Why You Should Give Internet Marketers and Mailing Lists a Second Chance
Some people I know are wary of internet marketers, considering them to be snake oil salesmen who are always looking to scam them out of some money by selling them products they don’t need.
Not all are equally suspicious: apparently their long sales letters with bold promises still do work to pull in sales and subscribers.
These gurus usually offer their own informational products, along with in opt-in mailing list, which allows them to prime an audience to support their future ventures, products or affiliate sales. They are also skilled in branding themselves as an expert through the recommendations of others.
Are these internet marketers trustworthy? Their aggressive sales letters may look like scams but you’ll have to understand that that’s somewhat of a standard for most marketers. The sales pages may be antiquated but apparently they must work for a large number of people, ergo their longevity and persistence.
Why You Should Give Internet Marketers a Chance
Everytime I come across a free newsletter or report, I’ll often sign up for it just to get a closer look at how the internet marketer operates. There are several reasons why opting into these email lists will help you to make money yourself.
- Learn How They Sell. After you sign up, observe how the internet marketer presells you by offering bite-sized chunks of information which build your interest and desire to learn more. Examine how they gradually push their own or other people’s product and look at how they brand themselves or evoke trust from the readers.
- Newsletter Management. If you’ve always wanted to run your own opt-in newsletter, sign up for several lists and learn how the ‘gurus‘ or experts do it. See how they format their newsletters or emails and you can even write them personally for feedback about the tools they are using. I’m sure they would welcome the direct contact.
- Beneficial Information. Not all email lists are junk and some actually do send you information that can be applied for your own websites and online businesses. The guideline here is simple: Look through all the fluff and extract the essence from the ideas offered. See how it can be applied for your website and test it out to see the results. Don’t believe their words blindly.
If you’re still not comfortable with giving your email address to an internet marketer, create a free throwaway email and use it exclusively for these lists. Log into this email account every alternate day or weekly to go through the mailings you get.
Manage the list every few weeks and opt-out of those who do not offer useful information. You may gradually find yourself trusting some marketers a lot more than others. Those are the ones you will have to study in detail. How did they earn that trust from you? How can you apply the same methods to build your own audience?
While they may get your approval, I would suggest doing some research before you make any expensive purchases based on their recommendations; do a search online or run a few checks with a few trusted friends who might know more about the product or the marketer’s history.
Develop an inquisitive and analytical mindset and you’ll make the full use of the time spent following and reading these newsletters and emails.
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Good point, I think I’ve learned more from watching what the gurus do than from reading any ebooks.
I’ll even admit to reading some ezines, particularly the “Associate Programs Newsletter” from Allan Gardyne. I learned some good stuff there long before hearing of DoshDosh, John Chow, Problogger, or Shoemoney!
Great post, Maki …. I have a lot of clients who are internet marketers and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with them. In my isoalted experience with them, they are honest, nice, hard-working people seeking to make a good living online.
As a blog/web designer, I’ve tried to glean some of their experience and expertise in how to effectively market online … working with them and reading their stuff has taught me a lot.
Maki, you are a man after my own mind. I’ve been doing this for months. And I’ve learned a lot by watching their tactics. Especially when some product drops and everyone sends out their crazy emails on the same day. It’s like an exercise in compare & contrast. This is how I knew why the “Next Internet Millionaire” show is such a big deal. It’s pure internet marketing genius.
I’m certainly one of the people who has distrusted them. The problem, as I see it, is the only way to seperate the good from the bad is to subscribe and read a LOT of information. All that reading time costs money away from our other businesses.
Anyone got recommendations?
Hi Maki,
The best snake oil salesman I had the pleasure of reading is John Carlton
His writing is so good. I read his blog just because he writes so well.
@Michael – Cool. I’m glad you’re learning how the internet marketers work. Yeah, there’s a lot of hype in this industry and sometimes too much selling.
@Codswallop – I’ll check out John Carlton, haven’t come across his site yet… thanks for sharing!
@Annie – I would suggest going with the ones commonly regarded as the ‘gurus’ or thought leaders of the industry. The more well known internet marketers. Usually they won’t provide you with too much junk.
Another alternative, as I’ve said.. is to just go through your inbox once a week and scan through the mailings you get, while unsubscribing from the ones you dislike.
@Sucker – Allan Gardyne is pretty old school. He occasionally has something that’s worth reading
@Cory – Yeah.. internet marketers are humans after all. Some of them have families and they are just normal folks, although they might be more prone to over-selling. There are good and trustworthy marketers out there.
Not sure if i would qualify, but if so thanks for seeing the good.
Yeah I have been just this over the last few weeks though it got to a point where I had to do a purge. Many of the so called newsletters were nothing but pure pitch-fests – every single post did nothing other than promote their latest product. These all got unsubscribed. Though others that give me useful information as well stayed.
Yaro Starak, Ed Dale, Ryan Deiss and several others all provide good value newsletters.