Maillist cash Extraction Goldmine part 3

 Divide & Conquer 

OK, that's the reviews done with. Before we move on, I'd like to discuss a

couple more points with you, and of course find out which type of list you're

going to be running. Before that, though, point number one. Remember to

divide up your lists for tracking a relevance purposes. If you sell a piece of

software and gain a load of subscribers, affiliates, sales and so on through

your site, you don't want to then try to mix it all up and sell them onto an

online marketing scheme, because you're going off track, losing the reason

they subscribed in the first place, and will in the end lose subscribers.Another reason for doing this is your tracking and testing. We already

talked in several key areas about how important tracking and testing

actually is using your list as kind of a market research tool. You don't want

to be asking about online marketing when your list is based on software,

no one will have a clue what you're talking about, you'll get bad data, and a

whole bunch of ubsubscriptions, and in extreme cases, strange phone

calls.

Don't be afraid to split your lists up and have two or three smaller ones

related to different markets or different areas. This isn't unusual at all, and

the extra work and maintenance is worth it by far when you look at the

possibilities and the clear research data you can gain from each targeted

list individually. Of course, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with

introducing one list to the other and inviting them to join if they're

interested. Don't randomly mold them into one though, or you'll confuse the

heck out of people.

Another advantage here is something closer to home and more direct, and

that’s simply it allows you to target people specifically for the type of

products you're selling. We all know how important targeting is, and how

much of a waste of time it is selling golf clubs to someone who's interested

in fishing equipment, this is just the same. On a deeper level, you're

allowed massive flexibility too. It's not just for show.

You'll be able to get more relevant people to spend more on relevant

products, earning you even more money and targeted affiliates at the

same time. You're even targeting indirect sales here and your future resource building by doing this in the way of additional subscribers and

affiliates as well as direct sales. It doesn't get any better than this, and it

sure beats just throwing them all in the same hat, and hoping the right

people read it. The power here is catering to your customers to your

needs. 

The Personal Touch

Finally, we have the personal touch. It’s something that’s always important

when you're running your own list. In fact, speaking of the personal touch,

just four months ago I remember getting a Christmas card from one of the

programmers that's working on something for me. It wasn't anything

special, just an e-card sent via e-mail to all his customers, with a generic

dear sir/madam at the top of it. It was nice though, and what’s nicer for him

is I remembered it. Heck, I don't even remember what I had for dinner two

nights ago so it definitely did something. I’ve used his services four times

since.

The same is going to apply to your subscribers. Send them Christmas

greetings for example, and they will remember you. Many people do this

already in some form or another, but a little graphic maybe, something fun

that isn't there to sell them on something. Remembering that programmer

and his name, and his company name is proof that it works. (I have many

more examples of this. It wasn’t just a one off) I've seen others do this too,

and I still remember them from last year. How many ads do you remember

that landed in your inbox say, three months ago? Be personal, but professional, and this will not only be relevant to your business, but more

importantly, your reputation and your profits.

All Done - Now It's Your Turn

OK so we've been through four main possibilities. I hope that I got across

to you what the pros and cons, the upsides and downsides are for each

example. Remember they're all categorized loosely here, you can modify

and gel one into the other to make hybrids. What I hoped to have

demonstrated though is a picture of what effects what and why, when

choosing how to maintain your list. Hopefully also this will be super easy

for you. Which one is the best to choose? The one that is best for you and

your business, not just now, but in the future. Once you've gone down a

path for a list, it's not easy to change. Make the right decision now based

on what you have in front of you, and you can sleep easy in the knowledge

that your choice will benefit you not just from the day you start building

your list, but one, two, five, even ten years or more into the future.

It's your choice. There is no wrong answer. Pick the one that's right for you

and your business. 

Summary

● Greetings and welcome to list maintenance part two. Let’s continue with

our reviews and look at the final few main categories that lists fall in to.

● The personal list - affiliate and ad content. This is much the same as the

personal mixed content list, however this time, you're not sending tips,

hints, or content, but ads however only ads for your own products, the

affiliate programs you promote and through joint ventures. Although no

content is provided, this list type is especially useful if you're well known,

and have previously released products of your own.

● Unsubscription Rate ** Two Stars: Unfortunately many people see this

as a plain ad list and unsubscribe if they haven't been in online marketing

for a period of time. Once you have a base of experienced people

however, you're going to reap the rewards. Be wary when selecting this list

type, because if you don't have the right contacts and the right expertise

gained through your own products, this won't work. If you do have those

things, no matter what you send people will listen to you, and it's in this

situation that your unsubscription rate drops off and I'd be happy to up this

to three or even four stars.

● Subscription Rate ** Two stars again: It's easier to get people subscribed

to your list when they know they're getting some serious content. Many

people yet to reach their goals don't understand that these lists are

powerful, simply for following established marketers and learning about

how they run their businesses. Your previous customers and affiliates are your best bet here, especially as they'll be interested in what you have to

say, have lists of their own and be ready to pack out your affiliate

promotion on the second level. Beware however, if you have an

inexperienced crowd at your disposal they may unsubscribe in numbers

due to mistaking your list for a simple ad list.

● Ad Income *** Three stars: This is a pretty tricky one and it totally

depends on how your list is performing. Ads to this type of list are in

demand because first of all, it's your personal list that no one else has

access to, and two to sustain a list like this for any period of time is not

easy, but if you pull it off, it's going to be one of the most responsive lists

you can find. Many marketers in the know are clued up about exactly how

valuable such a list is. Generally it's unlikely that you'll be selling ads very

often, but like the previous personalized list, if you're stuck for cash one

day, it's a quick fix. Starting to send out ads and offering ads to a very

borderline list type like this, and you risk alienating your subscribers, and

losing some really valuable people with promotion power.

● JV Circle **** Four Stars: This list is typically what marketers are looking

for when they come to joint venture with list owners. Highly qualified list

owners ready and eager to both buy products and promote affiliate

programs consisting of people who have purchased from you before, or

even affiliates who have promoted for you before. All of these factors bring

a high value to this list type and make it a great bargaining tool when

approaching or being approached for joint ventures. Keep the quality

subscribers and affiliates (the resource builders) up, and you'll find that in JV negotiations, this list type holds much more water than the e-zine or ad

list, in some cases as much as the personal mixed content list.

● Response rate over time **** Four Stars: Again, this list types response

rate over time doesn't vary too much from the mixed content personal list

we talked about earlier. The only additional things you have to look out for

is using too many ads from third parties in a short space of time

(remember these people are here to hear about you and follow your

business, no one else’s) and secondly, those who don't understand the

concept of learning through other marketers ads, or you happen to change

your list type. If your list type changes, but the reason everyone is

subscribed does not. This can be devastating.

● General Usefulness **** Four Stars: Because this list is also very

personal, it's not hard to get important tracking information from the

subscribers. They're happy to give it to you simply because they know it's

going to make them more money in the end, and of course many of them

are on your list solely for the opportunity to join your programs and things

you promote, and make wads of cash. They're all too happy to reveal to

you what turns them on, hence the four stars. The only ones that won’t be

forthcoming are those that don't quite see the concept of this type of list,

and it's likely they won't be hanging around for long anyway.

● Maintenance Time ***** Five Stars.:The ideal list if you're short of time or

don't particularly like writing. The only thing you'll have to do is find out

what your subscribers are interested in, which is a short job and beneficial to you anyway. Be wary however, if you haven't gathered the subscribers

though your own products and reputation, this list type won't work. People

jumping onto your list are interested in you and your business, what you're

promoting, and how much money you're earning, using your list as kind of

research for themselves.

● Finally, the ad list. Take every example that we've used, and everything

that I've shown you so far, from relationship building, to useful content,

personal lists, and your reputation, throw it out the window, go fetch it, then

throw it out the window all over again. It's a simple list that accepts all ads

from everyone, your own products, other peoples products, affiliate

promotion and so on. It's very impersonal and sends no content. Very

often, subscribers don't even know who the publisher is.

● Unsubscription Rate * One Star: Most of these ad lists that I’ve come

across either use unethical methods or promise things that they don't

actually deliver on predictably causing a high unsubscription rate. Granted

some people may want to see ads, this is true, but from a specific person

they know and trust and either work off the list owners marketing or follow

in their footsteps. This list type doesn't allow that either. Even when

legitimate methods are used, giving away free stuff for example, it's not

unusual for these lists to be packed full of freebie seekers, who as you can

imagine, are not very profitable to anyone.

● Subscription Rate * One Star: As you can probably plainly see, telling

people all they're going to receive is ads is not a good way to get

subscribers. In general, these lists are shooting for numbers rather than quality so they can charge more for ads. In summary, they’re hard to get

subs for ethically, and quality suffers either way through the sheer

unfocused number and type of ads being sent.

● Ad Income ** Two Stars: Not that this makes up for the other huge

shortcomings mind you, but generally the ad income can be OK depending

on the size of your list. An ad to a list of a hundred thousand for a hundred

dollars can look like a good deal to the entry level online marketer, or

someone who hasn't been around and seen the sights yet. Of course we

know better though. The response rates tell the story, and when your

customers don't see any response on their ads, if they're smart they won't

be coming back to give you their cash ever again. Bad news for your long￾term prospects, which is what building a business is all about.

● JV Circle * One star, once again: Unfortunately a list that isn't personal

slips up big time on subscriber quality. People that have bought from you,

willing to spend cash, affiliates, or even populated with people in your

target market are in most cases missing. For this reason, you won't be a

hot topic for joint ventures. Try to barter with one of these, and don't expect

to get very far unless your JV prospect is inexperienced. And in any case,

if they're inexperienced, it's unlikely the joint venture will be profitable to

you in any case.

● Response Rate Over Time * One Star: If you receive a different ad every

day for a year from a list, would your make the effort to open and read their

mails? Doubtful, unless you knew the marketer well or were interested in

their work. It's a big never-ending roll downhill. The more ads your send,the more people unsubscribe, the less people care, the more you're

filtered, blacklisted, and not taken seriously as a marketer. Your response

rates will plummet. Fast.

● General Usefulness * One Star: Unfortunately even general usefulness

here is a downer. Again, no one cares what you have to say or about your

questions, because they don't know you. They might have known you if

they didn't receive a load of ads from different people every day, or every

week or whatever, but that isn't the case here. It's unlikely many will be

reading, never mind be motivated to answer any questions you might have

or research inquiries. And after all, why should they if they're not getting

anything out of it too?

● Maintenance Time ***** Five Stars: Finally five stars. You receive the ad

from your customer, cash lands in your account, paste in the ad, hit send

and you're done. It’s the ultimate speedy list maintenance method. I assure

you though, this will never ever make up for it's shortcomings in other

areas. Don't bother if you're looking for a serious online business. It's just

not the way to go about things, morally or logically.

● Important note here: These are base figures, and your exact results may

be higher or lower than the above. It's more to give you some insight into

aiming your business in the right direction than to give you exact figures

and numbers and guaranteed base earning, response rate, income,

number of JV prospects etc.Ok, the reviews are done with. All that's left for me to do is give you a

few tips that should be implemented from the start to avoid problems with

administering your list later or having problems with response rates.

● Remember to divide up your lists for tracking and relevance purposes. If

you sell a piece of software and gain a load of subscribers, affiliates, sales

and so on through your site, you don't want to then try to mix it all up and

sell them onto an online marketing scheme, because you're going off track,

losing the reason they subscribed in the first place, and will in the end lose

subscribers.

● Another reason for doing this is tracking and testing. We already talked

in several key areas about how important tracking and testing actually is

using your list as kind of a market research tool. You don't want to be

asking about online marketing when your list is based on software sales for

example, no one will have a clue what you're talking about, you'll get bad

data, and a whole bunch of subscriptions.

● Another advantage here is something closer to home and more direct,

and that’s simply, it allows you to target people specifically for the type of

products you're selling. We all know how important targeting is, and how

much of a waste of time it is selling golf clubs to someone who's interested

in fishing equipment, this is just the same. On a deeper level, you're

allowed massive flexibility too. It's not just for show.

● Next, the personal touch. Strange as it sounds, send Christmas cards, or

a New Year card to your list. It's important because it makes your list even

more personal, maintaining high response rates.● I remember getting a Christmas card from one of the programmers that's

working on something for me. It wasn't anything special, just an e-card

sent via e-mail to all his customers, with a generic dear sir/madam at the

top of it. It was nice though, and what’s nicer for him is it was memorable,

and that’s just plain profits waiting to be had that you’re missing out on if

you’re not taking advantage of this.

● OK, so we've been through four main list maintenance possibilities. I

hope that I got across to you what the pros and cons, the upsides and

downsides are for each example. Remember they're all categorized

loosely here, you can modify and gel one into the other to make hybrids.

What I hoped to have demonstrated, though, is a picture of what effects

what and why when choosing how to maintain your list. Hopefully this will

now be super easy for you. Which one is the best to choose? The one that

is best for you and your business, not just now, but in the future. Once

you've gone down a path for a list, it's not easy to change. Make the right

decision now based on what you have in front of you, and you can sleep

easy in the knowledge that your choice will benefit you not just from the

day you start building your list, but one, two, five, even ten years or more

into the future.

● It's your choice. There is no wrong answer. 

Overview of List Management – Part 3

● To introduce the top methods of list building that will work alongside your

other resources to create the business that you desire.

● To introduce the five main resources that are going to make you a whole

bundle of money and to show you how list building ties into all of them

creating a self sufficient system that builds itself without any input from

you.

● To demonstrate that what you can achieve simply by the words that

come out of your mouth far surpasses any list building service that you can

pay for.

● To get over the first and hardest hurdle any online marketer will tell you

they came across, and that's getting started.

● To show you that just five hundred people on your list can in fact without

too much hassle outperform a purchased list of any kind more than ten

times it's size over and over again.

● To introduce several ways in which you should be building your list at all

times.

● To show that to get the initial list off the ground will take effort on your

part, but once it's off the ground and profitable for you, sales will flow, and

in turn, the size of your list will snowball.

List-Building Methods

This is easily one of the more important sections of the guide, as much as I

hate to say one section is more important than the next. On talking to the

people on my list and my associates, when I asked them what the hardest

thing was to do for them relating to online marketing when they first got

started, it was to build a list.

I reckon the reason behind this is that list building is drummed into us as

one of the biggest aspects of online marketing, which is true. Your list will

form the basis of your marketing ventures from now and into the future.

Unfortunately, while there is a good side to this for the people that get it

right, for those that get it wrong (which I should note I also did when I first

started out) it can become quite an expensive affair.

Quality over Quantity

The reason is that there are so many list building services on offer out

there. If you head on over to a search engine, and do a search for list

building methods, you'll be attacked by all sorts of products and services,

most of them I hate to say it, don't work. The old have a 100k mailing list

by the end of the week type of service, which some of us fell for in our

early years for example. What you'll find however, is that buying leads and

all that fluff aren't so important. You know why? I can tell you that with a

mere five thousand people on your list, if you follow this guide here, and

take it slow and steady, you'll find that you out do most of the 20k lists out

there, because your list is of better quality. We don't want a huge list of fifty thousand freebie-seekers, or fifty thousand people that are there and are

untargeted, or people that have even been paid or bribed in some way by

a lead generation company or some such business to join your list. All

you'll find yourself doing is sending mails out to thousands upon thousands

of people that never respond to you, at a great cost to you and your

pocket, but to the gains of whoever you paid for these leads.

I should say at this point that there are people out there who do make their

living through unsolicited email, numbers over quantity. They pick up

servers in other countries that don't have anti spam laws, or are not

restrictive in any way, and send out millions upon millions of mails, and

sure they make money. In my eyes however, this is not online marketing.

It's not ethical, it doesn't build a solid business base for your future, and it

gives those of us with legitimate lists a bad name. It just makes our lives

harder than they need to be. If this is the kind of info you're looking for, you

won't find it here. We're looking at real business.

Getting Started

OK so the first thing I want to talk to you about is getting started. The

number one thing I've seen over the years, from the friends that came and

went, and those that didn't make it, and even from those that did in the

early days was that they were put off in the beginning. You know the story,

and in fact, may have experienced or are experiencing this yourself right

now, the ‘I only have a thousand people on my list’ syndrome, where it all

isn't quite happening fast enough. Let me put your mind at rest here. Done properly, with a good solid product

and joint venturing and making some new contacts through a single

website, a single product not even directly aimed at increasing your list

size or quality can put you up two, three, five, and even ten thousand

subscribers within a few months. I've seen it, and I've experienced it. We'll

talk more about this in a moment, but first I want to be sure that you

understand that numbers don't matter.

So what if you only have five hundred people on your list, when all of those

500 people know you, trust you, know your products, and most of them

either bought from you before or see you as more than a random nobody

sending them e-mail. I'd pick that 500 person list over a random low

quality, purchased leads or whatever list consisting of 10,000 people any

day. Whatever you do, don't get disheartened by low numbers. Numbers

mean nothing, it's how you interact with them and how they respond to you

that matters.

And on that note, there's something else I want to get out to you right now,

if you've done this before, or have thought about doing it, or haven't done it

yet, listen up, because it's amazing how many people I speak to, asking

how their list building is going, and they say to me oh yeah, I only had

three, four, five hundred on it, so I ditched it and started again. They

weren't responding to me anyway. How to make them respond to you is a

different report altogether. But please, do not start ditching lists like this to

get organized again.