KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays (26 page)

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Authors: Joel Comm,Mark Victor Hansen

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These requirements are the minimum, and there are no restrictions against e-mailing existing customers or people who have inquired about your products. CAN-SPAM calls these “relationship” messages, and they’re perfectly legitimate.
 
In practice, legitimate e-mail marketers go further than CAN-SPAM’s rules. They use “double opt-in” lists. Subscribers have to click a button declaring that they agree to receive marketing messages from you. They then receive a confirmation e-mail that they have to click again before their e-mail address is added to the list.
 
That makes it impossible for someone to add someone else’s e-mail address to a list maliciously, and it also makes it impossible for anyone to say that they shouldn’t be on the list. If that sounds like you’re putting a pile of hurdles in front of people you’d like to be marketing to, understand that it’s a practice that benefits marketers as much as recipients. It ensures that the e-mail addresses on your list are functional and accurate, and it reduces the bounce rate when you send out your messages. You don’t need to be a programming genius to use this system, either. Mass mailing services often provide free scripts to their customers. SendBlaster (
www.sendblaster.com
), for example, supplies a simple PHP script that you can upload to your server and explains in five steps how to use it (
Figure 5.5
). It’s very simple, and most decent mass-mailing systems supply a toolbox for their clients to use. They want to make your e-mail marketing easy so that you’ll become a subscriber. It’s a good deal.
 
Of course, you still have to build your list, but part of your Internet business strategy should consist of picking up e-mail addresses whenever possible. You’re going to be handing out lots of free samples, reports, and white papers to bring people to your web site and spread your name around the Web. The price for those should always be an e-mail address that allows you to send them information about products they might want to buy in the future.
 
Figure 5.5
SendBlaster helps you build a double opt-in system in seconds.
 
Thousands of people are going to flow through your web site every month. You want to make sure that they’re leaving with a hook that enables you to pull them back at a later date.
 
When you’re signing them up, you’ll also have an opportunity to push other products in their direction. If someone has shown enough interest in the information you’re providing to give you their e-mail address, then some of them will be interested in other free information, too. People who sign up for the free copy of my AdSense Secrets e-book, for example, have to leave their e-mail address. They’re then taken to a “thank you” page that advises them to check their spam filters for their confirmation message. The bottom half of the page is an advertisement for a free trial of my
Top One Report
newsletter.
 
Enough people sign up for that report to more than cover the cost of the free books that I’m handing out.
 
In effect, I’m using an information product to grow my e-mail list, and at the same time, I’m signing up paying subscribers to a publication. All it’s costing me is free copies of my e-book.
 
It really doesn’t take a great deal of effort to produce a free information product, place it online, and capture e-mail addresses of people who want to enjoy it.
 
As you build your list, you’ll want to make sure that it’s managed well. Or rather, you’ll want to make sure that
they’re
managed well, because the more products you make available, the more lists you’ll create. Those lists are likely to be for products about similar subjects—someone who downloads a report on low-cost home repairs, for example, may also download an e-book on home carpentry—so you can send the same marketing information about similar products to different lists.
 
When you have that kind of overlap, it’s a good idea to make sure that you’re not sending the message to the same recipient more than once. It’s easy to do, and it’s the kind of thing that quickly pares down your lists, as people make use of that unsubscribe link.
 
So what should you be sending to the people on your list?
 
Affiliate marketing by e-mail is different from affiliate marketing online. Your visitors see your Web page only after
choosing
to visit your site. An e-mail is presented to someone who has not come to you; you’ve come to them with a product you think they’re going to like.
 
It’s the difference between store assistants who ask shoppers how they can help and people who hand out flyers on the street. Shoppers are willing to listen; passersby—even those looking in your shop window—will give you only a second of their time. You’ll have to work fast to keep them interested and lead them into the store.
 
That means e-mail messages that contain affiliate links tend to be more “sales-y” than Web content. The risk, of course, is that a subscriber who receives a sales message will glance at it and make a beeline for the unsubscribe link.
 
That’s fine. If subscribers don’t want to be bothered by sales messages, if they don’t want to know about the products that I’ve chosen to offer them, then there’s no reason for me to continue sending them e-mails. They aren’t going to buy, so I don’t want to annoy them. I’d rather send messages to 100 people who are interested in buying than to 1,000 who have no interest at all.
 
Every time I send an e-mail to my subscriber list then, I expect to receive a number of unsubscribe requests. Those numbers tend to be lower than you might expect—that’s the benefit of double opt-ins and offers of good products—and I keep track of the numbers. If an offer results in a higher than average number of unsubscribe requests, I’ll make a note not to offer that kind of product again. Not only are my subscribers not interested in buying it, they don’t want to see it, either. The response I receive tells me something about my subscribers and the information they’re looking for.
 
Unfortunately, much of that information will be negative. Let’s say, for example, that a marketer I know tells me that he’s created a kit that allows web site publishers to create terms and conditions pages automatically. The product looks good, I trust the publisher, and I think the information will help my subscribers solve a real problem.
 
I send it out with an affiliate link. One of two things is going to happen. If the product delivers lower than average sales, then it’s unlikely I’ll be offering another legal product any time soon. I’ll understand that my subscribers have found another way to solve those problems, so I won’t bother offering them different solutions.
 
Alternatively, the product could sell at a reasonable 1 to 2 percent conversion rate. If I send the e-mail to 20,000 subscribers, and 1 percent buy a product that sells for $197, then total revenues would be $39,400. If my affiliate cut is one-third, then I will have made just over $13,000. That money will usually come in within two to three days of sending out the message, giving me a very profitable weekend.
 
Once your Internet business is established, your lists are built up to a good level, and you have cemented relationships with other publishers who have good products, weekends like these become a regular part of your working life.
 
What do I do next?
 
I now know that my subscribers have a problem creating their web sites’ legal pages. But I’ve solved that problem. I can’t offer a similar product again, even in the hope of reaching the 99 percent of subscribers who didn’t buy the first time. If they did not find the first e-mail interesting, nothing brings in those unsubscribes faster than pestering people about the same topic. I might offer other legal products, but it’s unlikely that they’ll come along too often.
 
In short, each time you send out an affiliate marketing e-mail, you can never be completely certain what the response is going to be like. But keeping track of previous messages should help you steer clear of the most irritating duds—and writing good, sales-oriented copy should help to ensure that everyone interested in buying does buy. That copy, of course, is vital.
 
Here is an example of one marketing e-mail that I sent to my subscriber list.
 
 
Hi John,
 
I want to tell you about a new course that’s promising to open the world of web site design training right up—and inexpensively, too.
 
The product’s called “The Complete Guide to Web Site Building” and it’s from a good friend of mine, Paul Smithson—the guy responsible for XSitePro, the well-respected, award-winning web site design software.
 
His new course is a monster... it’s HUGE!!!
 
In total, it is OVER 30 HOURS long and goes way beyond just building web sites. You’ll find everything from how to research your niche to building a list, adding a payment system to a web site, and LOTS more.
 
There are 26 modules in total, and these are made up of:
• Over-the-shoulder demonstrations that lead you by the hand every step of the way
• Interactive illustrations that help you to expand your knowledge
• Classroom-style lessons that you can watch again and again
• Quizzes
 
This really is the whole enchilada and then some:-)
 
It’s MASSIVE!
 
It’s principally aimed at people who are newer to web site design, perhaps people who have:
• Tried creating sites with other products like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Expression Web, or Site Build It! only to end up giving up out of sheer frustration
• Outsourced their web site building up to now
• Never even tried creating a site before now
 
The promise backing the course is as large as the course itself.
 
Paul tells me he’s going to
*
personally guarantee
*
that the course will deliver ALL the skills you need to create professional-quality web sites, with a straight 365-day refund guarantee.
 
So far, so good. What about price?
 
You’ll often see similar courses retailing for well into four figures (and for good reason—courses like these take many months to plan and develop, and they’re definitely not cheap to create) but for some inexplicable reason, Paul’s asking for only $197 for the first 1,000 to sign up, and then the price shoots up to $297. So don’t procrastinate.
 
Remember, this is the first time Paul has made this available, so I have a feeling once he sees the demand he might want to rethink that pricing completely! It is DEFINITELY worth a LOT more!
 
Here’s the link to find out more:
 
 
If you want to kick-start your online empire right now and master the art of web site building, head straight over to the link and check it out. I am sure you’ll be VERY impressed, as Paul doesn’t do things halfway.
 
To your success,
 
Joel Comm
 
 
 
 
InfoMedia, Inc., 1151 Eagle Dr. Ste. 325, Loveland, CO 80537, USA
 
 
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