Direct Response

I was asked this question in response to my article 3 Secrets of Profitable Membership Sites:

I hadn’t really considered the “content delivery strategy” of my site. I guess I never really thought of it as being so overwhelming to have everything out there, and that’s something I might need to look into. Do you have suggestions of how to know what to put where/when? Thanks!

Here’s my answer:

1. Understand Your Objective
First, understand your objective.

Ask yourself, “what do I want people to have learned after going through my course?” Starting from this point, reverse engineer the steps you would take to get to that level of understanding starting from nothing. For example, if the final objective is to Plant a Tree, some steps you need to take are: how to choose a hospitable environment, how to water the seed, where to buy the seeds, etc.

When you start with the objective the steps for getting there should just fall out.

2. Start Broad, Then Get Specific
At first, keep the steps at a high-level. These will become the sections within your course. Once you feel like you have all the high-level sections, drill down into each one and bullet-point out the major components that make it up. These will be your individual lessons.

Now that you have you major sections and lessons, order them in logically (i.e. in order to understand how to water a seed you first need to know how to bury it in soil, etc). The natural order should come out easily. If the natural order doesn’t come out easily you may have a lesson or section that includes too many concepts … break it down further.

3. Don’t Assume Knowledge
In going through this process, it’s important not to assume that people know what you know. Get into the mindset of someone whose starting with a blank slate in your area of expertise. It’s easy to tell when someone makes this mistake when authoring a course because as a student you’ll feel overwhelmed and lost. This is because the proper foundation wasn’t built for you.

Not assuming knowledge can be tough because you’ve been doing what you do for so long that it’s become second nature. So if you’ve been planting trees for a long time you may make the assumption that everyone knows that trees come from a seed and seeds need to be watered. To accommodate for this blind spot, it’s a good idea to get 2 or 3 test subjects to go through your course and let you know if and when they get lost (the closer these test subjects are to your average customer the better). Then make the appropriate modifications to your content.

4. Create a Quick Start Guide
Once you have your course plan done, it’s a good idea to create a Quick Start Guide. The great thing about a Quick Start Guide is it’s a low effort, high impact asset. You’ve already created all the content, you’re just repurposing it to achieve a specific effect.

The Quick Start Guide should give the customer an overview of your course and present it in a way that will get them excited about going through it. It should also allow them to accomplish something tangible in a short period of time. People like to experience results and the sooner they’ve achieved some insight through your content the more naturally they’ll be motivated to go through your entire course.

For example, you could teach them the 3 steps to planting a tree, have them take a quiz on the material and then give them some kind of reward for completing (this could just be a page that says congratulations and has a certificate that they can print out). This particular example is kinda silly, but the concepts of quickly demonstrating your value and rewarding the customer for taking action are very powerful.

5. Implement Your Content Delivery Strategy
After all this you’ll have a course with a quick start guide, major sections and individual lessons in a logical order. From here implementing your content delivery schedule, or drip content sequence, is easy (assuming you have the right membership solution). Just figure out how much time you want to place in between lessons. For example, the Quick Start Guide and and lesson 1 are available on day 1, lesson 2 is available on day 4, lesson 3 on day 6, etc. Choosing the length of time between lessons is completely up to you, just keep in mind that you want to find a balance between keeping them engaged and overwhelming/spamming them.

6. Keep Customers Engaged
It’s a good idea to send out a notification email when new lessons become available. This will ensure that the customer stays engaged. When customers are engaged they’re far most likely to participate in the social aspects of your site and this increases retention and customer loyalty. Without the notifications they may stay away from you site for 2 weeks or more and come back to find they have a pile up of 6 lessons and now we have the same problem of overwhelming them.

Eric Turnnessen is the founder of MemberMouse, a membership solution designed specifically for the needs of high-volume merchants that integrates seamlessly with WordPress and Lime Light CRM. It is the result of combining over 10 years of marketing expertise with over 10 years of software engineering experience and delivers a powerful solution that allows users to easily implement and manage profitable membership sites.

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Crush Your Competition. Build Your Own Direct Response Campaign With Us.

Contact Us Directly: Impact@DirectResponse.net

A quick tidbit on affiliate networks and their “managers.”

If you’re running an offer on an affiliate network, you probably receive calls weekly from network managers wondering why your offer dipped in sales. The question is typically posed as “did you change something in your offer.” The real underlying question is whether you started using a scrubber on your account.

What networks and affiliate fail to realize at times is that they are pushing traffic to real human beings.  And yes, while humans are creatures of habit, they are not robots.

Consumers purchase in patterns throughout the day, season, and holiday.  There are a myriad of external factors that affect the way consumers shop.  i.e. On December 28 diet offers are dead.  On January 3, right after New Years Resolutions, diet offers boom.

Shopping trends fluctuate during day hours as well.  i.e.  Women buy clothes online during the day.  At night sales drop.

It’s funny to hear stupid ass affiliate managers that don’t know the first thing about marketing try to understand why offers perform differently from day to day.   One of my favorite affiliate managers comes from a background in buying and selling businesses.  This guy is a total bad ass when it comes to selling businesses.  His only problem is that he doesn’t have a clue about marketing.  I tried to explain to him today why offers dip at certain hours.   In one ear, out the other.

Most affiliate managers don’t even deserve that much credit.  I worked with one affiliate manager that kept wanting to bump the pay of “his affiliate.”  I noted that the advertiser was going to lose money at that rate and this dumbass seemed oblivious.  As I explained the business model of the advertiser and why the highest payout could be $38, I noticed that he seemed loss.  (affiliate managers work on quotas btw, hence they are only motivated by high numbers.)

What’s the problem with this picture?  Well for starters, without advertisers affiliate networks wouldn’t exist.  All the bitchy ass affiliates out there have these affiliate managers wrapped around their little fingers.  Affiliate managers for the most part are slaves to their affiliates – until of course the advertisers pack up shop and go elsewhere.  Funny, the affiliates follow the advertisers.

The dialogue then goes something like this:

Affiliate: Yo, what’s up with XYZ advertiser jumping ship.  I went down the street to another network and my payout dropped 20%.  I’m still running it but I’m NOT HAPPY.  WTF????

Affiliate Manager: I’ll do everything I can do sir.  It seems as if there was an issue with the offer not backing out on our network.  It’s probably a shady advertiser, ya know?

Affiliate: Well if you can get it back at the same payout I will CONSIDER running it with you.  Don’t waste my time BITCH!

Affiliate Manager: HAHA lol

Affiliate: I’m serious you fucking dipship

Affiliate Manager: Ok, i’ll see what I can do

And people wonder why the larger networks have lost almost ALL lost their tier-1 advertisers.

At the end of the day, the advertiser is king.  The advertiser brings all of the money to the table.  Without advertiser dollars, affiliate networks and affiliates wouldn’t exist.  We are the reason you earn an income.  Advertisers can easily run their own media, and most good advertisers do just that

Advertiser to Affiliate Networks: LOL.  You’re not getting my money and if you want to run our offer, you’re going to pay a CPA that I can profit at.  In the mean time, I’m going to run my own media and make a shit ton of money.  How do you like that biatch!

One day, a man goes to a car dealership and tells the salesman that he wants to buy a car. The salesman asks, “What are you looking for?” and the man says, “I need something that turns on, goes forward and runs on gas.” The salesman looks at the man puzzled and being careful not to insult him responds, “We have a lot of cars that do that. Is there anything else?” The man replies, “Yes, I only have $800 to spend.”  Now knowing that there’s only one car that fits this description, the salesman smiles and says, “Here’s what you’re looking for. This is a classic VW Beetle. It turns on, goes forward, runs on gas and it’s only $750.” The man says, “Perfect! I’ll take it.”

Later that day the man arrives home, runs into the house and very excitedly asks his wife to come outside to see their new car. Upon seeing the Beetle a confused look comes over his wife’s face and she asks, “where are we going to put our 3 children?” The man furrows his brow, scratches his head and says, “Hmm… I didn’t think about that.”

Secret 1: Plan for Success

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make when selecting a membership solution, is to place too much attention on the price and not enough on asking themselves if this solution will really help them achieve their goals.

All membership solutions are not created equal and this is especially true when you’re dealing with a lot of customers. As your site becomes more and more successful there are two costs that will increasingly be of concern: support costs and opportunity costs.

Support Costs

Assuming that you aren’t working with a custom solution which is a whole different kettle of fish, in general, your largest support costs will come from customers who have just signed up and need help getting started and from customers who want to modify their account in some way (i.e. change their billing information, upgrade/downgrade their membership, cancel their account, etc).

Reducing the number of questions about getting started can easily be achieved by putting together an FAQ section, video tutorials and other automated guides.

Reducing the support cost associated with customers who want to modify their account is a little more challenging because here the solution doesn’t lie in reducing the number of enquiries; the solution is to automate the process so that customers don’t have to call or email you every time they need something. Having a strategy in place for customer self-service is imperative to allow your business to scale and preserve profits at high volumes.

At the very least, the membership solution you use should have the ability to automate the cancellation process. Giving your customers the ability to cancel their own account not only decreases support costs, it also increases the customer’s trust in you. And for extra credit, on the cancellation page, make them a special offer in an attempt to “save the sale”. Most membership solutions don’t support this in an automated way, but you can fake it by making them the offer and having them send your support team an email to confirm.

Opportunity Costs

When working with a membership solution, an opportunity cost occurs when you have an idea that you know will be profitable and you can’t implement it because you’re limited by the technology. When you’re faced with this situation, you have a few choices: a) hire a developer to customize your existing solution, b) switch to another membership solution or c) just forget about it. Either way, you incur a cost and this is why it’s so vital to understand as much as you can about how you will use your membership site before investing in a solution. There’s nothing worse than leaving thousands of dollars on the table every month because you’re stuck with limiting technology.

Secret 2: Monetize Existing Customers

As marketers, we spend a lot time and money searching for qualified traffic and refining our sales message in order to increase conversions. All this effort is driven by the knowledge that the more we know about someone, the better chance we have to know what they want and the more closely our offer aligns with want they want, the more likely they are to buy.

Who do we know more about than our own customers? No one!

So why not sell to them?!

In a lot of cases we don’t do this because of technical limitations … and sometimes laziness. I can’t help you with the laziness part, but I can recommend that at the very least, use a membership solution that allows you to dynamically display relevant offers to your customers based on their purchase history. Even better would be a solution that supports 1-click buying so customers can immediately take action on relevant ads (decreasing the number of steps in the process reduces the number of chances the customer has to change their mind). Ultimately the goal here is to leverage the knowledge you have about your customer to increase lifetime value.

Secret 3: Focus on Customer Experience

Nowadays customers expect a lot out of their online experience. Good design, quality content and good usability are a must in order for people feel comfortable spending their money with you … and not ask for it back.

Good Design

The biggest slap in the face to a customer is to have been sold by a masterfully designed sales process only to come to the members area and have it look like it came from the dark days of Flash intros and the HTML blink tag. You’ll certainly hear the refund bells ringing if this is your approach.

Good design is extremely important and since WordPress makes it so easy to implement a professional looking site and there are thousands of themes available for it, there’s no reason not to take advantage of it. For this reason, do yourself a favor and only look at membership solutions that integrate with WordPress; there are a number of them available that support all different levels of experience. WordPress also has an extensive plugin library that helps you take care of any additional functionality you want to include on your site.

Bottom line: Use WordPress. It’s a no brainer.

Quality Content

Most of us know that quality content is essential for long term success. Equally as  important (if not more so) is your content delivery strategy. One approach is to just slap all of your content on a single page and say to the customer, “Ok, here’s your content. Have at it!” You might as well spray them in the face with a fire hose while you’re at it. This approach is overwhelming and even if your content is as amazing as this guy’s robot dance, it will scare away a large chunk of your customers.

Customers want their hand held. They want a 1-on-1 experience. They want to be engaged. Engaged customers will stay with you a lot longer and are much more likely to become self-proclaimed advocates of your product. To accomplish this, time-release your content over a period of time with “drip content sequencing”, or what I call content delivery schedules. This actually isn’t much of a secret and every membership solution out there offers a way to accomplish time-releasing content. The differentiating factor is in how easy it is to implement. To do a reality check, imagine creating a content delivery schedule for two membership levels, say Silver and Gold, each of which have a year’s worth of content that’s released bi-weekly. If the solution you’re looking at allows you to implement this without calling in sick from life for a week, use that one.

Good Usability

Another area where you can set yourself apart is by giving customers the ability to view and manage their information. By now, customers have had enough experience online with sites like Amazon, Facebook, eBay, etc that they’ve come to expect this level of self-service. And with all the hoopla about credit card fraud online and the FTC cracking down, the more a customer feels that they are in control, the more comfortable they will be, which translates into increased retention. If you can allow them to change or cancel their subscription, edit their account and billing information or view their order history, you’ll differentiate yourself immediately.

Eric Turnnessen is the founder of MemberMouse, a membership solution designed specifically for the needs of high-volume merchants that integrates seamlessly with WordPress and Lime Light CRM. It is the result of combining over 10 years of marketing expertise with over 10 years of software engineering experience and delivers a powerful solution that allows users to easily implement and manage profitable membership sites.

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Crush Your Competition.  Build Your Own Direct Response Campaign With Us.

Contact Us Directly: Impact@DirectResponse.net

Chances are that you’ve dealt with that client that calls you with “just 1 more thing.”   As soon as you hear it you get that pang in the pit of your stomach.  The feeling is a cross between resentment and anger. 

The “1 more thing” happens all the time in business, especially when you have a value added service and your clients aren’t seasoned in your industry.  Naturally clients will have a lot of questions and need your help.  

The good news is that you are able to answer all of their questions and help them with everything they want.  In fact, from this moment forward, so long as you follow these tips, you are going to be very excited to answer the “just 1 more thing” they asked you for.

1.   Set An Hourly Rate. 

Set an hourly rate.  Then charge for every second of your time.   Make sure every second you spend on a clients account is documented.  It is your duty to provide your clients with a report upon request.

So, when you send an email out, charge it for .15 of an hour.  If you hop on the call or chat with them on aim, time it.   An easy way to document time is in Excel.  There are also software programs that attorneys use to document time that are even more effective.

If you are working on a set fee, add an addendum for an hourly rate of support.  If you offer free support, create a premium support fee.

It is paramount that you outline the exact services and cost upfront.  Avoid ambiguities.  If a client asks for something outside of the scope of the project, feel humbled that they’ve come to you for guidance.  Guide your client and enjoy the payments for your time.  

2.  No Freebies.

No matter what, do not give out your work for free.  What has taken you years to master will get delivered to your clients in minutes for a nominal fee.  If you’re good, then your time is worth a lot of money. 

Your client is not your friend – not when working at least.  There are no friends in business.  There are alliances, but at the end of the day good businessmen make sound decisions based on logic, not emotional attachments. 

If you feel that you ought to assist a client with an aspect of the project for free, then do so altruistically.  You ought to feel good about it in your heart if you decide to assist without charge.  Do not feel obliged to work for free just because a client has requested it and is already a good paying client.  Add value to their campaigns and charge for it.

i.e.  My friend Jeff owns a web design and SEO firm.  A few months back Jeff started to get bogged down with work.  The turnaround times on projects seemed longer and longer, while the quality just dropped lower and lower with every subsequent project.   I reached out to Jeff and offered to pay a premium price for top priority on the work we sent him.  It took Jeff a few days to get back to me and when he did, he was scatterbrained.

I dropped Jeff from our trusted vendor list and start sending the work to other designers.  We were by far Jeff’s largest client – billing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in referrals we sent him.  A few weeks ago Jeff reached out to us and asked what happened to all of the leads?  Were we still doing ok in business?  I’ve yet to respond to his email – it’s not worth the time as the new designer is doing a much better job than Jeff ever did.  Oh btw, the new designer charges for every second of his time.  

3.  Focus On Clients That Make You Money

There are core groups of clients that are in-it to win-it.  Focus on this group.  They are glad to pay you as they truly respect your time. 

4.  Cut Clients Off That Waste Your Time

If a client starts to waste your time, starts nickle and diming you, summarily cut him off.  These leaches will suck you dry.

Look, I personally don’t give a shit if a client can’t pay and I certainly don’t want to hear any reasons (excuses).  If the client can’t pay or doesn’t want to, we send them packing:)    We have loyal clients that each spend millions of dollars a month in the direct response space.   Other clients are less capital intensive however are 100% devoted to succeeding in this space.   Those small accounts eventually become large accounts.

Oh yea, just 1 more thing, do me a favor and KILL IT in your career.  While money doesn’t buy happiness, it sure as hell helps!!!

Oh and just 1 more thing, if you’re maximizing your time please post a comment and share with us how you do it.  We can learn a lot from you.  Please share it with us!

I gotta tell you guys, this week has been awesome!  Asides from locking in a really nice house for my family, I’ve spent a lot of time with my fiance and daughter.  We’ve taken trips to IKEA, remodeled parts of our home, and watched a lot of good movies.  On top of that I read a good book,  unlocked the AK-47 in Black Ops, and made it to the gym every day.

The best part of this week so far is that I’ve had wires, ach deposits, and checks come flooding in – with practically no work on my end.  All the while I’ve had a blast hanging out with my fiance and daughter.  Amazing times like these call for reflection.

For the past 1 1/2 years I have worked super hard.  Some night I worked till 2am and woke up at 6am just to repeat the schedule again.  The only breaks I took were to take care of my daughter (my fiance and parents have helped out a tremendous amount) and exercise.   I worked at this feverish rate 7 days a week.  There was no downtime.

Were personal relationships affected?   Hell yea they were.  My fiance almost left me.  My parents were up my ass.  And there were times that I felt that I just wasn’t giving my daughter everything I had.  It was a pretty bad feeling to see my daughter sleeping at night and know that I could have spent more time playing with her versus working.

At any rate, I was working toward a goal that my family now appreciates.  Not only are we secured financially, my entire business life is turnkey.   From taxes to customer support, everything is taken care of by other people.  It’s a strange feeling to wonder what I’m going to do with my time.  For the next several months the answer is pretty simple: focus on family and have fun.   Oh and if you’re a client or need to take on a project, fear not, your account is still a top priority and my staff is working hard for you.  I run a tight ship and everything from A-Z is handled.  My team makes me look very good – thanks guys, I love you!!!

I documented the 12 step process I took to a turnkey lifestyle in hopes of creating a better life for you and your family.  I promise you that if you follow it you will not only have more free time to do the things you love in life, you’ll make significantly more money with much less work:

1.  Give Up Control

In the E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber opened my eyes to one of the most important lessons in business: Give Up Control.   Have you ever wondered why that awesome shop in town never franchised out?  Why they remained a 1 location business yet could have absolutely killed it if they went mainstream?

The answer is that most small business owners play 3 roles: Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician.   While every start-up with limited capital must play all 3 roles simultaneously, once things get rolling it is critical that you remove yourself from the technical and managerial roles.   Why?  Those roles bog you down.  Entrepreneurship requires creativity.  Creativity requires time.

I know of 2 really really sharp business leaders that are stuck playing the Managerial and Technical roles of their businesses.  One leader owns a well known service in the direct response space.  He actually takes all the sales calls to this date – mind boggling.  Just imagine how much time this takes up in the course of a day…and for as brilliant as this man is, if he only devoted more time to other activities his results would be scary good.  It’s too easy to hire a sales rep to take things over.

2.  Pay Others To Do Time Intensive Activities

- Cleaning
- Laundry
- Yard Maintenance
- Grocery Shopping
- Dishes
- Cooking
- Maintenace

If you have a really awesome wife (or husband if you’re the bread winner) that handles the above items kiss her feet.  I’m serious, bend over and kiss her feet.  Tell her you love her and that without her support you wouldn’t be a rockstar in your industry.   I tell my fiance every day how much I love her and appreciate her support.  I truly do and when we get married, I refuse to sign a prenup.  A lot of people think it’s crazy to go into a marriage without a prenup – I don’t.  Without the support of your significant other, and without agreed upon roles, there’s no way you’d have the time to take things to the next level.

- Taxes
- Bills

Hire a bookkeeper and accountant to pay all of your bills and do your taxes.  Leave it up to the pros, don’t waste your time on it.

3.   Use A Receptionist To Take All Calls

Buy 2 cell phones.  One phone is for your immediate family.  If your family is not respecting your office hours and starts constantly calling you, have their number blocked.  It’s harsh but they’ll need to respect your business time.

Your second line is for business only.  You can dial out, however all incoming calls are handled by a secretary.  Make it impossible for the secretary to forward calls to you.  They can only forward voicemails via email.  You are the one that makes the calls.  You do not receive them.

This is probably the most important step AND BY FAR THE HARDEST for most people.  It allows you to keep scheduled meetings and block interruptions.

4.  Never Agree To A Business Meeting That Is Not Scheduled

By following step 3 you make it impossible for people to call you directly.  If someone is not on your calendar and they attempt to hold an impromptu meeting with you, deny them.  Last week one of my employees asked me twice if I had read his email.  Seriously!  I pointed out that while he is a superstar, interruptions like that are unacceptable.  I read emails 2x a day, and unless the email was something that just couldn’t wait, he shouldn’t be bugging me.

Unless you’re making the call or are in the middle of getting something setup on a project, DO NOT ALLOW PEOPLE TO INTERRUPT YOU. Sorry for the all caps and bold – but this is a big point that you can’t afford to miss.  People that interrupt you do not respect your time.

Create barriers.   Make calls, don’t receive them.  Small distractions add up.

5.   Let Money Work For You, Don’t Work For It – Rich Dad/Poor Dad

Once you get your feet off the ground start using your money to hire people to do all of the core work for you.  I surround myself with the best media buyers, lawyers, graphic designers, programmers, etc.  In order to effectively manage these groups, learn as much as you can about their trades.

i.e. I went out and got a paralegal certificate and a business law degree.  When working with our corporate attorneys, I’m able to save us thousands of dollars and help assist in making sound legal decisions.

6.  The 10,000 Hour Rule

In Outliers Malcolm Gladwell astutely pointed out that the most successful people in the world had effectively put in close to 10,000 hours in their field before they struck pay dirt.  Bill Gates spent his high school weekends programming computers at a local college.  When the opportunity to enter the software game came, he was ready.

I’ve spent the last 10 years mastering online marketing.  With television commercials dying (Tivo) and radio almost extinct (Sirius and Pandora), conventional tier-1 advertisers are allocating much higher spends in the online space.  We’ve put in over 10,000 hours in this space.  The time to hit pay dirt has arrived and it’s requiring minimal effort!

7.   Create Strong Financial Underpinnings

Last year I hired a financial guru from the Wharton School of Business.  He had all of the trappings of success.  Long story short – he sucked.  This overpriced anachronistic CPA ended up creating a half-ass financial system for us.  The problem was that he just couldn’t grasp the concept that CPA stood for Cost Per Action and that we weren’t referring to Certified Public Accountant.  No matter how many times we explained the industry, this old dog couldn’t catch on.

Our group hired a young CFO and reached out to our accountant and bookkeeper to assist him in getting brought up to speed. My partner worked hand in hand training the CFO on what we did.  It took awhile for him to get it, but when he did, he got took the ball and ran with it.

Now if we need a wire to go out we simply pick up the phone and our CFO makes it happen.  No more waiting on the phone for 30 minutes to talk to a rep.  It’s turnkey.

8.   Hire Prototypes

I brought on a couple young guns that are full of energy and really hungry.  They’re doing a great job and now have ownership in 1 of our projects.   These guys manage the majority of the work I used to  - and they’re doing a superb job.

9.   Build Systems and Outsource

Create step by step processes for every task in your business.  If possible, replace humans with software – software is a lot easier to manage.

Our client’s offers take less than 1 hour a month to manage.  From fulfillment to customer support, everything is outsourced.  Traffic is strictly managed.  If we spend more than 1 hour a month managing the campaigns then we’re doing something wrong.

10.  Eliminate Wasteful Relationships

Take a look at who’s making you the most money and stick with them.  I’ve cutoff a number of relationships that were taking up too much of my time.  A good example was this retarded doctor we were working with last year.  He knew nothing about the direct response space and always wanted to “pick my mind.”  Every day he’d call with “just one more little thing” that ended up being a big thing.  I obliged and gave him insider information.

At the end of 2010 the good doctor arranged a half million dollar line of credit for his campaign.   This dip shit thought that his campaign investment allowed him to have his way with our staff.   He started asking for free leads, free this, free that.  WTF!

I summarily cut him off.  Why?  Other than the fact that he was a bone head, I weighed the opportunity cost of working with him.  Off a half million dollar spend our margins are minimal.  Is it really worth listening to his bullshit?  I think not.

I create a degree of separation from people that:

- Cause extra work.
- Are consistently unhappy.
- Engage in drugs or excessive drinking
- Don’t take care of their health (obese etc.)  My philosophy is that if you don’t take care of yourself, you certainly cannot care for others.
- Are unlucky.  Bad luck rubs off.
- Negative Nancy’s.  These people always have something to bitch about.  They will kill your spirit and drag you down.
- Don’t hold confidences.
- Don’t add genuine value to my life.

Surround yourself with people that:

- Are successful.
- Happy.
- Passionate about their lives/careers.
- Follow the rules.  This is a big one.  Advertisers that make millions by using deceptive marketing tactics do not gain points in my book.  Any fool can throw up a fake presale page and crush it.  It takes a wise man to build a compliant offer and make it work.
- Are punctual.
- Physically fit.
- Are happy and fun to be around.
- Are trustworthy.

11.  Surround Yourself With The Best Of The Best

Discover who the top players are in your industry.  Strategically align yourself with them.  These individuals will add enormous value to your life.

12.  Stay Focused

At last, focus.  The ability to focus separates the successful from those that try to be successful.  It’s easy to get distracted and veer off on another course.  Work on 1 project at a time until it’s turnkey.

This year I had an opportunity to have ownership in a really big direct response campaign.  The offer was awfully enticing and it took me a week to deliberate whether it was worth it.  At the end of the day I passed the opportunity up.  I knew that if I took the project on I would lose focus on the projects I had at hand.  That’s not my style.  When I take a project on, I want it to see it all the way through.   If I take on too many projects at once, there’s no way I can create turnkey businesses out of them.  I’ll be stuck working hours that I’d rather spend with family.

Take on no more than 1 or 2 projects at a time.  Stay focused.

This has  been my longest post by far.  I hope that you find it useful and create a turnkey lifestyle as well.  Maybe you’re not ready to stop building businesses – and I urge you not to stop.  Keep going until you’re ready to take some time off.  Then sit back and enjoy your new found freedom!

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. –H.P. Lovecraft

It’s 8 am and you wake up to a loud pounding at your door.  Your not expecting anyone at your home at this hour so your internal alarms automatically go off.  You know the feeling: the sharp pang in your heart followed by shortness of breath and tension.  You step out of bed and quickly throw on the closest tshirt and pair of shorts you can find.  

As you walk up to the front door you jump back in shock as there is a large white box sitting in the middle of the hallway.  No it can’t be.  Everyone else in the house is sound asleep - there’s no way that box could get there…unless…someone broke into the house. 

You tip toe up to the door and peek through the cubby hole.  No one is there.  Slowly you open the door and peek your head outside.  All clear to the left and all clear to the right.  You slam the door and throw on the dead bolt.

Sitting in the middle of the hallway is a big white box.  Your now on full alert and looking for an intruder.  You go through every room of the house, check every corner, and discover that no one has broken in.  Whewwww!

You walk back to the hallway where the box is and open it.  Inside there’s a white slip with a telephone number that reads: Protect Yourself From Intruders – Install ADT Today and Use It Free For the First 30 Days.

Congratulations ADT, you just simulatnously scared the shit out of some dude and converted him into a customer. 

ADT ran this camapign in Chile.  They slid Pop-Up boxes under people’s home doors to make them think that someone was in their place that shouldn’t be.  Fear tactics – I love it! 

Fear sells arguably better than sex.  In order to have thoughts of sex you need to be free of fear.  Fear selling trumps sex selling.  

Here’s how the pros sell fear:

1.  Scare The Daylights Out Of People

The goal in this phase is not to create new fears, but to tap into existing fears.  Discover your customer’s fears.  Then create a story that brings those fears to life. 

i.e.  Purell started pumping out ads that brought to light just how filthy our hands are:  “A 2003 survey sponsored by the American Society of Microbiology found that many people passing through major U.S. airports don’t wash their hands after using the public facilities…”  Purrell went on to add stats, colorful figures, and actually show shots of germs passing from one hand to the next.  Ewwwwweee!!!

2.  Introduce An Offer That Will Eliminate The Fear

Purrell introduced a bacteria killing handsoap that “Eliminated 99.99% of germs.”  That’s a pretty high amount.  The elicited consumer reaction: “hey, that’s pretty good.  I’ll prefer 99.99% of germs eliminated vs. my current state of germs infesting my skin.”

3.  The Recommended Offer Is Perceived As Credible

Purrell included studies, doctor endorsements, and testimonials.  The perceived value of their soap is top notch.  There’s videos of the bacteria disappearing off of the hands of users.  Awesome credibility builders!!!

4.  The Consumer Believes She Can Use The Offer To Eliminate The Fear

Make your offer simple & easy to use.  Your offer not only alleviates the consumer’s fears, it is so seamless to use.

By understanding your customers demographic, you will create the right barrier to entry.  In the case of Purrel, they offered their soap at $2.99, just a tad bit higher than conventional soaps.  The perceived value was so high that it was a no brainer.

IMPORTANT: In order to succeed using this stragegy you must accomplish all 4 steps.  If you remove a step, it won’t work.

Also, if you scare your audience too much, they’ll run.  Fear can paralyze.  Fear will motivate your prospect to act only if they believe your offer will change their situation.   That means that in order to create an effective fear campaign, your ad must have specific, believable recommedations for reducing the threat that are both credible and achievable.

Credits: Drew Eric Whitman’s book Cashvertising gave me a lot of insight into this article.  I highly recommend you read his book.

It’s challenging enough to come up with an effective marketing campaign. It’s even more challenging when you want to ensure that this marketing campaign complies with FTC rules and regulations. You don’t want to mess with the Federal Trade Commission and other similar governing bodies.

As such, it is of paramount importance that you pay attention to the guidelines outlined in this article if you are the least bit interested in continuity billing and negative option marketing. Being able to provide some positive value to your customers probably doesn’t hurt either.

What Is Continuity Billing?

Continuity billing or the continuity sales model is a version of negative option marketing wherein a customer agrees to receive additional products or service on a subscription basis until they choose to cancel. This is typically without any sort of advance notice.

One example would be a customer who signs up for a free one-month subscription to the local newspaper. If this customer does not phone in to cancel this subscription before the free period ends, he or she will continue to receive the newspaper at the regular subscription price.

From a marketing perspective, this is a great way to get your foot in the door. However, many marketers have taken advantage of this business model, possibly using deceptive tactics to get those initial sign-ups. As such, the FTC has stepped in with several rules and standards to protect the consumer against these kinds of practices.

You Need an Affirmative Consent

With the FTC regulations surrounding continuity programs, there are two very big guidelines that you should keep in mind.

1. The forced continuity cannot be in authorized in the fine print.

In the past, marketers used extra large print to showcase the free trial or remarkably low price for an introductory item. They would then put the conditions related to the automatic billing that would follow (continuity program) into the fine print. Few customers read the fine print, so many people signed up with no real knowledge of the obligation they just agreed to.

So, the FTC stepped in to say that this authorization needs to be more clearly visible to the consumer on the sign-up page, whether it is a physical form, an online form, or over the telephone.

2. Marketers need to obtain affirmative consent from consumers for the subscription billing.

Again, marketers in the past could have attained implied consent through the fine print or as part of a larger form. On the web, this could have been achieved through a “pre-checked” checkbox in an online registration form. This is no longer compliant with FTC regulations.

The “affirmative consent” must be attained through a positive action on the part of the customer. For instance, that “pre-checked” checkbox must not be “checked” by default. The customer must then actively check the box next to the clause saying that he or she agrees to paying the regular subscription fee as part of the continuity program after the free trial or initial offer.

FTC’s Five Principles

As part of its efforts to reign in the confusion surrounding continuity programs, the FTC developed five key principles that are consistent with existing standards by the governing body. These target online marketers, but they also apply to offline marketing tactics as well.

1. “Marketers should disclose the material terms of the offer in an understandable manner. The negative option guidelines suggest that to comply with Section 5 of the FTC Act, marketers of negative option plans should disclose, at a minimum: the existence of the negative option offer; the offer’s total cost; the fact that a consumer’s billing information will be transferred to a third party (if applicable); and how to cancel the offer.”

Being as up front as possible with your potential customers is the best way to comply with FTC regulations, but this can go against some more traditional tactics in marketing. So, be creative but make sure you are in compliance.

2. “Marketers should make the appearance of disclosures clear and conspicuous. Disclosures should be placed on a Web page in a size, color and location where consumers are likely to see them.”

This is related to the notion above that consent to the subscription not be in the fine print. When it comes to the web, you should make sure that the disclosure text is just as large as the rest of the form.

3. “Marketers should disclose the offer’s material terms before consumers incur a financial obligation. Placement above any button a consumer would click to submit an order is suggested.”

It is quite common to see a “submit” button on a website before the full terms and conditions. You can’t really do this with negative option marketing. To help keep your page at a more reasonable length, the full terms and conditions can be in a scrollable text box.

4. “Marketers should obtain consumers’ affirmative consent to the offer. Marketers should not rely on pre-checked boxes as evidence of consent.”

This echoes the regulation described earlier in this article.

5. “Marketers should not impede the effective operation of promised cancellation procedures. Marketers should not hang up on consumers who call to cancel, place them on hold for an unreasonably long time or misrepresent the reasons for delays in processing cancellation requests.”

This doesn’t have so much to do with the sign-up process as it does with the cancellation process. It’s not illegal to have a “retentions” process to try to convince these customers to stick around, but you can’t use the unsavory methods (and ones like them) described by the fifth principle.

Marketing and Free Trial Offers

What else do you need to keep in mind when using continuity marketing programs? First, the trial offers need to be extended for a minimum of ten days and this period cannot begin until the product is shipped (or the service is rendered) to the consumer.

Second, it is important to outline the exact terms of the continuity model to the customer before he or she signs up. This could include information about minimum purchase obligations, for instance, as well as the frequency (and amount) for the subscription-based billings.

Offering a free trial is perfectly legal. Just make sure that the free trial really is free with zero obligation on the part of the consumer.

More Suggested Reading

Some people felt that the crackdown by the FTC would effectively kill the continuity billing framework. That’s far from true. It does change the game, though, so you need to make sure that you play by the rules.

For more information, be sure to check out these important documents on the FTC website:

- Prenotification Negative Option Plans – Facts for Consumers
- Negative Options (PDF)

P.S.  If you want to learn how to follow guidlelines and CRUSH IT at the same time reach out to us and we’ll show you. – Rich Gorman

There’s no question about it, consumer testimonials improve conversion rates.  Human beings are followers by nature.  The more security you provide them with people that have tried and liked your offer, the higher the chances that they’ll buy.

Most legitimate campaigns launch without customer testimonials.  This is normal as it takes time to procure loyal customers that are willing to share their positive experiences with your product to the world.

The good news is that once you’ve started receiving customers,  it’s really easy to get legitimate testimonials.  Here’s how to do it:

1.  Create A Value Added Incentive For Customers To Come Forward And Provide Testimonials

Reward your loyal customers for coming forward and sharing their success stories with the world.   I’ve found that by offering customers a free supply of your product works best.   Why?  Simple, customers that genuinely enjoy your product are more likely to provide true and accurate testimonials when the offer in return is more of your product.

If instead you offer cash as an incentive to receive testimonials, there’s a high probability that disingenous customers will step forward.  Paid customers may not accurately reflect your products efficacy, which in turn broadcasts an inaccurate portrayal of your line.  If you can only receive testimonials through cash incentives then it’s in your best interest to revisit the quality of your offer. 

2.  Add Your Testimonial Program To Your Site

Place the program on your website so customers are aware of their chance to obtain free products by providing their user experience.

3.  Email the Incentive To Your Entire Customer List

Put together a nice .html email and broadcast it to your list with your offer.

4.  Have The Customer Sign a “Testimonial Affidavit.”

This is the  testimonial affidavit legal provided us: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD.  Make sure you consult with your counsel before using it.

Over time you will amass hundreds of positive user experiences.  Carefully document those experiences and leverage them as much as you can. 

P.S.

-  Make sure you consult with your legal counsel before using the above advice.
-  As a general rule of thumb, if you can ask the loyal customer to provide a testimonial at no reimbursement you are better off.  
-  Make sure the testimonial reflects what an average consumer should expect to see with your product.   i.e. If you sell a weight loss product with green tea in it and a customer happens to lose 100lbs., you should not use this testimonial on your site.  Average customers should not expect to lose that much weight.  Federal Guidelines do not allow for deceptive testimonials.

For those of you that don’t know, a scrubber is a piece of code that is added to a website to stop a pixel from firing.  Scrubbers are exclusively used in affiliate marketing.  Scrubbers essentially allow advertisers to receive an affiliate sale without having to pay for it.  Hence when the pixel fires advertisers pay.  When the pixel doesn’t fire, advertisers don’t pay.  One way to stop a pixel from firing is to use a scrubber.

The other day an advertiser I’m working with asked whether we should add a scrubber to his offer.  This advertiser comes from the affiliate world, where paranoia of scrubbing is rampant.

If you’re an advertiser that’s worked with an affiliate network then you’ve received “the call”…all of a sudden your offer is converting less than the day before and your inbox, aim, and phone starts blowing up with an affiliate manager asking you “what’s wrong with your offer.”  What’s wrong with my offer?   Why don’t you just cut around the bullshit and ask me straight up, did I add a scrubber to the backend?

The fact of the matter is that very few advertisers know how to use scrubbers, and for those that do, very few use them.

My thoughts are to NEVER use scrubbers.  If you need to use a scrubber then there’s something fundamentally wrong with your offer.  You have not designed an offer that will succeed from the beginning.  That’s key.   So it’s time to go back to the drawing board and take a look at what you might be doing wrong:

1.  You’re paying too high of a CPA.  Do not get bullied by networks.  You have to be willing to turn down the traffic and go elsewhere.

Can’t find anywhere else to go?  Then hold off on the campaign.  Look at a different vertical.  A perfect example is health trial offers.  A year ago networks wouldn’t touch trials at less than $45 CPAs.  That’s right, $45 CPA to convert a trial, whether it goes into a rebill or not.  Do you know what you need to do to profit at a $45 CPA on a trial?  When you factor in chargebacks, refunds, and legal expenses, it’s just not feasible to run a legitimate trial at a $45 CPA…So what happened?  Every single one of the health trial advertisers went out of business.  They either lost their mids, went to jail, or went broke.

These days legitimate trial advertisers in the health space can receive premium traffic at CPAs that are profitable: ranging from $26-35.

2.  Your offer’s perceived value sucks.  Perceived value is huge.  People go to your website, order a product, and receive a crappy looking box in the mail.  Alarms go off and they cancel.   Go back to the drawing board and create a product with high perceived value.

3.  Your offers actual value sucks.  Customers receive the product, they try it out, and it doesn’t work.  They cancel.  They chargeback.  They request a refund.  If you’re selling crap you’re going to lose in the end.  Create an offer that adds true value to the general public.  You will win in the end.

4.  You’re receiving shit traffic.  A lot of networks engage in nefarious activities behind closed doors – especially networks that have affiliate managers on quotas.  Incentivized traffic and fraud is abundant.

If you have 200 publishers running your offer it’s almost impossible to control the quality of the traffic.  It only takes 1 publisher to start pushing bad traffic and you’ll find yourself in a world of trouble.   Strictly control the traffic to your site.  Utilize trusted networks.

Jeremy Shoemaker recently created an offer that’s perfect for the affiliate space.  His offer converts.  It has huge perceived value and actual value.   A select few publishers are running it at a CPA that is making him profit in the first month.  It’s a win-win situation.

Zero sum games seldom work.  Scrubbing is a zero sum game – an affiliates loss is your temporary victory.  In the end advertisers that scrub will lose.

Build an offer that’s worth waking up to. Then scale your offer through the roof!

Monetizing data is a surefire way to improve your bottom line.  Part of your data you should email yourself, and the other part you should outsource to monetization groups.

With the below partners, each sale can easily tack on $5-10 in profit.   Direct Response utilizes these groups to monetize data:

1.  Unique Leads

Unique Leads is a master at monetizing data.  The owners are superaffiliates and know what it takes to turn data into a goldmine.  They focus on email marketing and use a number of offers they represent inhouse.

2.  List Acquisition

List Acquistion acquires lists and direct mails to them.  Revenues are not as high as other direct mail firms, however they’re a good group to work with.

3.  Interactive Marketing Solutions

Email and direct mailing group – they have a number of unique offers that are tailor made toward lists.

4.   Carney Direct

This group is very strong in the health and beauty vertical.  If your list is in that vertical, use Carney Direct.  They email and direct mail.

5.  Profinity

Profinity utilizes a call center to contact your customers and upsell them.  Profinity is a master at monetizing data.  Caveat: If you are running a trial make sure you check your stats.  Profinity may affect your rebill rates as customers have cancelled at higher rates in the past.  The owner addressed this situation however I would still carefully monitor the stats.

6.  Monetize It

Monetize It is a branch of Media Whiz, a really good affiliate network.  These guys are probably the best at monetizing data. Note: they’re a pain in the ass to get moving on a project.  I think they’re too busy killing it as publishers themselves to really give a shit.  If you are persistent they’ll take your list on and you will likely see a very high return.

Lately I’ve received a ton of emails from guys wanting to build their “own affiliate network.”  Before you email me again make sure that you meet the following requirements:

1.  You’re a seasoned publisher making at least 7 figures a year.

2.  You’re willing to place affiliates on prepay for the first 60 days and then move them to weekly wires.

3.  You have a niche that you want to focus on.  If you’re thinking about creating just another network, go fuck yourself.  There’s too many run-of-the-mill networks out there as is.  You’re going to need a niche.

4.  Make sure you have a war chest of a few hundred k.  Don’t waste your time if you have 10k to your name – it ain’t happening.

If you do not meet at least 3 of the 4 above requirements, then go fuck off.  I’m serious, fuck off.

With the advent of hasoffers (great software program btw),  thousands of “affiliate networks” have popped up.  Most of these networks are nothing but idiots that have no business getting involved in affiliate marketing.  Hint: just because you license hasoffers and attract 2,000 affiliates from India does not mean that you own an affiliate network.

Out of the thousands of affiliate networks that exist, there are only 9 that I’ve found that are good:

1.  Ads4Dough

2.  Ads Direct

3.  Health Converter

4.  EWA

5.  Millionaires Network

6.  Mundo Media

7.  Unique Leads

8.  Get Ads

9.  Max Bounty

News flash for newbie network guys: Top affiliates are smart, very smart.   They’ve all had a friend that got burnt by networks.  Honestly who do you guys think you’re fooling?  The high volume affiliates are hip to your game – you don’t have a snowball chance in hell in attracting them to your new network.   I know most of the top affiliates in the world, guys that can turn on a media buy and hit 12,000 leads a day at a $40 CPA.  When they look at running an offer on a network, they pay heed to the following:

1.  How long has the network been in business? If it’s less than a few years, the next questions is:

2.  Who do I know running traffic with that network? If there are other top publishers running with good experiences, they’ll consider joining your group.  If you’re a top publisher that they trust, they’ll likely work with you.  If not, the next question is usually:

3.  What type of payment terms are they giving me? Top affiliates will want to hedge their risk of loss.  They will need guaranteed EPC’s and a prepay.  They’ll also need:

4.  Exclusive Offers? You better have truly exclusive offers that are not brokered out to other networks.  If you’re just brokering offers, forget about it.  Why would an affiliate risk not getting paid by a no-name network.  The risk is too great.  Instead they’ll stick with networks that have deep pockets and  are already vetted.

I’ve consulted with a number of the networks listed on this site.  There are real businesses behind each network, with strong financial underpinnings, legal backbones, and strategic marketing efforts.

My good friend Jason Akatiff (smaxor), owner and operator of Ads4Dough, used to be one of the largest affiliate marketers in the space.  He has his finger on the pulse of the industry.  I’ve talked to countless network owners that noted that they’d like to find themselves in Jason’s shoes one day.  Chances are that you won’t make it to that level, but if you are determined, do the following:

1.  Run your network with integrity.

2.  Be willing to accept large losses along the way. I remember talking to Jason back at ASW 10 just after he took a 700k loss.  Visa/MC came in and shut down most of his trial advertisers.  These advertisers went bankrupt overnight and couldn’t pay their CPA bills.  Did Jason turn around and chargeback on his affiliates?  Hell no!  He paid his publishers and ate the loss.  The loyalty his publishers have toward him today is unwavering.

3.   Run a compliant network. Jason has zero tolerance for fraud.  If an affiliate attempts to wrong one of his advertisers, Jason will summarily block the affiliate and charge the leads back.

4.   Deliver on your promises. If Jason takes your offer on, expect it to receive a test early on.  If it backs out, you will enjoy high quality traffic and as much volume as you can handle.

Building a viable affiliate network that attracts the largest publishers in the world is not an easy feat.   It takes experience, money, and tenacity.  If you do it right, you can enjoy access to the best facets of traffic in the world.

Is it worth it?  If you were to ask me, I’d say no.  It’s a whole lot of work and too many headaches for the money.  If you’d ask Jason Askatiff, he’d say yes, as Ads4Dough is now arguably the top affiliate network in the space.

Note: I’m not a fan of large networks like CX Digital, Epic Direct, and Never Blue.  They have too much overhead and subsequently have to charge advertisers more money than the lean six sigma networks listed above.

Historically direct response landing pages and SEO didn’t go hand-in-hand.  Search engines looked for content rich (telling) pages.  You know the type: 400 words or more per page, 5% usage of the keyword you’re targeting, backlinks, etc. etc.

Basically the antithesis of a direct response page: graphic rich, selling not telling pages.

So direct response marketers focused on building out pages for media buys.  Our goal was to find that sweet spot on high traffic websites.  We could literally turn  traffic on with 1 click and pull in thousands of sales a day.   Then with 1 click the traffic is turned off.  Poof, magic to the unassuming advertiser.

A few weeks ago something awesome happened that I’ve never seen before.  After pausing a media buy we kept getting orders.  I’m not talking about a few orders here and there trickling in.  No sir.  We started receiving around 70-80 leads a day.

Apparently Google ranked our direct response page.  We used a few commercial intent keywords on our page, however they were all in the metatags.  The front end of the site was multiple spliced images.

In January Google promised to make a major change in it’s algorithm.   Indeed Google followed through its promise – with a change so big that it affected 12% of domestic searches.

Google is now paying closer heed to the users experience on a website.  Are users filling out the call to action and purchasing?  How are people reacting to the page?

While the above factors have always played a role in SEO, other factors such as backlinks held much greater significance.   Over the course of this year we will witness search technology that begins to interpret the users experience on our websites at a whole new level.

This is an exciting change that will affect direct response marketers in a positive way.   When you invest in high volume traffic your pages may start to get ranked organically.  Read more about this exciting new search update via my friend Vanessa Fox’s article on the most recent SMX West Expo.

Note:  Affiliates running these large buys were coined super affiliates.   Once you peel back the onion there’s really nothing super about it.  It’s just a matter of economies of scale.

Al Pacino, Martha Stewart, and Babe Ruth are all superstars.  They came from humble beginnings and faced ennumerable tribulations.

Yet all 3 reached the pinnacle of excellence in their careers.  So what did they do that others don’t?  Surprisingly it has very little to do with their god given talents.  Say What?

The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people walking this planet with godlike talents that amount to shit.  One of the baddest ass wrestlers in the country, Joe Curry (went to high school together), ended up a bartender.  My old friend Aaron Fluck, one of the best people-persons you’ll ever meet, ended up managing a local Panera Bread.  These guys should have gone on to the Olympics and high levels of Politics, respectively.

There are 3 factors that seperate superstars from the rest of society:

1.  Overcoming The Fear of Failure

Babe Ruth is one of the great hitters of all time, with a career record of 714 home runs.  What many people don’t know about Babe Ruth is that he struck out a lot. That’s because Babe always swung for home runs, not singles or doubles.  Babe either hit it big or struck out – there were no in-betweens!

The fear of failure is a SERIOUS impediment to success. Most people never go all out because there’s a lurking fear holding them back. “What if I get in trouble?” “What if someone is offended?”  What if, what if, what if.

Look, the only “what if” that you should worry about is if you keep getting stifled by “what if’s,” by the time you figure it all out it’ll be too late.  Someone else will come in and capitalize on the opportunity.

Don’t get stifled by overanalyzing a project.  Do your due diligence and make a decision.  Then pick up your skirt, grab your balls, and make it happen.  Make fear your mortal enemy and choose to never lose.

2.  Focusing On 1 Core Strength

Become the master of 1 trade.  What are you best at in this world?   Hone in on that talent exclusively and discover ways to monetize it.  Need to learn how to do this?  Study others that have mastered this talent and copy what they did.

Then surround yourself with masters of trades that you are not a master at.  They will compliment your weaknesses and make you appear as if you are a master of all trades.

i.e. For DirectResponse.net I retained UBD (the creators of the Nike and Yahoo blogs) to develop a unique template design.  Ron Gamble, one of the best graphic designers in the world, created the avatar.  These masters complimented my programming and design weaknesses.  They allowed me to focus on my core strength – project management and systemization.

3.  Developing An Unwavering Belief In Yourself

Envy and jealousy are woven into human nature.  People love to see people fail.  That’s why tabloids exist.

Remember all the people that were hating on Martha Stewart a few years back.  God damn man, take a close look at what Martha was accused of doing – selling stock based upon her financial adviser’s advice.  He called her while she flying and said the stock was about to go bust!  She sold the stock based on his advice.   WTF would you have done?

Then some overly ambitious Federal Prosecutors decided to make a name for themselves.   They brought charges for insider trading.  Martha got slammed by the media and the courts.  She lost her most important asset – her good name.  People were hating on her non-stop.  And at the end of the day, Martha went to prison!

Instead of wallowing in self-pity, Martha exemplified the meaning of having an unwavering belief in herself.  She walked out of prison and hit the ground running.  Today Martha Stewart is killing it.  She’s making more money than ever before.

In business and life we will all face naysayers. Ignore them. Stay steadfast in your resolve and you will always persevere.

Last year I discovered that email marketing is hands down the most effective means of marketing in the world.  In the world?  Yes, in the world.  If you’re a bit skeptical, as I was, read on.

Historically I had focused on working with affiliates, placing media buys, ppc, and social media campaigns.  My thoughts on email marketing was that it was all “spam” and that no one really bought off of email campaigns.   Then I met Ronen Hamatian, one of the most prolific email marketers in the world.  I changed my mind about email marketing pretty quickly.

Ronen manages the Millionaire Network, a division of Pirannah Media.   His group runs email campaigns for several Fortune 500 companies and does a lot in the direct response space.  We utilize their service for all of our email campaigns – and gladly choose to work with them exclusively.

The Millionaire Network is comprised of a small group of publishers that each hit enormous volumes.  If you run trial offers, expect rebill rates of 60%+, even on ccBill offers.   Many of the publishers at the Millionaire Network are the largest email publishers in the world. 

If you are looking to hit extremely high numbers, hit them up. 

Note: Ronen is a really down to earth guy, but do not bs him.  Anyone that’s reading this that’s worked with Ronen knows you have 1 shot.  Be straightforward and you’ll land yourself a relationship with the best email marketing group in the world.  Throw some non-sense their way and you’ll have to use 3rd parties to work with them in the future

P.S. This is not a paid review – I just have a lot of love for the Millionaire Network.  They’ve made our clients a lot of money.  Keep up the great work Ronen!

Over the past few weeks several companies reached out and asked me if I sell advertising space on Direct Response or do paid reviews?    The answer is unequivocally no!

While I’m flattered that people would like to advertise on DirectResponse.net,  I simply cannot allow it.  Advertisements on blogs devalue the authenticity of your message.  I don’t feel comfortable placing an ad on Direct Response from a company that I haven’t personally worked with.  What if their service sucks?  Or even worse, what if it’s a scam and one of our readers gets harmed.

Luckily I’m in the financial position to avoid the advertising pitfall.  You know the blog type, with Ryan Eagle Blam Ads splattered all over it, or 8 125×125 flashing banners.  How about the popup “give me your email address and you’ll get my ebook” shit.  Damn, half the time I’m reading those blogs on my iPad and I have to exit off the page because I can’t find the “x” on the popup.

How about the blogger that gains access to your email and inundates you with promotions!  My friend DK recently promoted “The Magic Bullet” to his email list.  I had to unsubscribe to DK’s emails because I was getting flooded with bs about “The Magic Bullet” program, which appears to be a biz opp scam.  Come on DK, seriously?

There are so many better ways to monetize your traffic.  I monetize Direct Response through referral agreements I have in place with many of the vendors I discuss.  After I conduct my independent due diligence on a value added service, I reach out to setup these contracts.  Several companies I list on DirectResponse.net do not entertain referral agreements, however I still promote their businesses.  Why?  Simple, these companies provide value to direct response marketers.

Another great way to monetize your traffic is to offer a consulting service to your readers.  We quickly vet those that are serious about building campaigns and running traffic by requiring $350 for 1 hour consultations.  Nearly everyone that has money quickly retains our staff for a campaign.

So far the referral agreements and consultation fees place this blog at a 6 figure revenue stream.  This cracks me up because the purpose of the blog was to bring together the best minds in the space – not to turn a profit.

The only banner on the site is Chris Rugh’s Custom Toll Free service.  Chris is a friend of mine that hooked me up with a vanity telephone number: 800-923-1111.   In return I added a link to his website.  His vanity telephone service is awesome, and it’s a great tool for direct response marketers.

What are your thoughts on allowing advertisements on blogs?  Are we remiss?  Do you think the message gets diluted?

Reading good material is paramount to your success in just about everything in life.

I am a very selective reader. i.e. I do not subscribe to any magazines and refuse to read newspapers. Why? Edited material from major publications does not provide the content I’m searching for – I seek insider information that is useful to my direct response career. Sure, some content in national publications or niche magazines is decent. The thing is that you have to sift through a world of bullshit to get to the good stuff. Who has time for that? i.e. The latest Feedfront circulation had 1 halfway useful article in it, everything else was complete garbage.

Additionally academia is a waste of time. Most professors suck at life; they teach about the careers of others because they’ve never actually had practice in the field. How can you learn from someone that’s never lived and breathed the subject they teach?

Instead I search for books and blogs written by professionals that thrive in their careers. I want to hear from people that talk from experience, not through other’s experiences. Additionally, I read content that provides resources I can use. A good example is the 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. Ferris listed companies he works with and points you in an exact direction. He provides his audience with his sources. That’s useful information!

Another requirement is forthrightness. Does the author hold back or does he put it all out there? I want to read the good, the bad, and the ugly. There aren’t many bloggers out there that can afford to weather a frivolous libel suit, which I’d imagine is the reason they refrain from releasing names in controversial situations. i.e. A good friend of mine, Jon Volk (a seasoned affiliate marketer), was burnt by a Penny Auction advertiser last year. He blogged about it and didn’t name the company. Say What!!! Shit, if that had been me, I would have not only blogged about it I’d quickly rank in the first position for their name. Come on Jon, throw him under the bus. Put it all out there!

Here’s a short list of blogs I religiously read on a daily basis. I have gained a world of insight from these sources and hope to turn you on to some great material:

1.  Copyblogger

Hands down the best marketing blog on the net. I’ve pulled more good ideas from Copyblogger than every other blog combined. Even my significant other reads Copyblogger on a daily basis – and she isn’t a marketer.

2. Seth Godin

Seth’s blog gets my mind turning. Lately his blog posts have sucked! Not sure what’s going on with Seth, however I’d imagine that he’ll get back on the ball soon. Check out this historic post that provided me with a lot of insight on how to get DirectResposne.net a strong reader base: sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html.

3. Search Engine Land

Search engine land provides resourceful information on what’s happening in the search world – from SEM to SEO.

4. Matt Cutts

Matt is in charge of stopping spam at Google. He releases a lot of important information for those of us that like to gain insight into how to spam Google Hahaha!

5. Michael Gray

Michael is a seasoned affiliate marketer, SEO guru, and social media specialist. His blog rocks. Michael has no problem telling it like it is, and recently threw Google under the bus. Good shit bro, keep it up!

6. Mr. Green

 Bad ass internet marketing website with tons of useful info.

7. Zac Johnson

 Zac is a prolific affiliate marketer. He gives away a lot of great tips on his blog. I highly recommend you read his posts daily. Top notch material.

8. Jon Volk

Jon Volk is also a prolific affiliate marketer. Jon gives a way a ton of useful information and resources – and I dare to bust his chops about throwing people under the bus, he’s a really nice guy.

9. Ad Hustler

I don’t know what Ad Hustler’s real name is, but can tell you that this guy puts it all out there and he definitely knows what he’s talking about. Whoever you are, keep up the great work.

10. Tech Crunch

Tech Crunch helps me keep up to date on news in the tech world. Great source of insider information.

Some other blogs that provide good inside info are:

IanFernando.com
Shoemoney.com
JohnChow.com (if you want to learn about blogging)
PPC.bz

What blogs am I missing any blogs? Any suggestions?

Our founding father’s were comprised of some pretty smart folks.  The US Constitution is hands down the greatest document ever created by man.  It’s no coincidence that our founding fathers made the 1st Amendment, the very 1st,  ”Freedom Of Speech/Press.”  They had an innate understanding of its priceless value and knew it deserved a #1 ranking in our bill of rights.

Historically we the people have had this right yet have had a hard time exercising it.  The gatekeepers to the media were vast.  Each news station had its own political agenda and, well, things were never really fair and balanced.  “Editors” ran each story through “legal” which in return cut most of the good stories for fear of libel suits, ratings loss, or misalignment with ulterior agendas.

With the advent of social media & search technologies, we the people are now freer than ever before.  With 1 phone call or email, I could literally bring any idea in front of thousands of people – and keep it there.  Here’s how:

note: follow SEO guidelines when following this process: to gain insight into true SEO guidelines, visit Michael Gray, Matt Cutts, and Eric Enge’s blogs via our blogroll.

1.  Create 10 exact match keyword mini-sites.  i.e. for “John Doe”

JohnDoe.com, JohnDoe.net, JohnDoeSucks.com, John-Doe.com.  Register each site for 10 years and through different registrants.  This helps get past spam blockers in the search engines.

2.  Host each minisite on a different server.  Search engines will rank each site as unique.  Use different technology to build each site, i.e. WordPress, Droopal, html, .asp, etc.  Do not use Flash.

3.  Create compelling journalistic content.  If you’re not a top notch writer hire one.

4.  Every day release articles that have are optimized to rank.  Create 1 way backlinks to the minisites.  You need to vary the number of daily articles, shooting for 3-4 a day tops.  Do not use a spinner and focus on truly original content.  I have a list of over 500 of the best directories, feel free to reach out I’ll give you access.

5.  Then hit the forums – just make sure you post in forums that are relevant to your topic.

6.  Hit 1 press release a week through places like PRweb.  You must create news worthy press releases.  Create 2-3 backlinks in each release to different minisites and articles.

7.  Buy 1 way backlinks from PR7 + sites that are highly relevant to your topic.

8.  Create social media profiles across the board that link to your minisites.

9.  Continue this process until you achieve the rankings you’re looking for.

If there’s a huge opportunity cost in doing this yourself, retain a company like Reputation Changer.  They have systems in place that streamlines this entire process.

Depending on how competitive the topic/keyword is, you will get your thoughts ranked within weeks.  I’ve worked on projects where we’ve ranked in hours.  And no, please don’t contact us asking if we can do SEO work for you – we only do it for our internal projects

To highlight the influential nature of social media & search technologies the New York Times recently created a new category called “The New Influencers.” These are a group of people (once again, that’s you) who are influential on a specific topic tied to a valuable demographic.  This section has gained enormous popularity.

As we grow older we grow wiser from life experiences.  For direct response and affiliate marketers, we all started off at some point.  As we gained more experience, we discovered ways to get in front of the eyeballs of more and more consumers.

Continue to discover ways to reach your audience.  Google’s original purchase price of YouTube was written off as daft by pundits.  It turns out that purchase allowed Google to reach billions of more eyeballs every month.

And that’s what freedom of speech/press is all about – getting your thoughts in front of eyeballs – the more the merrier.

Last week I opened a new call center to manage the sales & customer support for one of our lead gen offers.  For most direct response projects, it makes sense to outsource sales and support.  i.e. If you’re selling a muscle offer, there’s really good turnkey call centers such as Focus.   Focus can handle standard Q&A’s, such as when the product was shipped or how to cancel recurring billing.  It’s daft to vertically integrate projects like that when turnkey solutions exist.

On this project, we have no other option but to vertically integrate.  The project has an average ticket price of $32,000.   The demographic for our clients is an almost all white male, $200k+ household income.   It’s a great demographic and one that I’m ultra proud to serve, however we’re going to need to run it inhouse. 

White males with $200k+ household incomes typically do not have time to chat.   Their dip shit radar is always on full alert – they don’t suffer fools gladly.  Hence outsourcing calls to the Phillipines or to a call center with a “Lakesha” is a no go!  When these white males call us, we want other razor sharp white males picking up the phones.  In order to attract those reps, we’re offering positions that start off paying $150k annually.  The caliber of these sales agents is second to none.

Based on our tests so far, we’ll bring on an average of 10 accounts a day running at a 60% margin on 30 day media buys.  The office we locked in is 4,500 square feet with 2 partitioned rooms.   Having the rooms partitioned is key, here’s why:

A common mistake new advertisers make is mixing sales and support.  The general thought is that if sales guys can close the deal, they can keep the deal.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

The best sales guys are Glen Gary/Glen Ross ABC Closers – Alec Baldwin style.  They earn 900k+ a year and their focus is on one thing: getting the client to sign on the line in which is dotted.  You don’t find top notch sales guys by placing an add on Craigslist or opening up a position via Monster.com.  No sir. 

You bring on the top notch sales gurus by stealing them from other companies.   One of the best places to look is a high end car lot, such as Mercedes or BMW.  The guys walking these lots are SHARKS!  You never see them coming.  They already have you felt out before you’ve had the opportunity to glance their way.  They know to never underestimate a potential client based upon his dress or current vehicle.  They know people that drive Hondas are the biggest buyers as they’ve been economical with their money.   They identify that guy in the suit that pulled up in a Toyota as pretentious – he wants to believe he has money yet suffers from delusions of grandeur. 

My colleague and I are going to roll up to these lots donned in Armani and flashy watches.  We’ll pull out our $10.00 metal business cards and offer them a 2 week trial run in our call center.  Then we’ll pull out a roll of hundreds and give it to them right there on the spot if they say “yes”.  Money talks.  No, there are no contracts and sure they might fuck us over and keep the money – but at the end of the day that is written off as a cost of finding the right sales agents.

These top sales guns need to focus on one thing – sales.  The moment a customer support call hits their desk, they will immediately forward it to the second half of the call center, support.   We do not want our superstar sales agents dealing with technical aspects of the project, knitty-gritty details, billing, and ESPECIALLY disgruntled cusomers.   To do so is akin to eating fruit off of the poisonous tree.  It causes distraction from their one and only goal – sales.  Additionally we will fire them on the spot.

Our sales and support staff are given 1 strict guideline – they cannot speak to each other.  We want support focused on support, and sales focused on sales.

With regards to support, we are using Salesforce CRM to manage each account.  Every single interaction with the customer, including calls, emails, invoices, and proposals, are appended to their accounts.   When progress is made on the account, it’s added to Salesforce. 

Why are we so anal about documenting everything?  We create systems where employees are expendable.   If an employee that spent 10 hours on an account gets hit by a car, we don’t want the customer to get penalized.  The entire history of conversations with that employee will not go with our employee Heaven (hopefully that’s where she’ll go).  No, we want the next agent to spend 5 minutes reviewing the notes on the account and pick up as if nothing happened.

Our clients support and service is the pinnacle of our long-term success.  When bringing on support agents, we look for 4 things:

1.  Pays close attention to detail.
2.  Is able to completely focus on 1 task at a time.
3.  Is a constructive listener.
4.  Does not have ambitions or an entrepreneurial spirit.

Does not have ambitions?  Did you really just let put that out there dude?  Yes – I did.  We look for people that are happy to make 50 grand a year at the top of their career.   We want steady eddies that love habit.   Their job is to follow directions to the letter of the law.  That way client accounts are never misappropriated and we don’t have to spend time training people.  Remember, it costs a lot more money to train someone new than it does to keep your current staff happy.

This is a really exciting project.   Like all projects we enter, this project does not have a ceiling.  Once things are in place, we will scale the campaign.