and I have Liz Tomey on the line. And we are billing this as--what do we call it, Liz? Is this the Marathon List Building Viral Marketing call? What was my official title of this?
Liz Tomey: Yeah, I think we are giving out all the information we possibly can. I think our focus was list building but there is going to be some really good information in it.Jeff: Yeah, and also the call might be a little weird because Liz and I are
pretty good friends, so we do like to make fun of one another a lot. So, you might hear some of that. We are going to probably try to keep our language cleaner than it might be in normal calls that are more private.
But what you are going to hear is just we are going to really get into the details of our business, and how we built our business. And primarily my business was built off of list building. We are going to really focus in on that.
But we are also going to be talking about not only the ways we build our lists, but we are going to be talking about things that maybe people don't talk about, like the JV aspect of it, how important that is to build your list, and how to go about that. Liz does a great job in creating a lot of products, and a lot of these things I don't even know.
So I am going to be asking her and taking notes with all these products, and the viral aspect of it, because I have never heard. I am going to be asking Liz how many people she gets through all those products she creates, and the links and the sales, if she knows those numbers.
So we are going to be asking a lot of good stuff, and just trying to give you guys as much information as we can, so you can apply this stuff to your business. And I say this oftentimes, that a lot of people always keep on learning and learning and learning. And a lot of times, they don't take action.
So we might be giving you 50, 100, 200 things here, great ideas. Well, obviously you can't do them all. Just off the list, look at your current business model of what you are currently doing and what your current goal is, and look at just the things you can apply and take action on almost immediately.
Look at maybe just one, thing, or a handful of things. Don't look at all 100 or 200 things. Just look at a couple of them, focus in on those and, if possible, see what you can get done by tomorrow, the day after you hear this. Can you get a couple of those accomplished, even just one?
Your goal might be just doing one by the end of the week. But the main thing is just getting that first one done. Liz, what do you think about that? Is that a problem that you see? I know that you do a lot of coaching, which I do not do. Is that whole process, or people just taking action, is that like a big problem that you see in a lot of your clients?
Liz: Oh, yeah, most certainly, and it starts with focus. Something I have learned from Robert Puddy’s seminars is that even I am doing a few things wrong. And the biggest thing is that if it doesn't apply to your business model, it doesn't apply.
You stay away from it. You don't focus on it because what you will find yourself doing is hopping. You hop to this, you hop to that. You have got to stay focused. This is my business model. This is what I do. If it doesn't relate, it doesn't exist. And another thing I have been teaching my coaching clients is kind of like the 24-hour rule.
And this 24-hour rule is about buying, because buying stuff is all great, and you need to continue your education. But if you can't use it or need it in 24 hours, don't buy it.
I don't care if someone comes along and says, “Oh, it is the latest greatest, and it is never going to be done again. ” If it is in Internet Marketing, it is going to be done over and over and over and over again. So that is a big thing. Focus? If you don't have focus, you are going down.
And it may take you awhile, and it almost happened to me, you know. That whole focus thing almost killed me, because I was working 16, 18 hours a day, and getting absolutely nothing done. So if you don't focus, you are going to lose out big time.
Jeff: Well, you should say, Liz, you were getting a lot done, but compared to what you are getting now, looking back, you weren't getting that much done. You were still creating a successful business and growing, but now your growth is like hyper growth compared to before because you are outsourcing compared to when you were trying to do it all yourself.
Liz: Exactly, exactly.
Jeff: Yeah. On the topic of that focus, there is a book called Good to Great. I am horrible at remembering names. I think Jim Collins is the person that wrote it. This book is brought up many times in Rich Schefren’s coaching program. I am a member.
And also, Mike Filsaime had a big seminar a couple of weeks ago in New York, and it was about building your business. And they quoted that from the stage at least three times or four times, and I know of at least two speakers who brought up that book, so anyone that is listening, I definitely recommend Good to Great.
It deals with the difference between just normal, good companies and the great companies. And they deal with that whole focus issue. So that is definitely a book that you guys can put on your list of things to buy from Amazon.
Liz, I have wanted to get into your history. I met Liz just in the last year. We met at a few, maybe three events. We were doing a mastermind group together, and we did a product together, but I don't know much about your history. For the people out there, maybe quickly give them an idea of your online history or maybe any other history that is relevant.
And then also get right into the list building history. At what point did you start building your list or figure out that that was something you needed to do?
Liz: Okay, well, I got my start, a lot of people don't know this about Okay, well, I got my start, a lot of people don't know this about to-5 thing. When I was a teenager, I was a carhop at a restaurant in Indianapolis, but that is the extent of my real job stuff. When I was 19 years old, I started a direct-mail business.
It was a direct-mail advertising business, and I ran that until about a year and a half ago. It made me $50,000 to $60,000 a year. But compared to what happened when I got online, it just wasn't working. So my background actually comes from the direct-mail advertising business.
And what I did there is sold advertising services to people who were in direct mail. And what I did is create this huge list of dealers. In the offline world, affiliates are called dealers. So I had this whole list of affiliates, and I probably didn't advertise the last four years of my business because all of these dealers were promoting my stuff for me.
They would make a sale and they would get a commission. So all I was doing was filling the orders, basically. You guys forgive me. I am losing my voice because I have done so many interviews over this past weekend.
Jeff: Oh, yeah. Liz was at a seminar all weekend, doing a boot camp and doing interviews, so hopefully you can make it the full two hours or more.
Liz: Oh, I can. I am drinking hot tea, so we are ready to roll. But that is what I did offline. So I went, “Okay, I see people doing this online. I bet I can do bigger by taking my business model, which is creating products and having others promote it, to the online world.” And that is exactly what I did.
I actually didn't start with building a list. I started by having my own product, and having that is vital. And so many people miss that. They don't start with their own product. If you don't have your own product, you are not starting.
If you want to go into affiliate marketing and building a list, and all that stuff, that is really hard to do. You need to learn to leverage other people. So I saw at a forum a topic on joint ventures. And I went, “Hmm, okay, this I can do because I know about joint ventures off line.”
But I didn't know about joint ventures online, and there is quite a difference there. So I went to the forums and started asking questions about joint ventures. And I saw these big names giving me answers, and I said, “Okay! This is content!”
So I e-mailed them all and said, “Hey, can I use the post you made in the forum for creating a course on doing joint ventures?” And that was the birth of my very first product, which was Joint Venture Secrets. And it has been taken offline now, because I need to update it.
I am going to make it a huge course instead of the small course that it is now. But all those people I got to say yes to being in the book, once I got it done, I went back to them and said, “Hey, will you promote it?” Well, we are in the Internet Marketing industry, and the Internet Marketing industry has a lot of big egos in it. And if you put someone in your product, nine out of ten times, they are going to promote that product because they are in that product.
A case in point here: night before last I was reading an e-book, and I can't even remember the name of it, but there was a lady who was writing this e-book, and she mentioned me several times in this ebook. I didn't know who she was. She had never contacted me.
Jeff: Did she say something positive or negative?Liz: All positive, Jeff.
Jeff: Okay!
Liz: This wasn't about a whole lot of people commenting on you. This is about me! You only get the negative feedback, remember?
So she had me all through this e-book and I e-mailed her and said, “Hey! You know, I really appreciate this. What can I do for you? Can I promote this for you? Do you have an affiliate program? Do I just need to send this out to my list? Tell me what you need?”
And it was because she had mentioned me several times in her ebook. So once I got my e-book totally done, I went to these people and said, “Hey! This is what I got; this is what I did. There is a workbook with it; there are audios. Here’s the download page. You, of course, get it for free. Would you mind telling me what you think about it?”
“If you don't have the time, I would be more than happy to jump on the phone with you and give you the lowdown on it. Maybe we could work out a deal where you could promote this for me, and I will promote your products on the backend.”
So I already knew the key to doing a joint venture was making sure the person I was doing the joint venture for was getting a lot out of the deal. I went to these guys and said, “Hey, you are in this ebook. There is benefit number one. Benefit number two, they are getting it for free. Benefit number three, I am promoting their product on the backend.”
So if you ever go to these big guys, throw yourselves at them; whatever they need, do it. If they need affiliate links created, if they need you to get a domain name and redirect it to their affiliate link, whatever they need.
When you are first starting out, don't grovel at these guys, but make sure they have everything they need. So once I got that going, the launch just took off. It was my very first product. I literally was online six or eight months just trying to decide what I wanted to do.
But once that went off, that was the start of my list building. And it was by having people promote my products. Anybody who came to the site, I had a little opt-in box so they could opt in and get a free report on doing joint ventures.
Some people now are not real crazy about that, so I don't recommend putting any type of opt-in box on your sale page. I know that I, as an affiliate, will not promote to squeeze pages and that kind of stuff any longer. I don't like giving away my list. So you might not want to do that.
But when they buy, you can put them on your list. So I was building this list of buyers that kept getting bigger and bigger. On the flip side of that, I was also building a list of affiliates, because once they would buy my product, and this was all before the whole butterfly marketing thing. This will be three years ago this July, so this is all before butterfly marketing.
Once they bought my product, not only on the download page would I tell them on my page they could make money now by my promoting it, but I also had an entire e-mail series ready to go. And I told them, “Hey, here's some benefits to this. I bet some people on your list would like this, and you can make $77 a sale.”
So I also built a list of affiliates. So I had a list of buyers, and I had a list of affiliates. I was already powerful. So when I came up with my few products, I did the exact same thing, the next product, the exact same thing. And now I have a list of 20,000 people, and 1,500 affiliates. And that is all in three years.
And in those three years, I have deleted my list and started over. I started over about a year ago. I just deleted the whole thing because they weren't being responsive and evidently, I was doing something wrong. I just wanted to take a different model to it and go, “Okay, this is what I want to do now.”
And so basically in a year, I built my list to 20,000 and my affiliates have always been with me. I will never delete them because they are my bread and butter.
Jeff: Let me hear about deleting this e-mail. So you had this big group, at that point, what, two years old? Some of the contacts, you just felt they weren't opening the e-mails, or they just weren't responsive, so you just literally…?
Liz: Well, the biggest problem was that at that time, I was using an autoresponder service on my server. I wasn't using Aweber. And so I noticed that only 40% of my e-mails were getting delivered. And I was like, “Well, what is going on?”
My domain name wasn't blacklisted. My ID wasn't blacklisted, nothing like that. The domain name was fine. But the software that I was using on my server and the hosting company I was with would only allow like a thousand people to be e-mailed a day.
So on Monday, I would e-mail out. Well, if it had a thousand people, it takes 5 days to get all those e-mails out. So that was the big kicker. And like I said, I probably had 8,000 to 10,000 people on that list. And when I would send out, maybe 40% of them would get it, and then I had bounced e-mails and all this stuff. Nobody was buying.
And the big thing I think I did wrong was I gave them too much content. I love to teach, and I love to give people lots of content. But if you train them to be nothing but content, they are never going to buy from you. People don't understand that, but we are marketers.
We are supposed to sell to people. Don't be afraid to sell to people. That is your job. That is what you do. A fire fighter puts out fires, and marketers market. So don't be afraid to sell to your people. Always give content. I am 110% behind content, but make sure you are trying to sell them something in that content.
And that way they will be prepared when you send them something, and they will be, “Okay, Liz is going to educate me but she’s also going to try to sell something to me.” And that is fine. If you just want to do hard sells to your people constantly, a lot of people like that.
Everybody likes something different, and they are going to pick you for what you are, so don't try and do everything. And that was what I was trying to do. So I just said, “Okay, I am deleting you guys.”
And I told them all that. I said, “Hey, I am deleting you guys. If you want in my new list, here is the opt-in box. Go subscribe.” And I may have had a thousand people who resubscribed. But now I am with Aweber. My e-mail delivery rate is more than double, and I have a very responsive list now.
Liz: You know, either AWeber or Email Aces. Both of them I have had some decent luck with. But anyway, I think of AWeber as being the best.
Jeff: What about that initial list that you grew from that very first promotion? Did you sell to that list right away of other products, because you mentioned that that was your first product, so you didn't have a second product right away to sell to them?
Did you start selling other affiliate products to them, or what type of response did they have, being brand new when they first came in, the first month or two after they came in on that very first product?
Liz: Well, those were the very same people that I was doing nothing but sending content to.Jeff: Oh, so you weren't even throwing in hardly any affiliate links at all.
Liz: Yeah. I promoted a couple of products from the people who were actually in the e-book that I promised I would promote after everything settled down and I had a list. And they did decent, but not like they do now. A lot of that is because I have a reputation now, and that is a big thing.
Get a reputation. It doesn't matter if it is a bad one or a good one. You'd rather have a good one, but get some kind of reputation and get your name out there. And once I did that, everyone started getting a lot more responsive.
But the first one, when I was doing anything related to joint ventures, because it was a very, very targeted niche list of people who were interested in joint ventures. If it wasn't related to joint ventures, it didn't sell at all.
So if you decide to build your list, you are going to have to build different ones, because if you build ones as tightly focused as I did, like joint ventures, they are just going to buy joint ventures stuff.
That is like my AdSense Girl list. Those guys will buy AdSense stuff all day long. But if I send them something about how to create e-books, they are like, “I build AdSense sites. I don't need that.”
Jeff: Yeah, interesting. I was just going to say for everyone listening, you should put a little star next to what Liz just said. With all these different sites you build, there are going to be segments and different niches. You need to remember that you need to match your message with the list itself. So if you have Internet Marketers, you can't be selling a weight loss product.
Or as Liz is saying, you have got to be even more specific. Even though it is Internet Marketing, if it wasn't joint venture and Internet Marketing related, they didn't buy it. So yeah, definitely put a little star next to that one. That is a great tip to remember. I am sorry I interrupted you, Liz. What were you talking about?
Liz: I was talking about segmenting lists. I was talking about the different niches, like you just said, about how important that is. But now I have a kind of general Internet Marketing list, and I have a couple of shoots that come off that. I still have the list about joint ventures, and I still preach that a lot--doing joint ventures and building your affiliates.
And then I have AdSense, and then I have kind of a general one. The main thing that I did wrong with my list building is I didn't focus on building the big list. All I focused on was building the list from buyers. Now that could be good and bad. But with list building, it’s a numbers game.
If you have 5000, buyers, you could have a really good list. But if you take that and add another 15,000 people who aren't, you've got an even better list, because you are going to get more people. That was my big thing. I didn't focus on list building.
I focused on creating a product and selling it, and list building was my second thing. Now I do both of them just as much as the other. I focus on building my list and making products.
Jeff: Yeah, I think that is one of the problems I, well not really a problem, but I think everyone enters Internet Marketing at a different level of experience. I had a lot of past business experience, but I didn't really understand about the whole Internet Marketing thing.
I had heard that there was value in your list, but I didn't really pay attention to it. So I kind of just fell into it. I already had a list, and all of a sudden, I am like, well, maybe I should do something with a list.
My first product was Secret Article Converter, and I did a pretty decent job on getting a lot of people, kind of in pre-launch, so I had a name squeeze page just during pre-launch. Now again, like Liz says, a lot of people will not send to that.
But I did a pretty good job with getting a lot of viral e-books out there, where I let the affiliate themselves brand the book with their picture, their URL, and say their main product URL, and of course their branded URL for my Secret Article Converter.
I also created pages for them that were specific for that person, so that Keith Wellman had a page that was “SecretArticleConverter.com/keithwellman.” And it had his picture on it, it had my picture, and then it had an area where they could download the free report.
So I did a lot of things pre-launch that caused me to get a pretty good list of potential buyers. Once my site launched, I did not have a name squeeze page.
I didn't have a name squeeze page probably for the first two months just because a lot of affiliates, just like Liz said, they will not send to any type of name squeeze page, so your product will not do as well just for that simple reason alone.
It could be the same exact product, but if you have got a name squeeze page, you might lose half of the potential affiliates. They will see that and they won't even look at your product, no matter how good it is. So I did get an okay list, maybe only…, I didn't even keep correct numbers. I should have written all this stuff down.
I believe I had about 3,500 going into my launch, and then I had buyers pretty quickly. I had 1,500 buyers real quick. So overall, my list grew real quick. And then those viral reports continued to bring in people every single day.
I launched it February 20th or 21st. I didn't even send out any type of affiliate link of any type until a full month later. So at the end of the next month, I sent out something. I made a quick $500.
It may not seem like a lot, but for just one e-mail, I am like, “Whoa, that was pretty simple! Maybe I should look into that a little more.” Plus, you are so wrapped up in your business. You are not even paying attention to what offers are out there.
And now Liz, you and I can sit back, and people will send us links and tell us, “Yeah, in a month I have this coming out,” or “In three months, I have got this coming out.” They will send you the product ahead of time to look at.
It is so much easier now, because, I don't know how you do it, Liz, but I have got a big calendar on my wall, a big white board, and I have got the next two months laid out. And I will have all the launches set on that calendar so I know ahead of time, on this day, there are two products. On this day, there is one product.
And then it is just a matter of me getting in and testing the product and downloading copies. Or sometimes they will even send me a box of DVDs for me to watch. Then, it is just a matter of me evaluating the product and seeing if it is good or bad, or it is something I feel my list could use if it is a good product.
But when you are just starting off, you don't even really know about it. And for everyone that is listening, you need to start paying attention to the e-mails that are coming through, because they are going to start hinting at some products.
So if you are not at a level where you are not being e-mailed by potential JV partners, you need to pay attention to some of these teaser e-mails. If someone is putting out a free report, download it and see what it is advertising.
And then if you see, “Oh, wait! Inside that free report, it is going to a name squeeze page. He must be coming up with a product.” So then, you could always contact that owner, or the owner of the Web site, and say, “Hey, it looks like you have a new product coming up. I would love to be able to...” Then you have to let them know your URLs and the size of your list.
And you can say, you can let them know, “Hey, I have only been doing this for X amount of months, and my list is not big, but it is brand new, and I am growing.”
They want to sell product, and they are going to look at you as if, “This guy might be great! His list may be small now, but if I can help him out, send him a link, send him a download link, who knows what relationship I might create, and how big he might be a year from now, or two years from now?”
So even though you have a small list, don't be afraid to contact some of these people, or find out that person's affiliate manager. A lot of the bigger people have an affiliate manager now, so contact that affiliate manager, and go through them.
Liz: And let me interrupt you a minute. That is pretty important. Like Gary Ambrose was saying, when the butterfly marketing phenomenon, that is what I call it now, when that all launched, he knew Mike, and he and Mike were good friends. But Gary actually got Mike to do an interview with him.
Now, the premise of the interview was as soon as it launched, they were doing the interview. Well, it was prerecorded. And it wasn't like they were trying to trick anybody, but Gary made a good impression on Mike because Gary got this awesome idea to do this, and he made a ton of sales.
Look at Brian Edmondson. Nobody knew who Brian was. I did because somebody told me he wrote good e-mail series. I don't think Brian does that anymore. But Brian came out, was Mr. Nobody, and made a lot of sales for Mike. He was listed in the top 20, and he only had a list of just over a thousand at that time.
So he impressed Mike, and now he and Mike are buddies. So by going out there and going, “Okay, I have got a thousand people.” Well, if you’ve harvested a good list of a thousand people and you contact these guys, and say, “Look. I am a little guy, but I would love to be able to promote for you. What can I do for you?”
It will help your business big time. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt, but I just wanted to clarify that it doesn’t matter if you are big or small. If you go after these big guys, and you have something to give them, they will pay attention to you.
Jeff: Oh, no. Stuff like that, just interrupt me. Just go, “Dedrick, shut up. I've got something good to say here.” So if I am rambling, just butt right in. I will keep on talking and won't even let you talk for two hours, so definitely cut me off if you have got something good to add.
But just like Liz says, if you have got a great list, that is wonderful and everything, but with how Internet Marketing is right now, everyone is so in tune to these launches, and that is not to say that you can't promote an older product.
But a lot of times the sales are so much more in that first launch time, that first week or two of a product's launch, that it is actually important for you to hear about these ahead of time. So you really need to sign up for a lot of lists, and pay attention to a lot of these teaser e-mails that are going on.
And then look, because you can kind of tell if they are leading up to a launch. And then go that extra mile and pick up a phone. I have had guys call me. I don't know if you knew this, Liz. Eric Holden called me. I didn't know who Eric was, and he didn't know who I was, but he saw some of the buzz I was creating with my Secret Article Converter.
He gave me a call and just said, “Hey.” He rattled off his name and said he wanted to get involved in my launch, and I was like, “Cool! Someone actually called me?” Because no one had ever called me before that point, and he ended up being one of my top affiliates, and we even went on to work together on a product.
So definitely it is rare that someone ever calls you. It is rare that someone ever sends you something other than an e-mail, like a letter or anything. If you want to impress some people, send them a letter. I mean, how often do you get a call or a letter?
I am not even talking about a letter to introduce themselves. I have never gotten that. But have you ever gotten a letter or a post card for something like a launch, a product launch coming out?
Liz: No. Here is a cool thing. And Sherman Hu, I don't know if you know who he is or not. He is the Word Press Tutorials guy at www.WordPressTutorials.com. He was absolutely nobody, but he came out with this, and he had a lot of awesome background. He used to work for Corey Rudl.
So I joined Sherman's thing to promote it, because I needed a good Word Press Tutorial thing to promote to my people, and I was just totally jazzed about it. Well, as soon as I signed up, I got a phone call from Sher