Why I 92% of My List...

LOL - I goofed up the title. It should read "Why I Dumped 92% of My List..."

There seems to be an age-old question on what's better - a super-huge list with a ton of members, or a smaller (but more responsive) list? Well, here are my results.

I can get into more specifics later on if anybody so desires, but here's the long and short of it all.

My list size was growing pretty well (my site actually ranks top 3 in google for a few of my KW and gets decent traffic). However, I was under the impression that the niche my site is in (non-IM) was full of "tire-kickers", so I had to determine just how many people were actually serious about spending $$. It's not that I don't wanna help people, b/c I really do (and I really go outta my way to), but in the end, if I can't put food on the table, then there's no point in it.

I gave my list a choice - to keep receiving my emails, they had to join a new "poser-free" list (and there was a whole story as to why I called it that). To do this, they had to purchase a lifetime subscription - for $1.

Why just $1? B/c I didn't want to make money from this whole deal. I wanted to see who was serious. Spending $1 still means going through the effort of pulling out the credit card and plunking down some $$. And if you're not willing to spend a buck, chances are you're never gonna spend anything. If they had purchased products from me in the past, they could contact me and be automatically "grandfathered" in (as they've already proven that they're willing to spend $$, and a good majority of my customers are repeat customers).

Upon joining the "poser-free" list, you got a valuable freebie with usable info.

Inside the freebie .pdf file, there was a call to action / link to go to my site and buy the "full-version" of the freebie for just $7. Once they got to the order page, there was an upsell to add 2 of my products (real stuff I sell everyday - not "bonuses" I created just for this deal) for a total of $36.95.

Results:

My new "poser-free" list is just under 8% of the size of my original list. I literally lost over 2k members.

However, between the offer in the .pdf file and the upsell, my total conversion was over 16%

Here's the other thing though - I'm still sending emails (with truncated newsletters) to the "original list" (until it's time to re-up w/Aweber for the month that is - LOL) and complete newsletters to the "poser-free" list. Save for maybe 1-2 emails, all the response/feedback I've received on said newsletters has been from my 'poser-free' list.

I've also had a ton of feedback on my freebie from those that have downloaded, and purchased the full version of it. Enough so that I'm creating a quick & dirty continuity program that I expect most of my 16% to jump on, and can continue to sell.

In addition, I've been asked by members of my "poser-free" list for enough things that I've got my next two products mapped out already, and should be getting them both out w/in the next 2 months.

So those are my results. Yours might vary, esp depending on the niche, but I've found that literally in a matter of weeks I've been able to be more productive, know more about what my list wants, know what products to sell them, and dump a bunch of time-wasting tire kickers off my list.

For me, it's small and responsive list all the way.