A lot of people seem to be asking the question, what is a reasonable amount of money to make from an internet marketing campaign? The answer is that it all depends on your leverage. Let’s consider some examples inspired by recent marketing campaigns in the internet marketing community.

Say for instance, that you decide to run a two-day webinar complete with video-conferencing, non-video call in lines, and bonus online resources. If your webinar has a sticker price of $1,999 and you sell 500 seats then your gross revenue is a touch shy of the 1 million dollar amount. Keep in mind with all these gross revenue figures that the profit margins on information products tend to be pretty high.

If you are more of a products-only kind of guy, you might decide to spend a few months producing a take-home study course. You could outsource the development of a book, workbook, and DVD. Pay someone to write a winning sales letter, pay someone else to create a course related website, and pocket the difference. If you had an email list of size 50,000 you might expect 3% or 1,500 sales. If your take home materials cost $299 on average, then you could be looking at around $450,000 gross.

If you prefer you could run a five week online course with weekly teleconferences, online course related materials, and ways to network with other course participants. If you charged $199 for such a course and 200 students signed up by paying tuition, then you would collect near $40,000. Such a take would obviously not bring anywhere near the amount cash as the two above mentioned examples, however with opportunities to up-sell your students as well as increased exposure for you and your brand, such a venture would definitely be worthwhile.

The examples above tell the story of the kind of money that established players in the internet marketing community are making. When you are just starting out in the field of internet marketing you should expect to make no where near this amount of money.

Factors that can help contribute to the kind of massive leverage that would be required to pull of the kind of numbers mentioned above include a huge opt-in email list, a massive black book of networking connections that can light up online forums with to-the-top threads that never seem to die, or serious connections with dozens of bloggers who can post you offering on a score of blogs and let the viral power of the net take over.

Obviously it is never easy to generate a million dollars in revenue in a two week period, however the important thing to remember is that it can be done, and that the people who are doing it right now are ordinary human beings just like you and me.

Email lists can be built up even if it takes a couple of years of hard work and determination, as can extraordinary networking connections whether they be comprised of social networkers, bloggers, forum members, or a combination of the above.

If you are interested in reading more about the basics of internet marketing check out our post on the essentials of marketing online.

Tags: internet marketing, marketing, marketing camapigns, make money online, webinar, teleconference

I think that I am officially on an unorthodox strategy kick! The idea for today’s post comes from the mind of Tommy Vallier. Tommy is looking to obtain a new iMac but he seems to be a little low on funds at the moment. The solution… to make the internet “an offer [it] can’t refuse”. In exchange for the new iMac Tommy will wear the company T-Shirt of whoever buy’s his new computer, for one year. I have simplified the details of this transaction and for the full scoop I suggest you check out Mr. Vallier’s site. I would especially suggest that you check out the question “How will we know you’re wearing it?” on the questions page of his site.

Here is why this is an awesome idea… you may be saying to yourself “that’s a horrible deal, I would never go for that.” And if you have such a view, it’s a very understandable position. But it seems that Vallier understands that the internet is an awfully big place. Let’s say that his conversion rate is 1 in 10,000 people. If he were selling an ebook, that would be awful conversion rate. But he’s not selling an ebook!

With what looks like very little marketing overhead and the viral power of the blogosphere, this proposition should get itself in front of the eyeballs of 10,000 people, easy. You might be tempted to think that there is going to be a lot of follow up work for Vallier after reading his questions page. The answer to that question is an emphatic YES and NO!

If Vallier decides to use social networking sites and blog extensively about the experience then yes on one hand that might entail a lot of work, on the other hand it should be well worthwhile for Mr. Vallier since not only does his sponsor have the potential of gaining lot’s of exposure, but Mr. Vallier himself stands to gain ton’s of exposure.

This story is a great example of the kind of symbiotic marketing that Web 2.0 is becoming known for. Vallier could potentially spin this little idea into a huge opportunity or string of opportunities. As I suggested in my last post, study those who are marketing themselves online that are doing things a little differently, it may well lead you to your own million dollar idea!

Tags: iMac, Apple, Internet Marketing, Viral Marketing, Web 2.0 , T-Shirt

If you want to get rich you should seriously consider studying unconventional business models. Simply put, if everyone is doing it, it is probably not that profitable. By studying those in our field that are not following the crowd we can begin to gain inspiration for our own revolutionary ideas.

I realize some people may not want a “revolutionary idea” because such ideas carry with them a large deal of risk. However as marketing expert Seth Godin puts it in his wildly popular book Purple Cow, “Being safe is risky.” Taking risks whether they be in marketing or designing a business model can result in facial ticks, nervous tremors, sweaty palms and occasionally angina. These risks will not make your life more convenient in any way shape or form, but as we like to say here at Feedback Secrets, “convenience is expensive”.

So since we are a site that is interested in internet marketing, one of the best ways for us to get un-convenient is to study those in our industry who are using unorthodox business models of their own. The inspiration for this post comes from fellow internet marketer Michael Conquest. Michael informed me of a technique for making money with eBay that I had not heard of previously.

The technique revolves around making money as an eBay affiliate. The eBay affiliate network was previously maintained by a site called Commission Junction, however over the last few months eBay has been in the process of switching to its own in-house affiliate network. eBay’s new network is now online and working and you can find it here.

Obviously there’s more than one way to drive traffic as an eBay affiliate, but the method which was suggested to me was to search Craigslist.com for people looking to buy specific items. After compiling a list of potential buyers you could email them with the link to an eBay auction for the item they were looking for in hopes of collecting the affiliate commission. Of course you could also use this method to promote your own eBay auctions.

I am not suggesting that this method is a path to riches, or even that you should try such a method. What I am saying is that this is an excellent example of “thinking outside the box” when it comes to an eBay based business model. That is to say, when people think, “how could I make money on eBay” this strategy is probably not the first thing that comes to mind.

Seek out wacky and unorthodox businesses models and study them, the practice may well lead the creation of your own million dollar idea. For more information on Michael Conquest you can check out his site, ConquestEmpires.com.

Tags: eBay, Internet Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, eBay Affiliate Program, Craigslist, Unorthodox eBay

In any kind of direct marketing campaign there are several important numbers that are essentials to the success of your campaign. The numbers that we will discuss can easily be applied to internet marketing but in an attempt to keep things simple we will focus on direct mail for the moment.

The first of these numbers is the cost per-lead, this cost relates to the cost of obtaining a prequalified physical address. Here we use the term “prequalified” to simply mean, someone who is interested in your niche.

Once you know what your cost per-lead is, it would be valuable to know how much a single lead is worth to you in terms of dollars and cents. Determining your value per-lead lets you know for certain how much you can spend on each lead and continue to make a profit. Here is where things get a little bit tricky, a lead you obtain today could in theory pay out: a month from now, three months from now, or never. More…

The term “above the fold” originated in reference to the portion of the front page of a newspaper that was above the crease. An up and coming journalist might dream of the day that one of his headlines appears above the fold. The front page of any newspaper is prime time real estate, and the top half of that page is the “crème de la crème.”

In this case, what is true in newspapers is also true in web pages. It’s great when your stat-counting software tells you that a new visitor stayed on your site for 2 minutes and 38 seconds after first landing on your page. But far too often webmasters encounter the dreaded notice that the time on site was “0:01”.

The problem is that the web is just too big; there is too much information out there to ever hope to be able to digest it all. With so much information and so little time we are forced to make snap judgments about every web page that we land on. And if we happen to land on a new web page, what information are we going to make our split second judgment based on…?

Most likely, based on whatever is above the fold. The portion of a web page that is said to be above the fold is the portion that you see when you land on a page before you do any scrolling. If you look at the top of our webpage you will notice a header image, as well as opt-in form for our email newsletter. Nowhere above the fold on our site will you notice any Google AdSense ads.

This fact should act as a big hint that we are more interested in email opt-ins that we are in having people click on advertisements. Regardless of what you wish to emphasize on your site, pay special attention to the most valuable visual real estate you have, the area above the fold.

I must begin with a warning! The subject of Broadcasts vs. Messages as it relates to email marketing, is not nearly as interesting as the subject of Godzilla vs. Mothra, as it relates to the fate of humanity. With this in mind let us continue… emails sent to an email list or newsletter come in two flavors, broadcasts and messages. Broadcasts are single emails that are sent at the same time either to your entire list, or to a portion of your list. Messages on the other hand usually form part of a series of emails which are sent out at preset intervals. These intervals usually start from the date of opt-in.

Broadcasts lend themselves more towards recently breaking news. For example something major has just happened in your industry or a related industry, and you would like add your own point of view to the events taking place and there relevance to your industry.

Messages lend themselves better toward those pieces of information in your email campaign that will not become outdated as quickly. A group of such emails might easily be formed into a Mini-Course. Such a course can act as the “freebie” offered to entice new subscribers to sign up for your list. Another give away item, which you may consider including in your list of initial messages is a free ebook. While an ebook probably won’t fit in a single email, a link to your ebook in one of your first few messages will work just as well.

As time goes on and you have written more and more broadcasts you may decide that some of your broadcasts would fit nicely inside your messages. So as your number of broadcasts grows your number of initial messages might grow as well, effectively “killing two birds with one stone”.

Let’s say that you are absolutely nuts about golf, and you have decided to follow your passion and build an email list around the subject. Imagine that at this point you have built your email list up to 100,000 leads and that you have several products in your pipeline, which you plan on release in the near future. This could include a product on weight-lifting for golf, a product for improved driving, and a product for achieving putting perfection.

A simple way to market these 3 products would be to create an email campaign for each product and send the entire campaign to every one of your subscribers. Of course even with such a simple strategy you would want to make sure to spread out each campaign. No list will respond well to being constantly bombarded with sales pitch after sales pitch, and padding the space in between pitches with informative, and preferably unique information, on golf can only help your credibility in the eyes of your list.

A more complicated marketing strategy would be to divide up your list into a main list with several sub-lists. So you might send an email to your main list telling them that you have special information for anyone interested in efficient weight lifting for golf, which will add yards to their drives and fairway shots, even without a touch of improvement to their technique! This email would contain a link for anyone interested to follow.

Anyone who clicks on this link will be brought to a second opt-in page where they will have the option to become a member of the sub-list for “weight-lifting for golf.” Of course I would not advise you to use the term “sub-list” anywhere on this web-page, just some brief information to pique there curiosity, and get them to sign up.

Once your “weight-lifting for golf” email marketing campaign is completed you can send it to your sub-list. Please not that by campaign I mean a series of 5 to 7 emails designed not to inform but specifically to sell. At the same time you send your campaign to your sub-list you can send a brief series of sales letters, between 1 and 3 to your main list to try to encourage some extra sales.

Breaking up your email list in this way tends to cause better results in terms of conversion rate as opposed to treating all members of your lists as equals. You are always going to get a higher conversion rate emailing to your list of pre-qualified golf leads then you would to a list of 100,000 members of the general public. The reason is that your list represents leads that are pre-qualified based on the specific interest of golfing. It is the specific interest of the lead that gives it its value, and in a market as wide as golfing related products, there are bound to be even more specific interests which can be unearthed.

Two posts ago we spoke about “The Four Horsemen of Web Traffic,” namely Paid Advertising, Organic Search, Social Networking, and Viral Marketing. In that post we hinted at a “Hidden Source of Web Traffic“. So what could this source possibly be, and what benefit could it be to your online business? Let’s start with the benefits.

Imagine for a moment that you have just invested serious time and money developing a first class ebook. Regardless of your chosen niche, you face an enormous problem when it comes to monetizing your product. In this day and age of file sharing services, websites, bit-torrent, and so forth, ebooks are especially susceptible to being copied illicitly. Given the nature of this technological disadvantage inherent to ebooks it would be extremely valuable to drive large amounts of targeted web-traffic to a specific conversion piece, the moment your product is released. If you assume that eventually your work will be pirated, it makes sense to sell as many copies “out of the gate” as possible.

Let’s say that you have just invented the world’s greatest course for making money with Blogs, AdSense, Mini-Sites, Affiliate Marketing, whatever. It would help to be able to make some sort of outrageous claim as a hook for the Sales Letter. For example “Discover how I made $10,000, in one Month with [Fill in the Blank].” Of course people will be skeptical of your claim so you will want screen shots to prove your earnings over a one month period. If you are the type that has no reservations about glossing over some the inherent advantages you had in accomplishing this feet, you may want to drive some instant traffic to your money making site in order to increase sales.

Business is of a time sensitive nature and a product that is a hit today, may well have turned out as a flop if brought to market a year later. If you have a product to bring to market and you just don’t have time to wait for traffic to trickle in order to test various versions of your sales letter, what should you do? Once again it would be great to be able to send a thousand or so unique visitors to each version of your letter to drastically increase the speed of your testing process.
The “Hidden Source of Web Traffic” that might allow you to duplicate the above mentioned feats of marketing magic, is a well crafted email list. We mentioned in our post “Lead Me to It” about the incredible value of a list of pre-qualified physical addresses. Building an email list of targeted leads is yet another way to fabricate your own gold mine. Indeed a large and well built list can mean instant traffic, however building such a list is not an overnight assignment. In some cases it could take years to build such a list, and even after the list is built, constant maintenance is required to keep your leads from dropping out or losing interest in your promotions.
Email lists are not a cure-all for your online business, they have there own pitfalls and dangers like any other online business technique. So I wouldn’t swear by them, but I would suggest you check them out.

If you liked this post, chances are that you’ll enjoy our post on monetizing web traffic.

Here is a trick for getting your site indexed fast. Some of you know this trick but this post is for those of you who don’t. Before we get into the “How To” of this article let’s start be examining what it means to get indexed.

If your site is indexed with a particular search engine, it means that your site is in their database and that one or more of your site’s pages will be returned as a search result for at least one keyword. It could be a high traffic keyword, or a low traffic key word. Keep in mind, just because one of your site’s pages shows up as a search result, for a particular keyword, does not mean you will show up on the first page of search results. You may show up on the twelfth

As far as I know the trick I am going to share with you only works on one search engine, fortunately that search engine is Google and Google gets more traffic than any other search engine on the planet! So what is this secret formula you may ask? More…