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The 20/20 Challenge offers a simple and bold proposition: earn $20,000 in twenty days or get your money back. It's a strong idea but is it a strong proposition? Let's find out.
Before going any further, it's probably crossed your mind by now that such a bold statement as "earn $20,000 in 20 days or your money back" obviously involves some upfront cost, so let's get that out of the way before looking at the course in more detail. The course or, as creator Michael Green dubs it, the toolkit, currently costs $247, although that will be rising to $497 after his introductory period special offer closes. There is also the option to upgrade to a "gold" version, for an additional $197, which gives access to a much deeper pool of products.
As you will see on the 20/20 front page, the key points are that internet marketing expert Michael Green offers a complete day by day plan, with no need to buy or create your own product, to hitting the target of making $20,000 in twenty days or you get a full refund of the purchase price.
His entry level course includes ten products, six eBooks and four software packages, from which you would choose one to use as the vehicle for the course, in addition to the day by day workbook and a dedicated forum for the exclusive use of those who buy in to the course.
Having signed up, the first thing to do is access the 20/20 Challenge Owner's Manual, a hefty 250 page detailed guide to all the steps needed to achieve your goal, broken down into detailed daily actions to be taken. The very first thing you'll read is this:-
Can you really earn $20,000 by simply owning this toolkit? Sadly the answer is in fact NO. Because ownership of this toolkit is not the answer to your wealth creation… You actually have to act on the help and advice it offers and turn the words of this manual into action.
I can vouch for the profound wisdom of these simple words. It's entirely possible, maybe even necessary, to read a lot of information from many different sources about different ways of potentially making money online. I have read an enormous amount of such stuff purporting to be good advice over the last year, most of it self-serving rubbish. The trick of it is always to sort the wheat from the chaff and take action. As Stephen Fry wrote in his 1997 book Making History, "You are what you do. What's inside your head means nothing until you act".
Michael Green advises that to succeed in his challenge you'll require raw determination to commit yourself fully from Day 1, otherwise the result will be all too predictable failure. If you have that determination and drive to see things through, potentially unlimited riches could be yours.
If, like me, your online skills are not the strongest and you're worried you might not be able to see this challenge through on a technical level, you need to be able to do or learn how to do the following:
- Surf the web
- The ability to create a basic webpage
- Open a webhosting account
- Upload files to your webhost
- Research the markets for free products in the toolkit (or make your own)
- Either re-brand or, more likely, get a freelancer to re-brand your chosen product
- Write a winning sales letter with interesting copy
- Search out joint venture partners to create additional sales
- Find affiliates to create even more sales
- Set up product delivery and payment process
- Spend the money you've made!
The course covers all the first ten points and I trust you'll have your own ideas about the last point if you go ahead and invest in this toolkit.
Here's a breakdown of the entire 20 day process. At the end of each day there is a set of check boxes for you to tick off to make sure that all the needed steps have been completed.
- Day 1: Read the entire 20/20 Owner's Manual right through. This is to familiarize yourself with the overall process and prepare for the work to come.
- Day 2: Learn all about Private Label Rights (PLR) products. Learn how to accept payments.
- Day 3: Choose the product for your challenge and work out re-branding model. This is one of the most vitally important issues in the whole course.
- Day 4: Start the re-branding process and look for prospective Joint Venture (JV) partners.
- Day 5: Write the sales letter for your chosen product and add more JV partners.
- Day 6: Price your product, set up payment system, decide how to manage your JV partners, create download page, set up auto-responder and add more JV Partners. (weakness, more extras need to be bought – including author's own, explanation lacks detail)
- Day 7: Test your sales letter and keep pushing for more of those all important JV partners.
- Day 8: Liaise with JV partners and product re-branders.
- Day 9: Start product promotion, set up test PPC campaign on Google AdWords, keep working JV partners.
- Day 10: Check on final stage re-branding, more pre-release promotion and, yes, more JV partner work.
- Days 11 to 14: Finalise sales letter, more promo and JV work. The end is in sight!
- Day 15 to 17: Add affiliates and more promo/JV work, decide on any product bonuses, and more promotion, affiliate and JV work.
- Day 18: Create product delivery system and keep working on promotion and sales activities.
- Day 19: Final pre-sales push and systems check and even more promotional work.
- Day 20: Launch your product!
Having read through this manual some three times now, I can confirm that, if you have always wanted to get into running your own online business to either supplement or even replace your day job, the 20/20 Challenge can help you get going. It's certainly given me the confidence to start on my own project, which I'll report on in a couple of weeks time.
Is it complete? Certainly not. For a start, there are some additional costs, software and services which you'll need in order to do a thorough job. These include obvious basics such as registering a domain name, which will cost about $10, getting hosting for your web site (about $10 a month), freelance services (at least $20 – $100), which are fair enough. Then there are more substantial costs like merchant accounts, JV management and download protection software ($50 – $300), most of which could have been included in the package rather than being presented as optional extras, particularly as the links to them are Michael Green's own affiliate links.
Some of the products included as the potential vehicle for your own project are absolutely brilliant, but there are also some which are either unlikely to be very profitable or simply a bit old and widely available elsewhere, so the need for very careful and thorough market research on your potential choice can not be stressed highly enough.
The course is also a little weak in the area of JV partner research, relying on just one, albeit powerful, technique and, to this newbie's mind, slightly skims over the mechanics of setting up payment receipt and product delivery mechanisms.
All in all, The 20/20 Challenge is a very useful and helpful beginner's guide to launching your first online business and I certainly wouldn't have been able to get going without it. Is the challenge of making $20,000 in just twenty days achievable? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating of course, but I believe it is possible to earn this and more. The real strength of this course is that the lessons learned are infinitely repeatable and I intend to use them as a springboard to launching my own little online empire.
Despite its slight imperfections, I would absolutely recommend The 20/20 Challenge to anyone looking to get started with their own online business.
