Thoughts on List Monetization

If you are not selling high ticket products you certainly are not maximizing ROI, and most likely are leaving a whole lot of money on the table.

My subscriber lists go through a series of progressive selling promotions, where each autoresponder sequence introduces incrementally higher end products after every purchase.

The messages are sent daily and include niche-relevant information, free resources, a few jokes, sprinkles of affiliate product ads, and a hard-hitting promotion for sequentially higher ticket products in the marketing cycle.

It's important to have a conspicuous unsubscribe option (mine is a notification at the beginning and end of every message with easy unsubscribe link).

In addition, conversions increase dramatically by providing contact information such as email, telephone, mailing address, social media, etc.

Besides building trust through a series of satisfactory transactions, it's also almost always going to require personal communication on multiple channels other than just email to close the larger deals.

Those are among among my top favorite niches, although I prefer to call them "end of the world catastrophes" and "security".

This bunch of folks are notoriously hard nuts to crack, and I don't think you will have much success with solo ads. Even though there are actually many hundreds of thousands of online/offline publications in those markets, such direct advertising tends to result in extremely low conversion rates. You may have already experienced this inherent hesitancy within your own marketing campaigns. Deep-pocketed advertisers generally have it sewn up in this marketing venue.

As with all similarly competitive arenas, I have found that subtlety is an extremely powerful marketing tool. My little trick is to initially build relationships with my subscribers long before they ever subscribe. This is accomplished through regular contributions of articles to publications in which targeted prospects read.

After reading my articles over a period of time, they will gravitate over to a relevant niche website and buy the "recommended" product. In my marketing model, nothing is ever blatantly "sold"; only recommended on the strength of credentials perceived as a result of my article writing. In addition, only initial buyers are invited to subscribe to my lists.

Subscribers receive messages on a daily basis which includes niche information, tips, resources, jokes, and increasingly hard hitting promotions (with 2-3 descriptive, feature-laden text links) for the next product in line. Non-buyers are culled from lists every 90 days. The remaining active buyers continue to be processed, and promotions are incrementally increased to higher end products.

This may seem like a "meat grinder" approach, but it is very effective in targeting and quickly engaging quality prospects who are already further down the buying path within their own buying process. This approach massages buyers into making increasingly larger purchases and establishes trust-based working relationships. Eventually, email is dropped in favor of more personal communication channels such as social media, webinars, direct mail, telemarketing, local seminars, and face-to-face sales.