What is Renegade University?

I'll be up front about my agenda here. You will notice that this article is chock full of my affiliate links. Yes, I'm a student of Mike Klingler's Renegade University, and yes, I am an affiliate of his and Ann Sieg's. Yes, I'd be happy to have you click on my links and make some extra cash. But I am primarily committed to providing quality information in here that you will find useful whether or not you ever purchase any of these products.

I'm also here to set the record straight. As a student and customer of Mike Klingler, I'm biased. I see that Klingler put a lot of time and effort into creating the materials and resources on his site, and it irks me to see affiliates of his giving him a bad name by doing the opposite of what he teaches. What really bothers me is that I see this kind of behavior much more commonly than I see people applying the lessons in a way that's consistent with the Renegade approach.

All of this was prompted by a hub I read by Eric Graudins. While I think Graudins is being a bit harsh in his judgment of Renegade University, he does make a very legitimate point. It's unfortunate that so many people sign up for services like Renegade University, or for that matter, the Renegade System itself, and start spamming everybody to make a quick buck. These practices go completely against the grain of what's taught at RU, and in my opinion, they should be more stringent about enforcing the anti-spam policies and terminating accounts of people who engage in these practices.

Mike Klingler specifically mentions in almost every module of his training materials that you shouldn't be posting blatant advertisements and trying to sell your stuff. He emphasizes that social media and Web 2.0 is about giving away free, quality information, and that you effectively build relationships on the internet by showing people that you aren't just out to promote your services. He also mentions that you should make a point of linking to other quality information, including when it's not an affiliate program that you're being compensated for.

I believe, and so does Mike Klingler, that the internet is a community, as well as sites like this one. It may work differently in some respects than offline communities, but the same basic social norms apply. Don't be rude, don't be self-serving, and come to the community to be of service first. If you help out the community, they will help you out. So, I'm here with the intention to pay it forward.

So, my request to the HubPages community is this. If you feel that my hub is just another re-hashed, cut and pasted advertisement, or transparent disgused "informational" article that doesn't really say anything new, please post a comment and tell it like it is. I can take criticism and I'd like to know if that's how the materials I'm posting are coming across.

So, in closing, I'll say that if you really want the skinny on Renegade University, you can check it out for yourself without spending a dime.

As a recent student of Renegade University, I've gone through a lot of Mike Klingler's training materials. This article is intended for anyone who's considering whether or not to spring for Renegade University. It all depends. If you haven't read The Seven Great Lies of Network Marketing by Ann Sieg, I would definitely recommend that you do this first. Her report is free, and if after reading it, you decide that the approach she talks about doesn't appeal to you, Renegade University won't either.

You may want to hold off on signing up for RU, especially if money's tight. Yes, you can sign up for the first week for $1, but as soon as you do that, the clock starts ticking. After the first week, you start paying $39/month. It would be a good idea to go through all of the free resources before paying for anything. And there are plenty of free resources that you can digest, especially if you're new to Web 2.0 marketing. Mike Klingler's web site has a "step 1" and "step 2" that don't cost anything. He does, however, recommend buying Ann Sieg's book as a prerequisite to his training course. Budget-wise, this should be your first priority. This will give you the solid foundation you'll need to understand where Klingler is coming from, and more importantly, what he's getting at.

Renegade University is built on Ann Sieg's approach, and the Renegade model is based on a fundamentally different mindset of network marketing. It's not a new set of slick techniques designed to close prospects. It's not a turn-key system that does all of the work for you. It's a fundamental strategy that requires you to relate to marketing in a new way. It is absolutely critical that you understand this mindset before trying to put it in action, otherwise you're just going through the motions.

So, I of course believe that Renegade University is worth the money for anyone who's willing to invest the time and effort in high-caliber network marketing training. But if you're not willing to put a bare minimum of ten hours per week into this (just like you would if you were doing old-school network marketing), then this isn't for you. Like anything else, this still requires elbow grease. The Renegade University training materials take a lot of time to go through, and you're going to have to put a lot of effort into researching topics to write about and getting yourself familiarized with new web sites. It requires the discipline to set aside a block of time every single day to sit down and watch the training materials, and also to do the assignments. The point is, this still takes work.

Also, don't expect that you'll be able to sign up for $1 and glean all of his material during that week, then cancel. It's more information than you could possibly absorb in a single week. Plus, Klingler's team is continually adding to it.

Think of network marketing as a grand pyramid scheme. Yes, you heard me right. It's a pyramid scheme. Just like every other business in the world. Remember that one if you're in network marketing yourself. The next time somebody asks you, "Isn't that a pyramid scheme?" look them right in the eye and say, "Yes, exactly!" You'll be telling them the honest truth. A pyramid is a strong, stable structure that works very well. The Eqyptians figured that out thousands of years ago.

So, let's take a closer look at the pyramid model to illustrate where Renegade University fits into the picture. Pyramids, like all other structures, are built from the ground up. The bottom, or the foundation, is the support for the rest of the structure. In our case, the foundation is network marketing itself. The track was laid decades ago by the pioneers of network marketing. Ann Sieg entered the picture when she created the Renegade Network Marketer. She built the next layer on top of the pyramid. So, Mike Klingler added another layer on top of what Ann Sieg created. And it's up to people like you and me to create the next layer on top of that.

So let's back up a step and put this into a more concrete perspective. Successful uplines in network marketing have been teaching for years that creating and growing a prosperous downline happens when you consistently execute an action plan that is designed around your personal goals. Ann Sieg took it a step further and showed us how to create much more effective action plans that are a lot more palatable, and considerably more viable than the outmoded methods of yesteryear. However, she threw a lot of information at us at one time. Klingler broke it down and created a step-by-step approach that anyone can follow, including people who have little or no experience using computers.

So if you were to sign up with Renegade University today and begin training under Mike Klingler, here's what to expect. He supplies you with a number of internet marketing tutorials, and he advises you to put your focus on his training videos regarding sites just like this one: social networking sites. His videos start with the basics: how to set up an account, how to create a page, how to put together an article, etc. He also shows you how to get up and running on each site as quickly as possible, going into more detail in his advanced tutorials. He basically gives you the lightning tour of the social networking sites, and gets you up to speed and in action as fast as possible.

Klingler's approach, while it is very broken down and step by step, is also very time consuming and can be frustrating for those of us who are already computer literate. Personally, I already know how to set up accounts and fill out forms, and could do without that part. Since almost all of his training is video-based with not a lot of bookmarked sections, it can be frustrating at times to try to guess where to skip ahead to. But all in all, it's nothing I can't live with. I do wish that there were more text-based training or navigation so that computer users at more accomplished levels could skip ahead more easily.

So, hopefully, that should give you a fairly good idea of what you'd be getting if you bit the bullet and enrolled in the University.