Interesting formula for capturing and analyzing online customers, including some interesting ideas for tailoring your messages to individual customer cohorts. Given the number of things I remember working this way from my own online activity, lots of people must be following the advice. ( )

This book is like a bowl of soup that Ryan was peppering with credibility statements, then the cap fell off. It seems to be about 30-40 pages of content mixed into 180 pages.

Often whole paragraphs or sections were spent telling the reader "Many books and resources are available about that so I won't go into it". Or saying the same thing reiterated.

The main reason this book exists seems to be to introduce readers to his software products that are repeatedly plugged throughout the book. ( )

In Ask, subtitled: The counterintuitive online formula to discover exactly what your customers want to buy...create a mass of raving fans...and take any business to the next level, marketing expert and business coach Ryan Levesque has a two-part story on online selling. In the first part he recounts his personal upbringing, education, health problems, success and failure in business. He not only discovered the fragility of human health, the difficulty of choosing between staying an employee of a large financial institution and taking the risk of entrepreneurship. After applying lessons from e.g. Timothy Ferriss (4 Hour Work Week), the 'you can do anything' way of life, he kicks off part 2. Here he shares his formulaic approach to take his sales funnel to actual sales through a series of surveys, email flows, free giveaways and teasers to get leads turn into buyers and earn a lot of money. Asking questions about both missed features or products, as well as enough data to know whether you are targeting the right pockets of leads and spending your online advertisement money wisely takes you there. Don't be surprised that the author applies the same throughout his book. Every other page you're asked to go online for bonus material and paid software offers. The book itself is free (you only have to pay S&H).
The Funnel Specialist has a lot of powerful insights in email list building and making profit out of any micro market or niche product that can be sold. His profits are impressive. Since we build a lot of enterprises on assumptions, Ask's main advice to ask the proper questions, analyze the data coming from surveys and then offer the right product to the right people at the right time is the better alternative. ( )