A journey from Internet marketing stasis to business mastery and financial freedom (I hope)

I’ve now had a chance to read through the first issue of Dan Raine’s Immediate Edge Newsletter and taken a look at the rest of the content on the site. I was immediately struck by how clean and functional the site looks. That, and some of the Web samples, show that Dan has definitely got a good eye for design (or at least knows someone else that does). I bring that up because it’s something I have strong opinions about and I think presentation is very important.

So what about the content?

Well, it’s actually rather excellent. There’s a few things I need to re-read to fully grasp what’s going on but, on the whole, everything has been very well explained. There are ideas and techniques in there that I would never have thought of myself. And there’s certainly a few that I can use for my Mercury Project though I don’t think many so far will be appropriate for my main business.

I’d like to be more specific about what’s in there but I don’t think that would be fair to Dan. Besides, any quick summary I could give here wouldn’t really do the subject justice. If I put some of the techniques into practice then I might explain what I’m doing when I do it.

There’s 2 things I would like to mention though. These are more about what Dan has done rather than the techniques he’s actually talking about. Sometimes it’s worth doing what others do and not necessarily just what they say. They are great techniques that I will definitely want to use myself.

The first relates to the money-back guarantee associated with the membership site. This is a 30-day guarantee which means that you can try out the first month and get a refund if it’s not for you. Now the first month’s content is great but it’s been structured so that some of the sections (articles) continue with “Part 2″ in the next month’s newsletter (and perhaps further parts after that). This makes someone less likely to cancel and get a refund because they really want the rest of the parts.

TIP#1: Ideally, a newsletter should have multiple topic areas each month with at least one of them left hanging with one or more further parts to come.

The other thing to do is describe what’s coming up in the next issue. This is not a new technique of course – you see it in magazines and other newsletters all the time – but it is so important to encourage continued subscription.

Now I don’t know how Dan has created his site and whether he will be allowing people to join at any time in the future but there is a risk with the guarantee if someone can join and get 9 months worth of back-content and then get a refund. You should always offer a money-back guarantee period though. Maybe it’s not an issue to worry about. People who would do that are freeloaders who like to take advantage of others. They probably have no intention of keeping their subscription in the first place.

So the second thing I wanted to mention was something that struck me when I was reading through the $15k challenge blog and making all my notes. Rather than focussing on a very specific craft niche, Dan went wide to capture a broad range of craft enthusiasts.

The really clever part (I thought) was rather subtle to begin with and could easily be missed in reading though the blog. On the opt-in page, he included a selection box to choose the specific craft each person was interested in. This was actually crucial to the long-term viability of this business because it started off so broad. It allowed Dan (later) to specifically target offers to people with the same interests and start to specialise. It also gave him a good idea of what sub-niches were more popular or more responsive, if that wasn’t clear from other research.

TIP#2: If you have an opt-in form, it’s worth thinking about whether there is a question you can ask that will help you later. It’s a micro-marketing questionnaire. You don’t want to ask lots of questions. Probably one or two at most. Offer a selection box with an “Other” option. If it must be freeform entry, ask a specific question rather than asking for open ended ‘comments’ (I’ll tell you about my experiences with this in another post). Even in a focussed sub-niche, there must be a question you can ask to discover a little bit more about your target market and how they differ.

Well, that’s not strictly true. This post should have been called “How I Stopped Myself From Spending Yet Another $97 A Month”, but in my little world, that amounts to pretty much the same thing.

I’ve been very good lately. I’ve unsubscribed from the worst offending emailing lists but I’m still subscribed to tons more. I know I ought to unsubscribe from them all but I’ve set up a filter system so that most of them automatically get filed away as soon as they come in. That way I don’t even see them. I figure that they don’t take up much disk space and I can use them as a giant reference swipe file should I ever have the need.

However, some of the lists defy filter rules because they keep changing their from address or for other reasons. These are fairly easy to spot in my Inbox and I usually just grab ‘em and drag ‘em into a “For Filing” melting pot and forget about them.

But old habits die hard. Sometimes a subject line will catch my attention. Especially if it’s from a guru on my whitelist. And when that happens, there’s every chance that I’ll get sucked into the marketing pitch and swallowed whole. What I need is a system that can trigger a Red Alert lock-down of my PC with flashing lights and klaxtons blaring – the works! Sadly, all I have to rely on is my weakened will-power.

This one was good. So good in fact that I had the order form open ready to fill in my credit card details without even reading the sales letter properly. That’s the work of some master pre-sales effort.

You’re probably wondering what it was all about. Well, it was a pitch for Dan Raine’s “Immediate Edge” newsletter at $97 per month.

Now I only have the powerful sales/marketing blurb and a few cliquey testimonials to go by but I reckon it’s probably quite good and may well be worth the money. It’s supposed to explain everything in simple terms and provide technical solutions. Instead of just saying “set this up”, Dan apparently gives you the scripts or code to actually do it. Nice.

The main teaser is something ‘truly amazing’ called the Lightsqueeze page that is supposed to be a modern Web 2.0 version of the Name-squeeze technique that everyone uses these days. No details on what exactly it is of course. You have to sign up for that.

I like the name “Lightsqueeze”. It’s very catchy. But every time I see the word, I keep reading it as Lightsabre. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’ve been catching a bit of Saturday morning kids TV with my children including an advert for the new Hasbro Lightsabres. These look much better than the old ones because they’ve managed to get the extending part to go right back down inside the hilt instead of sticking out a bit. Cool! I was hoping someone might have bought me one for my birthday today but no joy…

So, where was I?

Oh yes, I was just about to part with some money on a regular basis. But in a brief moment of common sense before I hit the “Submit” button, I decided to dig a little deeper and find out who this guy actually is and what the program is all about.

Now this may be old news to you but due to my auto-filing email filter system, the $15K Challenge last August completely passed me by. In essence, this guy Dan was challenged to make $15K profits from scratch in 30 days with a budget of only $150. He blogged the whole thing so people could follow along with what he was doing as it happened. It’s just the sort of thing I love to read about (somebody doing something for real) and in fact I made about 5 pages of notes from it. I recommend you scroll to the bottom of the blog pages and hit the “Next Page” links until you get to the start and read it from there.

Basically, he got the resale/reprint rights to a bunch of e-books and other bits by subscribing to one of these membership sites that has tons of this kind of stuff. Then he set up a membership site with free content at one level and extra content at a $27 paid level. Because he didn’t have the budget to advertise, he made extensive use of forums and MySpace to put the word out. He didn’t spam and only used ‘legitimate’ posts (more on that in a moment). He also made it viral by using ‘refer a friend’ techniques and an incentive to make affiliate commissions.

Dan almost made his target with about $12K profit. It was all very impressive and fascinating to read about.

But a few things niggled me about the whole thing and it makes me just that little bit more jaded about the whole Internet Marketing world. I’m not about to get onto my moral high-horse and spout forth about what people should and shouldn’t do to earn a living but I wonder whether I have it in me to do the same kind of thing.

A lot of marketers earn money by finding a profitable niche and exploiting it. Nothing wrong with that except for the proliferation of crappy, ‘non-content’, keyword-rich AdSense sites that are clogging up the Internet and wasting domain names that could be used for decent sites (but don’t get me started on that one again…).

What bothers me though is the way in which the exploitation occurs. Many of the products (e-books) are of low quality (and I wonder if the marketers even bother to look at them, but that’s an aside). They knock out these membership sites using what’s available but then what happens after they’ve made their quick buck and exhausted their supply of resale e-books? Do they develop more and improve the site for the members to continually add value. No, they move on to the next project, the next niche and the next membership site. After all, you’ve gotta have more than one to make any serious money in this business.

Of course I’m pessimistically generalising here. I’m sure there are some excellent quality and great value niche membership sites around and the top gurus are always stating that their teachings should only be used for high-quality offerings. But how many marketers actually do that? Most are in it for the quick fix and just don’t have enough interest in their chosen profitable niches to make them good enough.

I mentioned ‘legitimate’ forum posts earlier. This means no spamming. The usual technique is to place your URL in your signature and write posts that simply comment on other peoples posts or ask questions. Often, the marketer has no real idea about (or interest in) the subject so they just appear knowledgeable, sometimes by re-phrasing questions they’ve seen elsewhere.

It’s a clever and effective technique but that’s all it is. A technique to market your offering. You could argue that it does no harm but does it actually contribute to the forum and the community that uses it? Probably not. What’s the point of asking a question if you don’t care about or even read the answer?

And I’d love to know the percentage of actual MySpace users compared to the number of registered users. How many of them are fake identities created by Internet Marketers pretending to be real people to exploit others. I think it would be ironic if MySpace (and other sites like it) became full of Internet marketers sending marketing messages to all of the fake identities of the other marketers.

Like I said, I’m not trying to say what’s right or wrong, I’m just wondering whether I would feel good about using these techniques myself and, if not, whether I have any future as an Internet Marketer.

Right, rant over. Back to the original plot…

Knowing that Dan Raine had been setting up these membership sites and was now providing The Immediate Edge newsletter to demonstrate techniques and supply scripts, I thought it would be a good thing to get. It might well fit in with some plans I have for my Mercury Project.

So what happened?

Well, quite simply, I realised that I just wasn’t ready for it. I’m doing other stuff right now. I don’t have a bunch of niche sites and products that I want to “take to the next level”.

I’m really trying hard to stick to the principle of only buying what I can use right now and not be suckered by the pressure of “limited availability”. These things always come round again in one form or another because these marketers are always looking to make more money.

So that was that. Mind you, I still have the order form open in a browser… It would only take one click…