Infographic That Will Show You How to Grow Your List Overnight!

Because building a list is so vital and important to your Internet marketing efforts, I'm spending the next few blog posts writing out a strategy for you to use in building a list rather quickly.  Since I'm making a rather detailed series of posts on this, I'd like to share this great infographic with you, to give you some inspiration.

As you are going to find out, your email and customer list is where the real money lies, because it is an indication that you have either sold or gotten a response back from a prospect or customer that trusts you.

When you begin to gather tools like auto-responders you will become acutely of companies like GetRsponse, Aweber and MailChimp, there tracking tools and how they can help you.

But before you start playing around with these shinny new toys, you're going to need to set up a plan for your list building and execute it.  

Below is a great info-graphic from GetResponse that shows you how to set this all up.

Enjoy! 

Brought to you by GetResponse Email Marketing

Web Savvy List Building Story That's 100% True and SHOCKING!

NOTICE:  I am not, nor will I ever be involved with Network or Multilevel Marketing.  It's just not my thing.  If that's the type of business you're into, then God Bless you and keep on trucking. I'm not going to voice my opinion on it one way or the other.  It's just not for me, and I'm not into it.  I have seen some people make a wad on this type of business and I've seen people lose their shirts on it. In my opinion and experience, you have to be an excellent salesperson with a very thick hide to work it. But that's all I have to say about it.  So, there.

Years ago, I worked for an Internet and information marketer; it was a very interesting experience.  He called me from a number on a bulletin board, where I had placed a flyer advertising my Web Design services.  Turns out he had hundreds of websites and couldn't keep track of them all, so he hired me to help him out.   

To this day, I still scratch my head at how disorganized his operation was, yet he was pulling in well over a million dollars.  One day, I went in to his place of business to work on some things he asked me to take care of while he was out of town. 

As a matter of fact, he was always out of town, because he was constantly doing seminars of one sort or another.  So, I got to this building he had rented, and the thing was left wide open.  I didn’t have a key, I just walked in looked around and nobody was there.  He had left family members in charge while he was gone and apparently they had left it open. 

I called him to let him know that his building was left unsecured all night and that the lights and everything else were running full blast.  Since I had no way of knowing how much equipment he had in there, I didn't know if he had some of his stuff ripped off or not.  He had loads of computers, packing machines, machines for silk screening DVD’s, a lot of high-end video equipment, etc.   

When I got him on the phone, finally, he sheepishly said, “Oh, Dad must have left the building unlocked again.”  Turns out this happened all of the time.  

Since I was left alone in his building, I decided to check out the material he was making money on.  His operation was all handled at his shop, and it looked like he didn’t outsource anything. Every part of his business was right inside the building, and he printed on demand.  In other words he wasn’t publishing his books and pamphlets the traditional way.  He was the publisher.  Whenever an order came in, he’d print it up himself, box it up and send it out.

So, being an information marketer – wannabe, I decided to peruse some of his material to see what an actual full-sledged info-marketer was selling.

I was shocked at what I saw. 

Most of the stuff was... how I can put this delicately….Rubbish!

A lot of what I saw were flimsy pamphlets he had printed by copying stuff he had thrown together from his websites and websites from friends who had given him permission.  He would basically print up the actual webpages, put them into a spiral bound machine and send them out.  And the websites themselves were rubbish.  There really wasn’t any rhyme or reason to the material he was peddling.

But, his phones were ringing off the hook.  People were only too eager to buy what he was selling. (Just imagine if he actually sold a world-class product what kind of business he’d do!)  Turns out that he was an EXCELLENT salesman.  He had gotten into the multilevel marketing business and done very well with it.  Now, he not only was running that operation, but he was selling courses on how to make it big in the world of MLM and networking.

I didn’t stay working for this man very long, even though he and his family were very nice to me.  He was on the road so much, he was never home.  I could never get ahold of him to find out what he wanted me to do with his websites, and he also had other gatekeepers that were running some of those sites, so I just faded out of the picture. 

However, I did get one important lesson from this man.  I asked him what he considered to be the most important aspect of an Internet business or an information marketing business was.

THE LIST.  

That’s what he emphatically told me.  “The list is absolute gold.”

He was an expert at this, because his list was so massive he couldn’t keep track of it all.   However, he had a faster way in than many Internet marketing newbies would have.  Because he had made a major landing in a diet product related MLM business, he would go on the road for this business to their seminars.  He was an excellent salesman, so he’d not only promote his business, but he’d also promote his course. 

So, he was in an enviable position to promote his wares to large, hungry

groups of people that were eager to plunk down their money at the event as well as get on one of his hundreds of sites and order when they got home.  

This concept never left my mind.  When I was still building websites for people, I started noticing that people that were doing lousy in their businesses had no concept of list building or keeping in contact with their past clients.

If you have people that liked your business and liked you, these are the easiest prospects you could ever get?  Why wouldn’t you keep them in your business loop?

So, if you want to build an online business, or an offline bricks and mortar business then keep a good database of your clients and prospects. Always stay in touch with them, and strive to build it, because this is the fuel that’ll drive your business.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

You've Made Your Web Savvy Traffic Generating Video, Now What?

Ok, the next thing you’ll want to do is save your video so that you can easily upload it to YouTube, Vimeo or any other Video site.  Before you do that, you’ll need a basic understanding of how to compress video. 

If you haven’t been keeping up on how to create traffic generating videos, here are the links to previous posts that you’ll find very helpful: (These are in the order of how you should read them.)

1.  Use Web SavvyYouTube Traffic Generation to Get Prospects to Your Site 

2.  How NOT to CreateYouTube Videos That Will Get Traffic to Your Site 

3.  What Type ofSoftware and Hardware Should I Use to Make YouTube Videos With? 

4.  How to Make Web Savvy YouTube Videos That Will Generate Traffic

  

Compressing your video files --- The Basics

It would be a good idea to understand how video file conversion works when getting ready to upload them to different sites.  Basically, whenever you are compressing a file of any type, it is basically reducing it in some manner.  The smaller the file, the faster it will load. 

If you have ever reduced a typical photograph file for a website, you’ll notice that when you reduce the size of that file, the picture becomes a little less clear and sort of grainy looking.  That’s because you are taking out some of the pixels in the picture. In a nutshell that’s basically what you’re doing to a video.  

In video however, the camera stores or records anywhere from 23 to 30 STILL images which somehow makes the movement more clear and fluid. So, within the frames, the compression function stores the changes there instead of storing more frames.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW IS: Whenever you compress a video or picture, it will be less clear because the file is smaller!

Here is a video compression chart to help you understand a little about it:

My recommendation to you is if this is the first time you’re compressing a video file and placing it on the Internet, is to compress it into a standard mp 4 format and upload it to YouTube.  That is the easiest way to get your first video online.

How to Compress the Video File

If you read my article on which video editing software to buy, you’ll know that I’m partial to Camtasia and Sony Vegas.  These programs have video compression built into the programs, so just like any other video program, you can pick the type of compression or file extension that you want.  My recommendation is to:

A.)  Use either Sony Vegas or Camtasia for video editing

B.) Compress the video file into MP4 format

C.)  Upload to YouTube because it is very easy and YouTube will give you step by step directions on how to do it.

Why I’m Not Recommending HD format.

There is an area of Internet users caught in an area called The Digital Divide.  These are people that because of where they live, their economic situation or they may not be computer savvy enough keeps them from getting the fastest and best Internet service. 

I live in a rural community where the only way I can get Internet is by way of a “Hotspot”.  I am only allowed 10 gigs a month on my Internet service. So, watching videos at home is totally out of the question, so I only use static pages. 

I’m in an extreme situation, however.  Usually, most people can get regular full-blown Internet but, there’s an awful lot of people that can’t get the best Internet service.  Either they are living in an area where they can’t get it or they can’t afford the best.  So, for them to wait for a HD High-Definition video to load on a slower bandwidth is unrealistic. 

And if you are trying to market your services, you could be cutting a whole segment of people out of your sales funnel.  So go with a medium range MP4 compression if you can.

If you still don't understand how to compress video files, watch this:

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Use Web Savvy YouTube Traffic Generation to Get Prospects to Your Site

This is one method of generating traffic that I know for a fact works very fast.  I actually learned all about creating videos back in 2007 while working on my Master’s Degree in Education Technology with Boise State University.

One of the classes I took was “Educating with YouTube” believe it or not.  In that class, we had to create scripted, well edited educational videos and post them to YouTube.  Actually, there was more to it than all that; we had to create a YouTube educational channel, use various types of video editing and screen capture software like Camtasia among other things to make our instructional videos.

One of the first videos I created was one called “Facebook for Beginners”.  For that video assignment I had to build a lesson plan, write a step by step script, and then execute it and post it to my YouTube channel.  Of course all of this had to be submitted to my professors.

If you want to see it, here it is: 

I had beginners luck with this video.  To date I’ve had over 26, 000 views and it seemed to gain popularity very quickly.  Now some Internet marketers out there are going to roll their eyes at that count, and they would be right.  But for a person that tried it out for the first time, it was a good start.
 

Getting to the Top of The SERPS and Not Even Knowing it!

The other thing I learned about this that hit me like a Ton ̶ O ̶ Bricks was how fast the search term “Facebook for Beginners” went to the top of Google’s Search Engine Results Pages.  I was at the top of Google for that term for quite some time.                                                                    (Update: I’m no longer at the top of the Google’s SERPS for this term, unless you search under Google’s Video link at the top of Googles main page.  It’s still there after all these years, right in the middle of the page!)

The beauty of all this is that you can add your URL Website address to your video channel or display it in your video itself.  At the time, I wasn’t thinking about making money or gaining traffic on the Internet. I was just worried about getting an “A” in my YouTube class. 

Bad Videos and How They Can Cheese You Off!

Since taking this class, I’ve seen a lot of YouTube videos, especially instructional ones.  The problem with a large percentage of them is that they are horrible, mainly because most of them are unscripted.  Let’s say you search online for a Photoshop tip and find a video you think is going to quickly and succ where the person that created the video with Camtasia, has a bad microphone, so you can barely hear his or her voice.   

Then there’s the incredible dialogue with a lot of …uh…ya know…….uhhh……stuff…like…..uhhhh…..ya know ….stuff….like this!

If you’re like me, you hate, hate, hate, to waste time with someone that beats around the bush about what they are trying to tell you.  You can obviously tell the person that’s behind the

So, over the course of the next couple of days, we are going to take a look at what makes a good instructional video, why you would want to make one and how to do it as cheap as possible. 

Hint:  It’s the same principle as when you are trying to write Web content, if you write total crap, nobody will look at your material.  They’ll go to your site, see that you’re wasting their time because the content sucks and then leave.

So, tomorrow, I’ll write the first installment on how to create a good video with well organized content. In the meantime, if you want to watch a rather entertaining video on making money, here it is:

How to Make Interesting Money Making Videos

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Use These Three Web Savvy Steps to Get Targeted Traffic to Your Site

I know this blog has been dedicated to the pursuit of showing you a whole variety of different methods to generate traffic to your websites and businesses.  Let’s face it, without any traffic you won’t have much of a business and there really isn't a reason to have a website at all.

Where I Initially Went Wrong In My Business

Without the key element of intimately knowing what your niche is you may be getting people to come to your site, BUT THEY WILL BE THE WRONG PEOPLE!  So, you need to establish this key idea well before you jump on the Internet and start banging out information that you think people will want to read.

Getting the Traffic That You Want

So, step #1 in your traffic generating matrix should be:

1.  Get a niche that you can focus on.  I have written a rather extensive article on this in an earlier blog post, that also has wonderful links to good resources and you can read that here: Finding Your Niche However, this is a most important step that you must consider because this is the direction that your business is going to take. Without a focused subject or core idea, your business is going to go elsewhere. 

Personal story: Years ago, I started an online embroidery business.  I bought my self a $20,000 single head machine, digitizing software, hoops, and a bunch of other stuff I needed, and decided that I would run most of my services on the Internet.  So, I set up a basic E-commerce site, and put myself out there to get business and to make my fortune on the World Wide Web. 

Oh, I got business, alright.  I got people that wanted gardening hats, shirts with children’s pictures on them, jackets for Veterans and a whole slew of other unassociated stuff.  I set up loads of pages of material and pretty soon, my site looked like a one man band trying to spell out the name Mississippi on a parade field.

To make my point short, it was chaos.

It wasn’t until I decided on a niche that every aspect of my business got easier.  I decided to create apparel exclusively for musicians.  Hats, shirts and jackets for trumpet players, trombonists, guitarists, etc.  Because I had picked a focused niche I didn't have to digitize or sew out loads of unrelated garments either.

Which leads me to Step #2…

2.  Promoting your site or business.  Once you have a niche in place, you must have a way to attract the people that you want there.  In my case I started a light-hearted blog about the craziness of musicians and I wrote a lot of parodies about different instruments.  I also used Photoshop to create a bunch of really funny images based on them.

Some of the pictures and content that was shared went viral on the Internet which helped bring in new customers.  As a matter of fact, I have since sold the business and I went online and my pictures are still being circulated, years after I shut down the site.  

Not only do you need to get fresh content related to your site on the Internet, but you will need to know where people in your niche hang out.  In my case, it was easy to figure out where musicians were hanging out at, and how to get my marketing message in front of them. 

What I eventually learned was that musicians that were into my musician’s apparel were mostly kids in school band programs and music hobbyists that were in specific groups and clubs.  For years there was a group of music enthusiasts in Holland that wore my stuff to their weekly musician’s meetings, no lie.  I got a lot of orders from those guys!

3. Selling your wares.  This was where I failed for years.  I did fairly well getting people to come to my music embroidery site, but once they were there I didn’t sell them.  Yeah, it’s great getting new prospects in your door, but what are you going to do once they walk in?  You need to have a method of selling them, which is the reason why I decided to learn how to write advertising copy.

For years, I was intimidated by many of the awesome copywriters that were on the Web.  I thought I’d never be able to even approach the level of copy that I saw on websites and squeeze pages or stuff I got in the mail box.  And it’s true, those guys are real, world class, millionaire advertising copy writers. 

However, in order to play a decent round of golf, you don’t have to play as good as Tiger Woods.  You don’t need to be the next Bill Gates to use a computer or create a program.  You can aspire to be like them, and put your back into your passion.  It will take you a long way.  But to do well, you don’t necessarily have to be THAT good.

So, if you are going to sell any product or service on the Internet, you are going to have to learn to sell using words.   That, or at least hire a copywriter that knows what he or she is doing.

I have briefly touched on three very important facets of grabbing traffic on the Web.  To get a more in –depth idea on how to implement these ideas, please refer to the resources below.  Most of the information you can get from these sites are free but are high quality:

Finding a Niche:

The Warrior Forum.  Just type in “niche” into the forums search function to get a TON of information from seasoned online entrepreneurs.

Here’s an excellent video to get you started on finding a niche:

Promoting Your Site or Business:

10 Ways to Promote Your Website by Forbes Magazine

Copywriting Services: Mark Ellis Copy

Get this Awesome Book on Being an Entrepreneur for FREE By Best Selling Author Robert Ringer

A quick post here about an incredible offer by a great author.  Robert Ringer is a

man that went to the school of hard knocks. 

He's written several books that have made it to #1 on the New Your Times best seller list.  He usually writes about real life experiences that he has had in business.

The thing that I love about his books the most is the man can write.  Most non-fiction writers have a hard time telling interesting and compelling stories when they talk about being a entrepreneur or business owner.  Ringer tells you stories and points of view that are funny,sad, dramatic and interesting.  He does all that while telling you the cold, hard facts of getting ahead in the business world. 

Because he has busted his butt in business and made it to the top, you know that he is at the top of his game.  But better yet, he is telling you EXACTLY how to succeed in this book and he's giving it away for free! 

 That's right, Robert Ringer is giving his book, "Million Dollar Habits -- 10 Steps for Getting Everything You Want in Life." just for giving him your email.

What I've Already Told You About Success

Over the past several weeks I've been going through all of the different Traffic Generation tactics that you can easily start to use.  If you haven't been reading the easy traffic generating tactics I suggest you click on this link:  Generating Traffic.

But here's the point.

It doesn't matter if you are getting the advice from me, Bill Gates, or Robert Ringer.  The principles and tactics are easy to understand, but it's the EXECUTION and the DISCIPLINE that's hard to do

Sure, Tiger Woods uses a golf club to swing at the little white ball, but it takes bazillions of years of practice, dedication and work to make what he does happen consistently.  Slow and steady wins the race most of the time.  

So get Ringer's book.  You'll laugh! You'll cry! But mostly you'll learn something.

Click here to go to the site and get Ringer's great book. 

Million Dollar Habits -- 10 Steps for Getting Everything You Want in Life

To Your Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

Try This Web Savvy Internet Traffic Generation Method To Grab Readers And Prospects!

Another relatively free system of getting people to your site is by getting others to spread the word for you and give you "Virus Status".  

The tools of choice  for getting this done are what are known as “Share Tools” (A.K.A. - Tell a Friend Buttons, Share Buttons, etc.) ( These are basically buttons that are placed at key places on your website or blog that allow your readers to share your postings and articles with their friends. 

The most popular of these are at these sites:

AddThis.com

AddToAny.com

POST

I’m sure you've seen these things because they are everywhere.  The places I see them most are on job sites like Monster or Indeed.  You click on the page that has a job listing and you can immediately email a friend and let them know about the job you see posted.

 

Well, you can do the same thing on your site.  If you have a posting, video clip, contest, opt-in box to get a freebie or anything else, you can easily place one of these buttons next to them and people that come to your site ca share the feature you have with their friends.

Here is a real good video that talks about using "Share Buttons"

  Not only that, but when someone refers their friend and THEY like what you have, THEY will refer THEIR friends to your site.  Thus your site online will have “Viral Status”.

See how simple it all is?  However, this is just another reason why you should not be producing a lot of CRAP on your site or blog.  If your content is pretty good, chances are you will be slowly but surely moving toward that authority status that all IMer’s lust and pine after. 

Implementing the “Share Tools”

Setting up these buttons is pretty easy.  The sites that carry them usually have a small bit of code on them that you can easily copy and paste into your web page. 

Usually the code looks something like this:

I know that Blogger has a push button system called “Gadgets” that make it so easy to launch tools like this.  As a matter of fact, there is a gadget called Java and HTML coder that makes it so easy to add stuff like this to your sidebar.   All you have to do is add the code you find to the Gadget box and it will display it as soon as you hit “save” and exit the template. 

The Downside of Using These Tools

For just about everything you do in this universe, there is always either detractors telling you why something won’t work, or there is an aspect of it that just doesn’t work.

Many of the people that are in the Internet marketing arena will tell you that if your content is really good, then the person that read your content will probably copy the link and paste it into an email or browser window.  If they are too lazy to do that, then chances are they probably didn’t care THAT MUCH for your content anyway. 

However, many marketers will tell you that removing any barrier to completing an action is a good thing.  So, you’ll just have to decide whether or not you want to use this tool.

To Your Success

Mark Elmo Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

How To Use This Google App To Set and Achieve Your Goals Fast!

I'm a big believer in creating lists.  I have whiteboards all over my house with lists of things I need to accomplish.  This was really helpful when I was working on rehabbing my house that was completely gutted from top to bottom.  I would list at least 2 weeks of work I needed to do at a time.  

The reason for doing this is two-fold.  For one thing, when you have really big projects like that, you need a list so you can prioritize the really important parts and get them done sooner.  Actually, I like to tackle the biggest parts of a project first because they are usually the most important.



The other reason for working like this is when you knock out the biggest and hardest parts of a project, you'll have a huge psychological advantage.  Your brain will automatically tell you that you are on the down hill portion of your work and you will feel a certain momentum in getting your goal completed.  Another advantage of doing work like this is you'll feel a huge sense of accomplishment.  Because you have completed the work in a much faster and more ambitious manner, you'll kill that dreaded Procrastination Beast and get more work completed and more goals accomplished.

Google's FREE Application - Smart Goals

Google has a great free Application on the Google Chrome Store called Smart Goals.  This is a very simple application that I use to list my goals and accomplish them quickly and efficiently.  

The best part about Smart Goals is that here is a very small learning curve.  It is so easy to use that it takes almost no time at all to learn how to use it.  It took me literally 3 minutes to sign up and start using it.

So if you want to start listing your dreams and pursuing them, this is the perfect way to get started.

Please try it out and leave a comment below.

To your success!

Mark Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Portfolio Site: http://markelliscopyportfolio.blogspot.com/

How to Make Your Business Different From Everyone Else’s

One of the problems that I see with newborn information marketers, and netrepreneurs is that they do not know how to sell.  If you are going to sell any product or service, you need to develop this skill.  As a matter of fact, if you are selling over the Internet, you will have to know how to sell using words on a page, whether it is a piece of paper or a squeeze page on a Website. 

Just this week, I bumped into a young man that wanted to make money over the Internet and he churned out a webpage that looked like this:

I blocked out the name of the site because I’m not trying to embarrass anyone, and to tell the truth, I made the same mistakes when I was just starting out.  But, there is so much wrong with all of this that you don’t know where to start. 

First of all, this is supposed to be some sort of new blogging platform, which in my opinion is way too big of a project for a newbie.  If I were new to this game I wouldn't start here, under any circumstances.  Besides that, there are a whole bunch of blogging and social media sites out there that are trying to be the next Facebook, so the competition is pretty stiff. 

So, unless you have a very clear differentiation from those sites, you are going to have a very tough time getting people to access your site.  

But, all of that aside, you need to make your business different than all of the competition out there.

How to Make Your Business Different

Let us start out with the premise that you are a running a sign business in the bricks and mortar world.  What you should do is get a copy of the Yellow Pages

(YP) and set it right in front of you.  Next, you’re going to look up all of the sign businesses in the YP and you are going to write down the words and phrases that you see in their advertisements that are repeated.

For example, you see the words or phrases “vinyl lettering”, “craftsmanship”, “signage”, “vehicle graphics” over and over again.  Once you have gone through all of the ads you see in those pages you will see that almost all of the businesses are competing for the exact same market.

As you can see, this gives you market awareness that nobody else in your business has. 

Make Yourself Different

The next thing you must do is find an angle or perform a service that none of the other businesses have.  In the good ol’ days Domino’s Pizza got their pizza to you within a specified period of time and that’s what separated them from all of the other pizza businesses out there.

Maxwell House coffee started putting their coffee into measured filter packets that you just threw into the coffee maker.

You must find a way to make your site, business or service different than everyone else’s. 
One way is to make your business indispensable like this:

I know that you are probably thinking that I was going to tell you exactly how to make your business different, but I am not in your shoes or business.  I would need intimate knowledge that you have in your enterprise to know exactly the angle to apply to this change.

However, once you see what all the other businesses are into and what elements are the same, it will be much easier for you to differentiate yourself in your marketing and business.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

"When it comes to high response copy, I've got your back!"

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

If you want to learn more about how to write and use ad copy in your business, please click the link below and I’ll send you a free report on how to write more effective copy for your business.

Please send me a free copy of The Secret 7 -How to use advanced tactics in your adcopy to dominate your competition! 

FREE List Building Tricks Your Mother Never Told You About!

I once worked very briefly for an Internet millionaire that had about 80 websites.  Man, he was selling everything you could imagine under the sun from e-books, courses, dietary supplements, to multilevel marketing sponsorships.  I was hired on to help him manage and update his sites because some of them had been around for a very long time. 

I will tell you that he had quite a following.  He had rented a big office building that was abandoned (I think it had been a two story commercial site that sold light fixtures originally.) and sometimes I would beat him to his office to start working on his sites.  The phones would ring off the hook day and night.

 

I remember that his primary product was an info product on how to build a multilevel marketing business.  He would travel to a bunch of Internet conferences and give a demonstration or speech about how to grow a networking company and then afterwards he would sell his course on how to do it.

He was constantly on the road and was an excellent salesman, and I believe that his ability to sell to a live audience increased his bottom line and it created a great sales funnel.

 If I can remember clearly, this is what his sales funnel looked like:

The process of doing business, whether it was getting people to opt-in, buy a product, or upselling was accelerated by the fact that he was at speaking engagements all of the time.  They would see him speak and at the very least most of his audience would go to one of his websites and opt in.

This Is Pure Gold

One day while he was at the office I had an opportunity to talk.  I mentioned to him how I was inspired by marketers like Dan Kennedy, John Carlton and Corey Rudl (Of course this is before his tragic death).  He told me that he had actually spoke at seminars with these folks on occasion and that even though he was a chronic info-marketer and pretty successful  himself, he was always trying to extract any nuggets of wisdom that he could from them.

The one thing he told me that he learned from the likes of these big time entrepreneurs was that a list of potential prospects is pure gold and that mining it, using it and reusing it was how he built his business.

As a matter of fact, his exact words were “The list is pure gold.”

Don’t Misunderstand The Message Here…

He never said the list was EVERYTHING, he just said it was pure gold.  Now, if you were in his office and could see the way he generated, used, and reused his massive list you’d know he was telling the truth.  As a matter of fact, the one aspect of his business that he was very careful to take care of was his list. 

Website passwords, he’d forget. 

Dates and times of things, he’d lose them. 

Even products and merchandise he didn’t have that good of a grip on, BUT THE LIST HE BUILT WAS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT TO HIS BUSINESS.

What Can You Take Away from This Story?

Well, list building is extremely important!  As a matter of fact, the more information you have on a prospect, the better off you are.  If you only have an email address, you can still stay in the loop with them, but it is much better to have a physical mailing address and potentially, a phone number even. 

As a rule of thumb, try to gather as much personal info that you can gather on your clients and prospects as you can.

However, if you JUST have an email address, you are limited to sending just one type of message – email.  Email is very easy to ignore and dispose of.  Not only that, but email accounts get dumped all of the time, so the more contact info you can get, the better off you’ll be. 

How Do I Start Building a List?

You can start by using an auto responder like GetResponse, Awebber, or even a cheap free one like SendFree.  Of course, anything that is free will just the bare minimum and they will want you to upgrade to a better account ASAP.

In my opinion, if you are brand new list builder the best way to start is by going as cheap as possible.  The reason I say that is because it will definitely take time to build a viable list.  If you are building your list online and that is the only way you are marketing your business, then building a list will be a rather slow process, no matter what marketing gurus will tell you. 

If you don’t want to use an email responder at all, here is a video that will show you exactly how to gather email addresses without one:

Once you have several email addresses to send to, you can always use the following e-mail trick to send your email out to an entire herd of people.  Use this technique to send multiple emails out without recipients being able to see a list of email addresses:  Email Trick 

The downside to this lesson is that it takes diligence, hard work and a certain amount of patience to cultivate, build and use a list properly.  However, once you have it, you will see that it is pure gold!

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