In this review, we'll be taking a look at a relatively new product and WordPress plugin called “B L O O O M”. You read that correctly, it's B L O O O M with three “O”s and a space between each letter. (I'm not sure why the spaces, but I'm guessing it's to differentiate it from the popular 401k Robo-Adviser program called Bloom.)
This is a program that claims to require “30 minutes three times a week” and to be “99% passive” (we already have a problem with those two seemingly contradictory claims). It also claims to use “simple, uncomplicated, evergreen methods” that will “grow by the day” and are based on a “proven system which has always worked and will continue to do so”.
All of those claims were taken straight from B L O O O M's sales materials and promotional videos. How are these claims possible? Is B L O O O M a product that is worth investing in? Are there better alternatives for building a successful, sustainable, and ethical business on the internet?
The plan for this review is to answer all of these questions…and more!
Affiliate Disclaimer: According to the Core Principles of Kirby's Marketing and FTC Compliance Standards, I choose to disclose all affiliate links to my viewers (this means I'll be making a certain percentage if you choose to purchase a product after clicking on a link). I also only affiliate myself with products I would recommend to my closest friends and family. This product, however, is NOT one I would recommend for ethical reasons, so I do not have any affiliate links in this review, nor will I link to the sales page directly. If you'd like to visit the sales page, you'll have to type the domain address into your browser yourself. Also, because I have a very hard time spending money on and supporting unethical marketing products, I have not purchased B L O O O M myself. Instead, I am basing all of this review on their sales material and other research I've done regarding this product (It's amazing how much a product's marketing and sales material can tell you about the philosophy and business model driving the sales team).
Quick Review
B L O O O M Ratings
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5/10
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5/10
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4/10
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8/10
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3/10
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2/10
Summary
Product Name: B L O O O M
Overall Rank: 4.5/10
Price: One-time payment of $45 or $47 + Multiple Downsells + Multiple Upsells
Owners: Mark Bishop
Website: www.GetBlooom.com
B L O O O M Pro Unique Content Generation Plugin is a WordPress plugin that allows you to take the content from YouTube videos and convert the audio to text. You will then use this text to create blogs on your own WordPress website.
Overall, I would not recommend the B L O O O M plugin for purely ethical reasons. It is literally copying word-for-word the content from someone else's YouTube video. While this may not be explicitly illegal, it certainly seems unethical to me. So, even though the plugin may work great, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend it to any of my viewers. Please continue reading to learn more about the B L O O O M plugin or check out some better, more ethical products I have reviewed here.
In-Depth Review
Now we'll take an in-depth look at what exactly B L O O O M is, what I liked about it, and what I disliked about it. Then we'll look at exactly what you'll be getting if you were to purchase this product (not recommended) and who should consider buying this product. Will finish by taking a look at all of the pricing options for you to choose from if you do decide to buy the product. After this, I'll suggest some better alternatives that I would recommend for those of you who are legitimately looking for ways to build a sustainable and ethical online business which, believe it or not, is actually possible to do.
What I Like
Product Overview Video (Limited)
There is a legitimate YouTube video on their sales page giving a basic overview of how the B L O O O M plugin works and what it is capable of. However, this preview doesn't show you what the 2nd and 3rd step to the process of the program they are selling is. In fact, this isn't readily explained on any of their sales material, but I was able to figure it out after doing some digging (see next section).
Attempts To Use Legitimate Monetization Techniques
Regarding the 2nd and 3rd steps to the B L O O O M method mentioned, they are, in most circumstances, legitimate methods of drawing traffic and earning revenue. The 2nd step is to place advertising script on your blog post to allow ads to be shown to your visitors. When they click on the advertisement you'll earn a fee from the advertisers. The 3rd step is to pay for traffic to visit your site.
Both of these methods are unclear as to the actual advertising services you'll be using. It really is up in the air as to how great of quality the traffic generated from the advertising will be.
30-Day Moneyback Guarantee
This product is hosted and sales are facilitated by JVZoo, which, as far as I know, requires all products to have a money-back guarantee. So, if you do buy B L O O O M but are not satisfied with it, you should be able to return it for a full refund.
What I Don't Like
Low-Key Plagiarism
I'll start with my biggest beef with the B L O O O M model, and that is, I think this product is built around the idea of plagiarising content from YouTube. Let me explain briefly, the way B L O O O M works is to “transcribe” the audio from YouTube videos into written blog content. Essentially, you are plagiarising the work of YouTube producers to create “original” content for your own website by copying their speech word-for-word (you are able to edit the text, but that doesn't change the real problem I have with this model).
I'm not sure if this is technically considered plagiarism according to the law, but, to me, it certainly seems unethical. I know if I were to spend hours creating high quaily YouTube content only to have someone else copy my information word for word and profit off of it on their own website, I would be pretty upset. Not only that, I'd want to do everything in my power to stop them from profiting off of my own work without compensating me.
Truth be told, I feel like this “loophole” B L O O O M is exploiting is bound to be closed at some point by Google and other prominent search engines. Google hates plagiarism and duplicate content, so once they figure out a way to stop this from happening they will.
One final point here. If you read their sales page it accuses other marketers of using “nasty content spinning tools” but then refers to (on multiple occasions) your ability use B L O O O M to “spin” content for your own use. So, the question we must ask is, is “spinning” other people's content “nasty” or not?
Questionable Profitability
Looking solely at how this process will make you money leads me to believe that it's not all its cracked up to be on the sales material. You publish a blog post and then place ads on it. You draw traffic to your post by paying for it. So, you pay to bring traffic in with the hopes that they'll click on the ads showing on your post. While this may work at times, I find it hard to believe that you'll earn more money from visitors clicking on the ads on your post than you're paying to get the traffic to your site in the first place.
It seems like you could also rely on search engine results to draw traffic in as well, based on your “unique” blog content. However, search engine optimization is rarely, if ever, mentioned as a way of generating traffic. So, I think they're selling their product on paying for ads and then hoping that traffic, in turn, clicks on the ads on your own site.
Claim That Content Is “100% Unique”
This claim is based on the fact that if you place the transcripts of a YouTube video into Copyscape, it doesn't show up as plagiarized. While this means that it didn't locate that exact text anywhere on the internet, it's only true because Google doesn't index the transcripts and subtitles of YouTube videos at this time. So, in my mind, the content created by B L O O O M is not “100% Unique” as they claim and, as a matter of fact, completely unethical.
Downsells
It's common for products that are desperate for buyers but don't trust the product to sell itself will start with a high price and then offer multiple downsells to try to convince people to buy it and make them think they're getting a great deal. Really, this just shows the true value the product creators place on their own product.
Concerning B L O O O M, I encountered two downsells as I tried to leave the initial products page by clicking “No Thanks”. The first was a discount of $10 and the second was an offer be entered into a drawing for a free copy of the plugin. I'm pretty sure this is just a sneaky way to get you into their sales funnel with the hopes you'll spend more money once you get the B L O O O M plugin installed (more on their sales funnel in the next section).
Sales Funnel
There are a total of nine products that the owners of B L O O O M will try to sell you after you purchase the original offer. They'll try to sell you the “Pro Version” which has no usage restrictions, offers unlimited sites, and allows for automated scheduling, and more; the “Reseller” version, which allows you to sell the software yourself; the “Set-Up” option, in which they'll install and set up the plugin up for you; and the “Developer” version, which allows you to use it on sites that you build and then sell. There are downsells available for most of these as various versions as well.
Business Model
I'm not a fan of the business model B L O O O M is built around. From my research and general understanding of how most of these “make money online products” work, B L O O O M's business model is not built on creating a great product that sells itself by providing immense value for its customers. Instead, their model is based on the idea of getting as many people selling the product to other people as possible.
It's not actually about helping the people who buy the product make money by building a successful online business, but rather convincing them that the product is so great they should sell it to other people so they can make money for themselves. In reality, this is really making the most money for the person who created B L O O O M. This is why there are so many products in the sales funnel. Once they draw you in, they have you hooked and can sell you more products on the dream that the “better” version is just what you need to finally strike it rich with little to no effort on your part.
Let me put it this way, if the claims they are making on their sales material about how quick and easy it is to make money using the B L O O O M product, don't you think everyone would be doing it?
Product Overview
B L O O O M is a WordPress plugin that allows you to perform three steps to automate earning money, or so they claim.
Step 1: This is where you choose which video you'd like the plugin to transcribe for you. It does this by pulling the closed-captions and subtitles from the original YouTube video and turning them into a blog post you can edit. As I mentioned earlier, the closed-captioning and subtitles aren't indexed in Google so this is how you can get away with copying other people's work.
This part of the process also pulls the original YouTube video's title, tags, thumbnail, and some other relevant information association with the video.
Step 2: This is where you insert an advertising script to display paid advertising within your post. They don't mention this, but in order to do this, you'll need to have an account with Google Adsense or a similar advertising platform.
Step 3: This step is the most unclear of them all. They claim it will cost $5 per post to generate “traffic and income almost instantly.” I'm guessing this is done by placing Paid-Per-Click advertising out on the web to draw in traffic based on certain keywords related to your post (actually, it's the video you copied and are claiming to be your own original content…but, who cares about that? Right?).
Who Should Buy
Well, first of all, I don't think anyone should spend money on this product and support its creators since I believe it to be supporting and promoting a completely unethical method of internet marketing. We internet marketers who are legitimately building an honest and ethical online business already get a bad enough rep from all of the other scammy crap that's out there.
However, if ethics don't matter to you and you're unwilling to do any of your own work to build your own online business that is sustainable, legitimate, and ethical, then you might want to give B L O O O M a go, but, even then, I still wouldn't recommend it.
Price
There are multiple pricing options available for B L O O O M depending on how many downsells you run into and how far into the sales funnel you get.
The initial product will run you either $45 or $47 depending on which license you want. If you click the “No Thanks” link at the bottom of the sales page you'll be offered the same products for ten dollars cheaper, or $35 or $37. If you click the “No Thanks” on the second downsell page, you'll be taken to a page where you can enter your email address (now they got you into their auto-responder marketing funnel) to win a free copy of the plugin or $100 as well as access to free training for B L O O O M.
If you purchase the initial plugin, you'll then be offered the “Set-Up Package” for $67 to set everything up for you. You'll also have the opportunity to purchase “B L O O O M Pro” for $67, or $57 if you get the downsell. You'll also be able to purchase the “Developer's Rights Package” for $47 and the “B L O O O M Reseller Package” for either $117 or $107 depending on how many licenses you want to be able to sell to other people.
So, all in all, if you purchase everything they try to sell you once you get in the door, you'll be spending a total of $345. That's $345 to basically plagiarize YouTube videos.
Final Verdict
Honestly, I strongly recommend NOT purchasing B L O O O M. Firstly, it's completely unethical in my opinion. Secondly, I would not guarantee that Google won't figure out a way to detect the very kind of duplicate content B L O O O M is creating for you from YouTube videos. Google is smart and they don't like people to cheat. It's only a matter of time until they shut this practice down and your site will become blacklisted, then you'll really be screwed.
Better Options
You can probably tell I really don't like B L O O O M. Given that, you're probably wondering what I would recommend for building a profitable online business. Or, how is it any better than what B L O O O M is trying to sell me?
Well, if you were attracted to B L O O O M because it promised easy, 99% passive income, you're going to be in for a shocker when I tell you this idea of “free” money on the internet is a complete fallacy. The truth is, building a sustainable, legitimate, and ethical business online is no different than building a brick-and-mortar business. It takes time, dedication, hard work, and definitely, isn't easy or passive.
That being said, it is possible to generate income online. There are many ways to do it and I have done it myself. I did it by creating lots of ORIGINAL content that was helpful to my viewers and answered their questions. If you're still reading this, you're a prime example of that! You had a question about B L O O O M. I wrote an honest, in-depth, and helpful product review that answered many of the questions you had. This isn't the only honest way to earn money online, but it's the one I have chosen to pursue on this website as well as some other I have.
How did I learn how to build my own online business? Well, I surrounded myself with a community of like-minded internet entrepreneurs who were all willing to learn, work hard, and support each other in their endeavors.
There are a few communities like this, but the one I became involved with (after doing my due-diligence to make sure I wasn't getting scammed) was, and is, called Wealthy Affiliate (WA). You can read my super-in-depth review of all that WA has to offer here. Long story short, it taught me everything I needed to know regarding building an online business that actually generates honest income: the very basics of setting up my own WordPress website, writing unique and engaging content, advertising, and much, much more.
If your desire is to build a legitimate online business, I'd highly recommend you check Wealthy Affiliate out and see what they have to offer.
Questions? Comments?
It's my hope that you found this review helpful and that it was able to answer most, if not all of your questions. That being said, I ‘m sure I missed some aspects of B L O O O M or didn't explain my thoughts as clearly as I could of. If you have any questions or comments regarding B L O O O M, Wealthy Affiliate, or anything else online marketing related, please drop me a comment in the Comments Section below! I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
Peace,
Dustin “Kirby” Garness
I read about this and was intrigued. After reading your review of how it works I am definitely staying clear. It makes me really cross that my you tube work can be just Stolen like that. This is definitely plagiarism and the sooner Google works that out the better if you ask me.
I don’t think you can trust anything that has downsells either… what a con. However we all know that people will buy looking for easy money. I bet they don’t get it.