If you are active
on the web promoting your products, affiliate programs
or services, you probably sense where I’m going with
the title of my article. We all put a lot of effort
into our internet business. We all have the same hopes
and dreams about where our internet business will go.
Unfortunately we are all depended on too many variables
that have to be just right at the right time.
What is he talking
about you might ask. Let’s take a simple example. Listening
to self declared gurus of internet marketing they all
tell you the same thing. “You have to build your list”,
by that they mean your email list.
After following this
advice and spending hundreds of dollars in opt-in email
leads and maintaining a list of over 5000 subscribers
I was pretty convinced that success is just around the
corner.
This is as far away
from the truth as human possible. I’m running a newsletter
delivered daily and I send additional sales letters
to pitch some of my affiliate products. I track every
email with ad tracking and click through analysis.
Guess what? Nothing!
Sending daily emails and sometimes an additional sales
letter would trigger something, at least a wave of cancellations,
don’t you agree? Well, my conclusion of this mess is
that over 90% of the emails never passed the SPAM filters.
This is devastating.
As you know most people sing up for newsletters through
their free email accounts. The few who use their regular
email address unsubscribe within a few days.
Don’t get me wrong,
newsletters are great and if done right they can help
you to promote your business. I believe the key is that
your newsletter needs to be unique and very narrow focused
on a niche target.
Going back to the
email leads issue. Buying email leads from email harvesters
it is a waste of money. Even if they are double or triple
opt-in leads. Promoting a copied newsletter is a waste
of money. Why bother to promote something that is already
promoted hundreds of times?
If you are targeting
the people who are looking to make money online, your
target audience is pretty narrow and they probably have
already subscriptions to one or another form of marketing
newsletter.
I’m actually shifting
my focus completely and put a newsletter together to
help people to get started with real estate investments,
especially Florida real estate. As you can see this
is a very narrow target audience. If I get a couple
of hundred subscribers I will be happy. If you’re interested
send an email to mailto:pdobler@suncoastrenttoown.com
I will let you know when the newsletter will be available.
The bottom line of
my story is, don’t advertise to the advertiser. You
just waste your time and money. That’s the main reason
why people getting frustrated with their internet business
and simply quit. This is like car dealers advertise
solely to other car dealers. What do you think will
happen?
I know what you are
thinking. What happened to him? Didn't he tell us in
his article "Where's the Traffic?" that email lists
are the cure to non-visited websites? Yes, that's true.
I still believe that autoresponders are good business
practice to communicate with your customers. I just
didn't see the value of buying email leads. Yes, I changed
my opinion, which is plain human nature and happens
to all of us.
I hope this made you
think a little bit and if you can turn your business
into the profitable margins based on my little advice
please let me know. I’m eager to hear if somebody actually
is listening to what I have to say.