Survey Results Part 1 – Do You Have A Mailing List?

I think you'll agree that most people "get it" and you can see that list building is vital to your internet business. In fact I'll go a step further and say that your mailing list is your business. I believe that without one, you're dead in the water. [more...]

Way back in November (which doesn’t seem that long ago), I told you a little bit about my background and also asked you if you’d complete a survey.

http://www.frankhaywood.com/mailing-list-survey/

My intention was to:-

#1 – Share those results.
#2 – Help you do something about what came out of the survey.

I wanted to do both together, but I thought the only way I could do so was if I spent a lot of time showing you how to build your own mailing list.

As I’ve been sort of busy since then (yes I know this is just an excuse), I’ve completely failed to come up with the goods and so I’ve hurt myself in the process.

See, my logic is, if I help you build a mailing list, then you’ll be in a position to promote all the lovely things I’ve got coming out this year. Or not.

It’s always up to you of course what you promote to your list, and you should never bow to pressure to promote things you don’t truly believe are worth it. I don’t, and that’s why you don’t see me jumping on every big launch.

(Okay there’s an exception, there was a big launch yesterday, and I am VERY impressed with the product and the guy behind it, but let’s save that for another time.)

So what am I on about then?

Well, there were a few questions in the survey about building a mailing list, and one of them was to rank topics in order of importance. I was a little surprised with some of the results, and over the next few days I’m going to share them with you.

First of all though, let’s take a look at the result for how important list building is to you.

05_list_building.png

I think you’ll agree that most people “get it” and you can see that list building is vital to your internet business.

In fact I’ll go a step further and say that your mailing list is your business. I believe that without one, you’re dead in the water.

Now by a nice bit of good fortune, Jonathan Paston wrote to me and asked if he could try my nickel script out. I said okay, but was there something he could do to help you and me out in return.

After a bit of chat backwards and forwards, it turns out that he has a really nice list building product (a set of videos) that he sells for $77.

After a bit more chat I got him to agree to do a nickel sale for it, starting at…

Wait for it…

Two dollars…

Yee-haa! Now that’s what I call a result. 🙂

I’ve just taken a look at the new page he’s set up for it, and he’s thrown in a couple of REALLY nice bonuses to go with it – an ebook and an MP3.

He must have really REALLY wanted to get his hands on my nickel script!

So, we’ve agreed that tomorrow he’ll launch his nickel sale at the usual time of 3.00pm GMT (10.00am EST) as that seems to suit most people.

Sidenote: If it feels like I’ve been involved in a lot of nickel sales recently (it’s only actually 3), it’s because I want to “battle test” the nickel script before letting it out into the wild. There’s one outstanding problem with it over single quotes, and one extra little tweak I’ve asked the nickel script developer (David) to make and I think it will just about be ready for public consumption. So watch out for that one coming soon.

I’ll make sure to set up the blog post with the link to the nickel sale here in advance, and set it to appear automatically at 3.00pm, so even if I get called away (like I did yesterday), you’ll still get the link at that time.

Excited? I am! I just hope there aren’t any problems with the nickel script for Jonathan tomorrow…

-Frank Haywood.

Posted by Frank Haywood

8 comments

Paul Tuttle

“I’ll make sure to set … it to appear automatically at 3.00pm”

This blog function is quite useful!

“launch … 3.00pm GMT (10.00am EST) as that seems to suit most people.”

Really? Have you polled your audience? I am at work then and would prefer either 2 hours earlier or 10-12 hours earlier.

Frank Haywood

Paul:

Yeah WordPress is pretty good really. It’s just missing a few functions that could turn it into a real CMS.

Hmm, maybe I could get someone to code them up for me. Then again maybe I shouldn’t, as one of the products I’ll be launching this year is a fully featured CMS.

I haven’t polled my subscribers about the best time, but I get least complaints when I do it at that time.

Two hours earlier, complaints. Two hours later, complaints.

I can’t win really can I? 😉

-Frank.

Paul Tuttle

I am thinking about the CMS Joomla.

There is another steep learning curve right there. The right kind of template (theme, skin, whatever Joomla calls it) could really help.

About the timing of the sales. Fantasos (or JVM) has a function where you can put up only x number of copies of a product at a set price. You could do the 1st 20 copies at $5, the next 20 copies at $6.

Hi Frank
What software/script do you use on this website to collect names & addresses? It seems pretty reliable from my end.

Frank Haywood

Paul:

I played with Joomla for a while, but it just didn’t seem as comfortable to me as WordPress. There are other people who swear by it.

I also bought CMSI when it came out, now Memberspeed I think, and again it didn’t feel quite right or intuitive like WordPress does.

I’m not saying my CMS when it’s released will be any better than Joomla or Memberspeed, but I like to think it will have already built in all the key functions that a marketer might need to build a site with.

What I mean is, Joomla is free, but costs quite a bit in add-ons to get it to the point where it’s useful for a marketer. Memberspeed is something like $3,000 now.

My CMS will be reasonably priced and have what most marketers need from a Content Management System.

I actually have a resellers licence for JVM1 and at some point in the next couple of weeks I have to put in some time to get to grips with how it works. So far I’ve found the documentation to be confusing with little explanation of why you’re supposed to do certain things, only how to do them.

You wouldn’t know how it works by any chance? Or even be willing to put in a little time setting up a couple of sites for me? That would help in my understanding if I could see my own sites working under JVM1. I could probably piece it all together then.

In return I’d pretty much give you everything I release this year, and get Paul (the developer of the CMS) to give you a copy or set up a site for you.

At the moment, it’s in use on several sites, but Paul has had to install it and configure it on each one, and it’s just a basic framework right now. Paul will be adding in all my required marketing functionality over the summer.

My intention is you can just eventually bang out large multi-user membership content sites with it or even just “normal” sales page type sites with just a simple sales page, OTO, thank you and download pages.

Right now it’s not easy to install either, which is something Paul has to complete before we can launch it. That’s why Paul has to do all the installs – I believe he takes a site design and then customises the CMS around the design.

Anyway… There’s the offer.

Do you know how to use JVM1 to the point where you could do a couple of installs for me?

-Frank.

Frank Haywood

Gareth:

I use Aweber in conjunction with the MaxBlogPress unblockable popup. That WordPress plugin allows you to specify how often the popup appears to your visitors, and I set it to 10 days so as not to annoy people too often.

If there were some way of turning it off altogether once someone has subscribed, I’d do it. I may change it to something like 20 days for a while as I think that’s probably more reasonable. In fact, yeah, I’ll do that now.

-Frank.

Paul Tuttle

I can’t do the JVM1 installs (yet). Sorry.

I think you are correct. Joomla is not as comfortable as WordPress. I’ve bought the Joomla tutorials but haven’t gotten to them yet.

I anticipate taking some time off work (4-6 weeks)and hope to learn some of this stuff.

I have a licensed copy of Fantasos and the JVM1 reseller license. I am still trying to set it up and figure it out. Last time it gave me a wierd error message. I think my web host service has something that needs to be tweaked. I may have to get a web/script guy like you have to help you.

FH> “large multi-user membership content sites with it or even just “normal” sales page type sites with just a simple sales page, OTO, thank you and download pages.”

John Delavera is releasing an all-in-one script to help the beginner do just that come May 2008.