It will be true that from month to month there are small little things that change as far as strategies that one can take. That seeems to be changing all the time.

Sire´s last blog post..Sire’s Big Moment A Total Flop

I thank you for recognizing why I set this blog up in the first place, which is as not only a place to make money, but a testing ground for new things, to see what may work and what won’t work, and then to talk about it. And, of course, a free zone to be me and talk about whatever I want to talk about, while hoping that I’m still entertaining and informative. And if I can sell some stuff here and there,… well, the world will be a much better place.

That may be one of my big problems in trying to think this through. I don’t want to build a list just to send every and anything to everybody. One would hope that, if they’re receiving something in the mail, that it’s related to something they really want. And thus, it says to try to find a good number of related things if that’s what one is going to do.

Of course, picking the right products that you can truthfully support is another one to deal with. I’ve spent a part of my weekend reading through some of these downloaded “report” and such, and thus far I’ve been disappointed in everything I’ve read. It’s all free thus far, which is somewhat of a comfort, as I’d hate myself if I’d spent my money on nonsense, but it’s still disappointing; we all still want some real value, right?

Just in case you do get a notice of a reply to your comments…

Happy Australia Day!

JD

John Dilbeck´s last blog post..Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

I love marketing online and I’m happy that it’s my primary business, but it’s not an easy business because of all the competition, misinformation, and scams.

However, if we can establish reputations as people who want to help, then we have a much better chance of succeeding than the average affiliate marketer.

Another problem was brought up by Sire, and that’s sending visitors to sites that can’t convert. It’s a waste of time and effort and requires changing in midstream when we recognize the problem.

I know exactly what you mean by identifying a particular niche for a blog. I’m running into this problem with my affiliate marketing blog. I’ve been off-topic lately as I write about things related to promoting my local town and what’s going on there.

While some of the information may be useful for affiliate marketing, some of it isn’t. So, I need a blog where I can talk about anything and people can choose to read it or not. Then I can refocus my other blog.

I’ve come to really like how easy it can be to comment on blogs powered by WordPress, so I guess I’m going to have to create a new blog for John Dilbeck And Friends and move it away from my Manilla blog to a new WordPress version.

I don’t know if that will be wasted effort or not, but I really want to stay on topic and I know how hard that can be for those of us with lots of interests.

I think I’m Just Sharing is a good place for us to share our experiences, knowledge, questions, and thoughts about the topics you initiate. Although it would be difficult assigning that to a niche, I think it helps us get to know you better and follow along with what you’re doing.

I wasn’t suggesting that you take down any of your ads. You may have a lot of readers that lurk here and it would be hard to know what they’re interested in and what they may buy from you.

Of the commenters, however, I think we want to be sellers, not buyers.

It is obvious, on the other hand, that we’ll test things that may make us money and we’ll follow links on each others’ blogs to try them out.

Case in point: tip jars and using TopSpots.

We had a lively discussion in several places and some of us have decided to experiment with them to see how they work for us.

I think the same thing happened with Chitika ads and other things we discuss here.

So, I think this blog has the potential to become a money maker when you identify the things we might buy from you, and that includes your invisible readers who don’t comment.

I can’t lay my hands on a copy right now, but, if memory serves, Jay Conrad Levinson talked about the necessity of multiple advertising contacts in Guerrilla Marketing.

I think he said the study concluded that an average person had to be exposed to an ad 9 times before deciding to purchase. Since that same person missed two out of three of your ads, it meant that you had to expose him to your ad 27 times, or more, in order to make the sale.

I don’t remember who did the study, originally.

However, that was over 30 years ago. Now, we’re bombarded with thousands of ads per day and I’m sure that a lot more of our ads are missing their intended viewers because of the sheer enormity of what we’re exposed to and our learned desensitization to how ads are presented online.

It makes it more and more difficult to get our message across to prospective customers.

Things that were very effective a few years ago don’t work nearly as well as they once did. I’m not all that interested in downloading another free ebook, unless I know that it provides valuable information that will help me get what I want, and most of them don’t.

Some do, however.

Mailing lists are making a comeback, but most are not done well.

Blinking graphics originally had a high response, but we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the flashing lights on a website, now.

Banners used to convert well, but now they have abysmal response rates and have to be shown not dozens of times, but thousands of times for reliable sales conversions.

The one thing each of us has that can set us apart from all the noise is our own personalities and what we offer the readers in terms of intangibles.

All things considered, people tend to buy from people they trust.

We want to be those people, and while trust is hard to acquire, it can be lost in an instant when we step over a line our readers don’t want us to cross.

Exactly what that line is, I am working hard to learn so I can stay well away from it on the “trust me” side.

Discussing it here is a good way to help all of us avoid the dark side of the Force, which feeds on fear, desperation, and greed.

That’s enough for now.

Act on your dream!

JD

John Dilbeck´s last blog post..Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

That’s a really good question.

I think the first step towards list building is to define why we want to build a particular list and what we’re going to do with it.

“Making money” is not a good definition.

The more we talk about making money in our emails, the more likely our subscribers are to cancel their subscriptions.

At least, that’s my belief.

I think that’s the mindset of the people who bombard us with things they’re trying to sell and we want to avoid doing that, too.

I think that it’s only after defining clearly what we want to do FOR the subscriber (not TO the subscriber) that we can even think about writing the content, finding a delivery vehicle, and doing all the other things that we’ll probably be talking about here.

I know that I’ve made this mistake in the past and I never want to do it again. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s still something I struggle with, especially when writing about affiliate marketing. It’s much easier when writing about things that are unrelated to home businesses, marketing, and the other things that really muddy the water.

Act on your dream!

JD

John Dilbeck´s last blog post..Site Build It! or WordPress? Which is Best? Why?

For some reason I am not getting notifications of reply to comments although I have got it flagged. I notice you have two of them so I’ll tick the other one as well to see what happens.

Sire´s last blog post..Sire’s Big Moment A Total Flop

I also will not be using my ‘tiny’ lists to suck in any of my subscribers unless I have something that I can offer them that I truly believe in.

I find that the greatest failing in being an affiliate is not in getting people to click on the ads, as I get plenty of those, rather its the inability of the sites they land on in getting the sale or lead they need for us to make our commission.

Sire´s last blog post..Sire’s Big Moment A Total Flop

YES a list (be it blog or autoresponder emails) is in fact a corner stone to consistent money.

NO bombarding people with sales offers is never a smart idea. Ethics aside for a moment, readers are just going to unsubscribe shortly afterward anyway, so what’s the point?

#5 – it should be fun watching each other on this one. 2009 will show a primary focus on income for me as well.

Dennis Edell´s last blog post..Do You Use Google Alerts?

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