Over the years Ive built up considerable opt in mailing lists of well over 500,000 from scratch using a plethora of techniques which Im now introducing you to through The Wealthness Blog.
Ill also bring you absolutely anything I feel is of value to your online business.
I know what works and I know the people who you need to listen to. Below is a transcript of a teleseminar by Jim Edwards and Steve Pierce. I have reproduced it here as it covers some excellent list building techniques for getting the most from list building:
Stephen Pierce has a number of successful list-building ventures to his credit. Hes used those lists to sell software, coaching programs, information products he even used his lists to help generate over two and a half Million dollars in sales from just one project.
Stephen is an expert in one of the key areas of list building driving wave after wave of targeted traffic to a website because without targeted traffic, you can have the best offer in the world, but if nobody sees it, youll fail. Also, he is excellent at teaching others how to implement his traffic strategies quickly and profitably.
Jim Edwards burst onto the Internet scene 4 years ago with no list no real contacts and nothing but a burning desire to become a success!
In a very short period of time, Jim was able to build up not just one, but two lists of over 10,000 subscribers each. He has since built up multiple lists to a total subscription of over 100,000 subscribers and used those lists to help generate over 10,000 individual sales online last year!
In short, we both know exactly how to create, set up and build extremely profitable lists. But, more importantly, we know how to teach YOU what you need to know to set up your own profitable subscriber lists!
JIM: I want to welcome everybody to the Ultimate List Building
Tips, Tricks and Techniques call. Im your co-host, Jim Edwards,
along with my good friend and partner, Mr. Stephen Pierce.
STEPHEN: Yes, and its going to be an extremely exciting call
today or tonight, depending on where you are.
JIM: Thats right, or yesterday or wherever you are in the world.
So lets just jump right in. By way of an introduction, those of you
that may be from Stephens list that dont know me, my name is
Jim Edwards. I publish information on the Internet. I publish a
number of newsletters, most notably the I Gotta Tell You
newsletter that is rather interesting, and well talk more about how
I use interesting to build a relationship with my list. Stephen, why
dont you introduce yourself in a thumbnail?
STEPHEN: Im Stephen Pierce. A lot of people know me from both
The Whole Truth as well as Smart Pages, for those that dont know
who I am. That was a very short intro.
JIM: Okay. That was too short. I lost track of my notes. (Im just
playing.) Hey, I wanted to ask you, by way of starting out, one of
the things we want to tell people about is why you actually want to
have a list. But instead of just jumping right into the advantages of
having a list, why dont you share with the people on the call whats
one of the coolest things youve ever been able to do as a result of
having a list and having a relationship with your list? Im just going
to throw you a curve ball right from the beginning.
STEPHEN: I would say pretty much writing my own ticket, in the
sense that when you cultivate and nurture the proper kind of
relationships with the people that are on your list, you kind of blur
the line between computer and computer and it kind of gets really
personal. They care about you, whether its your birthday or youre
not feeling good, and they trust you so they trust your
recommendations. And you then start to look and be a little bit
more careful with what offers you start to send over. Because
youve gone beyond the situation of, you know, I just want to go
ahead and make some money so Im just going to blast all of these
offers out to my list, to the point of, I need to look out for them
and I need to make sure that this offer is something thats going to
move them vertically up towards where it is they want to ultimately
go. And by doing that and developing that kind of relationship,
youre able to send out mailings and make a high five figures or six
figures in just a matter of like 1, 2, 3 days.
JIM: I agree with you a hundred million percent. Im going to
share one of the coolest things that I was able to do because I had
a good relationship with my list, because I knew what they wanted.
About a year ago, I was able to be John Reeses number one
affiliate when he released Traffic Secrets and was, through the
course of adding value to my list, creating an MP3 file, a PDF file
and a bunch of other value added stuff, was able to generate
enough in commissions, the equivalent of being able to buy one
and a half hummers. That was pretty cool.
STEPHEN: And you know what, what else was pretty cool? We
were the number two affiliate.
JIM: Thats right.
STEPHEN: That was pretty cool.
JIM: There you go. I beat you.
STEPHEN: Yeah, you did, and we were in touch with Reese. We
said, Well, how far ahead is he?
JIM: I was real far ahead on that one. But the point is, is that
when you have a relationship with people, you have a relationship
with the people on your list, I think its important that what
Stephen just said, its really becomes your responsibility to be a
guard for them, not a babysitter, but a friend and a mentor.
So lets talk about why you want to have a list. Now, to some
people they say, you know, Oh well, you know the biggest reason
you want to have a list, and specifically a list of opt-in subscribers,
that you have at least their name and email address, people say,
Well, the obvious advantage is that you can make money. Well,
money, as you and I have discussed in the past, is really an affect.
Its not a cause.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: And so money is the result of providing value for your list.
But Id say the number one advantage of having a list is basically
making money selling your own products. And I know that pretty
much every time you roll out a product, Stephen, its pretty much,
if its not common knowledge you can fly through the phone and
beat me senseless, but pretty much every time you guys roll out a
product now youre looking at a six figure launch, arent you?
STEPHEN: Yeah, pretty much just looking at a six-figure launch.
And I totally agree with you that what you have to do when you
start looking at building your list and growing that list and
generating a ton of revenue, pretty much like Jim was mentioning,
because its something that we talked about. You know, everybody
knows that youre in this business online or offline to make money.
So its not even a part of the equation; thats automatic. The
question becomes where are you going to provide the value, what
gaps do you see, and what kind of value are you going to provide
so that your list, besides what it is your offering, is more valuable
than the money they have on their hand that theyre willing to
make that exchange. The value has to be that strong. Otherwise,
youre just somebody else thats out there thats just hammering
the ground, just try to make money off of other people. You need
to focus on the value, driving that to the top line of your business,
which is where your list is and your customers and your clients and
your prospects are. And then the bottom line of your business, as
far as the profits go, are going to take care of themselves.
JIM: Right. And the cool thing about having your own list is that
when you come out with a new product, you blast it out to your list
and all that profit is yours. You dont have to share it with anybody.
You dont have to pay commissions on that. And so, thats one of
the biggest reasons why you want to build the list, is so that you
can keep funneling new products down to the list, always building
value, always providing tremendous value. But lets face it. The
cold hard fact is that once you have a list, you want to drive
product to the list that they want.
STEPHEN: Right, and on another side. Some of you that are on
here that, you know, you have a list but youre not able to fully
maximize the profitable potential, you know, from that list. And a
lot of what were talking about right now to you may be common
knowledge. But what were hoping to accomplish from this is to
show you that its not just about having the list. Its about having,
developing, cultivating and nurturing the right kind of list that
yields those kind of results. Because you can go buy a list, you can
go do all kinds of different things to get a list, but theres a
difference between a high performance list, that you build a
relationship, versus a list that youre just throwing together,
because you want to get a list and try to make some money off of
it. Its a different mindset and the results of the kind of list you
develop are completely different.
I guarantee you the kind of relationships that people have
developed with the lists that have been making them money are
completely different than the kind of relationships that people have
developed with a list thats not making them money. And were
hoping that well be able to help you to overcome any of those
particular barriers that you may be facing in being able to maximize
the potential of your list, as far as developing profits by
understanding the kind of value you need to be giving to them.
JIM: Yeah. And I think a lot of people have ego attached to the
size of their list. Its almost like, Well, when I get a big enough
list, then Ill start working it and providing the value. And I think
thats a major mistake. It goes along with the metaphor that Earl
Nightingale used to tell, which is of the man sitting in front of the
stove who looks at the stove and says, When you give me heat,
then Ill give you some wood. And so, the important thing to
understand is that, no matter what size list you have, its important
to nurture it and its important to build that relationship. And were
going to talk about that a little later on in the call.
But the second way that you can make money is basically selling
other peoples products. Now, it is not possible for you to come out
with a product twice a month and have a really good product
coming out. Maybe you could do one once a month, but I really
doubt that anybody could come out with two products a month
consistently month after month after month after month. And,
therefore, you can also make money with your list recommending
other peoples products. Now, we said just a minute ago that each
of us, we were number one and number two as affiliates for John
Reeses Traffic Secrets. Thats where everybody really got exposed
to this whole rollout method and the big day of the rollout and all of
that stuff, which Im not sure one way or the other whether that
model is still good or not, but thats not the purpose of this call.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: The bottom line is if you have a list and you find a product
that works, and you find a product that you trust, then you almost
have a duty to roll out to your own list, or to the parts of your list
that are very targeted for that offer, you basically have a duty to
let them know about it.
STEPHEN: Right. Thats an important point and we just need to
cover this before we start getting into some specifics to help you
with your list building and building the relationships. But, thats an
important point, because some people are afraid to email offers to
their list because they dont want people to feel as if theyre money
grabbers, and they dont want people to opt out. Well, if you have
your list set up the right way, you build the right relationships, like
Jim was saying, youre pretty much obligated to let them know.
Imagine your physician knowing that he could prescribe something
to you that can help you in an area that you are experiencing some
pain, and he doesnt do that because he doesnt want you to feel as
if hes just trying to get some money out of you. Thats not how
you need to look at it. You need to look at it like, listen youre
trying to move vertically somewhere. Youre trying to get
somewhere. Theres this huge gap in your life between where you
are today and where you ultimately want to be. And I have an idea
and I found this guy, or I found this gal or whatever the solution is,
that can get you closer. So its my obligation to let you know about
this. Its up to you to decide, but I give him one hundred percent
endorsement. And again, depending on that relationship, if that
relationship is strong, that endorsement can be good enough, as
good as gold, that would get them to go ahead and take you up on
your offer.
But what happens is, as long as your own products or the products
youre recommending that are produced by other people are good
and they get some kind of yield from it, then youre fine with
presenting them with offers. But if youre offering them garbage
and people dont like it, its not everything they say its going to be
and theyre not getting any kind of results from it, then shame on
you. And then, of course, you may feel pretty bad trying to present
more offers to them because youre losing money and theyre not
making any kind of movement. But if you know this stuff is working
for them, then youre obligated to constantly let them know about
it because they should be getting some results. And hopefully, if its
in the business of making money, which a lot of people seem to be
in, then they should be making some kind of money in return off of
each one of those propositions you give to them that they can just
turn around and just reinvest back into themselves to build up that
knowledge based and an understanding base into those new
products. And many people wont have a problem with that if you
build the right relationship.
JIM: I agree.
STEPHEN: So, you can be guilty.
JIM: Let me kick in one extra thought on that. If you are doing
this the right way, in other words, if you have the right attitude
toward your list, a lot of times when you do recommend a product,
you should have used it first. Some of the most successful offers of
other peoples products come when you simply go to your list and
say, Hey, I found this product. I used it. These are the results I
got with it. Heres the good. Heres the bad. I think you should get
it. When youve used it and youve produced results and you can
show people how you actually used it, your ability to endorse and
the peoples receptivity to what your telling them, it takes it out of
the realm of youre pitching them and it turns it into your guiding
them and mentoring them. So anytime that you can use a product
ahead of time, and see what kind of results it will provide, see what
kinds of things that people can expect, see what kinds of things
them a fair and balanced approach, theyre going to, a) trust you
more, b) be more likely to buy and, c) youre going to make dough.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: A couple of other advantages of having a list. Those are the
two major advantages. You get to sell your own stuff. You get to
sell other peoples stuff. Some of the other advantages of having
your own list are not as obvious, but in some ways they can be
even more profitable in the long run. The number one favorite one
for me is basically traffic on demand. When I have an idea; when I
have some new thing I want to test out; when I have a new video I
want people to look at and I want to gauge their reaction. Or lets
say I have a script that I want to test out to see how people are
going to react when certain things happen on the website. Instead
of having to wait and have this trickle effect, I can send a
thousand, two thousand people to a website and know instantly
whether my idea is going to work or not. And that is so valuable
because it saves you the most important asset that any of us have,
which is, of course, time. And so, the ability to put a couple
thousand sets of eyeballs on a website in order to figure something
out is extremely valuable. Another advantage of having your own
list is instant market research. Thats one of the things that youre
really good at, Stephen, is finding out from your subscribers what
they want to buy and what they want to buy next. Right?
STEPHEN: Right. Again, I like talking about gaps, and theres
what I call value gaps. And actually everybody, you should write
this down, because if you have a list or you plan on developing a
list, you can find this to be useful. Its something that we give to
our clients called the hundred-dollar question. You can send out to
your list a simple question. What you do is you just give them a list
of five or ten different features or benefits that you offer and you
send them a question. And the question is, If you only had a
hundred dollars to allocate, to get what it is you wanted, how would
you allocate it? And they will send it back to you. For those that
are going to respond, you can incentivise them; you know, offer
them something in return for responding to the survey, or
whatever. Theyre going to send back to you an email or fax,
depending on how you want to get it back, or you can use like a
survey monthly or something; do it online. But theyre going to
send you back, letting you know out of what it is you offered, and
you can leave a blank for where they can mention something that
you may not offer. Theyre going to send you back a hierarchy of
what matters most to them. And youll find many times that what
you consider to be important or of value to the marketplace is not
something thats important to them. What happens is you start to
close the gap between what you think and feel the market values
versus what it is they ultimately say they value. The more you can
close that gap, the greater the profits are going to be in your
business because now you can start to create products. Dont
overshoot what it is theyre ultimately looking for, but actually
meet whats good enough. People arent actually looking for the
perfect product. People are looking for something thats good
enough to get it done
JIM: NOW!
STEPHEN: to their satisfaction.
JIM: to get it done to their satisfaction right now.
STEPHEN: Right. And that is the only way to really know what
your market is really holding as the balance of value is to ask them.
If you dont ask them, youre still running your business under pure
assumptions. And by having the list you have the power of being
able to contact them and just ask them, not an open-ended
question, but ask them specifically based on what it is you know
youre offering, so you can find out how they value what it is you
offer, and also let you know something that youre missing.
JIM: Thats a really good point. Another advantage of having your
own list comes down to testing headlines and other copy elements
on your website. One of the cool things about the web is, of course,
setting up these mini sites that have sales letters on them that sell
people stuff. And we also know that you can have a situation where
one headline is going to outperform another headline massively.
Well, instead of, again, waiting for this trickle thing, when you have
a list, you can set it up ahead of time so that you can be testing
three different headlines at the same time. And so by getting that
traffic surge, youre able to really tweak your copy, which can make
the difference between okay profits and massive profits, because
just by tweaking your headlines and tweaking your copy elements
and having that list, youre able to compress time. In what would
take someone without a list a couple of months to figure out, youre
able to figure out in a space of twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: Now lets jump right into the keys to building an effective and
profitable list, and there are actually four phases or steps of
building a list, and were going to cover each one of these in depth.
I just want to give you an overview of the four steps right now.
Step one is targeting a niche audience. Youre targeting a group of
people.
Step two is to create a relevant offer. And what that means is that
if youve got a group thats interested in real estate, youre not
offering them Barbie collectibles.
Step three is driving targeted traffic to that relevant offer that
youre using to build the list.
Step four is growing your relationship with the list through
continuous contacts.
So, lets move right on to step one, and bottom line, it all starts
with targeting and focusing on a specific, narrow niche audience.
And the more tightly focused the niche, the easier it is. I want you
to write this down: The more tightly focused the niche, the easier it
is to find, identify and recruit them onto your list. Now lets talk
about, just for a minute, some examples of niche markets that we
actually target in our businesses. Now, one of the niche audiences
that I go after is for sale by owners. These are people that want to
sell their house themselves. Now, I could go after the general
market of real estate or people that want to sell their house, but I
focus in very narrowly and very specifically on a niche audience of
people that want to sell their house themselves. And when I narrow
down that niche, Im able to identify them. Im able to go where
they go. Im able to put advertisements in front of them. Im able
to put messages in front of them that make them want to buy my
product and make them, sometimes more importantly, sign up for
my list. So thats one of the examples that I have. What are some
of the niche markets that you go after, Stephen?
STEPHEN: One thing, as far as our niche marketing mindset is, is
that, for one you look at a market and you look at the niche
market, but then you look to fragment that niche down to a more
micro segment, which is what we call nanoniche marketing, and
then you look to scale that market up. Now this, of course, isnt the
platform to talk about that. But what happens is when you do that,
you actually fragment a niche market to your advantage where you
know that you can bring the most talent and you can do something
there not only as good as somebody else, but youre able to do it
better than everybody else in that niche, and you can do it
competitively so that you have an advantage in that niche. And not
necessarily as fragmented according to what other people are
defining the market being set up at. And when you do that, you
pretty much control the sandbox and youre able to set it up so that
you have
You know, imagine people playing a football game
where theres a forty-five degree slant, you know, for the offense. I
mean, theyll just plow through the defense. They wouldnt even
have a chance. Thats the kind of advantage youre looking to set
up. And because you have the ability to pick your niche and then
fragment those niches, thats what you want to do. So, thats one
of the approaches that it is that we take. When were looking at a
niche market, were not looking at a niche as how its defined by
other people, but were looking at how to fragment it to our own
advantage.
JIM: Now, thats a very interesting point. So, one of your primary
niche markets is people that are investing, traders.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: And I think most people, if they were to think of a niche
market, they would think of day traders.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: But thats still a huge market that you have fragmented and
built lists around much smaller groups within that day trader
market. What are some of those?
STEPHEN: I will give you some examples. For many people its
just hard for them to believe, even when they see that actual
evidence. Ill just give you one quick example so that we can go to
some of the other stuff. Take, for example, Fibonacci trading. You
can go to Wordtracker. You can go to xxxx,
xxxx, to whatever. Look at how many people
each month look for Fibonacci trading. Its like about 260 people a
month. Its pretty much an obscured, what we call a nanoniche
market as the way we define it and the way we look at different
markets inside of the niche markets. But according to normal
marketing wisdom, thats not the kind of market you should be
building a business around or be building a product around.
However, we built one product thats combined with online and
offline sales thats done a million dollars in sales.
But its like how in the world can you do those numbers off of a
niche that has only 260 people looking for it a month? Well, those
numbers, as far as how many people are looking for it each month,
can be extremely deceiving. Just because a lot of people arent
looking for it does not mean that they would not like to have the
benefit of what it is that particular phrase may provide as far as
what that phrase relates to, as far as a solution goes. They just
may not know how to look for that specific thing. Its up to you as
the visionary or the creator to take it and then scale to that up
market and relate that to what it is they are conscious of. And by
doing that, you basically allow yourself to rapidly move up market
with very little competition, and then thats how youre able to just
make huge amounts of profits
JIM: Because you were
STEPHEN: in multiple areas.
JIM: You were talking about something that other people werent
talking about because it was too small.
STEPHEN: Right.
JIM: Too small, but when you showed the people that this was
fitting and totally in line with what their niche objective was, the
reason they were in that trading niche, all of a sudden you were the
only one with the solution.
STEPHEN: Right. Most people look at those little key words and
maybe think thats maybe good enough to make some contingent
offer to get some search engine traffic, and whatever they get off
of this fine. I mean, theyre missing a huge opportunity. Thats
what we look at as opportunity gaps in search engines, opportunity
gaps as far as product creation opportunities go. It depends on
your perspective. Thats what creativity is about. Its about a
change of perspective. It depends on how youre looking at these
different niches, and when we look at it, we fragment them to our
advantage. Nobody was scaling markets, scaling products. In fact,
to this day, very few people know how to go deep down in
nanoniche marketing and then scale products up from very lowlevel
phrases that very few people are aware of. And if you discover
how to do that, youll have a huge advantage in your market and
cab completely redefine how you go about doing what people call
niche marketing.
JIM: Excellent. Well I think that really illustrates the fact that the
more tightly youre focused in the niche, number one the less
competitive its going to be because everybody else is trying to cast
this wide net; theyre trying to be everything to all people. Also I
would say, would you agree this, that typically its less expensive to
advertise to reach them on pay-per-clicks. Not always, but
typically, the more focused you are, the less it costs. Would you
agree with that?
STEPHEN: I completely agree. Heres the thing. Being extremely
successful at marketing in anything is about being extremely
smart. Its about thinking strategically, not trying to out-muscle
people or anything like that. Think about the best running back in a
football game. Those are the guys that know how to see a gap and
seize that gap in an instant and cut, even if the original play said to
go left. Theyre able to see that the left is bottlenecked, theres a
gap open in the middle or to the right, and theyre able to cut right,
like Barry Sanders, and go through that gap. And it would be
insane to see a gap to the right but yet still run the play up the
middle because thats what the play called for. Thats not what it is
you want to do when it comes to developing your products and
targeting different niches.
We used the Fibonacci trading. For just one example, go look at the
phrase trading plan, like maybe 560 people a month. We did one
product on that that did over half a million dollars in sales. Weve
done it for all kinds of different things. Market timing. Very few
people look for that. Weve done it for like almost seven different
trading areas while everybody else was looking at putting together
something for options trading. Theres so many. Theres like 100
and some thousand searches for months on option trading and all
kinds of option trading products out there.
So the moment you come out with that, the heat that you have,
the competitive advertising dollars that you have and the
competitive products that you have out there are so huge that
youre going to have to try to operate and out-muster the
competition. And thats not what you want to do. You want to outthink
them, be able to use very little dollars, and scale something
from below the market and scale it up market and have a huge
advantage when it comes to generating sales in market awareness.
JIM: Well, when you do that too, it also enables you to be able to
provide information that is much more relevant and much more
interesting. If youre not out there providing the exact same
information as everybody else, but youre providing a fresh
perspective, a different angle, something that no one else is talking
about that makes sense, when were talking from a content
perspective, that actua
