Keeping A List Going?

9 replies
So I have never done email marketing before and am new to pretty much the whole idea of it. So apologies if these are very basic questions.

1) How do you keep a list going on a continuous basis?

You drive traffic to your site, you collect emails, run the campaign. At the end of the campaign, is the only way to keep a list going is to be constantly pumping out new articles every other day or so? Because I can't understand how else you would be able to constantly send emails if you werent actively pumping out articles to then link to.

TBH I'd rather make a small blog with only a few really good articles from time to time, than have to constantly be pumping out mediocrity or forcing out stuff just so I can keep emailing people.

But can you still make good money if after your first campaign you only email people like once or twice a month when you write something really good? Or do they forget about you this way?


2) How do you promote multiple products?

Since trust sells, you would only want to promote the very best, say, ebook in that niche. Once you promote that though what else is there really to offer besides something similar but sub-par or not as good as the first ebook?

For the sake of total continuity between campaign and product I am even considering making my own product but still the question is the same.

I know you could promote other products to supplement the ebook like a physical one; but typically those almost always boast low commissions and aren't worth the time I'd say.

Say like your site is about building biceps. You promote an awesome ebook (in fact the best one) for building the best biceps for a nice $30 commission. After you push that you then maybe later push a set of dumbells from amazon netting you a low 7$ commission.

What else is there to really sell next besides something sub-par like an alternative bicep program that isnt as good; or something else not needed like some fad supplement from amazon that boasts another low commission, as well as proably tarnishes your trust becuase its not really essential.
#campaign #continuity #email #keeping #list #marketing
  • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
    1) You don't need to constantly pump out mediocre content for the sole purpose of sending out emails announcing the link. Your instinct is right; you are much better off posting better content less frequently.

    2) You may need a little attitude adjustment on this one.

    First off, you seem to be fixating on the amounts of individual commissions. Better to focus on the "lifetime value of a customer."

    If Joe Blow buys your biceps ebook ($30), a piece of equipment ($7) and a supplement ($7) before dropping off your list, his real value to you would be $30+$7+$7=$44. Since customer acquisition is the major expense for many businesses, once you have a buyer in your funnel, the additional sales are gravy that adds to the LTV.

    Also, while you may be convinced that one product is the ultimate resource for something, not everyone will agree. While I'm with you on the notion of not promoting inferior products, is it possible there are products that simply take a different approach? Even professionals go stale with one routine and change it up, both for variety and to restart progress after plateauing.

    Just like there is room on the shelf for more than one cookbook, there should be room for more than one workout regimen.

    Last thing, I promise. Do you think people interested in building biceps might also be interested in building triceps, lats, pecs and, dare I say it, abs? Once they know that you know your stuff and recommend only good things, you should be able to move a percentage of your 'biceps' list to additional segments. And every purchase they make adds to their Lifetime Value.
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  • Profile picture of the author discrat
    Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

    Say like your site is about building biceps. You promote an awesome ebook (in fact the best one) for building the best biceps for a nice $30 commission. After you push that you then maybe later push a set of dumbells from amazon netting you a low 7$ commission.

    What else is there to really sell next besides something sub-par like an alternative bicep program that isnt as good; or something else not needed like some fad supplement from amazon that boasts another low commission, as well as proably tarnishes your trust becuase its not really essential.
    Are you kidding ? I have been working out with free weights for over 35 years. There is tons of other things you can sell people who initially were looking to just get big biceps.

    My gosh, who wants to have HUGE biceps but have small quads, lats, traps,pecs etc....etc... ?

    Plus, you can cross sell niches easily.

    I know when I started to get big biceps back in the 80s I was looking on how to communicate better with the opposite sex. because I was starting to attract women more and more with my bigger biceps and triceps and a bigger chest.

    It is a trickle down effect and this product can lead to totally new products outside of this Niche that your customers will be interested in




    - Robert Andrew
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

    is the only way to keep a list going is to be constantly pumping out new articles every other day or so?
    No; not at all.

    I tend to write to or three articles per month, for each niche in which I'm an affiliate. I use the articles as my primary traffic-generation method. I also re-use their content (with a little editing) to add emails on to my automated email series which are sent out to subscribers. One article typically makes two emails. I send email every five days, so three articles per month produces the six emails per month I need. It just works out nicely for me (as long as I actually manage to write three articles, that is: some months I only manage two, to be honest, but it doesn't seem to matter, much ).

    "Every other day" would be far too often for me. If I try to do that, my open-rates and income both decline. (I've tested.)

    Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

    But can you still make good money if after your first campaign you only email people like once or twice a month when you write something really good? Or do they forget about you this way?
    I don't know, and the only reliable answer for you is going to be the one you arrive at from your own testing, probably.

    For me, I suspect once or twice per month might not be quite enough to keep people interested. But I haven't actually tried it, because as long as I write two or three articles per month, I always have more content available than that, anyway.

    Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

    2) How do you promote multiple products?
    (As so often) I can't really add anything helpful, at all, to what John and Robert have already said, above.

    .
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    • Profile picture of the author AffiliatingAlan
      Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

      1) You don't need to constantly pump out mediocre content for the sole purpose of sending out emails announcing the link. Your instinct is right; you are much better off posting better content less frequently.

      2) You may need a little attitude adjustment on this one.

      First off, you seem to be fixating on the amounts of individual commissions. Better to focus on the "lifetime value of a customer."

      If Joe Blow buys your biceps ebook ($30), a piece of equipment ($7) and a supplement ($7) before dropping off your list, his real value to you would be $30+$7+$7=$44. Since customer acquisition is the major expense for many businesses, once you have a buyer in your funnel, the additional sales are gravy that adds to the LTV.

      Also, while you may be convinced that one product is the ultimate resource for something, not everyone will agree. While I'm with you on the notion of not promoting inferior products, is it possible there are products that simply take a different approach? Even professionals go stale with one routine and change it up, both for variety and to restart progress after plateauing.

      Just like there is room on the shelf for more than one cookbook, there should be room for more than one workout regimen.

      Last thing, I promise. Do you think people interested in building biceps might also be interested in building triceps, lats, pecs and, dare I say it, abs? Once they know that you know your stuff and recommend only good things, you should be able to move a percentage of your 'biceps' list to additional segments. And every purchase they make adds to their Lifetime Value.
      Yea I see your point. This is a good way to look at it. I suppose I wasn't really thinking about cost per customer because my initial traffic sources would be free rather than something like PPC where that is more imperative to know. Rather I was thinking how best to squeeze the most money from a list of say 20,000 people either short term to bank hard or long term to continuously profit.

      Originally Posted by discrat View Post

      Are you kidding ? I have been working out with free weights for over 35 years. There is tons of other things you can sell people who initially were looking to just get big biceps.

      My gosh, who wants to have HUGE biceps but have small quads, lats, traps,pecs etc....etc... ?

      Plus, you can cross sell niches easily.

      I know when I started to get big biceps back in the 80s I was looking on how to communicate better with the opposite sex. because I was starting to attract women more and more with my bigger biceps and triceps and a bigger chest.

      It is a trickle down effect and this product can lead to totally new products outside of this Niche that your customers will be interested in




      - Robert Andrew
      Yea the bicep thing was an example. Obviously biceps are extremely scaleable. Though I do see your point and agree.

      Originally Posted by Alexa Smith View Post

      No; not at all.

      I tend to write to or three articles per month, for each niche in which I'm an affiliate. I use the articles as my primary traffic-generation method. I also re-use their content (with a little editing) to add emails on to my automated email series which are sent out to subscribers. One article typically makes two emails. I send email every five days, so three articles per month produces the six emails per month I need. It just works out nicely for me (as long as I actually manage to write three articles, that is: some months I only manage two, to be honest, but it doesn't seem to matter, much ).
      Have you found reason for it to be better to email the contents of the article (or half the contents in your case) through email, rather than writing a brief introductory intro to the article in the email and then linking them to the full article which would be on your site? I figured linking to the site was preferable since it has better readability + pictures, rather than an email client which is just a raw text box, but I know everything you do has good reason so I ask lol.

      I was also wondering since I am only now familiar with article syndication via your posts.

      And I know you couldn't care less about this most likely; but have you ever ran into the issue of one of your articles being used by a "syndicator" (if thats the right word for them) where their sites post of your article outranked yours (the original -- your site) in the serps?

      I looked into this and my suspicions were correct:

      Originally Posted by External Resource

      “If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.”

      All else being equal, Google will usually display the article that was published first – your original. However, in the case that the syndicating site is a more authoritative site (more backlinks, older, etc), which is often the case, it may rank the syndicated copy higher than your original copy.
      I'm sure thats just the risk and cost of doing business for you. But that definitely would suck if someone else ended up ranking for a highly searched term using your article.Simply because all of that link juice could help the overall authority and rankability of any future articles for you in google.
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      • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
        Banned
        Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

        I wasn't really thinking about cost per customer because my initial traffic sources would be free
        Subscriber acquisition-cost is one of the key metrics, even if (like me) you don't pay for targeted traffic with money: you're still paying with your time, energy, effort and business-building skills, not to mention with opportunity-cost, and those are all directly or indirectly monetizable parameters.

        Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

        Have you found reason for it to be better to email the contents of the article (or half the contents in your case) through email, rather than writing a brief introductory intro to the article in the email and then linking them to the full article which would be on your site?
        Yes, very much so.

        It's partly about traffic demographics and continuity. People who were originally attracted by a "full-length article" tend to like "full-length emails", too. It shows in their open-rates and attention-rates.

        It's much easier, if you send them a "brief introductory intro" and a link to the rest on your site, for them to get into the frame of mind of thinking "Oh well, these emails are just notifying me of site updates - I can look at the site whenever I want", and that significantly devalues the whole process.

        (It's good to include some links to your site, as well, though: it helps to keep people clicking your links and finding something they like: and it pays off when you send a promotional link.)

        Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

        I figured linking to the site was preferable since it has better readability + pictures
        You can try/test it, if you want, of course ... but my experience points firmly in the opposite direction.

        Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

        have you ever ran into the issue of one of your articles being used by a "syndicator" (if thats the right word for them) where their sites post of your article outranked yours (the original -- your site) in the serps?
        I don't normally check, but I'm sure I have, in the past, perhaps especially temporarily when my site's been new and theirs well established, but who cares? Google could de-index all my sites this afternoon and it would take away only about 2% of my income. I'm far more interested in the other 98%!

        In the long run, though, that tends not to matter, even in SEO terms, as long as you gradually accumulate the initial indexations on your own site, which is of course one of the reasons for always publishing all your articles there before offering them to anyone else.

        Part of the attraction of article marketing is that it isn't SEO-based, and transcends all that, for the reasons explained here.

        Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

        that definitely would suck if someone else ended up ranking for a highly searched term using your article.
        Nope - not so, at all. It doesn't matter in the slightest. To me, anyway. (All that can ever affect - and this only temporarily - is a little bit of the hardest-to-monetize, least-relevant, least-important traffic you'll ever have.)

        Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

        Simply because all of that link juice could help the overall authority and rankability of any future articles for you in google.
        I suspect that you're not quite appreciating the long-term SEO-significance of collectively acquiring all the initial indexations, but these SEO considerations really have very little to do with article marketing, anyway. It's true that successful article marketing can bring you floods of search-engine traffic, but when you look at how very hard that is to monetize, compared with direct article marketing traffic, you'll soon probably stop letting Google run your business by influencing everything you think about and all the decisions you make.

        .
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

          And I know you couldn't care less about this most likely; but have you ever ran into the issue of one of your articles being used by a "syndicator" (if thats the right word for them) where their sites post of your article outranked yours (the original -- your site) in the serps?

          I looked into this and my suspicions were correct:



          I'm sure thats just the risk and cost of doing business for you. But that definitely would suck if someone else ended up ranking for a highly searched term using your article.Simply because all of that link juice could help the overall authority and rankability of any future articles for you in google.
          What does Google have to do with anything?

          The name of the game when syndicating content is eyeballs - real, human eyeballs with real, human zombie food behind them.

          I'm fine with people discovering my content on my site, mainly because I'm a bit of a control freak and I can better control the user experience on my own site.

          I'm also fine if people find my content on another site, especially if the other publisher adds their own introduction and conclusion. It serves as validation and tacit recommendation from the publisher.

          It's kind of like the old bit about "you can call me anything you like, as long as it isn't 'late for lunch'."
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          • Profile picture of the author AffiliatingAlan
            Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

            What does Google have to do with anything?
            I understand Google is not the prime directive when using article syndication or similar methods.

            However, it is still a factor worth weighing in for me on the off chance natural links are or could be aquired to said articles and achieve ranking.

            The fact of the matter is regardless of how much you de-value SE traffic it is still valuable and highly profitable. Maybe less so pound for pound for you but it still has its merits.

            There will always be people voicing their questions, problems, and crisis concerns by entering a query into google -- and its another chance to capitalize.

            There are people banking 30k+ per month affiliate marketing solely from SE traffic; albeit most likely not from information queries but still I think it only makes sense to have your eggs in as many baskets as possible.
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            • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
              Banned
              Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

              it is still a factor worth weighing in for me on the off chance natural links are or could be aquired to said articles and achieve ranking.
              You're going to think I sound "harsh" or "critical" or "uncompromising", none of which is my intention at all, but I think you'd probably be entering article marketing with the deck stacked against you, Alan, if you try it with this belief.

              Long (and sometimes uncomfortable) experience of advising people "how to do article marketing" has led me to the expectation that if you approach it from a perspective of "achieving ranking", it isn't going to work out for you, and given what a big learning-curve it has, in my opinion other methods of traffic-generation are very likely, in the long run, to work out better for you.

              Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

              The fact of the matter is regardless of how much you de-value SE traffic it is still valuable and highly profitable.
              Not really my experience. And that's experience that's come from making a living, over many years and in many different niches, including assessing floods of "article marketing traffic" and all the coincidental "search engine traffic" I happen to get as well. On a "visitor for visitor" basis, search engine traffic has less than 10% of the value to me, overall, that article marketing traffic has.

              But here's the main point: writing for search engines will, in reality, seriously reduce your ability to get your articles published in the places you need to get them published, in order for article marketing to be a successful avenue for you. I've seen so many people "get this wrong" that I'm gradually becoming a little less reserved about saying it as openly as that.

              Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

              There will always be people voicing their questions, problems, and crisis concerns by entering a query into google -- and its another chance to capitalize.
              A very small one, to "capitalize" a very little bit (by comparison) and in reality almost always at the expense of losing far better opportunities.

              Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

              I think it only makes sense to have your eggs in as many baskets as possible.
              It's a nice-sounding principle, and one's instincts are perhaps to think "well, nobody should try to argue with that", if you word it that way. But it's actually misleading: the reality is that one sometimes has to make choices, and the way one makes them sometimes tends to impact negatively on some aspects of one's business.

              When - as in this case - those potentially negatively impacted aspects are the most highly monetizable ones, in my opinion that's a fairly sure sign that this is one of the times that "both" is actually the wrong answer. Realistically, this isn't about doing something well, and trying to combine it with a little bit of something else as well, at the same time: it's about doing something important significantly less well and less profitably because you're also trying to combine it with a little bit of something else as well, at the same time.

              Article marketing isn't about "how the articles rank". It's about where you can get them published. If you imagine that you can make them rank well without detracting from their chances of being successfully published, well ... you're a better writer than I am.

              Just my perspective.

              .
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              • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
                Originally Posted by AffiliatingAlan View Post

                I understand Google is not the prime directive when using article syndication or similar methods.

                However, it is still a factor worth weighing in for me on the off chance natural links are or could be acquired to said articles and achieve ranking.

                The fact of the matter is regardless of how much you de-value SE traffic it is still valuable and highly profitable. Maybe less so pound for pound for you but it still has its merits.

                There will always be people voicing their questions, problems, and crisis concerns by entering a query into google -- and its another chance to capitalize.

                There are people banking 30k+ per month affiliate marketing solely from SE traffic; albeit most likely not from information queries but still I think it only makes sense to have your eggs in as many baskets as possible.
                You're missing the point. I'm not ignoring or devaluing SE traffic intentionally.

                But any ranking benefit you might get from proper article syndication is a side effect, not an intention.

                Back when I paid more attention to trying to rank for various keywords, studying my server logs showed that the majority of my search traffic came for searches I was not trying to optimize for. And most of that came for keywords I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to rank for.

                My point is, if you're going to use article syndication, do it to serve publishers and their readers, and take any search benefit as a happy side effect.
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