Internet Marketing Business Strategies

I guess that most Internet marketers have heard the marketing proverb, “the money is in the list.” The idea is that if you are to make money online it is no good simply putting up a site and adding a bunch of affiliate links and banner ads to it then sitting back and waiting for the money to come rolling in.

Sorry folks, but it isn’t going to happen.

No, if you are going to make money online your first aim is not to sell to your visitors straight off the front page of your website but to CAPTURE your visitor’s name and email address. Your visitor will then be automatically placed on your auto-responder’s mailing list and will start receiving your newsletter mailings.

As your list grows, so will sales from the links you provide in your mailings. To add to your income, you will be advised to send out an e-mail broadcast from time to time with a special offer.

This is all well and good, up to a point. But a one off e-mail broadcast is not much different from a one off visit by a surfer to your website. Indeed, it might be less effective since the surfer quite likely initiated his own visit to your site, whereas your broadcast arrives in his inbox for him to delete or ignore without taking any further action at all if he wishes.

A one-off broadcast or a series of preloaded mailings that skip from subject to subject are not the best ways to sell online no matter how big your list is.

What is needed is a concerted campaign in which an initial mailing is followed-up with two or three more messages, each one different in style or perspective, but each helping to reinforce to basic “buy now” message of the first.

It is said that 60% of sales are made not in the initial approach, but in the follow-up. So it is not quite true to say that “the money is in the list.” Really, the money is in the FOLLOW-UP to the list.

Now you might reasonably object that without a list there could be no follow-up…

…but with no follow-up there will be no money!

Or at least, not as much money sloshing around your bank account as there would be if you follow up your initial approach with a series of highly targeted follow-up letters.

David Hurley