means gamble on a few WSOs to gain ideas. But in all truth, those are usually the type that will turn up on the next blog posts you read just after you have paid for the info.

When I buy the occasional WSO, I think about it for some time, I have identified gaps in my knowledge that appear to be revealed in the product (usually in the bullet points), I am completely sure that I haven't already gained this knowledge but I also go off and see if I can find it first, I often have a few choice questions to ask before I buy (to ensure I get real value) - then if I am convinced that I want it, I buy it.

I explain this to demonstrate just how damaging I think it is to my personal development to buy a product that isn't needed, doesn't deliver or causes a refund.

I learnt this from experience. You pay a very high price for getting locked into a cycle of buying products that might 'give you a breakthrough'.

On balance, the ones that have come close to providing a 'breakthrough' for me have been scripts/software that help me to build a specific type of website - nothing else. And in all honesty, the ones I'm thinking of weren't WSOs.

But to emphasise an earlier point - 99% of my 'breakthroughs' came from my own research, testing, experiments, analysis etc.

So what I am saying is that the difference between a good WSO or a bad one is not as important as the difference between a good WSO and a good self-discovery - the latter is way more valuable for a variety of reasons.

By all means buy a WSO or a product from elsewhere - but never think that the only cost from making a mistake while buying is monetary. I would guess that the majority of people struggling are buying too many products and not doing enough doing. If you are observant, 'doing stuff' can produce 20 times better results than reading or trying to buy success - that particular product is not actually for sale.