About two months ago, my friend Pat O'Bryan, a veteran Texas blues musician arrived late to our weekly group meeting. After a long night spent filling orders for his first online product, he sighed and said, 'One day I'm going to write a book called 'The Myth of Passive Income'.

He was kidding, of course, and we all laughed. Except for Joe Vitale. Joe said, "I think you ought to write that book." Every one looked at Joe. "I'm serious, I think it's a great idea."

Since thanks to Joe's help, Pat had just made over three grand his first weekend online, Pat was all ears.

"Great, I'll do it," he said.

An hour or two after the meeting, I get an email from Pat and Joe asking me to contribute a chapter to this new ebook. They asked me to write what a typical day is like for me. They correctly assumed that I don't spend my days sitting on a beach with my laptop.

Well, I quickly told my story and by our next Mastermind meeting, I discovered I was not alone. Online gurus like Yanik Silver, David Garfinkel, Terry Levine, Randy Charach and our fellow group member Craig Perrine had all sent in chapters. Altogether 22 successful marketers contributed to the book.

This past Friday, Pat and Joe launched the site by announcing it to their individual mailing lists. Since my wife, Lena is visiting her family in Russia and Pat's partner, Betsy is in Italy, we got to hang out, grill some burgers and enjoy a good cigar this weekend. We also watched the Corey Rudl DVD reviewed in this issue.

By the time Pat arrived, he'd already brought in several thousand dollars in sales and, as you can imagine, was pretty excited. I've got wireless Internet access and Pat and I both had our laptops running while watching the DVD. Pat's computer was logged into his payment system.

And he couldn't help checking his account. 'I got three more sales while we ate these burgers," he said. 'Hey, here comes two more," he added a few minutes later. Pretty soon, I'm logging into my account to see how my sales are. My day wasn't quite as good as Pat's but both of us were tickled to death to be making money while we were just hanging out.

This was not always the case. A little over six months ago, Pat was a struggling musician. He'd had a little success in Europe but was playing five and six hour gigs locally and going home with $25 in his pocket after expenses.

Now, he's an Internet marketing machine. Does he work hard? You bet he does. But he's loving every minute of it. If you want to find out how he did it as well as hear some great advice from a big group of marketers that know their stuff, including your humble editor, you need to check out Pat's ebook. You can get it here:

http://www.ecommerceconfidential.com/myth

This three DVD set, also available on VHS, (plus one bonus DVD) is an update to The London Videos, a product Corey's been selling for several years now. A new welcome addition is a printed 33-page workbook which includes the key concepts and resources referred to in the videos.

Much of Corey's talk is similar to the London Videos presentation but the format has gone from a live performance in front of an audience to more of an infomercial style with live clips mixed in.

The new setting is a California mansion that has Corey doing a segment in almost every room of the house. The 'all this could be yours message' comes through loud and clear.

The outline is very similar to Corey's ebook, The Four Steps. Much of this will be old news to experienced marketers although there might be one or two tactics you haven't tried yet.

Corey strongly recommends automating your website from the very beginning. As such, a big part of these videos, and there's a lesson to be learned here, are product demonstrations and sales pitches for Corey's backend products. While I agree that automation should come early, for the most part, I disagree with the specific tools he recommends.

Pay close attention to how Corey makes his pitch, though. By using the tools to illustrate the concepts, he quickly gets newbies to associate autoresponders with Mailloop, an affiliate program with AssocTRAC, creating an ebook with Ebook Pro and so on. Alternatives aren't mentioned.

Ironically, with all the talk about automation, Corey does not address automating the order process at all. Then again, Corey doesn't have shopping cart software in his product line.

Copywriting is covered briefly followed by a demo of 60 Second Sales Letters, which is a branded version of Marlon Sanders Instant Sales Letters.

Next, Corey addresses affiliate programs. He covers the basics of both running your own affiliate program and earning money participating in other people's programs. Not surprisingly, Corey's own AssocTRAC is the featured product in this section.

Bonus Items

A third DVD in this set has Corey answering a list of commonly asked questions about Internet marketing. Some of what he has to say was covered in the first two DVD's. It appears, based on the way Corey refers to the Ultimate Seminar product, that this DVD may have been originally intended for some other purpose.

A fourth DVD is an interview with Jermaine Griggs of HearandPlay.com. This is essentially a video version of one of Corey's interviews from his Secrets to Their Success website.

I don't necessarily think there are any secrets revealed in this one but Jermaine's story is inspirational. If you lack the belief that an ordinary person can make good money online, this video will help turn that belief around.

One additional bonus is an audio interview with Corey in Australia. A link is provided when you place your order so you can access this one immediately but it's only available as an streaming media listened to while online.

Bottom Line: If you own (and have applied) Corey's Insider Secrets to Internet Marketing course, you probably don't need this video. If you're just starting out and haven't purchased this or any other course yet, you'll enjoy this video and get a good introduction to the basics. Ditto if you've purchased Corey's course but it's gathering dust, unread, on a bookshelf. Corey's very passionate about Internet marketing and his enthusiasm can be contagious.

A very similar presentation to this one from Corey inspired me to start my online business. Just don't do what I did and resist the temptation to rush out and buy Mailloop and AssocTRAC. Do your homework first.