Until just recently I had never heard of Ryan Nguyen. But then one day I read a very strong endorsement by Henderson of an e-book called "Milk the web" by Ryan Nguyen. Ryan's book is in many ways different from many of the other books on Internet marketing. He shows his readers some tools and resources that aren't usually mentioned in most other books on Internet marketing.

And instead of just concentrating on individual techniques, Ryan also wants to show his readers a complete strategy for running a successful business on the Internet. This doesn't mean, though, that he hasn't included some valuable techniques in his book. The emphasis is just on the overall strategies for marketing on the Internet.

The guiding principle for Ryan's strategy, can be cooked down to the words: Give and you will receive.

Don't just try to sell products, Ryan says. No, you are the product that your customer buys. So be careful to give your customers the right message. A message that presents you and what you do in the very best way. And the best way to sell yourself is to place yourself, as we say, in the shoes of your customers. Do your utmost to help your customers get what they want, and they will give you what you want to get.

I totally agree with Ryan on this point, and he gives a lot of concrete example on how to actually practice this overall strategy in real life. 

Ryan Nguyen adheres to the idea of giving a lot of free stuff away on your web site in order to get more visitors and customers. Now, lately some marketers has become rather critical to the give-away-a-lot-of-free-stuff-strategy. And I agree that very often this strategy may be too time consuming and ineffective for many marketers. But I also think that the free-strategy really can be effective, if used correctly. And that's precisely what Ryan wants to show you. 

I think that Ryan's book has many helpful and interesting points. He has included a wealth of information, and he dares to go another road than most other web marketers.

Especially, I like his emphasis on really helping your customers, and giving them what they want, before you receive yourself. I think this is a fundamental, but often overlooked rule of marketing. All the concrete techniques in Ryan's book are built upon this overall strategy.

Ryan's book gives you a fine overview over marketing strategies and techniques built upon that overall strategy of serving your customer.

He shows how to build your web site on a budget, how to get your web site hosted for only a few dollars (yes, even one dollar) a month, the best tools to use, how to get more visitors to your web site, how to keep your visitors and turn them into customers, how to survive in a highly competitive market etc.

Ryan has included references to a lot of helpful tools and resources for the internet marketer. And even though I know a lot of resources and tools, I didn't know several of the tools and resources Ryan mention in his book.

For instance, Ryan gives you a wealth of tools and resources that can help you to get more traffic to your web site. He shows you high traffic web sites where you can place a link to your web site, and thus get a share of their traffic. Some of these web sites are well known. Others are much less known among many web marketers. But they certainly seem worth pursuing.

Besides, I like the section on how to make your product stand out as a really good offer. In this section Ryan shows you how to convert as many of your visitors into customers, as possible. Ryan also shows you how to keep your customers satisfied by treating them really well. 

Unfortunately, there are some grammatical errors in the book. Not a lot. Of course it's the information itself that's most important, but some of them actually disturb the understanding of the book. It's annoying, but I won't say that it's really serious. 

It's also annoying that the URLs in "Milk the web", isn't hyperlinks. Consequently you can't click on the links. This should definitely have been corrected.

Several times Ryan doesn't take the time to really explain his strategies and techniques. This makes the reader sit back somewhat confused and with more questions than answers.

Finally, I think "Milk the web" seems somewhat unstructured at places, which sometimes makes it difficult to find a red thread in the book. Sometimes Ryan seems to jump from subject to subject without connecting them in any logical train of thought. But I suppose the reason is that Ryan has so much on his heart that he wants to tell his readers. 

Does these criticisms disqualify Ryan's book? Not at all! Ryan's book has so much valuable information, that it more than makes up for the shortcomings I've just mentioned. 

Besides, on the positive side, Ryan has given me a fantastic service, and he has been very cooperative. In a time when service is often praised but seldom practiced, such service is invaluable. 
 

SUMMARY

Despite the few criticisms I've mentioned above, I certainly think that Ryan Nguyen's book is a valuable addition to my personal library of books on Internet marketing. Ryan has included a wealth of valuable strategies, techniques, resources and tools for getting traffic to your web site, and then turning them into customers.

In short, I have some criticisms and I don't agree with everything in Ryan's book, but overall I find "Milk the web" to be a unique and helpful contribution to the many books on Internet.

Klaus Dahl
Active Direct Marketing Center
http://www.klausdahl.com/Ryan_Nguyen_Milk_the_Web_review.htm