A few days ago I received a marketing email from Mark Hoverson, which contained the question, “Is the shirt Mark is wearing on this video worth $480?” That, of course, is Mark’s way of getting you to watch the video (see link below). I didn’t care about the shirt, but I noticed that the link looked interesting.

www.JoeyBorden.com/Mark/MarkAnnInterview.mp4

So, I clicked on it and I wasn’t disappointed.

What’s So Special About the Interview?

If you are an internet marketer or a network marketer,  I think you’ll find this 13 minute video well worth a look.   As she reveals in the video, Ann Sieg has sold more than 4 million copies of “The Renegade Network Marketer” ebook.  Her audience for this ebook is mostly baby boomers.  As she tells it, she sold so many copies precisely because she understood her target market in depth.  She wrote the book to boomers.  In the video, she tells you a lot about this market.  If you’re interested in marketing to boomers, you need to know what she has to say.

On the other hand, if you’re shopping for an MLM to join,  Ann gives her reasons for joining Global Resorts Network (GRN).  As Mark says in the video, “This is big news.”  GRN is an MLM with a big ticket item.  It costs $3k to join.  When you sign someone up, you get $1k commission (out of that $3k) and your upline also gets $1k commission (also out of that $3k).  I’ve heard Ann say on another occasion that in her experience, you do the same amount of work to close a big ticket sale as you do a small ticket sale.  So, why would you want to sell the small ticket (low cost) item?  Other aspects of her decision are revealed in the video.   I’m not going to argue the pro’s and con’s of different MLM compensation structures in this post.  However, I do plan to address the topic of big ticket vs. small ticket MLM’s in the near future.

Don’t Know How Long the Link Will Remain Active

Since I don’t know how long the video (above) will remain available, I’m including the text of the interview below.  I transcribed it VERY quickly, so there will be typos. My apologies for any minor errors.  Here’s the video link in case you missed it.

www.JoeyBorden.com/Mark/MarkAnnInterview.mp4

And here’s the transcript.

Mark Hoverson Interviews Ann Sieg About GRN

MH: One thing that I wanted to talk about real quick is what we are gonna share is kind of big news. And I say it’s big news because Ann, the Renegade Network Marketer…  Now I know you don’t flash around how many sales that had.   But it was millions.

AS: It’s probably over 4 million now.

MH: 4 million.  And for Ann to join Global Resorts Network, and that’s really what we’re going to talk about. Of the kajillions of MLM’s and all the pitches you get.  And…

AS: I got a few today.

MH: I did too.  Today I’ve had two, and it’s a ground floor.  It’s brand new. It’s gonna change the world, and all that.  But I’ve gotta ask you straight up, GRN why?  Why GRN?

AS: I think, you’ve used the phrase lifestyle and I think that’s significant because so many things are changing. And how people want to adapt to these changes.  And the big part of that is, well in my age group, it’s bringing in those retirement years a lot sooner rather than waiting.  And to be honest, you know that whole model of retirement being when you hit 65.  That’s all a thing of the past.  So, let’s start retirement sooner.  Parsing that out, taking that out now, rather than delaying.

MH: Today, the whole idea of our team, and you’re gonna see probably clips any second of our team when we went on our hike today.  We’re doing San Francisco very soon. And that’s biking over the Golden Gate bridge…  We had basically baby boomers.  And one of the things I learned from you is, when we were talking about collaborating on this team before there was a team, you were just talking about the baby boomer and the mass of wealth that is in the baby boomer…  You Know Ann’s like (he gestures).

AS: It’s big!

MH: Yeah, well tell me. I mean I think  it’s weird cause I’m 31 and 95% of my team is baby boomers. And so we both know baby boomers.  And your crowd is generally baby boomers.

AS: mm-hmm.

MH: And one thing that Ann just said is they like anti-aging.  They popularized anti-aging.

AS: mm-hmm.

MH: They popularized the idea of vacations.  You know as a lifestyle. My parents parents never took a single vacation, outside of the family trips. So your generation has changed America.

AS: Very much so.

MH: And tell me just a couple of things about marketing to baby boomers, cause you got into the demographics and the psychographics of the baby boomer and the GRN fit and all that. What do you think is a unique touch on that?

AS: I especially saw it through a group of students that I worked with last year. And when I polled them, they’re very mission driven.  They’ve lived their lives, as far as raising their children.  And now is their time to live.  But they’re very
much about giving back as a very prominent feature.  In fact, of my members that are going to be showing up here shortly, I have a team leader and she said none of them are after the big house, the fancy car.  It didn’t come up with a single
person.  They’re very much about helping other people, and wanting to invest in other peoples’ lives. And while they do want wealth, but it’s… they want to hang with people who are also mission driven.  (This) is a very big part.  They want to enjoy that experience together.  Travelling.  We see that today.  There were conversations on the trail that were about that.

MH: I remember that poll. Cause Ann, she’s, your list is hundreds of thousands.

AS: (nods)

MH: And she polls this list.  And it’s funny because they weren’t after the fancy car, weren’t after the fancy home, but vacationing hit there. Because it was a family hot button. And as people hit baby boomer, i’ve just got young kids, but even I’m getting more reflective on how travelling is like… The memories that I remember from childhood are bound up in travelling. But travelling was one of the things that they were all about because it was family centered. And so people are looking for time freedom, and the whole idea of  automation and direct response.  I mean you are the queen of direct response. You’re basically the founder of online direct response for MLM.

AS: Thank you.

MH: The initial renegade network marketer. And, just… People want… They want time freedom.  They want travel.  They want all of these hot buttons. But GRN…  I want to get back to the GRN concept.  There’s other travel things.  There’s other travel little clubs and stuff. So, what did you see with GRN in terms of you being a marketer?  And maybe feeling some freedom there.  What was it?

AS: There was a lot.  One was a higher price point item.  And I have to be honest, these other travel companies didn’t appeal to me that much in the past. MLM’s that is. And we haven’t been big travelers.  But I think what’s really changed for that… You were talking about polling earlier.  I did a poll back in February of this year (2010) and 21% of my audience said they’d prefer to consume information at live training events. I have to admit that factors into it. Aside from travelling for enjoyment, this is enjoyment.  Meeting up with other like-minded people.

(phones ringing)
MH: And we’ve got the phones blazing back there.
AS: You know what it is? People want to know how to get here.

AS: So part of it is straight up travelling for enjoyment, but it’s also travelling so they can experience being in groups with people.

MH: I think the coolest thing is, like tonight…  This is deep in the psychology. I’m going deep down the rabbit hole here.  Is that typical corporate America does not offer a platform like we did this weekend. Corporate America is not going to invite you into a world-class 5-star suite, serve you unlimited top-shelf … and you’re going to hobnob with millionaires. And even bigger than that, in this (internet, mlm) culture, the whole point is to raise up the new people.  And in a corporate setting,  the rich guys hobnob together, because they’re all cash cows. But the employees and the commoners are left out because they’re just carrying weight and stuff. But what’s really cool about what this (mlm) industry can do and it’s important if you can buy into this concept and just accept it as it is.  To be able to immerse somebody into this culture, we provide a kind of lifestyle, even if you are not rich yet.  That’s what’s so cool.  People who are brand new members. We have people from Austrailia who are here. We have people from Norway.

AS: Brazil.

MH: Poland, New Zealand, all over Canada.  But there was a young couple, 22 years old from the east coast.  I forgot where.  They travelled and they make like combined they make $1500 a month. They got on the plane and got here.  They said, “We’re in this fancy suite.  We’re hanging out with you.  This is so great.” And it’s that kind of thing where we can literally spark young couples to see what can happen.  But they can also experience it now.

AS: And I think to adopt that lifestyle at a young age, rather than this whole idea of waiting.  I think people are wanting to start living it out. And I have to say beyond that with GRN was also to work with you was a big part of it. It was the whole package.

MH: We have a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun.  Dangerous fun.  Today (on the hike, someone fell) we had a gentleman whose face is probably permanently scarred.

AS: Ohhhh.

MH: Possibly, did you see it?

AS: I don’t think permanently.

MH: It looked like a tiger claw to me.

AS: It’ll heal. I’ve raised kids, it was not that bad. I’ve had kids wipe out on ?? at 95 miles an hour.  He’s going to be OK.

MH: One tme we were horse back riding through the Phoenix mountains.

AS: Oh, see now that would be dangerous.

MH: And it was dark and this horse bucked a guy off. The point is that the team is having a ball and they talk about it forever. Carl, who wiped out on that horse, he still talks about it to this day. And he’s known as Carl the wipe out…  So it’s kind of like, what we  like to do here is immerse people with like-minded people. And with the internet what you’re able to do is… In our normal world… I smoke cigars with some college kids.  My college kids, I live in North Dakota and I also live in Arizona.  The kids ask, “How do you stay so motivated when no one around you is motivated?”  Everybody’s kind of cashed-out (in North Dakota), this is what you do. You go to a hockey game on the weekend.  You drink beer and…

AS: This is really hot.  If you’re not motivated and it’s key… You know I’ve got a story that I want to share with you.  I’ve got a gal when I was at the Arkansas airport, Little Rock, on the way here.  “Are you Ann Sieg?”  We talked about this weekend.  And do you know why she’s coming here?

MH: Why?

AS: Inspiration.

MH: Yeah.

AS: She’s been in network marketing for over 30 years. She’s a baby boomer. She came here for inspiration.  And that really stood out to me. She was paying, taking time to come out here just for that purpose.  And that’s key. Like you’re saying, up in North Dakota that’s not happening.  So people will come to experience being around people who will motivate and excite them.  And that’s what we’re able to provide.

(phones ringing)

MH: We’ve got a busy room but we’re rolling anyway.

AS: People knocking on the door..

MH: Not that it matters because we’re hot right now. It’s this whole idea of… it’s a mastermind. And the idea of a mastermind is when 2 or more come together there’s a third entity. And it’s a master mind.  Like the meeting of the minds. And so people travel literally across the world.  We had a guy from Poland, you were telling me.

AS: Well Norway, he was going to be at dinner but didn’t make it because…

MH: There’s a hurricane in Ireland or earthquake or some weird thing that maybe caught him up (actually, it was a volcano in Iceland).

AS: He found out Monday or Tuesday night about this meeting on Thursday. And he’s en route somewhere. People are that eager and excited to be here for this 2 hour explicit team meeting.

MH: And it’s the human touch at the end of the day.  What we’ve done online, and you’re talking about joining me and the team.  What we’ve done really is… A lot of times online marketing has kind of a scammy history and edge.  “Make money at home” is kind of blinged out. Draping girls on Lambourghini’s is not cool. It’s just gross.

AS: It’s kind of cheesy.

MH: Baby boomers hate that.

AS: They don’t like it. That’s for sure.

MH: Baby boomers like professionalism.  They like integrity. They like real people. Because they grew up in the non-tech (world).  Not like the youth of today. Today kids would rather text than talk. Baby boomers would rather talk than text.

AS: That is so true.

MH: What’s interesting is if you’re gonna dominate online, and hit that baby boomer zone, you’ve gotta have reality (and) meetings.  You’ve gotta have this kind of thing. And by doing this it subconsciously… I’m going on a tangent here Ann, but it’s so  important.  It subconsciously says, “These people can’t be scammin’ people. They’ve got this open, transparent community that people are invited to.”  If you scam somebody and you invite them to a live event …

AS: That’s not going to work.

MH: It’s just a dangerous model. You know. So we’re excited for tonight. You’re going to see some clips in a moment of us, just bonding really.

AS: They’re calling on the phone. They’re that excited.

MH: So we’ll check back with you here in just a minute.

After hearing about some wonderful successes with affiliate marketing, I decided it was time to give it a try.  This post is about the very first step after opening an account with Clickbank (or any similar product directory).  It is about how to pick a product or service that you can market and sell profitably.

Product Directories

In case you’re new to affiliate marketing, Clickbank is a web resource that connects manufacturers with people who want to market and sell the manufacturers’ products. Such people are known as ‘affiliate marketers’ or just ‘affiliates.’  Resources like Clickbank are sometimes referred to as product directories.  Most affiliate marketers set up sales pages or websites to attract customers on the internet.  However, it is perfectly reasonable to sell affiliate products through more traditional channels, if that’s your preference.

Clickbank has a nice assortment of software, memberships and other products suitable for internet marketing.  What the affiliate has to do is to set up a “virtual store front” (i.e. a website or a sales page) for the product.  Clickbank handles all payments and the manufacturer handles the delivery of the product. In other words, all the affiliate needs to do is to attract customers to buy the product on his or her website.  Everything else is taken care of by Clickbank and the manufacturer.  Clickbank sends you a commission check when customers buy through your site.

It’s free to set up an affiliate account on Clickbank and peruse their lists of products.  Some of their top level product categories are: business to business,  health and fitness, home and family, computers and internet, money and employment, marketing and ads, fun and entertainment, sports and recreation, and society and culture.

What Do I Sell?

But how do you pick a product that you’re likely to be able to make money from?

Follow Your Interests

My first recommendation is to pick something you’re already interested in.  There are many reasons for this.  First, you’ll be in a good position to distinguish good products from mediocre products and good deals from not so good deals.  This already gives you a competitive edge.  In addition, you’ll be able to write reviews and create informative sales pages and ads without a lot of additional research.  Most importantly however, you’ll BE in your target market.  The most important component to successful marketing is getting inside the heads of people in your target market.  This can take months of research. You’ve got a head start that even professional copywriters don’t often have,  if you’re in the target market.

Avoid the Top 10

I’d also recommend that you stay away from ClickBank’s (or anybody’s) top 10.   These are the products or services on the first page or so when you sort by popularity. There’s going to be so much competition for these products, that it’s not a good idea for your first campaign.  The cost of advertising will be high for highly competitive products.  You’ll either pay too much for each click (as with Google Adwords) or you’ll need a very well developed website to attract customers away from the already established (and numerous) sites.

‘Gravity’ and Commission

So picking something a bit less competitive is a good place to start.  However, you do want a ‘gravity’ (ClickBank’s proprietary measure of popularity) of at least 20 for the product you pick.  You want there to be a substantial market, even if not a killer market.

You also want a commission rate of 50% or better.  It’s more difficult to become profitable with lower commission rates when you factor in your advertising costs.  It takes time to learn how to create ‘attractive’ ads and irresistable sales pages.  So, while you’re learning the ropes, your chances of reaching profitability are more likely at 50%.

Just One Product to Start

It’s also a good idea to start with just one product.  This is especially true if you plan to attract people to your site with a ‘pay per click’ service, such as Google Adwords.  You’ll want to experiment with different ads and sales pages until you find an ad and sales page that reliably attract and land customers.  This takes some time and effort, even for a single product. Once you’ve mastered the marketing skills to become profitable with one product, then it will be a lot easier to take on more.

The Niche is Nice

Finally, and most importantly, the best product choice for you may be something that you find extremely valuable — something you can’t resist buying yourself.  As you peruse the product directory, do you sometimes find products that are so compelling, you want to buy them?  These may be the hidden gems for you, particularly if they appeal to a specific (i.e. niche) market.  Finding a good niche product actually makes profitable marketing easier.  Maybe aquarium products are your niche?  If so, then it will likely be easier for you to achieve profitability because there won’t be as many competitors as with a mass market item, such as satellite TV services.  With a niche product, your advertising costs will be lower.  This is especially true for pay-per-click ads, whose cost is determined by the highest bidders.   Also with a niche product, it will be easier for you to attract visitors to your website.  There aren’t as many websites devoted to aquarium products as there are devoted to satellite TV.  So it’s easier to stand out in the niche market.  But the product has still got to be something you’re enthusiastic about, and that many others will become enthusiastic about.

The Pot of Gold

Often the best situations are with new and unusual products.  New products appear on Clickbank from time to time.  If you find one that you find irresistable, and you can make it seem irresistable to others, then you’ve got gold.  You may want to subscribe to multiple product directories and watch for these.

FlashTweet (http://www.flashtweet.com) is an inexpensive Twitter application for getting more targeted followers on Twitter.  At $6.95 per month it may very well be one of the cheapest ways to develop and manage your following.  There is a 14 day free trial period.  FlashTweet has a very simple and easy to use interface that you access from your web browser.  I found out about FlashTweet from the Renegade Professional training videos.

Manage All Your Twitter Accounts

Flash tweet claims to be a complete Twitter account management solution.   With it, you can monitor multiple Twitter accounts, and you can mass follow people based on search terms and geographic location. It also helps you find out who you are following, but who is not following you back.  In this case,  you can drop the non-followers with a single mouse click.   FlashTweet calls this “mass unfollowing.”  FlashTweet also helps you find out who is following you that you’re not following back.  In this case, you can choose who you want to follow in return.  You can do a  “mass follow” with one click, or you can manually choose which people to follow on an individual basis.

4 Programs in One

FlashTweet is divided into 4 Twitter applications that you control through a single dashboard.

1. Follower Management tool
   The Follower Management tool allows you to mass follow and mass unfollow your Twitter friends. For example, if you’re following people who aren’t following you back, you can drop just the people who aren’t following you back. You can also see who is following you that you may want to consider following back.
2. Schedule Tweets
   You can have tweets go out at specific times in your timezone with the Schedule Tweets tool. You just enter the tweet, and the date and time you want it to go out. Very simple. You can schedule as many tweets as you want.
3. Mass Follow tool
   This is my favorite tool in FlashTweet. You can mass follow another user’s friends, or mass follow based on search terms, and a geographic region (or all three). For example, you could follow everyone who is discussing bicycling in a 20 mile radius around Manhattan.

   Better still, if you know someone who’s got a big following in your area, such as Ann Sieg or Mike Klingler in the “Attraction Marketing” area, you can follow their followers. You can narrow those followers down by a search term, such as “internet marketing” and your geographical area. If you mass follow the results of such a query, chances are most of them will follow you back. If you like, you can mass unfollow the ones who don’t follow you back (after a few days) using the Follower Management tool (#1 above). Piece of cake.

4. 4. Tweet RSS feeds
   You can tweet the title and link of any RSS feed to your twitter account. This is intended for anyone who has a blog. Makes it easy to tweet a blog post.

Simplicity Has Its Price

Each of these twitter apps is very simple and easy to learn. However, the down side of their simplicity is that they aren’t customizable or programmable. For example, with the Follower Management tool, you can’t set up a group of people you want to be exempt from mass actions. Suppose I’m following Tony Robbins, but he’s not following me back. However, I want to continue following him anyway. So, I would like to make Tony Robbins exempt from any mass unfollow. Unfortunately, you can’t maintain an exemption list in FlashTweet. However, you can get around the problem by setting up a special Twitter account with just the people you want to follow unconditionally. Maybe not the most convenient solution, but it does work.  This is sometimes called a “kludge.”

Another problem comes from Twitter’s restrictions on mass following.  If you follow more than 100 new people per day, Twitter may shut down your account.  This means that you need to run FlashTweet’s Mass Follow tool each day you want to add 100 followers. It’s a long way to 2000 followers.  Unfortunately, there’s no automatic mode that will do this repeatedly for you.

Worth The Money

Even with these limitations, FlashTweet provides enough value to be well worth the $6.95 per month.  The Mass Follow tool together with the Follower Management tool is a simple and convenient way of prospecting for new followers.   What I like best is that you can find new followers matched to your niche.  That’s gold.  We hope that FlashTweet will add more automation in the future.

The cost of setting up a business and marketing on the internet is often said to be free or almost free.   Youtube abounds with video marketers claiming that they will show you how to build an internet business  that will make you a 6 figure income for scarcely more than the cost of their training materials. They claim that social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, can be used for free advertising.

I don’t think so.

Way Cheaper Than MacDonald’s

Down below is a list of what I’ve found are fairly typical expenses for internet marketing.  In most cases the dollar values I give are at the low end of the spectrum.  Some services charge according to the length of your prospect list, so the costs will rise as your business grows.  But note that many of these costs, though they appear low, are monthly fees.  You can easily find yourself spending upwards of $300 per month to keep a small internet business going.  While that’s nothing like the cost of a MacDonald’s franchise ($250k cash up front to get started), it’s not what I would call nothing.  More realistically, if you figure in good quality training, consulting and coaching, the figure can be upwards of $5k for the first year.  If you go for really high end training and coaching, with lots of individual attention, you could find yourself spending $25k or more.

The Real Costs

To give you a sense of what’s involved, here’s my list.  Let me know if I’ve missed anything. Please note that these are rough, average figures from my personal experience. Your mileage may vary.

1. Nice websites cost money to have built. Expect upwards of $500, and considerably more if the site is complicated.
2. Domain names are typically $10/year.
   Can be more or less depending on added services.
3. Hosting a blog is usually about $10/month, but can be more or a little less.
4. Autoresponder service costs from $15/month upward.
5. Good training costs a lot of money.
   The lowest I know of is Renegade Professional at approximately $50/month for an extensive set of self-study training videos. However, you can spend anywhere from several hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars on training. The low end of this price range gets you self-study materials. The high end gets you lots of individualized attention and coaching. One leading Adwords expert said that he has had years when he spent $30k to $40k on his own education. This figure is not unusual for some of the top trainers, who invest heavily in their own education. Investing in your education is money well spent.
6. It costs money to get traffic to your site.
   Yes, there are ways to get traffic almost free, but the faster you want the traffic to grow, the more you may want to pay. Here’s just a few examples.
   • With Adwords you pay for each click on your ad.
     This can cost anywhere from $500 dollars per month to a few thousand per month depending on how many clicks you request and how much competition there is for your keywords.
   • If you use a service to help you get more Twitter followers, you can pay $6.95 at the low end, to $39.95 per month or more. Incidently, The higher price does not necessarily get you better targeted results.
   • Even if you advertise on Craigslist, it will still cost you money for an automated service to renew the ads every week in all 27 major cities.
   • Press releases cost $80 per release or more.
   • Article submission packages typically start at around $100 for submission of one article to approximately 50-70 well-ranked sites.
7. It costs money to have a shopping cart and merchant account. Expect $34/month or more for the shopping cart.
8. Coaching costs money.
   I know of one program at $25k per year. Another one I’m familiar with runs at $3k. You can get coaching for as little as $25/hour.
9. Split testing ultimately costs money because you’re paying for clicks on the bad ads as well as the ads that end up working. Most ads or sales pages don’t work all that well. But the one ad that does work makes up for it. Finding ads that work for your niche and your population is a trial and error process. Split testing is easy to do with Google Adwords because Google provides great tools that you’re paying for as part of the clicks you’re buying. There may be free ways to do split testing, but doing it well would be enormously difficult.
10. If you use Elance.com or some other service to help you with writing, the cost can be anywhere from $10/hour to $35/hour and up. Even if you’re a good writer, and even a good copywriter, you may want to farm out some of the writing chores to free you up for other tasks.
11. Having your blog or website optimized for the major search engines will cost money unless you do it yourself. Prices vary widely, but are typical of consulting services.

Time vs. Money

One thing I haven’t mentioned is your time. Generally speaking, you can trade time for money with internet marketing. For example, if you can’t afford to hire someone to do Search Engine Optimization for your site, you can do it yourself. I don’t consider this totally free, though. You need to invest time and perhaps money to get training in SEO. Yes, you can find good SEO articles on the web, but you’re still investing your time. It’s always a choice whether you want to spend time or money on any individual item.

The thing to keep in mind is that the more you decide to do yourself, the longer it will take you to reach profitability. Then again, the more you learn to do yourself, the more valuable you’ll be as a coach or consultant. It’ll just take you longer to get there.

Right after joining a nutritional supplement MLM, I dutifully decided to approach my family and friends, my so-called “warm market.” My girl friend’s mother was visiting us from Las Vegas. She was working for a health club in sales. She’s one of their top earners. An ace. I thought for sure she’d be interested. After all, the supplements were pharmaceutical grade, the best in the business, and health was her main interest. But when I approached her, as soon as I mentioned “network marketing” she didn’t want to hear about it. My warm market was suddenly very, very cold. It turns out that she had been involved in several network marketing companies in the past. She poured her heart and soul into them and got very little in return. There was no way she was going to go chasing after prospects ever again.

As it turned out, others in my warm market had similar experiences with MLM’s. All of them bad, and nobody wanted anything to do with another MLM.   Interestingly, it wasn’t about motivation or effort. Many of the people I approached were successfully self-employed, or were top earners in their companies. There was nothing lacking. They all had talent, intelligence and drive.

What’s the problem?

The problem was that all of us network marketers were prospecting people who were not interested.  By prospecting our warm markets, we were spending our time talking to people who were happy enough with their current jobs and health products.  They were not seeking any change.  For them, it was just like when someone comes up to you on the street or comes to your front door and tries to sell you something.  You feel invaded and mistrustful.  Why? Because you didn’t ask to be prospected. You weren’t shopping for whatever they were selling.

When What You’re Doing Isn’t Working, Try Anything Different

Needless to say, I was as uncomfortable with my warm market as they were with me.  So, I decided to leave them alone and try purchasing leads instead.

With purchased leads, I soon discovered that there were similar problems, but this time I was paying for those problems ($2.50 or more per lead).  Usually the ads that pull in these leads are generic.  They usually headline something like “Looking for a Home Business?”  So, even if the prospects are looking for a home business, they’re not necessarily interested in your kind of business or your particular product. They’re slightly better targeted than your warm market, but not much. What’s worse is that the companies who sell you the leads typically sell the same leads to many other network marketers.  So, you often get a very cold response when you call the lead who has probably already been approached a few times.  “What are you calling me for?  I just talked to someone about this.  Leave me alone! Click.”

What’s the Solution?

There are several directions you can go in to put the odds in your favor.

• 1. Fine Tune Your Phone Skills.
  You can find the best source of leads available and use it. Then focus your attention on developing good listening and consultation skills on the phone. You’ll get a higher percentage of leads deciding to join your network. In this regard, the best training by far is Tim Sales’ “Brilliant Communicator” and “Brilliant Inviter” CD sets. Tim Sales has developed the most remarkable listening skills. When you hear his recorded sales calls, you won’t be at all surprised that he built a $22 million network with his approach.
• 2. Use internet marketing to pull in leads.
  For this option, you need to learn how to advertise on the internet. There’s an array of techniques, some involve blogging, some involve social media (e.g. Twitter and Facebook) and others are just straightforward advertising using tools that Google provides. There are trainings (discussed below) that show you how to do internet marketing. It can be used to generate highly targeted and qualified leads. Those who get through your funnel,
  will be the ones interested in your opportunity, so your percentage of closings will be higher.
• 3. Conventional advertising.
  Not a lot of network marketers admit to this, but you can advertise in the traditional media, such as radio, television, magazines and newspapers. I haven’t explored this route so I can’t offer any suggestions.

How to Master Internet Marketing

Here are 3 training systems that I’ve used. They’re each targeted toward slightly different audiences.

• 1. Renegade Professional
  A collection of training videos that you can watch with a monthly subscription. It is quite comprehensive. Over 200 videos cover every aspect of internet marketing. It is especially good for folks who are new to the internet and especially Web 2.0. You can read my comprehensive review of Renegade Professional here.
• 2. Mike Dillard’s eBooks
  These can be bought separately as: Magnetic Sponsoring, Building on a Budget, Traffic Formula 2, PPC Domination, and Black Belt Recruiting. (Note that these are affiliate links.) Dillard’s material is geared more for people who have more experience with computers, the internet and Web 2.0. Because they assume more knowledge, an experienced person can move through them very quickly.
• 3. Perry Marshall’s Adwords book and trainings (not an affiliate link)
  Perry Marshall wrote a wonderful book: “The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords: How to Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes.” If you are willing to pay for advertising, as you were paying for leads, this can be an extremely quick and cost-effective way to get targeted leads. You have to be careful though. When you’re paying every time somebody clicks on your ad, the cost can ad up very quickly. Use this only if you’re going to follow his instructions to the letter.

The Tradeoffs: Internet Marketing vs. Purchased Leads

Mastering internet marketing requires that you enter a whole new world. It’s work and it takes time. Whether it takes a lot of money or a little money depends on the path you take. It can be done very cheaply. It can be done quickly if you’re willing to take the money you were spending on leads and use it in advertising, with Google Adwords for example. If you’re willing to invest more time, you can save this expense.

A question that many people ask is this. “Is it really less work than if I just keep prospecting the way I’ve been doing it?” My answer is that for internet marketing, you have to put in a lot of work up-front to get your advertising infrastructure set up and working. Once it’s running, you’re golden.  Best of all, you won’t need to spend so much time on the phone because the leads in your funnel will be highly qualified and if you set things up right, they’ll be calling you. So, you’re making an investment in yourself by learning a technology that saves you time on the phone in the long run.

If you continue using purchased leads, and you have a 1 to 2 percent conversion rate, you’ll continue to call 50 to 100 people for every one you close (unless you use Tim Sales’ approach which will give you a much higher conversion rate). That’s a lot of calls and a lot of money (100*$2.50=$250). Every new customer is costing you about $125. This is actually an optimistic figure because good leads rarely cost only $2.50 each. What’s worse is that it’s very difficult to find downlines who are willing to sign up for this much work and this much rejection. So, it’s hard to duplicate yourself, which means it’s hard attain the leverage that MLM promises.

On the other hand, if you master internet marketing, you can teach that skill to your downlines. You may even generate enough leads to share with your downlines. So duplication becomes less of a problem.

It is common wisdom that a confirmed opt-in (a.k.a. double opt-in) gives you “better qualified” prospects than a single opt-in.  An article by Daniel Levis explores whether this is indeed true.

Definitions

For those who may be new to internet marketing a confirmed opt–in is when a prospect enters her name and email information on a web site (called an opt-in) and then gets an email asking her to confirm her opting in. She must take the extra step of clicking on a confirmation link within the email before her opt-in is complete. Because she has to take this extra step before she can receive whatever benefit comes from the opt-in  (e.g. a free report, or a subscription to a newsletter, etc.), she is considered to be a stronger prospect.

Surely, this extra confirming step loses some prospects.  The confirmation email can get lost in a spam filter, or the prospect may simply forget or not bother with the extra step.  The critical question is, How many of these lost prospects would ultimately have bought something from the site?

An Experiment

In his article, Daniel Levis reports an experiment he did indicating that significant sales are indeed lost. He ran an ad campaign using Google Website Optimizer that tested two identical looking web pages (squeeze pages). One web page had a single opt-in, while the other web page used a confirmed (or double) opt-in.

Google’s Website Optimizer automatically sent half the traffic to the single opt-in and the other half to the confirmed opt-in for a period of about a year.

The Results

Here are the results.

Double vs. Single Opt-in Conversions

The confirmed opt-in reduced the number of leads collected by 37% or 1842 leads lost during the year. A commenter to the article reported similar findings with an independent, but similar experiment.

Tune In Next Week

But does this really mean that your profits will be less with confirmed opt-ins?  Whether fewer leads means lower profits isn’t conclusively demonstrated by this experiment. However, Daniel Levis will report next week on another experiment aimed at measuring the actual click-thruogh and sales results for these two groups.

UPDATE: Follow-up Experiment Shows Surprising Turnaround

Dan Levis reported a further experiment where he looked at conversions (people who actually bought something) after sending out an offer to those who remained subscribed after a year.  The table below shows the results.

Double vs. Single Opt-in Profitability

When Levis e-mailed the same offer to both lists, the double opt-in list yielded 41% more opens and 46% more clicks.   This suggests that the double opt-ins may be more committed prospects.  Though he did make $773 in sales with the double opt-ins, it appears that this was due to 1 sale (note that there’s only 1 conversion).   One sale is certainly not a statistically significant result.  So, we can’t really conclude anything about profitability from this experiment.   All we can say is that it looks like the double opt-ins, though smaller in number, might be better prospects.

This second set of results was a surprise.  Dan Levis  explains the results as a side effect of the delivery method of the single vs. double opt-in servers.

“Since single opt-in servers send a lot of undeliverable mail (bogus addresses and typos) and spam (subscriptions created by someone other than the recipient), the receiving end servers assign a lower reputation to these sending servers than those that send only deliverable, verified mail (double opt-in servers).”

In other words, many of the single opt-in email offers probably got filtered out as spam.

Do Confirmed Opt-in’s Kill Your Profits?

Nevertheless, Levis concludes that in most cases the double (confirmed) opt-in is preferrable to the single opt-in.  This is especially true if you’re interested in the long term value of each customer.  So, confirmed opt-ins probably don’t kill your profits, but a bigger experiment is needed to be sure.

If you doubt that developing your copywriting skills is the single most important thing you can do for your business (and maybe your life), please listen to this interview of David Garfinkel by Ann Sieg.  David Garfinkel is perhaps the leading copywriting coach and mentor.  Click here to listen to the interview.

Last year Ann hired David to train herself and several members of her team.   More recently the launch of the Renegade Professional trainings generated over $1.1 million in sales in 72 hours.  Ann attributes this success to Garfinkel’s coaching.

Not About Money

I didn’t grasp the significance of copywriting to the whole picture until I heard this interview.   During the interview Garfinkel takes an unexpected perspective.

“Copywriting is not all about money. Copywriting is inspiring people to take action.”

Building on this point he remarks that “The practise of copywriting helps people become much more effective communicators.”  The reason is that good copywriting necessitates putting your audience first.  You imagine yourself in their position and you write from it.   You use their language and acknowledge their concerns and feelings.  To Garfinkel, copywriting is the skill of communication in its highest form.  Indeed, he gave the Preamble to the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as prime examples of this skill.

An Empowering Skill

There are many benefits to having copywriting skill beyond marketing.   For many, learning copywriting is empowering.  Ann indicated that communications among her staff improved because of this skill.  Once you adopt the “copywriting mindset” you treat every communication as important.  It’s about understanding what your audience is thinking and then finding the simplest way to get your point across to them.

A Dangerous Skill

This is a dangerous skill to have.  There are certainly those who abuse it. And that may be why selling can be so distasteful to many of us.  However, we all have the choice to use it responsibly and ethically. When used correctly, copywriting is about identifying the people who are interested in what you have, and giving them an invitation to it. When used properly, there’s nothing manipulative about it.

Ann Siegs Comments

Here are some of Ann’s comments about the interview from a promotional email.

“This interview is as much of a mental transformation
about the way money is made as it is about producing
short term results.

We get into some heavy-duty subjects like…

-Is sales EVIL?

-How does making money tie in with serving people?

-How you can apply our million dollar launch
strategies to your entire downline

-The most powerful form of copywriting EVER (hint: the
United States Government uses it)

-Plus, you’ll even get to hear David critique me!

The interview is absolutely free.”    Ann Sieg

Here’s the link to the Garfinkel interview again:
http://renegadeproblog.com/wealthexperiment/

Conclusion

Listening to the interview, I felt that what I was hearing was in sync with my own values.  Hearing the emphasis on service, ethics and responsibility was refreshing.  I’ve spent many years working for corporations where business practices, though considered normal for the US, were at times not only unethical, but downright abusive.  It’s a welcome relief to find a training program, and an occupation where my own values are not only appreciated, but taken to heart and acted upon.

• 1. Blogging is one of the easiest ways to establish a presence on the web. Blogs can be used to:
  • Generate leads, and direct traffic to your lead capture pages.
  • Provide cash flow, via affiliate sites or direct product sales.
  • Establish you as a professional.
  • Support your team or downlines by providing them with training and information they need.
• 2. A blog can be surprisingly cheap to setup and maintain.
  • You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a web designer for a blog. You can set everything up yourself. Really.
  • Blog hosting can cost as little as $6 to $10/month. On Hostgator, $10/month will get you an unlimited number of Wordpress blogs. For those who get really into it!
• 3. Blogs can also be quick to setup.
  • On squarespace.com, for example, you can design the blog yourself with their easy-to-use visual tool. If you can move things around with a mouse, you can design your blog. You can be up and running in an hour or two even if you are a computer newbie.
  • If you are open to a few hours of video instruction, you can set up your blog with Wordpress. This requires a little more time than using squarespace.com, but if you’re more technically inclined, it can give you more design options.
  • There are thousands of free “themes” available to pick from. A “theme” captures the “look and feel” of a blog. In includes the layout, the colors, the fonts, and everything about the visual appearance. You can buy a custom theme if you want, but it’s not necessary. See wordpress.org for a catalog of free themes. You can even change themes after the blog is up and running.
  • With just a little bit of instruction, you can set up and maintain a blog yourself, even if you’ve had little or no web experience. Renegade Professional, for example, has excellent, in-depth, click-by-click video training for creating a blog with Wordpress or SquareSpace.
• 4. There are (free) plugins for Wordpress blogs that make SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and auto tagging (picking significant keywords out of your text) very light work. Squarespace has similar tools.
• 5. There are (free) plugins for Wordpress blogs that let you monitor traffic coming to your blog. You can see how many readers you have for each post on a day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, etc. basis. Squarespace has this feature as well.
• 6. Blog structure is perfect for linking between blog posts and static web pages that are also part of the blog. These links can increase your rank with Google making your site easier for prospects to find.
• 7. The blog can be the hub of your internet marketing or network marketing campaign.
  • Google Adwords campaigns, twitter tweets, Craigslist ads, Google searches, squido content and more can all drive traffic to your blog.
  • Blog structure (including sidebars and static pages) is great for affliate marketing. Once traffic arrives, it can click-through and buy from your blog.
  • You can also have autoresponders and shopping carts in conjunction with your blog.
• 8. Blogs are a popular form of communication because the articles, called ‘posts’, are short. So they are accessible to readers (and writers) with small amounts of available time. To see the potential for reaching a large audience, please read the newsletter from Ann Sieg below.

In a recent mailing, Ann Sieg wrote:

Blogs have become “mainstream media.”

According to a recent study by Synovate and
Marketing Daily, nearly 40% of Americans
have visited a blog in the past year.

With the total U.S. population hovering
around 307,000,000 people…

That’s roughly 122,800,000 people!

——————————————
And These Numbers Aren’t Even Counting
The Other 193 Countries Of The World!
——————————————

Pretty mind-boggling, huh?

If you don’t have your own blog set-up and
positioned where these people can see it…

Don’t worry, you haven’t missed out!

According to eMarketer, in 2009 an estimated
96.6 million U.S. internet users will visit
(and read from) blogs at least once a month.

I’m not talking “once a year” like my
first example, this is once EVERY MONTH!

But wait until you hear this.

By the year 2013, eMarketer predicts that
128.2 million people, or…

——————————————
Over Half Of All U.S. Internet Users Will
Be Reading Blogs At Least Once A Month!
——————————————

Which means one thing.

There’s still time for YOU to build one
and cash in on this out-of-control trend.

(Even if you’re not sure how to do it.)

Our one-of-a-kind video tutorials inside
Renegade Professional will show you how.

Click-by-click, one click at a time.

So you’ll never be left wondering…
“What should I do next?”

Here’s where you can register right now.

Access Renegade Professional training here.

Just in case you didn’t know, you’ll find 28
blogging tutorials in our training program
where we cover everything from A to Z.

(That’s over 14 hours of blog instruction!)

Plus, a brand-new 70-minute webinar…

——————————————
“How To Set Your Content Viral In
Social Networks Using A Wordpress Blog”
——————————————

Was recently added late last week!

In it, blogging expert Stephen Anderson
reveals a free “traffic-getting” strategy.

How to deliver your content to ALL the
social media sites — in one simple step!

(Which will result in a reliable flow of
qualified prospects checking out your blog.

But here’s the really cool part.

Stephen illustrates this advanced traffic
strategy using an interactive mind map.

——————————————
So You’ll Get A Birds-Eye
View On How It All Works!
——————————————

If you want to learn the secret to getting
potential customers and business-builders
to not only visit your blog repeatedly…

But also…

-But your stuff

-Request more information

-Fill out your lead-capture form

-Become members of your team or downline

Then I would encourage you to register
for Renegade Professional right now.

Access Renegade Professional training here.

You can “test-drive” it free for 30 days.

——————————————
During This Time You Can Consume
Every Morsel Of Training In The Site!
——————————————

Nothing is off limits.

If you decide it isn’t right for you
simply send me an email and I’ll gladly
refund all your money –- no hard feelings!

And if you decide to stay in, there’s no
“long-term commitment” whatsoever.

You can cancel your membership at any
point in time and still owe nothing.

Are you ready to get started?

Good!

Click the link below to register.

Access Renegade Professional training here.

To Your Success,

Ann Sieg

P.S. Want to know the biggest obstacle
that stops people from using a blog?

They know what to put on it!

Maybe you’ve already tried blogging…

Only to give up a few weeks later because
you ran out of stuff to write about.

——————————————
Maybe Your Brain Shrivels
Up Into A Little Ball
——————————————

When you try thinking of something
compelling to put down on paper.

Maybe you experience dreaded “writer’s block”
every time you open Microsoft Word and try
putting together a few basic sentences.

If you’re thinking to yourself…

“Yeah, that sounds exactly like me Ann!”

——————————————
You’re Going To Love The 6-Part
“Writing With Pull” Series
——————————————

(Which is yours for free when you
sample Renegade Professional today.)

Because Mike Klingler’s going to hold
your hand and walk you through a simple
process that makes writing fun and easy!

You’ll learn how to put together content
(for your website and blog) that your
prospects will become addicted to.

Stuff they want to read about!

You’ll also learn how to brainstorm long
lists of attractive topics to write on.

Issues related to your specific products
and business opportunity…

——————————————
That Will Naturally Cause The
Right Kinds Of People To Find You!
——————————————

I’m telling you it’s powerful stuff.

And again, this entire 6-part series is
yours for free when you give Renegade
Professional a “test drive” today.

Ann Sieg