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:suncoastrenttoown@getresponse.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.
About the author:
Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business.
He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful
Internet business owner. Learn more about the concept of
residual income at http://www.fl-home-biz.comor
send a blank email to mailto:pdobler@getresponse.com
