Once the “REAL”ationship between Agora and Rich was figuratively wed amidst the tremors of “heated argument” the universe seemed poised to accept our notion of great wealth attonement. It is time. Are we ready?
I GUESS NOT!

I’m at the Early To Rise conference here in Delray Beach. Rich pitched the program last night. There were a bunch of people who flooded the table. But I’m not sure how many they sold or if that number counts towards the 250.

I haven’t joined yet because the price might still be a little steep for me. However I did hear one thing while I was here that’s making it really tempting.

In turns out some of the top guys from consciousone.com were here at the conference and joined the group. This could be another great JV partner for Alliance members I believe their email list is about 600,000

Since I’m trying to start a self improvement site this is really tempting for me. However I don’t want my wife to kill me either. But if I want to get in I get the feeling I better decide fast.

Hey Rich,

We’re trying to join your program. The order page is down. The button link on the sales page is faulty. Thanks. Peter.

After reading the sales letter, I am dissappointed. Compared to StomperNet sales letter, this one is very dull. Rich’s pre-sale reports were amazing, it seems that Agora did not let Rich write the sales letter.

The program is mainly based on teleseminar which are group based. So what you are paying is for the 100h seminars over a 12 month period. The other material seems similar to other programs from ETR and they are not very significant.

Also Rich played with words saying that it is not 5 figures but quarterly option gets you over $12000.

I really doubt that the program can teach what Rich says in the last report. WHat a pity…

ALso it seems that there is no money back guarentee, so take care. You need to pay at least $3800 to get started for the 1st quarter.

A $2.5M payday for ETR and Rich. Not bad for selling what exactly?

“It really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

By my count it’s the third one from Rich in the last 3 months LOL

Agree With Sweb I am very dissappointed, i dont think that 80%+ of Americans can afford this ! U a stomper Sweb ?
Linda: u seem to sing the same song all over the place… Good for you if you bought it, maybe you can start a group urself
Jon: It’s marketing after all

What could be a better business model than selling the VERY oxygen we breathe? Rich has been able to articulate the most dramatic epiphanies internet marketing has yet to experience. Is it the future? I thnk so. Can we do it alone? Impossible. We need Rich and his strategic voice to align the stars and push us to the heavens of wealth. The shimmering clouds above us wait in anticipation for the Agora/Rich starship to deliver us to the nirvana of abundance we all so RICHLY deserve.

Five hours have passed and there are still memberships available. How is this possible? Have people lost their minds?

The reasons Agora did not let Rich write the letter are two fold: liability issues related to the non-existent guarantee, and they would have had to pay him to do it. That’s just a guess on my part.

What I want to know is what business model is agora adopting for the future, now that their “lose money on the front end, make money on the backend” model is out there openly for anyone to copy.

They wouldn’t be so cavalier to release this information unless they had something else better they are doing.

Locking in the automatic renewal is important to building projected revenues for future pitches or a sale of the business even if the renewals are later cancelled and never materialize.
The current launch certainly isn’t losing money on the front end so I think that is over as a strategy.
I think the current model is selling synergy through sharing lists. I see this as a deadend as consumers will not be fooled.
I am a current target on the front end of this strategy and have lost respect for all involved. Just because the message comes from the original source of my purchase, it is still marketing me stuff I was never interested in to begin with.

YES This is a “once in a lifetime opportunity” didn’t you read the FINAL CHAPTER.
Once the “REAL”ationship between Agora and Rich was figuratively wed amidst the tremors of “heated argument” the universe seemed poised to accept our notion of great wealth attonement. It is time. Are we ready? This program is worth twice the price!

interesting, does that mean that frontend selling is where it’s at these days?

I mean the huge product launch seems to be the weapon of choice these days amongst the gurus.

Is this a shortcut to building customer relationship? Instead of painstakingly making that first “breakeven” sale, then upselling through the backend sales pipe.

People feel that nowdays they can bypass all that by just hyping people through a launch product process and replicating that relationship without having to put in the hard work?

food for thought.

I agree completely with morbid on this. Huge product launch backed by feverish promotion (recall the cancelled phone call). Hyperbolic and relentless copy. Its like aiming a huge shotgun at a very large target.You will probably hit something. Why not hit it with a $10k offer. I received a VIP pass for example and have never had any relationship with ETR or Rich.

The shimmering clouds above us wait in anticipation for the Agora/Rich starship to deliver us to the nirvana of abundance we all so RICHLY deserve.

Its still not too late to sign up. What are you waiting for?

Let’s face facts - you can’t afford not to join the Internet Wealth Alliance.

Are you ready to virtually GUARANTEE that you’ll never have to work a 9 to 5 job again? If you said “YES” — your choice is clear:

Join the Internet Wealth Alliance.
Is the IWA prepared to GUARANTEE anything? uhhhh, oops sorry

Linda,
I’m getting tired of your dreamy starship rant. Get off your soapbox and come down to realty and out of the clouds. Did you buy?
Let’s face it, we were promised the moon and it was not delivered. The price is ridiculous. It is not reasonable, but outrageous.
Most of us are not millionaires, like the Agora group.
Looks like their sales are very slow, which does not surprise me. Maybe they will wise up and reduce this price. You are right, credibility is at stake now. Let’s see what happens tomorrow. Plus, who pays for all this traveling? Agora? And, 8:30AM to 11:30PM meetings? Who will be picking us up and driving us safely to these meetings, and back to our hotels?
Plus, I think daytime meetings are one thing, but night meetings until 11:30PM with a one hour break for dinner is ridiculous. Where in a large city, can you get in and out in less than an hour, for dinner in a good restaurant?
And, more details are needed about the European trips.
There is a need for much more detail. Enough said.
Very frustrated!

Don’t worry about little details and pass up this “ONCE IN A LIFETIME” (not my words, Rich’s) opportunity. The Agora/Rich starship is taking us to the heavens of wealth and abundance on the celestial ladder of the IWA. All you need is a credit card.All aboard!

I can’t believe I got in! It is such a great deal! I can’t wait to get started with all the EXPERTS. WOW!

For the price, you should, at least, be sure of something; but I read that only 4 or 5 will take advantage of Agora lists. The wind is overpriced.

I can’t wait: a teleconference call, a website AND forum, a 15min call to the ETR staff, monthly call to an expert, and free meetings in exotic places. WOW! OH and the Life Lines, just like the “Millionaire” show.KEWL.

Just out of curiosity, I would be interested to know what the nature of the business agreement between you and Agora is…Rich. The reason I ask is that I was very impressed with your video on Google and your manifesto chapters. I feel that it is something many more people than the 250 of Agora’s current offer could benefit from. I know that one of your principles is to run your own operation, your own business. Are you still doing that? Are you in a 50-50 partnership with Agora, an employee of Agora, or what?

I hope you will understand that, having followed your story and advice for several months, I am interested in the nature of what you - and applicants to this partnership, are getting into.

Well, I went for it. Not because of the main offer, quite weak but for the Business Growth Mastermind Membership included as a bonus, having missed the July offer.
At that time, the offer is still not sold out, so I guess a lot of people are disappointed by the (lack of) offer. Let’s hope Agora and Rich will overdeliver on what is promised!

Hi:

First of all forgive my mistakes in English, I’m Spanish.

After following superb Rich’s documents and material these months I must say that when I read the sales letter of the Alliance I was quite disappointed, I could not see enough benefits for that price, and what it was worse, what the letter offers does not seem to reach the level of what Rich has been delivering all this time, at least at first sight.

Maybe that Alliance is going to be great, but after a very well built pre-launch (analyzing that alone is an invaluable resource to learn and apply) I must say that the final “climax” (IMHO) is a dull sales letter full of dirty cheap tricks and that let me totally cold and blind to the real benefits of what it was offering.

What is worse for me is that it seems that Rich has made a great job with the pre-launch phase, has shown a great path to follow and all finally ended in a letter that simply does not “fit” with the images that I built in my mind according to Rich’s documents and posts…

I suspect that Agora made a pre-launch that naturally ends with that awful sales letter, but Rich took other different pre-launch approach, totally serious and professional that, for one reason or another, ended in the same Agora’s sales letter that simply, “does not seem to fit”.

Living in Spain it was very difficult that I opted to the program because surely I could not profit from all the meetings and the list sharing (I work for a Spanish speakin market), but I was expecting that the strategis materials alone over delivered the price, I can’t see that and I’m not going to pay that price only to see if I made correct assumptios…

Maybe Agora is the giant corporation here compared with Rich, but he has made much better job that has been killed by that “thing” that the marketing guru of Agora wrote…

Yesterday I was ready and waiting, hot credit card in hand, for my VIP email!

But after reading the description of the program, in what I agree was a poor sales letter, I promptly put the credit card back in my wallet.

I had expected that the program would have at least followed the general flow of The Final Chapter, but having read through the sales pitch two or three times, I was disappointed. As far as I can see the IWA program only meets the criteria set in The Final Chapter to a very limited degree.

It is also a US-centric program and probably unsuitable for people like me who live on the other side of the world.

I will certainly be using the Trilogy to develop my new business plan, but will not be joing IWA on the basis of the poor value it seems to offer.

Did Rich and Agora both forget that the 32,000+ people getting the emails about this program were here because of Rich’s expertise and writing style (hmmm…maybe that’s what the heated discussion was about?). Yes Agora is bigger and older. But the audience they’re pitching is Rich’s, not Agora’s.

Yet if Rich sees the supreme value in the Agora alliance, especially for himself, then maybe nearly 32,000 opt-ins are simply more comfortable with Rich’s style and need acclimating to the rarified air of Agora. It might have helped if Rich was the one who brought the hungry to the banquet table. Or is the sales letter very deliberately part of the sorting process? Personally, I’d love to live in that rarified air for awhile if my budget and circumstances permitted.

As someone else said on another board: “To be frank, an investment like this isn’t about the money - it’s about your confidence in being able to capitalize on the opportunity.”
Come on people, even if you do get zero value (which I doubt) from Rich coaching program, Agora insider info, you have ONE WHOLE YEAR to make JVs with the other high level participants and gain back the $9,000 invested!
Sure $9,000 is a lot of money for some. Sure the IWA sales letter is weak (on purpose?). But do you really want to build a business or not? In any offline business I know of, $9,000 is peanuts money to invest.
Rich one said he paid Jay $20,000 for just 4 one-hour coaching sessions. Quite a different mindset that some seems to have on this blog, don’t you think?

I am new to all of this, but have been a subscriber to ETR for about a year and have carefully read Masterson’s advice, as well as his take on businesses and opportunities.

Even though I am basically a novice, I was rather disappointed in the final sales letter and kept re-reading it over and over just to see if perhaps I had skipped over an important benefit for joining (considering the price).

But in the end, I DID join - not because of the letter, but because I believe that ETR/Masterson/Schefren didn’t make it this far by under-delivering. I FULLY expect this membership to worth every penny I paid - not to mention the incredible opportunity of building some relationships through the mastermind group.

I owned another (successful) business and just sold it because I believe I can make more money through alternative means. If you are REALLY serious about making some real money, then $9K is just a pittance to invest when considered in the grand scheme of things. I have recently met millionaires who invest $30-50,000 per year in themselves for ongoing training and knowledge and I suspect they did that before they made all their money (although to a much smaller scale).

I expect being on the cutting edge (before “information lag” sets in), will be worth much more than the $9k. The proof will be in the pudding, but again - “knowing” Masterson through his ETR newsletter, I am sure those of us who join won’t be shocked when they over-deliver and give us the knowledge / tools to do what would otherwise perhaps take years to learn or accomplish.

Just my opinion - but I am an expert at it (my opinion).

Don’t worry about little details and pass up this “ONCE IN A LIFETIME” (not my words, Rich’s) opportunity. The Agora/Rich starship is taking us to the heavens of wealth and abundance on the celestial ladder of the IWA. All you need is a credit card.All aboard!Join George, Olivier, Amy and the rest for the virtually guaranteed success you deserve!

Hi again:

I worked as business consultant for years in one big company, now I own a profitable and growing business, I can afford the payment and I agree with most comments and outlines that Rich has made in the chapters and manifesto (by the way I’m and old ETR subscriber, I know Agora), so I’m not bashing the Alliance, on the contrary.

But…

I’m only saying that Rich succeeded in constructing a well crafted strategy and to show us a path that we were eager to follow, but when the curtain was raised, I simply saw another very different thing than I expected.

I’m quite sure that the alliance will probably deliver what is promised, but it was simply not what I expected, at least according to the sales letter, and if you expect A and the sales letter says B, you simply don’t buy it, it’s not a question of price or narrow mindset (and if the sales letter says B, but what you get after is A, then it’s a poor sales letter).

If Rich, after crafting very powerful messages that were capable to generate so much interest, did not want o could not make the end move that the whole thing deserved, (at least for the hundreds os subscribers that he was capable to move, again IMHO) then it ends in a disappointment.

To make my point clear, Rich, congratulations I sincerely take my hat off (and I’ll listen when you speak) when you were the man in the helm all was superb, in the last moment, where it seems you stepped back for one reason or another, and that letter appeared to show us the much waited climax, for me, and I only speak for me, all was quite disappointing.

My sincere best wishes to all that embarked in the adventure of the alliance.

Regards

Agora is not about to offer a guarantee for this offer. Its too abstract and doesn’t deliver on the hype or relate back to anything Rich has written. Its as flat as a pancake.

let’s not mince words here, while it is all very fine to tread carefully and not be afraid of hurting anyone’s feelings, the simple fact of the matter is that this launch has been bombed in the worst way possible.

You spent $100,000 on the architect to design the house and then cheaped out and hired a cheap contractor. The result, no one wants to live in the house. THe people that do want to live in the house are only doing so because they saw the plans beforhand and hope that the contractor did not botch the interior like the exterior.

A very poor job, it reflects badly on Rich and on Agora, I don’t know how anyone can take the threats of AGORA coming and dominating their niche seriously if this performance is indicative of their “skill”.

I wonder how many spots have been taken.

The thing that I most disliked of the pre-launch material was precisely the “threat” of Agora dominating all, like a mytical juggernaut rising to devour all of the smaller players.

Beforehand it didn’t impressed me for a moment, in fact, that kind of phrases seemed not to fit in the general scheme of the Manifesto that I liked a lot, now, after the letter wrote by the Agora’s Marketing Chief himself, it was a definitely a extremely void statement, but it’s fun to read in a cold dark night of halloween.

Seriously, IMO Agora has bombed itself in the core, and for Rich maybe it can be affected some way, but I think he’s one of the few that I’ll keep listening, for now I’ll open and read every e-mail from him, in fact I have good (non affiliates or the like) references about his “pre-Agora” coaching system and for now it seems to deliver well to the people involved.

In fact I’m more than curious about what Rich have to say to all these comments. Maybe he’s quite satisfied, at the end maybe people like me is simply not the target customer, one can not please everyone.

Regards

It seems that the problem people have with the offer is the price.
But Rich’s Business Growth Mastermind Membership Bonus is worth alone $4,800. So the price has to be higher.
I guess that even if the IWA is more or less what to be expected, people here were expected a much cheaper thing.
So what are the points you don’t like in IWA?

The manifesto trilogy is one of the most lucid and profound arguments for the evolving state of the web written in recent history. Most people who’ve read it won’t value it for those reasons, nevertheless it’s really elevated you in my eyes.

But the conclusion of your launch is the promotional equivalent of a committing a syntactic non sequitur. Rich, please don’t prostitute your relationship with your clients and fans to another company like this again. You havn’t lost total credibility in my eyes, so pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again. I’m confident you’ll play it a little better the next time around.

I have to agree with other posters here. I’m one of the ‘lucky’ ones that got into Rich’s other program. I’ve barely made a dent in the material because I’m actually busy running a few very successful businesses… and it’s definitely been worth every penny.

Rich’s materials given for free as part for the pre-sales were outstanding. However, both the pre-sales hype and the actual sales letter/package fell incredibly flat for me. Personally, I found it to be a huge disappointment knowing what Rich is capable of.

The pre-sales hype on the other programs WAS warranted because Rich had to get his name out to the masses. In this case, I feel everything was overkill. Either that or the sales letter/explanation of the IWA was just not benefit-driven enough for me.

That being said, I really DO believe the BGS is worth the price being asked for everything. If the sales letter had stressed what was contained in this alone and given sincere testimonials from BGS members, it’d have done a much better job in selling people.

Rich Is there a monthly option please?

I totally agree with Ty and Deana w/ their comments here.

I’m also a BGS client and Rich’s BGS program is worth every penny.

The IWA launch was a disappointment. The sales letter sounded like a “car salesman” forcing you to buy something on a whim using the old scare tactics:

“Secure your spot now before you’re locked out forever!”

“Are you ready to virtually guarantee that you’ll never have to work a 9 to 5 job again?”

It overshadowed the benefits of joining IWA.

Pay no attention to the negative comments.This program is the MOST
important development in the history of the internet.Don’t worry about little details and pass up this “ONCE IN A LIFETIME” (not my words, Rich’s) opportunity. The Agora/Rich starship is taking us to the heavens of wealth and abundance on the celestial ladder of the IWA. All you need is a credit card.All aboard!Join George, Olivier, Amy and the rest for the virtually guaranteed success you deserve!Open heavens! Open heavens to higher profit now!Don’t forget BGS is included.

Well, I have joined. Yes, it was a poor sales letter, and a incredibly expensive price for anyone, let alone for someone like me who lives in Puerto Rico, is in college (masters degree) and still lives with his parents. But, the main thing is. Do you want to change your life or not? I do and I’m willing to do ANYTHING to achieve that. I see it like this right now. If you don’t want a job (yes even traditional businesses belong here) and want to have a life of freedom and prosperity you have two options:

1- Do some of the many known illegal things and make money.

2- Learn real no holes barred internet marketing and change your life.

I have been learning internet marketing for a year now, but I always felt that there are a lot of things missing in the big puzzle. Maybe I have made the wise decision joining this or a terrible mistake. Only time will tell.

Victor

It’s sad that Agora botched the IWA launch and dropped the ball.

Rich has done a superb job in building the excitement through his business manifesto trilogy and got a lot of people interested.

Agora is a great company, but Rich is the real superstar here. He had brought a lot of people to start thinking about building a real business instead of this “get rich quick” schemes that I seen being marketed as informational product by ETR just as how they try to sell IWA.

People are looking to build “real business” here and IWA failed to showed that.

I’m curious why people here have such a high opinion of Agora as a business?

I am really sick of all of the negative posts concerning this launch. I am new to all of this but am not new to the business world and the world of risk-taking and opportunity.

Up to this point, I had never taken a Rich Schefren course in my life, neither have I had the pleasure of hearing him speak, nor read his books.

But I have been pretty shocked at the outpouring of dismay over this whole launch, so I went backed and studied many of the past blogs as well as the comments. Also, I found some google video and audio of Rich giving some incredible speeches.

ARE MOST OF YOU ALL SAYING THAT SINCE YOU DIDN’T FEEL LIKE IT WAS A GOOD ENOUGH SALES LETTER THAT YOU FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE BEEN SOMEHOW LET DOWN OR MISLED?

Gosh, I’m glad that most of our collective customers aren’t like this everytime one of us has a bad day and either writes or says something that is up to par.

What about when you or one of your salespeople are having a bad day and perhaps botch up a sales presentation?

Does that make the product you sell any less respectable? Does that change the offering? Did you not read that this information product is truly that? INFORMATION?

Now how in the world can they tell us everything we’re gonna get in the package WHEN SOME OF IT HAS NOT EVEN BEEN INVENTED YET???!!! Did you not read the part of about “information lag”?

I’ll tell you what… I think there is some major information lag going on right here on some of these posts where many of you want to take your ball and go home just because you didn’t get a sexual arousal over a less than stellar sales letter!

From reading all of the previous blogs, it appeared that this information product was going to be in the 7 figures or at least $25-$50,000. Here they go and make it affordable for the assess… ahem… masses (yet not too affordable so as to keep the tire kickers away) and everyone is griping because they didn’t get turned on by the sale letter.

From what I can gather, the membership to the mastermind groups and the potential for alliances are worth the price alone.

Most of you are astute business people, I would assume, so why are you still complaining about the “weak offer”? And Linda, would you please quit copying the same old tired quotes you copied in previous blogs and keep copying into this one? You are obviously either very cynical or a ‘plant” from a competitor.

Both Rich Schefren and Michael Masterson have outstanding reputations, as well as good ethics and I am sure that they will stand behind this product and over-deliver.

It is an incredible opportunity. What are you waiting for?

George: First of all nobody actually believed this program was going to be offered at $25-$50K. That was an absurd speculation. I agree that the interest in the quality of the sales letter is peculiar. Who cares about the slaes pitch that is going to spend $10,000. I think the real problem is that the product itself simply has no content worth $10k. I’m happy that you do think it does. But not everyone here buys on faith alone.

I am taking Rich’s BGS course and while I would agree that the offer for the IWA is too sketchy to be compelling, of this I’m certain.

Rich is a totally ethical person and a brilliant teacher. If he is offering something, you can count on its being worth way more than you pay for it. I paid $5000 for the BGS; it has already had an enormous impact on my business. Middle term, I’d say that $5000 will be worth $3,000,000 to $5,000,000. Long term, I don’t know and don’t care since $5,000,000 is plenty for me.

I didn’t join IWA because I’m deep in the implementation of everything I’ve learned in the BGS, but the next time he offers something, I’ll jump at the chance to sign up. In short, if you are serious about making money and having fun doing it, and if you are willing to invest the honesty, discipline and hard work it takes to make it happen, then working with Rich is the way to go. You’re certain to feel it’s an honor to have a guy like him in your life. And you’re certain to get rich.

I would like to point out that the individuals who have done well from their work with Rich have had sensational sites to begin with and provide authentic service to people. It is a shame to imagine that one can turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse for any amount of money.