My Crowd Mountain Review (at last)
When you first join up with Crowd Mountain you start by working through Boot Camp. Michelle lays out her system step by step with videos and worksheets to guide you along the way. I love this way of doing things because it’s more conducive to getting things done.
Many membership programs throw everything at you at once and try to wow you with volume instead of substance, but for learning a particular process the boot camp works very well at keeping you on track and preventing you cutting corners (the same reason I love the Thirty Day Challenge).
Why Do I (You) Need a System?
I often say that I’m not interested in re-inventing the wheel. Over the years I have developed my own way of doing things but I’m always happy (and in the ever-changing world of the Internet it’s a necessity) to learn new methods, refine my processes, add new tools, and even overhaul things completely. Online you have to be prepared to adapt and change your systems as some processes stop working and new things come along.
I don’t need to be the architect, I just need to be the builder who knows the right architect to go to and the plans to follow.
You know what? I’m quite happy to let someone else put the time in to see whether a system works and then learn it from them.
What Is the Crowd Mountain System?
Michelle explains the basic system in these Bird’s Eye View videos. It’s the same process she follows to research a niche, set up the site, create content, monetize, start gathering emails from visitors, and push the site to the top of the natural search engine rankings.
This is niche online marketing made easy.
What Else Does Crowd Mountain Offer?
As well as the bootcamp, Michelle offers:
- A monthly Q&A
- WordPress themes that are suitable for use (from an SEO and monetization point-of-view)
- Monthly LRBs (links, ready to build) – the best sites to post your content to in order to build authority backlinks to your site
- Niche Trailheads (Michelle finds some great niches for you)
- Great tools and software. You’ve already received 2 pieces of software from Michelle, well inside Crowd Mountain you can enjoy tools that will make your business life easier including the Crowd Mountain Task Manager, Bookmarker, RSS Blaster, Snooper and some fantastic custom made plugins (the one I use constantly is the YouTube Dropper).
- Best Link Building Tactics. Michelle is particularly well-known for her SEO skills and building great quality backlinks. She shares all her best tactics and tools in the member’s area.
How Am I Using Crowd Mountain?
The Crowd Mountain Bootcamp has changed my own processes considerably and now setting up sites is even quicker and more systematized. It can be too easy to become distracted and miss steps out when setting up new sites and I like knowing that I can move through step by step and make sure I don’t miss anything.
I’ve always had a number of niche sites (some of them sorely neglected) but recently I have been setting them up at a faster rate to sell on. If you have aged domains or can buy something with a good age and/or PR then put it through the Crowd Mountain process and list it on Flippa for a nice tidy profit.
It’s simple, step-by-step-easy and is perfect for both beginners and those of you, like me, who already have experience and a system (it really has made setting up sites easier for me).
Make sure you check out all the free stuff mentioned earlier and if you are already sold click here to join Crowd Mountain.
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Entrepreneur Solo:
April 29th, 2010 at 6:51 am
You know what I really like about Michelle? She goes fast on the videos. No filler just killer tips.
Lisa:
April 29th, 2010 at 10:10 am
Me too. I guess for beginners she may be a bit fast sometimes but you can always pause and re-watch whereas speeding up something is much harder to do.
Lauren:
August 23rd, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Oh my gosh, please do not join crowd mountain. The bootcamp is good material, but the site itself is a mess, there is almost no customer service, and Michelle disappears for long periods of time with no explanation or apology and doesn’t keep the material current. Not worth it at all!!
John:
November 28th, 2010 at 12:24 pm
I actually joined Crowd Mountain when it relaunched for 2010, and I joined at the basic $127 membership fee. According to Michelle’s pitch, this $127/mo give you access to the Crowd Mountain website, live weekly Q&A webinars with Michelle during the 6 week boot camp and monthly Q&A sessions after boot camp is over, and various monthly goodies (SEO’d WordPress themes, niche keyword suggestions based on Michelle’s research, links to places where you can build good backlinks, etc). Sounds awesome, right? Well, read on…
BOOT CAMP
The Boot Camp was indeed pretty good (as many people will tell you). The videos featured the straight forward, no fluff, succinct style of teaching that Michelle is known for. Lots of info about finding niches, setting up niche sites, SEO-ing them, and promoting them. Not super different from what you find in the free 30dc, but a few interesting twists on the standard techniques.
BUT the videos had been recorded 6 months to a year before the relaunch of Crowd Mountain, and much of the information was out of date. Not only did we — Michelle’s paying customers — have to find workarounds for suggested plug-ins that no longer existed or had changed, but we had to find them without her assistance as those questions were routinely ignored. Also, her videos and techniques did not take into account any of the major changes that Google was making with Caffeine.
One bit of marketing genius that you all should learn from, though: When signing up for Crowd Mountain, you are offered several upsells. One of them gives you access to all 6 weeks’ worth of bootcamp videos immediately. If you don’t purchase that upsell though, you get one bootcamp moduel a week for 6 weeks… which, of course, guarantees Michelle 2 months’ worth of membership fees before you’re done with the basic bootcamp.
BEYOND THE BOOTCAMP
Well, beyond the bootcamp there is nothing. After the bootcamp ended, she kept up the monthly goodies for a month or two. After that, they stopped completely. More importantly, Michelle stopped showing up for the Q&A sessions (without telling anyone, btw). This was especially bad for the people who bought the “Mastermind” upsell, because they were guaranteed monthly (or was it weekly?) Q&A and brainstorming sessions with Michelle, but she stopped showing up for those too. In short, after the outdated bootcamp was over, the content petered out and Michelle went AWOL.
At first, we were told she was going to a weekend seminar with Ed and the 30dc gang and would be back at the beginning of the following week. She had scheduled a week-long live webinar series on Outsourcing, followed by two more on other IM topics. All of us showed up on Crowd Mountain for the webinar, but Michelle didn’t. No announcement, no postponement, nothing. She just didn’t show up.
The following day, we all showed up again, but Michelle did not. In fact, for the next month, we were left in silence on the site. When we started asking the CM manager what was happening, she first hid and ignored our questions, then began threatening to ban us from the message boards if we kept asking “negative” questions.
After well over a month of absolutely no contact from Michelle (and no updates to the site, and no product or service provided), the site manager finally came out of hiding and started telling us that Michelle had the flu and would “be back soon.” The “flu” lasted another 2-3 months apparently, because we didn’t hear from Michelle at all during that time, and received none of the monthly goodies, teaching, or Q&A sessions which we were promised and for which we were paying.
At various times, we were told that Michelle (1) was out of town, (2) moving to a new house (and so was too busy to provide the service for which we were paying), (3) sick with the flu, (4) still sick with the flu, (5) *still* sick with the flu, and (6) one of her fillipino outsourcers died in a car accident, so she was unable to do any work on the Crowd Mountain site. We were also told that (7) one of the site manager’s close friends had died (and so neither her nor Michelle were able to work on the site), and (8) her site was down for maintenance — for a few weeks. This was all over the course of about 6 months of membership, btw.
Of course, during this time she was still tweeting and we were still receiving affiliate offers from her in email (which angered a lot of CM-ers).
At one point, Michelle came back to Crowd Mountain briefly, but she still had no new content. Instead, she set up “webinars” with guest expert speakers. These webinars turned out to be sales pitches from Michelle’s JV partners, period. Basically, she was out of content and so instead started spamming us with JV offers (for which we were paying a minimum of $127/mo). After a few of those, Michelle disappeard again and has not come back.
Now, of course, we’re being told that (9) she’s having surgery (which has apparently been going on for about 3 months). Forgive me if, at this point, I’m a bit skeptical about *any* excuse we’re given, because it’s become officially ridiculous.
As of today, the Crowd Mountain website is gone. It’s been down since at least September. It definitely has not been up at all during October or November. BUT — and here’s the fun part that tells you a lot about Michelle and the way she does business — my credit card has been charged for both October and November membership fees.
At this point, you may be asking why I haven’t cancelled. The truth is: I have. I sent a support ticket to Michelle’s support desk (at Revolution Tilt, the only place she accepts support questions) and requested a cancellation of my membership. It was ignored and I was charged for October (when there was no Crowd Mountain on the web anymore and after Michelle being AWOL for most of the past 6+ months). I attempted to send another ticket requesting cancellation and a refund of the month I was charged without any product or service in return, but found that her support site had been taken down.
I then sent a support email to the Revolution Tilt email address, requesting cancellation and a refund for October. After a week, the email bonced back. The support email address no longer works.
I then tried every Crowd Mountain link and address I could find; all sites and related addresses were completely gone from the web. I tried all Revolution Tilt site links and addresses I could find; all were (and are) completely gone from the web. I tried every address and phone number on my Crowd Mountain membership invoices; all gone and/or disconnected. Finally, out of desperation, I went to Michelle’s Facebook page, Twitter, etc. They’ve all been abandoned, with her last tweets and updates in August or early September. Basically, Michelle has taken down all her sites — including customer support sites — gotten rid of all her email addresses, and disconnected all but one of her phone numbers. The only phone number that still works is a recording that directs you to the Revolution Tilt support site that no longer exists.
HERE’S THE FINAL KICKER: I just received an invoice in my email saying that she’s charged my credit card for November’s Crowd Mountain membership. Thats right; the site hasn’t existed since at least late September/early October, she’s removed every way of contacting her or cancelling my membership, and yet she keeps charging me every month. $127 a month, stolen from my credit card.
I’m now left with no recourse but to try to get my bank to either cancel the payments or cancel my credit card, and *hopefully* reverse the charges for the past 2 months. Fingers crossed…
LAST THING YOU SHOULD KNOW: Being a compassionate guy, there was a moment when I thought maybe she was just having a rough year. That’s still no excuse for the way she’s run her business, but I really didn’t believe that it was some sort of scam or something. THEN I went to places like the Warrior Forum and a few other IM communities and looked up Crowd Mountain; Turns out the EXACT SAME THINGS happened the last time she launched Crowd Mountain. People liked the bootcamp, but then the content immediately petered out, Michelle completely disappeared in a cloud of ever-changing excuses, but she kept charging the CM members until they finally called their banks and cancelled their credit cards in disgust. So, yeah, this is a pattern with her.
I like to think she’s just flaky rather than shady. Maybe she’s just not cut out to run a membership site and should just stick to selling the bootcamp as a stand-alone product (after updating it, of course). I thought there was no way someone with her cache in IM would jeopardize their hard-built reputation (and the revenue stream that comes with it) by screwing over their customers so handily. But that’s a hard attitude to maintain in the face of her continuing to milk my credit card and removing all ability to contact her or cancel my membership. And, of course, in the face of the pattern of doing this repeatedly.
I know Ed and the 30dc gang continue to talk her up in response to questions about her, and I’m sorry to see and/or hear it when it happens. I know there’s no reason for them to badmouth her outright, but for them to continue to support her as a guru with a good product is simply untrue and causes me to wonder about their ultimate intentions as well.
So, in response to your question, I say stick with the 30dc. You learn basically the same thing for free (minus a few very tiny differences, many of which no longer work), and you are far less likely to find yourself out thousands of dollards and having to cancel your credit card.