IMGrind: Affiliate Marketing Training Forum
November 24, 2012 Posted by Tyler CruzAs I continue onto my journey of affiliate marketing, I am increasingly asked by readers via comments left here and through e-mail on how they can get started and learn all about affiliate marketing.
They ask me if I have an e-book or a course anywhere. I don’t. In fact, I have never written an e-book or sold a training course of any kind. While I am not ruling out trying that down the road, my blog has always been about my personal journey of making a living online.
That being said, I do have a fantastic resource for you: IMGrind.
IMGrind is a paid, private training forum for affiliate marketers.
It is run by super affiliates Ralph "Ruck" Ruckman and Ryan Gray, two guys who are extremely well known in the industry. If you haven’t heard of them, then you are definitely a newcomer to this space. I actually did a 1 hour and 20 minute screencast interview with Ryan back in 2010.
You can read more about them at IMGrind if you wish, but all you need to know is that they have generated many millions of dollars online through affiliate marketing and are well respected members of the community.
Below are a few screenshots of the level of money these guys make from their campaigns, to satisfy any such cravings you may have:
Paid & Private Training Forum
By being closed to the general public and charging a membership fee, IMGrind helps keep the quality of the forum up as it is comprised of people who are serious and dedicated about learning affiliate marketing.
While Ryan and Ruck are active on the forum and will definitely help you out, the real beauty of the forum is that it consists of hundreds of other experienced affiliates and super affiliates. As a result, you are learning a hell of a lot more; it is not just 2 guys you are learning from, it is hundreds of successful affiliates.
Some of the biggest guys in the industry are members there, and it is up to you how you decide to interact. You could be a "fly on the wall" and just sit back and read all the valuable information, or you could be an active member and participate and engage in discussion and ask questions. If you really want to learn, you’ll do both.
IMGrind is for both newbies and experienced affiliate marketers. I’m a member there myself, and earlier today I read a fantastic tip that I’m going to try on Facebook either later tonight or tomorrow.
As I write this, there are currently 5,158 threads, 23,308 posts, and over 1,400 members. That’s actually not a massive amount of posts, but also keep in mind that the forum contains very high quality content and isn’t saturated with useless posts.
The Best Way To Learn: Hands On
Assuming you already know the basics (how to set up campaigns and drive traffic – if you don’t know, there are guides there for that), the best way to learn as well as get the best value out of IMGrind is to take advantage of their "Follow Along Campaigns".
After signing up, you can access this by going to the forum and then to Case Studies –> Follow Along Campaigns.
Follow Along Campaigns are not campaigns for you to copy and run yourself – obviously nobody is going to hand you a blank cheque. Instead, the name stems from others following your campaign.
Here’s how it works: You create a new thread which basically acts as a journal for a new campaign you create. It doesn’t matter what niche or traffic source. You reveal however much information you feel comfortable with.
Other experienced members will then help you out by providing suggestions and tips. You keep working on your campaign and updating your thread, and others will continue to help you out to improve your campaign and hopefully get it to where it’s profitable.
The more you reveal, the more others can help you. If you’re not comfortable in sharing your landing page, that’s fine – others can help you with your targeting or bidding or ad copy, etc.
Follow Along Campaigns are an extremely useful way to learn and improve, as you’re basically having your hand held by the entire community.
The Cost
As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, IMGrind is not free. It is a paid forum, which makes it private.
Membership costs $77/month and can be paid with either PayPal or credit card.
I’m not going to bother writing about all the reasons why $77/month is nothing in exchange for what you’re gaining, because you either already understand the value or likely never will.
So there’s my answer for all of you asking where you can learn affiliate marketing: IMGrind.
Hope to see you there! My username on the forums is tylercruz.
The membership isn’t worth it. I was a member over there for a month and I’d say 50% of the threads there are from ruck or ryan and all they did was copy paste information they found on someone else’s website or blog…
The unique content that is there is mostly newbies asking how to do certain stuff. The case studies are outdated and don’t really offer any real insight.
Your better off getting a membership over at stackthatmoney. Even though I’ve never used stackthatmoney I can honestly say your better off over there. It seems to be the most active of the paid make money online forums and you will find more super affiliates over there.
No offense to ruck and ryan, but these guys were just big players during the biz opp rebill era. They made a lot of money but most of it was dirty money. They fell off the wagon a bit when the biz opp rebills wen’t flop and that’s why they started this “training forum”. Once your in the forum they try and get you to go to pay a couple hundred bucks to attend a marketing class where they teach you about lead generation which seems to be all they know.
Nothing personal against them. They are good guys. Unfortunately that forum sucks and isn’t worth the price.
Thanks for sharing your honest opinion man because I’m looking for some real training in affiliate marketing to improve figures in my monthly earnings online.
So the DP and Warrior forum are better than IMGrind.
I’m sure that even “not worth it” would tell you that IMGrind is far better than those two forums.
Might be worth it for the first 2 days it takes to take in all the info they got. Half of the content they have on there is copy pasted from other blogs and websites. Don’t believe me? Go look at the threads Ruck starts, mostly the ones that have no comments (people on there probably realize that the stuff he posts isn’t even by him). Go do a google search on half the content he posts and you will realize how much of his content is taken from other people.
When were you a member? Maybe when it first came out it was like this, but I’ve seen a lot of great content posted. For me personally, one good tip pays for the monthly cost of $77. I waste so much money on my campaigns by trying stuff for myself that often just 1 good tip is worth the $77.
I also find it strange that you say: “Even though I’ve never used stackthatmoney I can honestly say your better off over there.” — How on earth can you say that when you haven’t tried it?
That being said, I’m actually a member of both forums and STM is definitely a great paid training forum like IMGrind, and I do recommend it. However, I find that STM is a little bit more advanced than IMGrind (and is also $20 bucks more per month), and this post was mainly to share a great resource for people who are looking to learn affiliate marketing.
I might do a post on STM down the road, but I do still recommend IMGrind. Hell, it’s worth it simply for the networking so you can find other affiliates like yourself and share ideas via IM.
I was a member I’d say around 8 months ago. I paid for the membership and basically went through everything that was remotely useful in about 2 days.
To be fair I know a lot more than your average newbie, but if you are a newbie, it might be beneficial to pay for one month and get all the info and cancel. Even though the info itself isn’t that great you might find a nugget that you didn’t know about which could be a game changer for you.
But the truth is, if you’re going to have a paid forum your newbies shouldn’t have to be digging around to find those golden nuggets. It’s like any Make money online program out there. They try to string you along and “help you” by giving you bite sized pieces of advice hoping to keep you entertained enough to stick around for another month. There’s nothing ground breaking on these forums that you MUST KNOW. It’s all hype and most of the content is ‘theory talk’.
@not worth – Ahh a hater and a bitch? I guess you missed the dozen+ 6-figure a month campaigns we posted in the forum since the “rebill era.” LOL, sit behind you’re screen and enjoy the take-over. Sheep.
With that reply, I for one will never join IMGrind. What an asshole.
That’s funny because I saw nothing like that over there.
And you guys don’t have to take my word for it. It’s pretty widely known most of IM Grinds content is taken from other places (I wonder if that’s even legal?), but then again calling someone a hater and bitch speaks more about their character than I ever could.
I was going to try the service notwithstanding the post by NWI. But, after reading this reply, I’ll pass. That was utterly unprofessional.
Wow… with a reply like that, I can only imagine how the forum itself is being run.
Top tip for the day: treat your customers and ex-customers with respect, even if they’re not regurgitating the things you want them to be.
Professional? As if I ever claimed to be. I’m an Entrepreneur and I build my businesses the way I want, I don’t let customers dictate my decisions like some ordinary robot. The EXACT people I want to repel are the EXACT people I don’t want around me. Now, who needs some Vagisil for them overly-sensitive vaginas?
I was actually considering joining but after this remark there is NO WAY I would join that forum. WOW, cant believe someone who runs a paid forum would just reply like that.
Thanks for saving me $77
Hmm, Im not a user of IMGrind, but I can tell that these guys know what they are doing just by looking into free stuff they share.
Haters gonna hate 🙂
I am a member of both and can say they are both easily worth the money, they each have their strengths and you can grab them both for about $176/month which may be a lot of money for some people – but based on that fact if that kind of money is considered ‘too much’ then maybe you’re not ready for paid affiliate marketing just yet because you have to invest a lot more than a few hundred $$$ each month to give yourself a chance in succeeding.
Having access to read through the forums will save you from wasting that much alone anyway.
Yup – if $77/month is a lot to you, then you really shouldn’t be getting into affiliate marketing. It takes a lot of money to buy traffic these days.
You should probably be looking to spend at least several hundred dollars each month on your campaigns. Creating a “follow-along” campaign and investing that $77/month into invaluable feedback from experienced affiliate marketers is most definitely worth the price.
Although I haven’t roamed IMGrind much over the past few months, I did find some golden nuggets at the beginning of this year. Here’s a snippet from my review I published on my blog:
“The first day I had a membership to the grind I found a thread that had information on it that I used to make about $2,000. With one thread on the first day I was a member I learned something that made me enough money of the course over the next month to pay for my membership for 2 years. Now, it wasn’t handed me to me and I had to do some work on my end, but if I had never read that thread it is likely that I wouldn’t have built the campaign I did. For the next two years I can consider any money I make from information I find on the forum 100% profit.”
It’s important to understand that for the most part no one is going to hand over all their deepest darkest secrets. Affiliates and guys like Ruck and Ryan are happy to point you in the right direction and lay the ground work for you, but you are going to have to be creative and put in your own effort to really make those concepts work.
Do your research, get your hands dirty, and ask the right questions. You’ll make money. You don’t necessarily need places like IMGrind and STM to get that done, but they can definitely help speed up the process 🙂
Can anyone comment on STM and IMGrind compared to AffPlaybook.com?
I’ll be doing a review of Affplaybook in the not too distant future… but here’s a quick overview to COMPARE the three:
IMGrind: Mobile
STM: Media buys
Affplaybook: PPV
They all cover everything, but that seems to be their strengths.
I find a lot of value in warrior forum, and even though it has some garbage on it there are some old threads which have great content. You have to be very objective in reading the threads. It’s great forum to start learning from and then you can graduate to the paid private forums. I’ve heard that WF are bringing in some more fees to help clear up the forums a bit. That’s a welcome change.
I’m often bewildered whenever I hear that said about WF. Most of the stuff is general and very rarely do ever see any valuable insights. Much of the time I see regurgiated newbie fodder that is no longer relevant or is completely inaccurate.
Most of the people on there are there to promote stuff, not be part of a community. Any posts on the Warrior Forum that people receive a bunch of thanks, usually have a bunch of holes in them when comes to aspects that will make the difference in a winning and losing campaigns.
The difference with paid forums is that people are not posting just to promote links, and if they were providing lame content they would get called out. You’ll find peope are a lot more generous and you’ll find real insights that can make a difference and not just theory and an a general framework as you see in WF — if you’re lucky. Like I said a lot of it is crap that people have not made money outside the MMO niche or not making money at all, trying to make money.
The Warrior Forum is a complete cesspool. Most people will not answer your questions accurately there to which is the scary part.
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Is there a discounted trial for IMgrind.com?
And to tyler cruz, what about a video review of imgrind.com? thanks
I think my review summed it up well – no need for a screencast review on it.
So someone gives a honest opinion about what they thought & one of the owners comes back & calls them “a hater & a bitch”? I don’t care what the other person says. When you run a business, that’s not how you’re supposed to conduct yourself when running a business.
*That’s not how you’re supposed to conduct yourself when running a business.
Yes, I agree. Would you want to do business with someone who has no respect for its customers by calling them names?
Immature, childish and silly.
The 2 guys running it were doing a similar course a couple of years ago too. IMHO, the best courses/memberships sites are those that have been around for quite a while and have a good reputation. Not something that starts up and disappears in a couple of years.
@Not something that starts up and disappears in a couple of years.@
True dat
Wow. Your blog is pretty awesome lol. Its neat to read about how you wanted to become an entrepreneur and decided to focus on marketing. I wanted to become the same thing and focused on web development and design. I suppose you made the better choice lol Anyways, keep your blog going its interesting for a programmer to read about all of these marketing strategies.
I would definitely say that Ryan is not in the same league as Ruck.
Ruck is a definite smart ass, but he’s dedicated to his work, and is a smart guy.
Perhaps this may explain some things.
http://www.imgrind.com/how-i-overcame-money-obsession-and-bounced-back-on-top/
Im Grind for me is a great forum, I have got good value out of it, what I learnt from Ruck and Ryan, actually made me change my whole business model.
Just take a look through the free guides, and the little bit of gold nuggets they drop in the blog daily.
Ruck maybe does come across in a way that he offends people, but trust me if you can get pass that, it can actually change your business it did with mine.
When you enter any paid forum, don’t expect for you to be making money right away. Ask questions and even put your campaign in a thread for people to actually help with your campaigns
I was a member in stm but that was earlier in my internet career, so even though it had good content I wasn’t in the right mindset to actually put what I learnt into actionable steps
I have to say that I think paid forums are generally disappointing. Some of the content is undoubtedly higher quality than the content on free forums and people aren’t just trying to spam with their links. That being said, often times the price can be higher than the value, in my opinion. I wouldn’t say that they are scams, just overpriced for what they provide. I don’t know about this particular forum so it may be the exception to the rule but I have never been a part of a paid forum where I felt like I got my money’s worth.
I’m new to building web sites and I was wondering if having your blog title relevant to your articles and other content really that vital? I notice your title, does appear to be spot on with what your blog is about yet, I prefer to keep my title less content descriptive and based more around site branding. Would you think this is a good idea or bad idea? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.