An HONEST Pure Leverage Review

If you're tired of people telling you they're going to review a product, only to then just recite the sales pitch on it, you may appreciate this honest review on Pure Leverage.

I joined Pure Leverage when it first launched and had the opportunity to bring quite a few people into it. However, I pretty quickly dropped my account because I felt it was WAY too hyped and didn't roll out the level of quality I was looking for. The company asked why I left, and here are the thoughts I shared with them. (I never heard back.) I'll let this serve as the most honest Pure Leverage review I could offer:

[Comments in brackets like this are my current additions.]

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Thanks for the help. I appreciate that someone like Joel likes to have information about what's working and what isn't, so I'll write out my thoughts here and you are welcome to share them. I'm happy to have you/Joel reach out with responses and am always open to reconsidering things, but I think there may not be an immediate solution....

QUANTITY OVER QUALITY
I've been online making money for many years, so using the system is not a problem for me. In fact, it's my experience that made me feel that the system offers a lot in terms of quantity, but not as much in quality.

For instance, 10,000 people in the system for $24.95/month is a great value, but most people will never break the 500 mark, which they can get for $19/month at AWeber with a higher quality e-mail system. (Beautiful lead capture forms for any site; automatic archiving online; list segmentation; deeper analytics; etc.)

AFFORDABLE & EFFECTIVE
My biggest concern in finding a system is having something affordable and EFFECTIVE for my team members in other businesses, because it's so easy for new people to go online for business and overspend; for them, almost ANYTHING is overspending until they are earning. So it HAS to be effective.

I like that I can share autoresponders with team members, for instance (which I can also do with AWeber and a few other systems though), because most people can't write or are afraid to, so I can help them to be effective in this way. But I was especially concerned that the lead capture pages were very, very limited (look and content flexibility) and, without capturing names, didn't allow for personlization in the e-mails. As a result, I am concerned that the lead capture pages won't be as effective as they need to be in other businesses.

(It would also be nice, by the way, if team leaders had a way to share lead capture pages with their team members. As with the autoresponders.)

LEAD CAPTURE FORMS
I was concerned that there was no way to put a form on my own websites to capture people into this system. That would have given me far more flexibility as to how I presented a lead capture page and/or expands where I can get leads. Obviously other e-mail systems give you this option.

BLOG
I was concerned that the blog wasn't yet available. To me, this is the first thing that needs to be launched, because it's how people start getting traffic, which is then how they put people INTO an e-mail system.

It also sounded to me like it was just going to be a Wordpress blog and that it was going to be Pure Leverage branded. So, I can get my own free blog anywhere without such branding, allowing me to focus on whatever other business I'm building. It seems to me that Pure Leverage ought to give you 3 blogs -- one for marketing Pure Leverage and one for marketing each of your other two businesses, which you're using with the other mailing lists. NO PureLeverage branding on those, except maybe a footer that says, "Want a blog like this one? Click here to get yours." And then include the person's affiliate link.

[I can only presume they've got blogs in place by now.]

VIDEO E-MAIL & TRACKING
I DO LIKE that you've included such an easy way to do video e-mail. This is one of the aspects I was pleased with. I also like that you added a simple tracking feature for running ads.

FERRARI COMPETITION
Loved the idea of the Ferrari competition, but after one week, you could no longer promote the idea of winning a Ferrari because, by then, that person [the person you were promoting to] wouldn't be eligible to win it. This is NOT a reason why I've requested my refund, but wanted to point out this complication to the promo.

RESELLER FEE
I felt that the $19.97/month to resell was not easily seen information on the sales page, so I was unaware of it until after I signed up. I feel this should have been made clearer, as I'm all about transparency.

[Yes, the system was $24.95/month. If you wanted to sell it to others, you had to pay an additional $19.97/month. This way they could claim 100% payouts because they were only referring to the cost of the system, and not your total cost as a referring agent. I do NOT like systems that charge you money to refer their products -- this is very counter-intuitive to me.]

BENEFITS REMOVED
I had signed up based partly on the understanding that you were including a testimonial generator for the blog, which I thought was a unique selling point and would add value not usually seen elsewhere. This was shown on one of your graphics. After I joined and asked about this, the team admitted this was a mistake and removed it from the graphic. I know this wasn't done purposely, but it's a reason I felt less value was given.

SUMMARY
In the end, I felt that I could get an unbranded blog elsewhere for free, and that the main values here were:

* Autoresponders / e-mails
* Ability to share those with the team
* Video e-mails

Since I can get the first two for less up to 500 people on a stronger platform (including the ability to integrate with so many services), and believe most team members will never hit that amount (or it's a good problem to have) ... and AWeber charges nothing to refer people for 30% commissions (so team members don't have to pay a reseller fee to cover the cost of their own usage) ... I've decided that video e-mail didn't add enough to stick with the limitations of Pure Leverage.

With better lead capture pages AND the ability to capture leads from other sites AND the ability to capture names and then personalize e-mails AND a non-branded blog ... I would feel that Pure Leverage is an outstanding value.