The Ryan Deiss Method

From your post you linked to:

I'm not quite sure what to make of this comment. You are obviously proud of it, and linked back to it, but all you are doing is calling a couple dudes who have made millions from IM stupid and laughable. Well, actually, you are calling A LOT, PROBABLY THE MAJORITY, of IMers and Warrior Forum members, operators of 'stupid & laughable' efforts, better suited to selling used furniture.

No offense, but I am sure those two dudes would laugh at your income from email marketing and say the same thing to you. Unless you yourself have made millions of dollars via email marketing, but I doubt you have ...

I'm sure someone like Kern would look at the bottom line of your excellently written (for you are a quite talented writer) email/article/affiliate business, the bottom line being your net annual profits, and laugh at you. And when you looked them in the eye and told them their methods are 'stupid', their open rates 'laughable', and they should go find some other way to make money, like selling used furniture, they would do the 'ol ROFLMAO at you.

A couple times, at least.

They obviously have a DIFFERENT business model than yours, and to suggest it 'stupid' or 'laughable' due to their open rates is awfully pretentious and making an evaluation of their business off of very, very incomplete data, dontcha think? In fact, the simple evaluation of an open rate IS NOT something you can extrapolate out to the conclusions you make.

Especially when the amount they make from their 'stupid, laughable' open rates is what it is.

Telling people who have made millions from email marketing that their model is stupid and laughable and suggest they should find some other means of making a living, is, well, stupid and laughable, Ms. Smith.

But, who knows. Maybe we should all listen to you and hang on your every word (like you have most doing). Maybe you rake in 1 million a year. Or a million per month. Who knows. None of us here do, for even though you are probably the member (at least currently) who posts the most often as well as self-promoting your posts, you are also about the absolutely most vague 'expert' on the Warrior Forum, that really only seems to know email/article marketing and has a penchant for linking to your own posts. And what you relate about all of that stuff is pretty much common knowledge (for non-newbies), anyway.

I personally would have problems sleeping at night selling the kinds of things Kern has - he is a dream peddler, like many gurus, making his money off of selling his 'methods' versus actually implementing them in areas other than 'get rich with da Net with no work' niche. It is, like much of the Health/Self Help niche, very predatory, cheesy, and although not illegal, unethical. So I am not rushing to Kern's defense. MOST of this IM guru stuff is not a ponzi scheme, but it is an enclosed loop, a closed circuit, compared to many other markets, and has some different rules. Porn is another one with the 'Internet Business Model' that has its own rules that you could not apply to other things, due to what it is. So is 'Self-Help' stuff. Like selling lies about how guys can make their wee-wees grow, or how to 'grow taller', how to get laid at the nightclub, etc. Selling stuff that people would be too embarrassed to say didn't work and they wanted their money back.

I agree, in part, with your comments and view about open rates, but suggesting that Kern's, et al, methods are laughable and suck and they should go find another 'job' to do is, well, ...

Unless you are just trying to tell us, again, with no real evidence, how awesome you are at email/affiliate marketing and know everything that works and everything that doesn't.

Further, those open rates are not directly (and only) related to the quality of the email series, etc. There are plenty of people, like me, who have subscribed to lists to get the 'freebie' and then proceeded to never open a single email after that, without regard to what kind of 'relationship' they were trying to build with me.

And when I subscribed, I knew full well I wasn't interested in their email followups. Let's not forget that all of these freebies, many of them rehashed PLR, promise to be 'awesome, time saving, Top 10 things to do or not do', etc. Most of the time, it is curiosity to see the feebie, not really wanting the freebie. The point being, certainly in the MMO niche, I think a marketer should EXPECT the majority of the emails to be unopened.

Nor should you expect equal open rates across all markets and niches. In that thread you linked to, you talk as if all markets and lists are the same and should have the same things expected of them.

What do you think the open rate of direct mail campaigns is? For me it is 0%, as I throw 'junk mail' in the trash without even reading it, as most do. But, even if MOST do not respond to a direct mailer, I am not going to laugh at or call snail mail marketers stupid, laughable, or in need of a career change, for there are quite a few that have made themselves millionaires with 80%, or higher, un-open rates.

It is a business model where they EXPECT most people to not respond to their call to action, or even read their call to action. It is a numbers game; and not open rate numbers. It is an ROI numbers game. Not the open rate numbers game you suggest it is.

If you added up all of the money made over the last 20 years from email campaigns who's open rates never exceeded 20%, well, I don't even know how many millions of dollars that would be, but it would be a lot of them.

There would be a lot less rich people in this world if they followed your marketing advice concerning acceptable open rates and what rates are stupid, laughable and a waste of time ...

Not trying to be a jerk to you here, but saying things like you did in that post, and then linking to it a year later (showing us all how right you think you are) can be a bit 'jerky'. Did you think about how many people on this forum you just told have 'stupid & laughable' email series because they have 20% or less open rates? That they suck and should just give up and go sell used furniture?

You insulted quite a few people, some who, no doubt, make more money than you, some who might be stoked because their open rate is on the rise and getting close to 20%, etc., so I just wanted to point that out, 'cause you have 'branded' yourself on this site as an expert, nay THE expert, on all things article/email marketing related.

And that branding is because you are a talented writer, not for any tangible evidence supporting your know-it-all demeanor concerning the subject. And because you are, apparently and supposedly, a 'hot girl' in her 20's. Are you a talented IMer, so much so to be laughing at people with 20% open rates and calling those rates stupid and indicative of a needed career change WITHOUT CONSIDERING OTHER ASPECTS OF THE CAMPAIGN OR MARKET? I doubt it.

Who knows, though, for the ONLY thing anyone can determine about you is that you are a talented writer who spends more time than anyone else posting on the WF.

And again, I am not being insulting here, for it is not I running around calling people stupid and wasting their time and efforts with email marketing - you are. Dress it up in a fake identity, err, 'pen name' with some random avatar pictures of brunette chicks lifted from the web, and apparently those insults are okay, completely overlooked, and Thanked.

* I made some generalizations about some niches in this post. They are generalizations, and I stand by them, but I don't think them conclusive about all IMers involved in certain niches. *