Welcome to the first posting of Luke Parker’s Product Review Center blog.
I know you’re a true fan to have found this post, since it was posted at the same time as all my other existing reviews, and it’s not linked to from the chart… So thanks, and I’m flattered that you came looking for it. 
Since you seem to care, I will bestow upon you the story of why Luke’s PRC and LaunchCal both exist. I think it’s a good one but I’ll leave that up to you to decide.
Sometime after Surefire Success was launched in May 2007, perhaps 2 months later, I realized that all online marketing seems to take all marketers towards the same end… To becoming a super affiliate like Ewen Chia or John Reese.
I happen to like both of those guys, but still, it bugged me to learn that my future was kind of already written out for me, just because I was an online marketer.
If you have been with me since the Home Biz Factory or even ION, you have likely picked up on the fact that I really just want to help people learn to make money online. That’s how I see myself, as an educator who learned a trade and wants to help others learn it too.
So a battle between good and evil broke out inside of me. No, I’m not making this up.
I really felt torn on how much I should hype products in order to make affiliate commissions… Isn’t it ethical enough to simply pitch products that I know work, and hype them as much as it takes from there? -Afterall, 9/10ths of my industry doesn’t even do that much… They just copy and paste the affiliate resource materials they are given into their autoresponders.
Yet it kept nagging at me. On the one hand I could stay true to my calling and speak the hype-free truth about every product I reviewed to best help people learn, but on the other hand I could go broke due to lack of affiliate commission checks.
What was I to do? It nearly drove me batty. It seemed a solvable problem if only I could find a way to do two things:
1. COMPARE the products to each other somehow, something no marketer has attempted before, and for good reason.
2. Get my grubby hands on a larger number of JV preview products than normal affiliates attempt to review.
The first problem was quite difficult, and was really solved at the last minute. You can see the outcome of my idea at our Chart page. (If you are a member here, of course.)
However the second problem, gaining access to a large number of JV invites, was a problem I’d already had made the solution to and didn’t know it.
You see, back in 2005 I had already dreamed up the Launch Calendar. I knew back then that it would be difficult to monetize (boy was I right on that!) and worse yet, difficult to keep up with all of the posting submissions that had to be checked manually.
As luck would have it, I happened across the old LaunchCal project folder when trying to figure out this latest problem, sometime in October of 2007.
I knew then that it would be worth it to manually review submissions if the trade-off was that I’d have my hands on every upcoming launch… Two weeks later the Launch Calendar was “beta-launched,” and here I am at Christmastime beating off JV invites with a stick.
Of course there is a price… Tons and tons of posting request forms that I do by hand until I’ve finally training a Virtual assistant to do the job correctly every time.
Anyway, it took a helluva lot of work but it’s all working out now in the end. Just like Hannibal on the A-Team always said, “I love it when a good plan comes together.” He was right, it’s a great feeling. Because of this work I’ve described here, I will be able to:
1. Give totally honest reviews that actually help people every time.
2. Make a comfortable living with affiliate sales.
3. Be right in the middle of all the product launch news in many online industries, so I can act on all the good stuff first.
4. Write from just one place to one list instead of all the many different lists I’ve been tied to.
5. Use my three great membership sites together to catch a larger audience.
So that’s my big plan for now… There’s no end to my to-do project folder but for now I think I’m off to a great start with these three sites and will finally be able to have my cake and eat it too as far as affiliate reviews are concerned.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to my ramblings. If you have any thoughts on them, I’d love for you to share your comments below.
To your Scheduled, Reviewed, and Surefire Success!
Luke
