How is the money in the list when it is an unresponsive list?

Try more persuasive subjects. If you subscribe to a couple of lists (you'll find many available among the free WSOs), you'll see what kind of subjects do they use.

I would think you could write to them about anything fitness related. Which could even include diet.

Its just a numbers game.

For example, in the "make money niche" a 10% open rate is considered high, so if you have a 278 opt-ins your only looking at around 27-30 opens per mailing.

Build your list to 2,078 people, that same 10% open rate is now 270-300 opens per mailing.

See what I'm saying?

Also, other than that you need to "build a relationship" with your list. Offer them value, be HUMAN, give your mailings a personal touch. These will also help open rates as generally when your list warms up to you, your open rate will rise dramatically.

It's early days, Nathan. You have to have a plan in place before you build out your list any further. There's not much point adding any more people to your list right now until you have a specific strategy in place. If long distance running is a passion of yours, then you just have to get that passion across to your list and build a connection. It's easier to build relationships with like minded people if you're genuinely both passionate about the same things.

Unfortunately what happens more often than not, is marketers selling in a market they know very little about, so you already have an advantage in that department. However, I doubt too many affiliates are pushing long distance running products. Whether that's an advantage to you or not depends on your angle. Usually if there's no ads on Google for a niche, there's a good reason for that (no money to be made)

I know nothing about this niche, but you must do your due diligence and find out if it's really worth your time pursuing a market with very small scope for cross promotions other than clothing. Again, do your research.

As for building relationships, just learn how to tell stories with emotional triggers within your messages. Talk to one person with everything you write. Create an ideal customer in your mind and just talk to that person only. Be a "real" bloody person who wants to help your ideal customer reach his/her goals. You already have the knowledge since you are a long distance runner yourself. Build out a stellar autoresonder series of at least a months worth of content. Take your time with it. See what messages work best and change the ones that are crap.

With 278 subs at the moment, it's now that you want to sit down and think long and hard about your overall approach. Email marketing is a business in and of itself. You MUST take it seriously. It's not one aspect of your business - it is your business.

It is all about giving great value to your list and becoming someone that they can trust. And of course, to do that, they have to open the email to start with. Try and think of some amazing subject lines that would make them sit up and take notice. What would most interest you if you were interested in running and receiving email from a runner?

You need to work on your personal branding so people know who you are and why they should listen to you (i.e. open your emails).

You need to write more captivating subject lines to get them reading.

You need to make your giveaway (assuming they get one when they opt in) better so when they read it they want to open everything else that you send them.

You need to build a better relationship with them so they trust you, get excited when you send them something and want to open.

Build a relationship up with them dude!! You need to start giving them some information which they can use for their training...

Recently there has been studies done by Oxford, British Medical Journal and Independents about the affects of supplements, sports drinks, certain trainers have no improved affect on running ability and some others stuff... Heres the news story, I'm sure you could find the published journal if you actually looked for it (Search the doctors name). BBC News - 'Lack of evidence' that popular sports products work

Not everything you send them has to be products, it can be hard facts about the body. Plenty of scientific research right now debunking common beliefs to do with exercise, go out and find them.

50% open rate is not bad at all. 278 is just a very small list. However you can build a relationship with them. Dont forget the 95-5 rule. Give them 95% value and 5% sales pitch. So basically send them valuable emails, free stuff, tips, info etc 95% of the time and every once in a while throw in an affiliate offer. When your giving lots of value people will open your emails. When your just pitching them products all the time people are going to ignore you.

When you send out an email to the list, you will want to resend another email to those people that did not open your email. This will help to getting more people to open up the email.

When you do this consistently over a period of time, you will be making your list more responsive. For the running niche, I feel that there are lots of content that you can send to your list like dieting, how to do proper training, running equipments and others.

There are tons of content in the Fitness market. One thing that I like to do is to read magazines as I will be able to get ideas from there.

Just my 2 cents.

Ya depending on the email I will mail out a second or even third time to people who didn't open the first time. Also, you may want to try and use a more compelling subject line because it will drastically increase your open rates.

My best advice to find compelling subject lines are go to the forums in your niche and see which threads are getting tons of views, look at the thread title and adjust it for your purpose...

Also, you can pick up magazines in your niche and see what the cover titles are. Especially in the health niche they always have compelling titles like "7 Quick Short-Cuts To Washboard Abs" or whatever haha just made that one up but you know what I mean.

There's not ALWAYS money in the list, for if it has, then all we would do is make lists so we would get rich, right? someone should be interested in your list, if not someone, almost everyone. and maintain your people, dont just get and get people that you forget that the others would be satisfied.

Pick a different niche. Don't get emotionally attached to 1 niche. If it's unprofitable, move on to another one and start over. How often are you emailing your list? Whats the price point of your products?

Just repeating mostly what everyone else said...

- Build a relationship with your list. Do this by giving them free valuable information each and every week.

Send them funny videos too once in a while or something interesting you like to share. Just get to know them better and engage with them - ask them how their doing.

Every once in a while throw in a product you see very valuable and will help them. If you spent the time helping them in the beginning - they will more then likely buy from you.

I think you need to manage your expectations.

In actuality, a 50% open rate is great.

Most people on this forum with big, BIG lists are happy if they're hitting 15%.

There will ALWAYS be people on your list that won't open an email.. Click on a link... Etc.

Also, don't worry about those that don't open and focus your attention on best helping out those that do.

And most people in this forum fail to make a living in IM.

Building a responsive list is hard work. But not nearly as hard as trying to convince yourself that a 15% open-rate is acceptable, when for many people really making a living in IM, that would feel like an unmitigated disaster!

The honest answer, Nathan, is "plan differently and do different things next time", because unfortunately it's much easier to give birth than it is to raise the dead.

Here's the point: the factors that determine how many people open, read and pay attention to your emails nearly all relate to continuity and subscriber expectation, and those in turn depend on events and circumstances before, while and immediately after people have opted in. Once the open-rate has deteriorated a lot, it's very difficult to correct that for those people. What matters is to change whatever you're doing at an earlier stage.

There are little things you can try (different subject-lines, giving them another freebie, etc.) but realistically, these things are going to make only small differences. They're baling out the water when you're flooding - they're not turning off the tap.

Here are a couple of threads that will probably help you quite a bit ...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6123982

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7647187

Nathan,

To be honest with you here, the old saying of the money is in the list is no longer a legitimate claim and is not true.

From my own view, if you want to make the money money with affiliate programs, it is better to send people to the affiliate sale page that you are promoting right away.

Don't forget that there are other newsletters out there in your niche and many of your subscribers probably joined theirs too.

Does the distance running market have any digital products?

Do you have a blog where you discuss the hot topics and show the rest of the niche that you're someone who's worth listening to?

If you want to make money from any list you have to be seen as an authority figure and show leadership in what you do. For example if I wanted a new pair of running shoes and your blog post gave the best review and the pair you recommended helped me run further then I'm now a customer for life with you.

It's a slow process, but you with effort you can achieve success in almost any niche with listbuilding.

I just searched Amazon, found a random book on running. I then looked at people that bought this also bought this-. As well as a whole lot of different types of running I found some stuff on stretching, Vegan soup recipes, yoga, etc etc.

If you want to find more stuff to write about that will be of interest in your niche just drill down a little.

As far as the money is in the list is concerned the money is in a responsive list. You need to build relationships and trust.

Good luck
Paul

here is a big tip.

get some freebie seekers, try to turn them into buyer, then save your buyers in a seperate list, and treat them like gold, and then they will hand you over lots of gold i.e. money.

I remember my mentor tell me that many years ago, and boy was he right.

The money is in the list of buyers, who you treat well. Get a few of those on your list, and you will never have to work a single day in your life.

The money is in the list, if you have a highly targeted list. Give free ebooks/reports in order to build a targeted list, then give them value. Then you can promote products to them now that you've earned their trust. But, make sure that you are promoting quality products that will actually benefit them.

Money is in the list. That is to say, money is in the relationship with your list. You can deliver valuable content (most)and promotion information to them. so you can give them the impression that you are professional/expert in this field. then you can market your prduct to them. You also need pay attention to the headline in the bulk emails. please try to think of professional and practical subjects. Headline is the key point to decide whether your mails can be opened or not. Good luck！

The money is in the list and your goal as an internet marketer should be to build a high quality relationship with that list.

Only email them high quality content and affiliate offers that you actually believe in and have a passion for.

The churn and burn approach to email marketing is a sure fire way to get many unsubscribes from your list.

The industry avg is 7% open rate and some people will tell you they get way more, and maybe they do but the avg is 7%.

You make money by learning and applying different type of email marketing strategies. This should be your focus. Learn this and the money will follow.

On average, only 2% of your opt iners ever read your newsletters.
only 18% of your facebook likers ever see your status updates.

you've got to be a damn good writer to change these stats.

The money is in the relationships of trust you build with people
on your list.

First a list of less than 300 people is usually pretty tiny (although
if each was potentially a client who could spend tens of thousands
of dollars with you it might be a really lucrative list).

What you really need to think about is "who is on my list?"

"What do they really want? What motivates them?"

"What can I do for them?"

If you're thinking about ways to help the people on your list
and you go out of your way to do that you're going to build
deeper relationships with those real live people and you're
going to see which products and services you can offer them
that are likely to be of real value to them.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh