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Terry: Those are good points. On the affiliate side of things, there are two types of affiliates. Type one is somebody who goes out and purchases the product, uses it, gets a good feel for it, then promotes it. Type two affiliate goes out and promotes the newest and the latest programs and then develops multiple income streams. Which kind of camp do you lean towards? Do you purchase the product or do you promote a new program?

Eva: Both. Definitely both. I work by my gut instinct and how things feel. If something feels right to me and I think that it’s a fantastic product then I might purchase it straight away. If it passes the criteria I have in my head then I’ll promote it. If it’s something out of my reach money wise or just more than I want to spend, I’ll become an affiliate instead and just promote it that way.

Having multiple streams of income is quite an easy thing to do when you publish an ezine. You need to vary the content, of course it’s good to repeat promotion so people see it again and again, but you don’t want to do that all the time. You still have to provide variety and keep up to date with what’s coming out on the Internet. That’s the thing: there are always new things coming out all the time. Everyday. You might not even see them all.

Terry: We don’t have time. Would it be better, with the programs you’re involved in, to have a high priced item that you sell less of but you make a larger commission, or to have a lower priced item that you’d sell more of but make less commission?

Eva: I’d have to say the second one, only because that’s what I base things on because of my ezine. I’m always looking for something free, a good value, a low cost, a discounted price, or a bargain. I get more thrills from selling more of something than making more money, that’s a bit strange but it’s true. More people would rather get good value.

Terry: It almost sounds to me that your subscribers are the same type of people that you are. You like to have a good value, and they go and purchase something because you recommended it and because it’s a lower priced item.

Eva: Yes, I think so. They must trust me, and they should, I’m trustworthy. That must just come across in the newsletter. You know yourself being a publisher that it takes a lot of time to publish an ezine.

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Terry: Are you able to track them and see how they pan out? Are those people actually buying products from you?

Ian: No, but that’s a great idea. I haven’t been able to track on what they’re buying. I can’t think of a way that I could track that right now, but it’s something that I would look into. Thanks for the tip.

Terry: I was just curious to see if they panned out to being leads that actually purchase things or just people who like to read a lot.

Ian: I can’t say I’m 100% certain, but I’m able to track if they’re getting all the way through my course. It’s an eight-part eCourse, so I can see if they only get through the first couple of pages or if they’re finishing the whole eCourse. It seems that most leads that sign up for the course are taking the whole course. The course is set up to sell Smart Subscriber, and I am noticing a huge increase in the number of people taking a free trial for Smart Subscriber, because I have it set up so that each person who joins gets a free month before they have to pay. I am noticing an increase in free trials and subscribers. So, I would probably have to attribute that from people who are buying leads from Lead Factory and putting them into my affiliate marketing course.

Terry: Excellent. So what about all of the spam filters and everything that’s out right now? How do you know that your e-mails are getting through to the people on your list?

Ian: Well, I cover things from a couple ends. When people subscribe to my ezine, I only use double opt-in first of all. When someone first subscribes to anything on my list, the next page they’re taken to is a page that gives out a little bit of information about spam filters and e-mails going lost and being misplaced and whatnot. So, it tells them to check their spam folders… like in Yahoo! and Hotmail, there are a lot of spam folders and things. It tells them to check their spam folders, to white list TheGuruMarketer.com, which is the domain name that I send my e-mails from. It just basically gives them information on how to make sure that they receive my e-mail. Once they do receive it, they click on the confirmation to double confirm. From that end, that’s how I cover it.

From my own end, I’ve been trying out a new service from AWeber called DeliveryMonitor.com, and what they do is give you 116 e-mail addresses that you can upload into your autoresponder and then start sending out e-mails. They monitor from the 16 major ISPs if those e-mails are getting delivered or not. If they’re not getting delivered, they tell you why. Maybe it’s being reported as spam, or it just didn’t arrive, it tells you and gives you an overall percentage of what e-mails are being delivered. I’m running at about 80% delivered right now. It tells me all of the reasons that some aren’t being delivered so I can fix them, like if I have a high spam count with my messages or that I have some triggers that are setting it off. I can find out why they’re not being delivered and try to fix the problem.

Terry: That’s excellent. Is it a service you get through AWeber or is it totally separate?

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Simon: I would have said the same thing, Terry, because if you think about it, unless you write good sales copy, you don’t sell any products.

Terry: Yea… how about list building?

Jeremy: List building was number two. 69% said they wanted to know how to get more visitors. 62% said they want to know how to build a list.

Terry: Oh, yup.

Simon: If you think about it, me and Jeremy realized that a lot of people have it backwards. Having a lot of visitors doesn’t mean making a lot of money.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Simon: It’s the conversion rates and how to increase conversion rates. How to write better copy is something that people should really have at the top of their minds. Yet, those were the fifth and sixth most important thing to people. Unless everybody can write very good sales copy, they have it all a little wrong. I think that’s predominately caused by the market itself always telling people that they need more traffic. In reality, you need a better sales letter and a better product.

Jeremy: It’s pretty funny because the top two are getting more traffic and building a list. Number four was how to increase conversion rates. Number five was how to write better sales copy. That’s so backwards.

Terry: Isn’t that funny?

Jeremy: Yea. Below that was researching markets. That’s why people aren’t making money online because they have it backwards.

Simon: The perception is the wrong way around. You should research the markets, write good copy, create high converting websites, and then worry about traffic and your list.

Jeremy: Then you get the traffic and build your list, yea. That’s one thing that we realized people had wrong. One of the things that we created for MME 2 was, while Simon was busy creating more products, I created four new membership sites that I have people after they bought MME 2. One of them was LearningToEarn.com. That whole site was dedicated to people learning about business. It has 18 eCourses set up where people can learn anything from the basics about everything: SEO, list building, generating traffic, how to use Microsoft Word… really anything.

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Anik: Yea, it's a networking game. Just get your face into that market and keep contact with everybody. But, that takes a few hours a day and you won't see immediate results. So, be patient. Kevin Bidwell's strategy is that it might take two months of working everyday, so you have to be ready to work a few hours a day and not see anything for a month or two.

Terry: Right. Next question is from Vincent. He says, "Let's say I build a mini site for an affiliate program. Do you know how I can get at least 100 visitors a day to my website as soon as possible without paying a single cent on advertising without any article submissions?"

Anik: Yep. You're going to do link exchanging. Or, do forum promotions. If you start participating in a forum, and if you participate in a couple of them with five or so posts a day, if it's an active forum you should be able to get 100 visitors a day. But, that on your part requires activity everyday. If you want to just get traffic that comes everyday where you don't have to do something everyday, do link exchanging.

Terry: Excellent. Next one is from Sandra. She says, "I've been told that you need to have an autoresponder with at least seven messages to send out the messages to someone when he/she signs up for whatever business or product that you're selling. I'm new to this, and I paid for an autoresponder, but I have no idea what or how to write a series of messages. So, how do I get it on my site? I've been offered many scripts, what do I do with them? And, I'd like to know how to get started writing a newsletter." Maybe first question first.

Anik: The answer to the first one is that you need to find some examples that have already been done. So, in your niche, you need to find someone who has written a similar course, sign up for it, and see how they do it. If there's more than one, then perfect: sign up for all of them and see how they do it. There's a lot of material that you can buy online. I know that in the Affiliate Classroom, we have a marketing library with a couple of very good books about autoresponders, what to do with them and how they work. So, have some patients, observe, see what other people are doing, sign up for as many as you can, and read them all.

Terry: The next part says, "I paid for a website, and it has something called CPanel. I don't even understand the instructions. It would be nice to have one website that I could go to that had a step-by-step how to do things, instead of saying what to do but not explaining how. Is there a website like that?"

Anik: It really depends on the guy who designed it and what he gave her. Most affiliate marketers have the issue of web building. Whatever system she has could be very different and unique. She could go to a lot of websites and they all get very technical very quickly so she'll get lost very quickly. I think for someone who's not computer savvy, going into your CPanel and going into your databases is just a big no-no. Even with directions, you can screw up pretty quickly. She has the option of getting someone who is familiar with this type of coding, and paying him or her on a regular basis to keep her site updated. I know that sounds expensive, but if you go to elance or scriptlance, it's not that expensive to hire someone.

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That really changed the way I did business. It was at that point where I started to see my online business as a mail order company. Then, I was able to formulate it using the same process that I was using offline, and then things really started to click and come together. The first year I was working online I didn't make any money because I was out there spinning my wheels and I didn't have a mentor or coach at that time to tell me what to do. It was all trial and error. I was out there trying to come up with things.

So, just to give you a quick example of the difference between the online and offline world when it comes to the mail order business, when I was doing mail order offline, I was spending about 50% of the income coming in through the business on expenses. The biggest expense in my mail order company is the advertising. Whether you're sending out postcards, advertising in newspapers, advertising in magazines, fax advertising, whatever it is that you're doing in the offline world, it's very expensive. I was very happy to be able to have my cost low at 50%.

When we do that online and take the same business online, my cost is not 10%-20% depending on what I'm experimenting that month and what marketing and advertising I'm doing. Now instead of keeping $50 for every $100 I bring in, I'm keeping $80-$90 from that $100 I bring into that company. So, there's really no comparison, especially when it comes to the financial side of it.

When you also look at the work and the physical labor that you're doing, it's the same type of thing. When you're offline, if you're doing a simple postcard campaign for example, there are seven steps that you go through. You design a postcard and print out the post card. Next, you write everybody's address on it using labels or handing writing them.

Then, you stamp them, run them to the post office, and in a week or two you get orders that start to filter in. Now, you take the checks and deposit slips and run all of that to the bank. Then, you have to wait again for the checks to clear. Finally, you have to package everything up and take it to the post office and mail it. It's pretty much like a shampoo bottle: apply, rinse, repeat. You will be in that constant circulation all the time.

When you get your online business up and running and things are running smoothly, you really have a five-step process, and you're only involved in one step. In the online side of things, you're looking at the same process. You send out an e-mail message to your list. Your subscribers decide if they're going to take a look at what you're promoting, so they go look at the website that you're promoting in that e-mail.

Some of those subscribers will click on the buy button and make the purchase. Their credit card is automatically verified by the payment processing company, whether you're using PayPal or ClickBank or 2CheckOut or whatever. Then, your customer is automatically sent to a download area, where they take care of it themselves. The majority of things are electronic. So, they download it whenever they want. If you take a look of where you're involved in that process, you're involved only in step one. You sent out an e-mail. You write an e-mail and send it out.

That's comparing apples to apples because I didn't go though the whole process of how you developed your list offline. But, there is also the list building online which is the same process as it is offline. When you're looking at the actual physical daily process after you have your list built, what you physically do is send out an e-mail. That's your day's work.

There's really no comparison from online and offline, but it is the same process. Online you're working with a mail order business. Your website is a giant interactive brochure. When that hit me, it was my first big Ah-Ha moment. The next thing was actually something that Richard covered: you have to walk before you can run. It's very easy to come online and see all the huge success stories. You're familiar with people like Willie. Now, you make a very good income. Back in the beginning, when he first started out, Willie wasn't making huge dollars. He struggled along the same as we all do.

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Jeff: That's true. I just forwarded you an e-mail, and maybe I can even read part of it. It's really so encompassing in what I wanted to say because you have to learn something... when I became a dentist, I didn't just say that I wanted to become a dentist, opened up a box of dental tools, then became a dentist. You have to do something and you really have to learn your craft. I wrote an Internet piece today because I was selling your membership site. I wrote, "Dear fellow entrepreneurs and valued subscriber, if you want to learn how to do anything, ask an expert. Don't go out and buy turnkey websites and businesses and think they're going to make you money. Nothing can be further from the truth.

When I wanted to learn direct mail marketing over 20 years ago, I read all the books written by the pros and attended many seminars so I could perfect my craft. If you're promoting anything online, you may not have the time or resources to find what teaches your craft. My good friend and Internet marketing extraordinaire, Terry Telford, has a motto that says, "If you do what you love, you'll never have to work a day in your life." Terry gave me an incredible but very limited offer."

I go on to speak about how I had to go on your membership site and when I went to it, and started learning things, it was helpful. But, when I wanted to do direct mail, I looked at magazines and saw who was running the biggest ads and called them up. I realized that they all talked to me, even though I thought that none of them would. I had a mentor in direct mail, and when I got in the Internet, I had a mentor there as well. I really believe that anybody who comes in and wants to learn a craft should get a mentor. It really is the way to go. You could trial and error and lose your shirt. I was losing money on the Internet for years. I met a few people about three years ago who put me in the right direction. When I hooked up with Dan Lok, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

I'm not a kid anymore, but I'm still alive and kicking, and I want to be on top of the heat. To do that, it takes work. It's also about knowing where to go. If someone wanted to start in direct mail, I have a terrific mentoring program myself. I teach people where to go: where to get the good lists, who is a good copywriter, and who is the real deal? That's very important because in this business there are many scoundrels who are so happy to take your money and give you nothing in return. It's a shame. Meeting a guy like you, for me, is like gold. Also, the day I met Dan Lok was one of the luckiest days of my life. I could do that for so many people as well, or recommend them to people who can.

Terry: That's fantastic. That's very inspiring. If you were going to be my mentor, and I developed a product, which is a book that I've written...

I have several different markets that I could target, but mainly it would be the business opportunity people. What should I do first in my marketing?

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People have done that. If you have a really good pre-launch, you can basically just put up an order button and people will buy it. But, you do need good sales copy too. So, during the planning stages, plan how you can somehow provide value to everybody out there in your target market: some kind of value or content to get attention basically. You can give it away free reports, free books, movies, audios, and all kind of stuff. But it has to be good stuff. You can't just give away a free report that's five pages long that's basically a sales page for your product; that's no good. You have to give actual, solid content. That was one thing we did during the planning... we thought of how we could give away free content. So, we also made a free report that we released, as well as preview movies.

Simon was on Camtasia and we were thinking what else we could give away. So, we said, "What about show people what our software can do?" So, Simon hopped on Camtasia and made some really cool videos about what can it do. I think that was a big factor in a lot of people's decisions because they saw these videos and they're like, "Wow, look. It can do this and this and this. I want to buy it." And the goal of that was to show people what it could do. The goal of the Mastermind Series audios releasing in a little tips was not so much to get them interested in buying the audio series, but more the mindset. We wanted to show people the mindset and some helpful content for people.

We didn't want people who are not entrepreneurs to buy MME 3. We wanted serious people who were going to buy it and use it for their business. So, we wanted to help people with the mindset. All the customers got the entire series, and each audio interview was like anywhere from an hour the two hours long and there are ten of them in there. There's just solid content. there's no selling at all in those audios; it's just solid content for people to listen to. And on top of that we even had videos made to show people step by step how to resell those and everything else. We basically put together different parts of the package because you can get somebody the keys to the Ferrari, but if they don't have their license, they're going to crash it.

So, we gave people the software to build the business but we needed to give them the mindset and that was the goal of the mastermind series. And then we also give them some other products like JV Zone, Member-to-Member Offer Zone, and other things on top of that and just a big combination. Everything did have a purpose, maybe a lot of people didn't see it all come together like we did, but everything did actually have a purpose. So when your planning make sure everything has a purpose, make sure there's a reason why your doing this, make sure you understand your market and try to provide as much free content as you can during your pre-launch to get attention. Basically, make products that you can sell for ten dollars, 50 dollars, 100 dollars or more and give it away.

People are going to be thinking, "This is cool. This guy is giving me this for free? Wow. I can't wait to see what his offering for sale. This is so awesome, I can't wait to buy his product." So, I think that's real important. And also, when you're planning, you have to be in constant communication contact with people such as your affiliates and your JV partners. You could hire an affiliate manager, but when working with partners, one thing I don't like to do is hire somebody who's going to take care of all the partnership because I want to do that personally because it's the relationship. I will sit down and write personal e-mails and e-mail them to each person. I don't want to just have a mass responder and have my staff or somebody e-mail all the JV partners. I think it's kind of cold.

So, keep in warm contact with all your partners involved. I did that for several months during MME 3, so basically all of our top producers on the launch were people we have good working relationship with for a long time. We were in constant contact with them through Skype, MSN, and e-mail back and forth and things like that. So, it's really important to plan your launch strategy? Is it going to be just you or are you going to have partners help you launch it? If you have a list of a million people, then I guess just you could launch your product.