Michael Cheney: 
"The WebSite Marketing Bible"

Important note:
This is an independent and critical product-review - not a sales letter or an ad! 


Format

Review 

As the competition on the Internet gets harder and harder, it becomes more and more important to know exactly how to produce and market web sites that stands out in the eyes of your potential customers.

But just how do you do that?

Michael Cheney's book, "The WebSite Marketing Bible", is an attempt to answer this question. His book is by no means the first attempt in this direction. Numerous others have been written.

However, Michael Cheney is not just anyone. He created his first web site in 1995, and since then he's become both famous and successful as an Internet marketer. He's a fulltime online marketer, and as the owner of the hugely successful site, Seniority.co.uk, he's been featured on British national television and in many other media.

Michael Cheney has also gotten some of the strongest endorsements I've seen any Internet marketer get.

Just to give you an example, Al Ries, the famous author of the best-selling marketing books, "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” and "Marketing Warfare", has the following to say about this book:

"I thought your book was terrific. Loaded with helpful information. I particularly liked the emphasis you place on 'interactivity'."

Another famous marketer that I personally know quite well, Michael Green, also praises The WebSite Marketing Bible in no uncertain terms. And so does Jay Conrad Levinson, arguable the world's best known marketer.

Whenever I read such strong testimonials, I've of course intrigued and ask myself: "Is this book really that good? Or are the testimonials and endorsements a bit exaggerated?"

After all, on the Internet you soon get a bit suspicious about what you read, don't you agree?

A criticism: Religious language

First I'd like to mention one thing I don't like in this book, is the author's allusions to the real Bible. Not that I don't like allustions to the Bible. I most definitely do as I'm a Christian myself.

However, in my opinion Michael Cheney plays too much on biblical references that has absolutely nothing to do with Internet Marketing.

For example, Michael Cheney uses the following words as the headline for the first section of chapter four: "Flash, Aaaaargh!!! Not The Saviour Of The Universe!"

It's become more and more usual to call all kinds of books for a "Bible" (simply meaning, book) in a particular context. But to me it seems to be going too far if you play on particular biblical and Christian concepts, such as the central biblical concept of a saviour (Jesus) sent to the world.

Another, almost blasphemous example, is what Michael Cheney calls, "The Webmaster's Prayer" i chapter 8 (with the title, "Exodous" - another clear allusion to the Bible).

This last example is carrying the allusions to the Bible and central Christian concepts and teachings way too far beyond the border for a reasonable use of such allusions. And there are other allusions to the Bible that certainly should not be included in this product.

You might think that this critique is taking things too seriously. After all, what's the harm of using a few biblical allusions. But please remember that the concepts that these allusions point to mean a lot (even life and death) to a lot of people. There's absolutely no reason to use such language in a book on Internet Marketing.

This criticism is even more serious on the background of the following words, which Michael Cheney uses to introduce chapther one:

"If you’re reading this and you don’t even have a website yet all I can say is – you lucky devil! By reading this first you’re going to make less mistakes, waste less money and achieve success quickly than most other people out there!" (My emphasis).

From a marketing point of view I can easily understand the point Michael Cheney wants to make. But it's absolutely meaningless to use such words ("devil") in a context where the author plays on biblical allusions. And especially so when you consider that he uses the word "devil" in a positive sense here. Understand it who can. I just can't!

When that's said, lets take a look at the rest of the substance of this book.

What do you get in this book?

Michael Cheney treats the web site as his starting point for any successful online business venture. Step by step he covers why your potential customers would visit your web site and how you can turn these people into loyal customers.

Cheney emphasizes that the only reason why anyone would visit your web site is information and interaction. These two factors are the only ones that will cause people to actively want to visit your site.

His point is this: You gotta carefully consider what your visitor thinks when he or she visits your web site. Even if you have the nicest and most professional looking web site in the world, it just won't help you if it doesn't catch and keep your visitor's attention and interest.

In the main part of "The WebSite Marketing Bible" Michael Cheney shares with you how to turn your web site into a site that your visitors not only like, but also a web site that they want to buy products (or services) through.

Cheney doesn't spend much space on how to use, for example, Email Marketing to promote your business. Instead, he primarily focuses on how to optimize your web site so that it accomplish the goals just described.

Evaluation

In my opinion Michael Cheney focuses too much on one way of marketing on the Internet: Using content rich web sites.

But a quick look a how many successful Internet marketers have created order-pulling web sites, will soon reveal that there are other ways to market effectively on the Internet.

I agree with Michael Cheney that using web sites with a lot of content and interactive elements is one way of marketing online. However, you need to know exactly how to do it, and a lot of people just don't know how.

"The WebSite Marketing Bible" can be a help if you want to run your online venture this way. But it's usually a rather time-consuming way and there are a lot of pitfalls that you have to steer clear of. And in many situations there are other, eaiser and often better ways to run most online ventures. At least, that's been my experience after years of running a content rich web site.

Again, if you want to create and run a content rich web site, you'll find a lot of valuable help in "The WebSite Marketing Bible". Michael Cheney has included a lot of useful information in this book, based on his own experiences.

One of the really fine ideas Michael Cheney gives you in this book, is his so called, Diamond Website Model^TM model.

This model points to four important criteria that every web site based on Cheney's online business model needs to fulfill:

• Your web site needs to be well intergrated with your business.
• Your web site needs to have a professional and good looking visual design.
• Your web site's technical construction needs to functions really well and support your visitor's wants.
• Your site needs to be magnetic. By this he means that it needs to attract a lot of the right kind of potential customers.

This is in many ways a fine and useful model.

However, one major weakness in this model is that the only way Michael Cheney gives you by means of which you can determine how well your web site rates according to this model, is by using your own, subjective impression and evaluation.

The problem is that many people simply don't know enough about Internet Marketing to give an unbiased and realistic evaluation of how well their site rates according to the four attributes in Michael Cheney's model.

Now, I don't want to be too hard on Michael Cheney and his book, but I think that this criticism needs to be aired.

A bit later in "The WebSite Marketing Bible" Michael shares with you how to create or define a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for your business. and thus differentiation your business from your competitors. He gives you seven useful ways to accomplish this. This is fine, but I miss some more details and concrete steps to about how to create or define your USP; some help to apply the seven ways Michael Cheney suggests.

More details wanted

In chapter three of "The WebSite Marketing Bible" Michael Cheney lists "11 Keys To Unlocking The Selling Power Of Your Website". I agree with Michael Cheney that these points summarize important attributes of a good web site based on the content model.

The problem is just that you don't get enough details.

For instance, the paragraph on the SWOT model (SWOT stands for, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) needs to be elaborated on, in my opinion. Why is it so important that you need to make a SWOT analysis every month, as Michael Cheney suggests? And what exactly do you do with the results of your SWOT analysis? Michael doesn't answer these questions; at least not directly.

This criticism applies to several of the other points on this list in chapter three.

Commendable aspects

Despite my criticisms of "The WebSite Marketing Bible", there are certainly also many commendable aspects of this book.

For example, Michael Cheney's emphasis of and guide to trimming your web site and making it load faster, is good.

It's really laudable that he doesn't fall for the temptation to blindly follow the advice of some 'professional' webdesigners who just love heavy design, lots of images and Flash animations.

It's obvious that Michael Cheney knows quite a lot about effective Marketing. He knows the importance of your web site's message and the worth of good, Direct Response copywriting. Thus, I was glad to see his link to Michel Fortin's web site, SuccessDoctor.com. In my humble opinion Michael Fortin is one of the absolute best copywriters on the Internet and he really knows how to create successful online businesses.

Michael Cheney also refers to several other excellent sites by clever Internet marketers. This shows that he's done his homework and is aware of the work done by these front-runners.

I miss some more details

In chapter five Michael Cheney has a fine analysis of the three different types of customers who'll visit your web site.

I agree with Michael Cheney that it's important to divide your visitors into such different segments.

However, I don't understand why he doesn't elaborate on this important concept and shows his reader how to 'catch' or 'hook' each of these three kinds of visitors. Instead he rather abruptly jumps into covering how to optimize your web site for Google.com's robots.

This part of chapter five is actually quite good, despite the fact that later on, in chapter six, he says that "the search engines suck" (page 79 in the version I've got of "The WebSite Marketing Bible") and forget (page 80) about them.

But again, I miss some more details, and I don't understand why Michael Cheney suddenly leaves this important topic and jumps to yet another subject, Web Design. In this part of chapter five he gives you "7 Concrete No-Nos Of Web Design".

These tips are also important, but once again I miss the important details that'll help you to actually apply the tips to your concrete situation. Moreover, some of these tips just repeat what Michael Cheney has already said in the past.

Michael Cheney on the search engines

As already mentioned, Cheney doesn't believe in trying to get traffic from the search engines. In chapter six he shares why he even advices you to forget about them.

I find this statement quite confusing, considering that a few paragraphs later he says:

"Having said all that you still cannot afford to ignore the search engines and the moderate bounty of visitors they have to offer you" (page 82).

What exactly is his stand on the search engines? For or against? I find the answer quite unclear.

Anyhow, one of the reasons he gives for this advice, is that, "visitors that come from search engines are often of the lowest quality".

Well, I agree that many visitors who com from the search engines aren't automatically of the highest quality. But a lot of Internet marketers would certainly disagree with Michael Cheney that their quality is so low that the search engines are not worth caring about.

Several highly successful Internet marketers, such as James Maduk and Michael Campbell, have done very well by focusing an important part of their marketing efforts on the search engines. And I agree with these marketers: Search engines isn't necessarily the most important way to get your traffic, but on the other hand they're not unimportant and irrelevant.

Getting web traffic

Michael Cheney suggests several ways to get web traffic. Two of the methods he focuses on are Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPC) and Link Exchanging.

He covers some aspects of how to use PPC, but again I miss way too many details for this part of the book to be really useful.

I find Cheney's treatment of link exchanging to be more useful. He covers this method better and in more details. This part of the book is actually quite good, though there's definitely still a lot more to say in order to be really well prepared to use this method. But it's a fine introduction to the subject.

Another traffic generation method he covers is Viral Marketing. This section is also useful. It's a fine introduction to this particular way of marketing. In my opinion Viral Marketing is one of the very best ways of online marketing. Just look at how master Internet marketer Jimmy D. Brown uses this method, and you'll clearly understand it's potential.

Michael Cheney provides you with a list of five important elements of an effective Viral Marketing campaign. These elements are all important and I find Michael's list helpful, though - again - I'd like to get some more details.

Finally, Michael Cheney gives you three examples of how to run a successful Viral Marketing campaign. These examples are fine if you consider launching your own campaigns, but again I miss all those details that turn such examples into really useful.

Let me just share one more part of "The WebSite Marketing Bible" which I think deserves to be mentioned: The section with the heading, "How To Become The Online Voice In Your Industry".

In this section Michael Cheney emphasizes the importance of creating a unique position in your marketplace. This is a really, really important and grossly overlooked subject. Too often you see Internet marketers covering all kinds of different of online marketing methods, but they forget to treat this all-important topic.

It's highly commendable that Michael Cheney doesn't make this mistake. However, once that's said, this section too, like so many others, is disappointingly superficial. He does cover a few important aspects of this topic and he gives some excellent advice, but he never really gets to the heart of it. Like so much else in this book, it's way too superficial.

"The WebSite Marketing Bible" contains even more than I've already shared with you. But this is enough to give you a good overview of what "The WebSite Marketing Bible" covers.

Eays to read, but...

One commendable point is that "The WebSite Marketing Bible" is easy to read. The language flows nicely and the content is interesting all the way, though a few places I think Michael Cheney becomes a 'prisoner' of his own style by trying to keep a very fresh and smart-sounding tone. Sometimes it sounds a bit too artificial.

The overview of the content is generally good, though I  definitely miss a better navigation. It would really have been helpful to have a 'clickable' contents list at the beginning of the book, so that you could just click on the different chapter and sub-chapter headlines and be forwarded to the corresponding part of the book.

Overall assessment 

Michael Cheney tries to cover a lot in "The WebSite Marketing Bible". In my opinion he tries to cover way too much.

"The WebSite Marketing Bible" contains much good advice and many fine points, but it's simply too superficial to be of any real help. Michael Cheney touches a lot of important concepts, but too often you're left with an empty feeling, missing all the details you need to being able to call this a really useful book.

Much of the content in the book seems unorganized and unstructured. Some of it seems confusing and a few places the content even seems to contain self-contradictions.

I'm really sorry that I have to give this book such a bad review. It seemed very promising at first sight. And the raving reviews it has gotten from several famous marketers really impressed me. But after having studied "The WebSite Marketing Bible" I had to ask myself if we're talking about the same book! I simply don't understand that these marketers can give this book such positive and strong testimonials as they've given it.

"The WebSite Marketing Bible" does contain some good stuff, but all in all there are many other, much better and more useful books on Internet Marketing out there.

Out of 10 stars I give this book six stars.

About Michael Cheney

Who is Michael Cheney?
Click for the answer!

Buying information 

Price (at the time of this writing)

$97

Web site

Websitemarketingbible.com

Email

enquiry@websitemarketingbible.com