As I mentioned in my last post, I bought the Site Stealer book last week. I went through everything over the weekend, so here's my review.

First of all, don't get too caught up in the hype on the sales page. This book isn't actually about stealing other people's websites. It's about how to get ideas from other websites, and how to use resell rights to duplicate other websites legitimately (the "stealing" process).

There are 5 sections in the book that progress from using successful headlines as models for your own, through duplicating entire processes from successful sites and finally using resell rights to "make 'em give you the keys".

The section on headlines is pretty basic stuff. Anyone who's been marketing online - or offline - for any length of time has probably read how important headlines are many times.

The main value to this section is one of the bonuses - a list of 229 successful headlines to model yours after. If you've ever sat down and tried to come up with ideas for headlines, this can be a great way to jumpstart the process.

It's also an excellent way to come up with alternative headlines for split-testing.

The second section goes one step beyond headlines and looks at how to copy the layout and structure of successful sites.

This one is a little bit of a gray area, in my opinion. Copying other websites could potentially lead to copyright issues if things aren't changed enough. Be careful with this one.

The third section about copying entire business models is also fairly basic stuff. It basically takes you through the process of figuring out how another successful website handles the sales process, and then implementing something similar on your own site.

Things like getting the sale in the first place, one-time-offers after the sale, backend follow ups, etc.

The next two sections are really the meat of the book, getting into some detail about resell rights.

This includes how to use resell rights products in your own business and how to offer resell rights to your products.

I found most of Site Stealer to be fairly basic information. For someone who is new to resell rights or even selling products on the internet, there is a lot of helpful information.

If you've been around the marketing game for a little while, however, you'll probably already know most of what's in here.

Having said that, there is one piece of information that made the book worth the cost for me. There is a process map for setting up a resell rights offer of your own that has a viral twist that gave me a couple of new ideas for my own marketing processes.

This is often the case when I buy ebooks or other educational products. Most of the information is stuff I've either read elsewhere or picked up myself through trial and error, but there may be one or two nuggets that make the cost worthwhile.

And this is something I think a lot of people miss. They buy these products expecting some great revelation, instead of simply adding a trick or two to their arsenal. Those tricks can really make a difference though.

Don't always assume that because you know most of what you read, there's nothing for you to learn.

The main problem I see with Site Stealer is that it only covers one side of the marketing coin - the product & website side.

It doesn't deal with the other side, how to get traffic to your website.

And the people who will get the most out of this book are the people who probably don't already have a large email list of their own to market to. Many of them also won't know how to drive targeted traffic to their websites quickly and easily (and cheaply!)

Like so many other products in the "internet marketing" space, there are lots of nice screenshots from Clickbank, showing hundreds or thousands of dollars coming in each day.

You can make that kind of money with the techniques in this book, but you need traffic to do it. And there's no magic way to get that. Just "stealing" a website through resell rights and throwing it up on your own domain isn't going to earn you a single cent.

So, for those of you like me who just scan for the bottom line:

Pros:
- Good information for anyone just starting out in marketing
- Sample headlines bonus good for brainstorming headline ideas
- Viral resell rights process map

Cons:
- Most information will be familiar to anyone who has been marketing for a while
- No information about how to drive traffic to your sites once they're set up

[rating:3.5]