Online Business Community: IMPho Review – Should You Trust Allen Payne?
Owner: Allen Payne
Website: www.impho.com
Price: $1 free trial for your first week for a premium access or $0 as a starter account
Monthly price: $37
Discount price $27
Verdict: Legit
First of all, I would like to say that in my review I’m going to compare IMPho and Wealthy Affiliate community (the best online business community in the world). I think that way will be much easier to understand how IMPho can help you or how good it really is.
IMPho is an Online Business Community helping people to build a business online. It was founded in 2011 by Allen Payne to offer those who are new to internet marketing an effective training course on affiliate marketing or teach them how to build a real business online using legit methods.
Compared to other online business communities, such as Wealthy Affiliate, which was started in 2005, IMPho was founded in 2011. So it is the youngest among other similar programs out there.
From the point of overall rating and quality, Wealthy Affiliate is the best among other online business communities (Affilorama – 2005, Chris Farrell Membership -2008, Bring the fresh – 2012) in all aspects.
IMPho is still among good ones, but is by far not the best one. All these communities are legit and really have helped thousands of people build their online businesses. The longest standing site, with the best experience is WA, because it strictly follows Google’s Guidelines and is second to none in the industry.
Pricing policy
So, what can we expect from this membership? The first thing worth mentioning is that you can join the community for 1$ for a premium access and see what is inside it within the first week and then if you decide to stay in the community you are expected to pay 37$ monthly.
But there is one thing I would like to mention and which I don’t like. When you try to sign up and pay for a membership you are redirected to the payment page to pay the amount mentioned above.
But if for any reason you change your mind and decide not to pay then you will be offered a new price, 27$. That leaves a bad impression, because if you don’t refuse to sign up, that means you will pay 37$!
That kind of approach is not a good sign for a company that claims to be trusted one. Because it gives rise to some doubts about IMPho that claims to teach folks legit business using ethical methods.
In regards to WA, their price policy is very clear. Start up price at WA is $0, then $19 for the first month. If you decide to stay as a premium member then you have to pay $47 per month or go yearly and pay $359.
Training course at IMPho
The training course at IMPHO is pretty good and lessons are very informative. It has a lot of training modules (500), such as generating traffic, social media engagement, affiliate marketing, email marketing and email list building, search engine optimization, wordpress, creating product and selling it and even marketing through PPC (paid traffic).
So, the training course is really good and provides a new member all the information he might need to build a successful business online. I would even say that the training material is too overwhelming and it can take too much time to complete the full course.
Though it will pay off later when you start building a successful business, but it is still too overwhelming.
Compared to Wealthy Affiliate, there is an abundance of information at WA too. But most of it is an additional material, which you are not required to learn.
What you need is just go through WA main certification course (50 lessons) and Affiliate Bootcamp (70 lessons). Total 120 lessons and you can start building your successful business online.
In regards to the tools that IMPho offers its members, they are good and helpful. Among them are keyword rank checker (very useful to know how your pages rank on Google), Instant on-Page SEO review (to know how to fix issues if you have ones on your pages to be able to rank well), Backlink tool (absolutely useless) and some other tools. The only tool that I don’t like is a backlink creator.
You should know that after recent Google algorithm changes this tool can hurt your website rankings in search engines. I believe they will remove this tool in the future because it’s not going to help you in any way in your business.
Compared to WA, all the tools offered inside WA community are absolutely legit. In my view, the Jaaxy (keyword research tool) alone, offered at WA is top of the line, in today’s competitive market.
PLR content and the future of your success with IMPho
PLR (Private label rights) is the content that can be used by everyone but this is a big NO-NO.. Allen Payne teaches his members to use that kind of content though it can hurt your website rankings. He tells that you can make some changes to that content and use it. Actually, creating content that way doesn’t work anymore.
That’s why to be honest, I really don’t understand that part of the training offered by Allen. I mean that Allen is a seasoned internet marketer and that strategy coming from him really amazes me. If you want to be successful online and have a search engine friendly website, you need to create an original, unique content for your website.
Of course, before writing an article you can read some other reviews on other websites BUT when it comes to writing your own content you should write with your own words and use your own and unique approach.
In regards to WA, they teach people to write only original content, i.e. legit methods. Creating original content is one of the major factors of your online success and anything different from that approach is the first sign to be on the alert for a particular company.
JV products offered at IMPho – Yes and No
IMPho recommends its members to promote JV products, which are by far not the best ones in the industry. Many Clickbank products related to making money niche are poor quality products and misleading.
IMPho founder knows it very well and since they teach and want their members to be successful online, they should explain that they can’t be successful if they promote poor quality products. That is my personal view.
Many people who are new to internet marketing, don’t know how to separate good products from the bad ones and selling bad ones is the fastest way to failure. Compared to IMPho, WA teaches its members to promote good products only, by teaching you how to build long-term relationships with people.
Support
The IMPho forum is very active and the members are very knowledgeable and willing to share their knowledge and help new members. Allen himself, the founder of IMPho, is an active member of the community and you can get help even from him. In this regard both WA and IMPho are great.
Pros of the program
You can create account and benefit from some resources offered by IMPho for free
No upsells compared to many other similar programs
Good training course
Good support
You can earn 50% affiliate commission by promoting IMPho
Cons of the program
PLR content (out of date)
Backlink strategy (out of date)
Final word on IMPho
Finally, let’s compare IMPho and WA:
| Experience | * | IMPHO | *** | WA |
| Price | ** | IMPHO | * | WA |
| Pricing Policy | * | MPHO | *** | WA |
| Training | ** | IMPHO | *** | WA |
| Tools | ** | IMPHO | *** | WA |
| Methods | ** | IMPHO | *** | WA |
| Support | *** | IMPHO | *** | WA |
As you can see above, WA is a winner and I highly recommend to join WA. I’m a premium member of WA and know the community from inside. I forgot to mention that you can try Wealthy Affiliate for free within 7 days. But IMPho is a great community as well.
Anyway, Allen is doing a great job by helping people succeed online and this alone is a great thing. If you are on a low budget then you can join IMPho or read my review of the WA below. Wish you all the best! I hope my review was helpful and I tried to be honest. If you have any questions feel free to contact me.
About the Author: Adam
My name is Adam. I'm the founder of Your Income Advisor. My goal is to help others succeed online, by exposing scams and reviewing top rated products. I can help you start your own business online 
Thinking about changing my career is something a have dream about for a very long time.as to what you are saying it means,now all my searches and spending has come to a halt.I will take advantage of this affiliate which is wealthy and make my dreams come through.
Yours sincerely,Rol.
If you work hard and stay consistent in what you are planning to do, I think you will have the ability to achieve all or some of your goals. Just stay focused and patient and while working hard and success will come.
A very good attempt at reviewing two competing companies without bias. I thought you were very generous in your appraisal of Internet Marketing Phorum. Not that I know anything about them, but my reason is because I am left with a nagging sense of your lack of conviction towards WA. If I were looking, I might seek out another review and see if I get a stronger sense of which direction to go in.
Your comparison chart gives good information but it is too boring. I have to read it. Give me a line chart with two distinct colors and I can see at a glance that WA either is as good as or better than the other, just by comparing lines. Make it as easy and fast as you can yet still deliver the message. Without showing bias! 🙂 Good Luck.
Thank you for your interesting comment. To be honest, my intention was not to convince someone to join Wealthy Affiliate. My intention was to show benefits of both programs and the rest is with my reader. It’s up to them to decide which program to join. Since both are legit I feel free to recommend both of them although Wealthy Affiliate is a better alternative to IMPho. At the end of my review I provide a link to review of WA and readers can read my detailed review if they have any questions. Anyway, thank you for your recommendations and I’m going to write a new review on IMPho in the nearest future and will probably take into account your recommendations too.
Hello just wanted to say very interesting article and very informative. I did not even know what IMpho was until today I knew the other one’s and of course wealthy affiliate which I myself recommend to other users to start learning online business. Overall thanks for the article found it very useful and very interesting to read keep up the good work!
IMPho is a relatively young program compared to other similar programs such as Wealthy Affiliate, Chris Farrell, Bring the Fresh. The program is legit and offers a good service, but it’s definitely not as great as Wealthy Affiliate or Chris Farrell. But still it’s a much better alternative than buying someone else’s course without real support. Since I’m a member of WA and know this program from inside I always recommend it to my readers.
Hi Rufat. I have never heard IMPho and it’s becoming clear ti that there are a few training programs and websites out there. I have heard of Chris Farrell, Bring The Fresh, Affilorama and another that escapes my mind but they all sem to come up just short in some way or the other. I am not saying they are bad at all, the only two I’ve had personal experiences with is Chris Farrell and Affilorama. I would be more inclined to go with Affilorama, just because from experience the forum and material is superior.
IMPho, sounds like a great place to be. The only thing I would agree with you that Google is stamping down on more these days are duplicate content. This can become an issue with the PLR articles. It’s important to keep your content original and as authentic as possible.
Wealthy Affiliate teaches you how to create articles easily and there is plenty of input from successful members on how and where to find ideas to create articles.
Hi Andre, Glad you visited my site again and left a great comment. It’s always a please for me to get comments like yours. Always love getting comments from those who have real life experience with programs. Chris Farrell, Affilorama and Bring the Fresh are definitely good programs and all provide quality training and support. Since you’ve tried Chris Farrell and Affilorama and you are now a member of WA, it looks like WA is a much better option compared to those programs. As for IMPho, of course it’s a good program too, but encouraging people to use PLR content is something I can’t agree with. Like you say, it’s dangerous for search engine rankings and in fact many people don’t know how to use PLR content. Don’t realize that PLR content can and will hurt their site rankings. The only way to use it properly is through rewriting it thoroughly which takes a lot of time. I personally would never use it because for me it’s much easier to write my own content than rewriting someone else’s content that already was used by others and can be found on other sites too. It’s definitely bad for you as an authority site and I know exactly that authority sites never use this type of content. The fact that IMPho encourages its members to use it is not good at all and that’s why their program is not as respected on the internet as Chris Farrell and Bring the Fresh.
Right! If the idea is to re-write PLR content to make it your own, then the effort taken to do that can be used writing your own content in the first place. There is a certain structure anyone can use to create articles and once you understand those, you will be able to write much faster and create articles easier than re-writing other articles anyway.
I completely agree with you Andre. Although there are enough people who prefer using PLR content over writing their own, I never used PLR and I’m sure will never use it in the future. Like you say, effort taken to rewrite content can be well taken for creating your very own, unique content. And in my opinion, writing your own is much easier than rewriting. Plus, rewritten content is not original and can be easily recognized by readers which is not good fro your reputation. I’ve never heard of successful bloggers who have used PLR content. In my opinion it’s bad for search engine rankings, your reputation and not engaging for your readers. That’s why the fact that IMPho encourages its members to use PLR content is definitely not a good decision.
Very informative post about IMPho, especially for someone like me who is looking at comparisons between WA and other options out there. It looks like IMPho offers a better price. Do you think it’s a good option if I can’t afford paying for WA?
I do have a question, you mention about keyword rank checker as one of the available tools but WA does not have it. In fact in my opinion Jaxxy is kind of extra thing you are encouraged to buy when you join WA which is ok but guess you should highlight it here.
Glad you like my article about IMPho. Yes, IMPho does offer a better price, but training and support at WA are much better and WA has been online longer and has more experience. I think if you can’t afford to pay for your membership at WA, you can join IMPho. It’s still a good program and offer a good training. You definitely can start making money with both programs and everything needed for your success, i.e. website, tools, are available there.
As for keyword rank checker, it’s a good tool, bit it’s not available within WA platform. You are right, this function comes with Jaaxy only. But I can’t agree that you are encouraged to pay for Jaaxy. I’ve never paid for this tool in fact and always used a free version only. For me personally, keyword tool available within WA platform is absolutely enough and if I need to check my rankings I simply go to incognito mode of Google chrome browser and check my rankings.