Thank you for the information on building a list.

I need list building HELP!!!

I just came across a PLR giveaway that is expected to reach more than 200,000 people. I want to make the best use of this event and possibly add a minimum of 10K new subscribers to my list. Can anyone suggest the best possible way to promote this event?

I would like to thank you for the work you have done.

I have just started to listen to your podcasts and reviewing your web sites this week.

I just got my first website up this past month. I used a company that I knew nothing about and I knew nothing about websites so a long story short…
communication with them hasnt been very good. Since the web site was created, I havent been able to get them to change anything. They created the site with their own text and I cant get my text on the pages.

So I am staring to think that I will have to create my own. Thanks to you two guys… I am much more informed than the first time.

Which brings me to my question.
I found a link on your website , the “Internet Business Gift Guide” page.
It is for the Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business On the Internet course for 197.00

My question is….. Do you recommend this company and their services?

Do you know of others that have bought the course and what was their results?

If you do not recommend them, do you have any others that you might recommend?

Thank you so much for your time , and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

1ShoppingCart is much more of a complete commerce system. It is also very popular, but very expensive. When it comes just an email management system, we prefer aweber.

Thanks for the podcasts. They’re about the only thing I listen to in my car now. Drives my family nuts.

Anyway, I see that most online marketers use either Aweber (your choice) or 1shoppingcart/ marketer’s choice for autoresponders. Did you compare the two? If so, why did Aweber win?

Thanks!

Eric
http://www.learn-amazing-japanese.com/blog

To answer your questions:

How are we to use these articles for self promotion, especially in an autoresponder? Is this not stealing intelectual property?

If the articles that you are referring to are from the Niche Kingdom, that is a services that provides articles that can be use by you as you please. You can use them as web site copy, you can use them in a blog, you can put them in a course, etc.

You are not required to credit anyone. They were written with the understanding that they would be used that way.

The best thing to do is to use them as a start and add to the content in some way.

when writting eBooks, is it ok to link to different sources on the web? – link to content that you did not originally author.

You’re free to link to whatever you want in your ebook or on your site. You can’t use the actual content (beyond using an attributed quote) unless you have permission. But you can link to stuff all you want.

great podcast, i learned a great deal.

A quick question for you: i downloaded the 25 articles as you have suggested, and searched for their content on the net.
none of these articles give credit to the writters, – example
Always Watch The Golf Ball
is written by George Stark, and all the articles are taken from different sources on the net!

How are we to use these articles for self promotion, especially in an autoresponder? Is this not stealing intelectual property?

another quick question:
when writting eBooks, is it ok to link to different sources on the web? – link to content that you did not originally author.

Thanks!

I used to live in SLC. Sterling lives there now.

As for your questions….

Is it difficult to find the balance between informative communication that results in sales and just spamming your customers until they hate you?

Personally I don’t think it’s hard at all as long as you keep the real goal in mind–to establish a relationship with the people on your email list. This is especially true when you are trying to position yourself as a thought leader.

It could be that the car dealership actually did have a focus–to sell the hell out of the list because the ongoing value is not their for them. Personally I think that’s short sighted and they are just missing the mark (killing the goose to get the gold so to speak).

There will always be people who flee your list at the first sign of selling. So be it. But you want to keep those “ideal” prospects around in order to move them through your sales/relationship funnel.

Ultimately you want to make money, too. This is about having a more longterm vision for your list and the trust you build with them. Keep that in mind and it will lead to more sales in the long run.

Can you give me an idea of how many listeners you have and how that has helped your business? We are hoping that the podcast could help position us as thought leaders in this category.

We will be talking soon on the show about branding yourself as an expert (or thought leader) online using social media such as blogging and podcasting. For me it has worked really well. Neither of us planned on being seen as experts in this space, but the Internet Business Mastery just made it happen. More people listen to it than we ever expected.

The same goes for my podcasting tips blog and Podcasting Underground podcast. Many of my business activities and clients have come about as a result of my “visibility” online through these media.

You can get great results from even having a few hundred listeners (although our podcast gets a lot more than that). It comes back to developing relationships which in the end lead to more leads, longer client retention, shorter sales cycle, greater lifetime value (LTV) of your customers, etc.

I would say, you should start a blog today. Start there and see what happens. Then you can try putting resources into podcasting after you get that running and see the results. Again, stay tuned to the show for more on this.

Best of luck.

I have been listening to your podcast for a while and I just realized while catching up on some from January that one of you (I can’t remember who) is here in SLC. I was excited to hear that. I work as a web marketing consultant for sprout marketing http://www.sproutmarketing.com our offices are in Cottonwood. I handle all of the SEO and SEM for our clients. We also have a Buzz Engine option that we offer to get the word out on the web. Most of our clients come to us through our venture partners vspring capital and Olympus capital. So they are startups that have funding but no market, they hire our firm instead of their own marketing department. If we do our job correctly they will eventually outgrow their need for us.

I enjoyed the conversation on building a list. It was really informative and changed the way I think about a lot of things. Is it difficult to find the balance between informative communication that results in sales and just spamming your customers until they hate you? Let me give you a personal example. I wanted to buy an VW Rabbit so I sent an email to Ken Garff VW (a local dealership) to ask what models they had in stock. Somehow that automatically placed me on the “spam the hell out of this guy with tons of ‘helpful’ information and never actually answer his question” list. I still want to get a Rabbit but there is no way I will buy from Ken. They had obviously taken great care to set up their auto responder templates and make them look nice. But I had asked for something specific and they just carpet bombed me with crap.

Also we have been toying with the idea of doing a marketing strategy podcast for Sprout. We aren’t sure if we can justify the time we will invest with the return. Can you give me an idea of how many listeners you have and how that has helped your business? We are hoping that the podcast could help position us as thought leaders in this category.

You bring up some excellent points. Switching your email list from one service to another can be a pain. There are many trade-offs. It may or may not be worth going through the process you described. I’m not sure what service you currently use, but it may have everything you need already.

Although we recommend Aweber, if you’re happy with your own (or don’t see an advantage worth the hassle of transition) then by all means stay with what you have.

I’m currently debating whether to transfer one of my own lists. At present it’s on a service that provides all the basic features I need, but it
doesn’t have some of the tracking of Aweber. I know that in transitioning I’ll lose some people from the list. Some of those will be people that are just not interested anymore anyway. (We all want that gratification of a “big” list, but it’s just as important to have a clean, focused list.) But some of them might still be at least mildly interested, but will fall through the cracks of the re-confirmation process.

This is why it’s important to get set up the right way early on with your email list. There are cheaper (or even free) solutions, but later on it could cause problems when you’re ready for a full-featured service and want to switch over.

Thanks for bringing up those important points.

For info purposes, I just got out of a chat with a guy over at Awber. They seem like a VERY fine service. However, one thing people with large pre-existing mailing lists should know up front is that they will limit your ability to import addresses to 2000 per day. On each batch, they run your list through a quality check as well as have all of your subscribers re-confirm to their list. After 5 days of this, if all is well, they will let you import the rest. So, the first thing is to make sure your list is managed to remove undeliverables and remove unsubscribes. Then, when your list is totally clean, you’ll have to go through the 5 day ordeal before you can get the list into the system totally.

Very good service. I am impressed, however those with large pre-existing lists (like mine) need to bear in mind that the transition is not going to bring instant gratification. :)

You’re not doing anything wrong. The podcast feed is set to only have a certain number of episodes in it. I just raised that number so that all the episodes are available in the feed. If you right-click on our podcast title in iTunes and select “Update Podcast” it should now show all the episodes.

Enjoy!

That is an good questions and a very useful technique to know. I will prepare an article and post it in the near future. I will also post the link to the answer the in the comments here. Stay tuned.

Thanks for listening and recommending our podcast. Here are my insights on your questions:

How often do you guys find that the emails you send out produce sales from people who were undecided on your products?

All the time. There will always be people who don’t buy on the first contact. If you don’t follow up with interested prospects, you are leaving money on the table. Your mileage will vary, but their is truth to the statement that the majority of customers buy on the 2nd to 7th contact. The last time we sent an promotion to the Internet Business Mastery list, half of the sales came from the 2nd and 3rd email.

The email list is also about building and maintaining a relationship to create lifetime customers.

Over a period of say, 2-3 months, what is average in terms of conversions to actual sales?

Their are too many factors that play into conversion to give a definite answer, but keep in mind that you can make money if even 2-3% of your list buy.

What’s most important is to track these things for your situation so you know how much it costs you to acquire each optin lead and then how much it costs you to acquire each sale. This will let you know how much you can spend on advertising and still make money or cut even. Some information marketers cut even on the first purchase because they know the Lifetime Value (LTV) of each customer. They make all their money on the back end.

And also, what has been your experience with people unsubscribing?

There will always be people that unsubscribe when you send out offers. Don’t take it personally. It is just part of the process. Think of it as cleaning your list. Those who unsubscribe are not the kind of customer you’re looking for anyway. Weed them out.

It’s pretty typical to have at least one or two people unsubscribe when you send out an email. The number will be higher if the list is quite large. This is nothing to worry about, though, unless people are really leaving in droves.

Jay

I do have one question though. After building a large mailing list for a specific product or service, how often do you guys find that the emails you send out produce sales from people who were undecided on your products? For instance, you have 1000 people subscribe to your email list, but none had purchased your products. Over a period of say, 2-3 months, what is average in terms of conversions to actual sales? And also, what has been your experience with people UNsubscribing? Is this something that happens often and in large numbers?

Thanks guys, keep up the great work!

-Terra
http://www.betterforbusiness.com