GCFN In Review...A Year After Leaving The Program

Hi folks. It's been over a year since the last time I posted anything about my story. I think I owe you all an update.

What I Think of GCFN
First of all, GCFN is a legitimate company. They sell a legitimate product, for what it is worth. However, their products are sold at a highly inflated price relative to other products available on the market. Their prices are way too high for the value they provide to the buyer.

That said, by reviewing their sales process you can learn a great deal about how to be successful with internet marketing by building a "sales funnel." The only thing I'd change is to provide more value for the prices they charge.

Now as far as value of the training...I never participated in Dan Kushell's mentoring program, so I can't say if his program is a good value or not...I'm still waiting for someone out there to post their success (or sob story) about Dan Kushell's program. For all I know, Mr. Kushell's program is excellent.

The Ultimate Traffic System really does come with some good training material that you won't otherwise receive with the basic package. However, as I said...it is exorbitantly overpriced relative to other courses you can find elsewhere on the internet.

While I do not consider GCFN to be a "scam", they are overpriced...way way WAY overpriced!!

I Got My Refund
Around May or June 2008 I completed the CMPS checklist for the program, and after 4 or 5 phone calls, received a refund for my initial cost for the CMPS program ($500 or whatever it was...I don't even remember now). However, I never received a CMPS certificate in spite of their promise to do so. (Believe it or not, I really did want that certificate!!)

So they did keep their word on the money-back guarantee. I just had to be persistent to play phone tag and keep trying to get in touch with the right person. (Of course, it is also possible that my success in achieving high page rank on Google led them to pay extra attention to me...it's hard for me to really know.)

I did NOT get my money back for the Ultimate Traffic System (which cost me thousands). There was no money-back guarantee on that. Their guarantee was to run my "guaranteed traffic" again when I initially failed to achieve the promised return on my investment. And they did run it again. So they honored their guarantees and kept their word about that.

Return on Investment?

Talking of return on investment, however, this program was a net loss for me. I made back less than half of my initial investment. (I lost thousands of dollars on this program).

So if you have already bought the program, as I have said before - view it as a learning opportunity, not a way to make fast money. Take what you learn from this as the first step in a journey. Don't give up...but be more careful in selecting programs to purchase in the future.

From what I can tell, it takes 2 years or more of trying, failing, and trying some more before the average person will be capable of making a profit online. It's a matter of studying and learning from a lot of different sources to figure out what will work for you. Persistence is the key.

I also recommend you take what GCFN teaches and apply it OUTSIDE of GCFN by setting up your own blogs and "Linked In" and "Squidoo" pages with Ebay and Amazon and other links to try and build a list in a specific niche. You'll need some kind of autoresponder to build a list...but listbuilding is a critical element to making money online.

Bottom line: If you rely only on the sites GCFN gives you, you are probably not going to make your money back. (Their stock pages are terrible at converting sales for you!)

The Best Thing About GCFN
Did I learn from the program? Yes! In fact, I found Joshua Shafran's monthly newsletter to be the best thing that ever happened to me with respect to GCFN. From his newsletter, I was introduced to PPC and CPA affiliate marketing which I am now pursuing with high hopes of actually making a profit... Since last year I have invested a lot in other training (stuff that has nothing to do with GCFN).

Joshua's content is very good and I highly recommend him for newbies. If you just keep up with his stuff for a year, you'll learn a lot. That said, I no longer subscribe to his newsletter.... I've got too many other bills and have moved on to other sources of internet marketing information.

Attitude
I try to be positive about GCFN, to the greatest degree possible. Why? Because being negative isn't going to help me make more money (it just gets me depressed).

Do I regret joining GCFN? A little. I lost a lot of money on it in 2007/2008. But I view it as a learning experience and have moved on, and plan to be successful in 2009/2010 and beyond.

Question for Reader Input!
If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to post some links to resources I recommend for learning how to make money online (things that are a better value than GCFN). Just submit a comment if you'd like me to do that...and please be patient.

Thanks for reading!
KB