Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

Last week I mentioned we were changing our first email to all our lists to be more direct about the fact that yes, we will be offering paid products occasionally along with our free tips, tricks and content.

Our sense is that while many people understand that joining a list means an occasional sale pitch for the products of the website owner or their partners, many do not – or at least appreciate a direct statement to that effect in the beginning.

In part, the emails now say something similar to this:

Here it is: we’re going to be emailing you ideas and tricks we use but never publish on our blog. And we’ll explain it in a step-by-step way that you’ll be able to understand and use them on your own website right away to make some coin (or euros, pounds, dollars, pesos, etc.).

That’s what makes our list so valuable to subscribers.

But we’re also going to introduce you to products and services we think are top notch and worthy of your attention and dollars – things we’ve bought ourselves.

In other words, we’re going to ask you to buy stuff too.

So if capitalism, grandma’s apple pie, or marketing offends you, you’ll want to find that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email and put yourself out of your misery right now. Go ahead, we’ll wait….

So are we seeing more people click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of that email? The answer is YES. Not a lot more, but before we implemented the more direct text, very few unsubscribed after the first email. But, interestingly yet not surprisingly, less people are unusbscribing, percentage-wise, on the first sales pitch email that comes around email 6. This is across the board on all our sites.

So we’re just getting rid of non-buyers sooner in the follow-up chain. Which is A-OK by us. If there is no chance they are ever going to buy something then the sooner they are off the list, the better.

This is all based on just 6 days worth of data, but I think it’s encouraging and wanted to update you.

email marketing, list building email marketing

My recent interview with content creator and online marketer Rob Booker got me thinking about the first email we send to subscribers for our various niche content sites.

One of the things Rob said was that the trick to keeping subscribers on your email list, even while you are pitching something, is to set the stage early and simply tell them to expect it.

It’s a simple idea. Manage your subscriber’s expectation right up front and when the sale pitch comes, they won’t be surprised. Even with this website, which focuses on on how to make money online with content, I just assumed that our subscribers knew we would pitch them occasionally. This site is about making money, right? So isn’t it obvious that we’re making money ourselves? No, it isn’t.

Even though we haven’t pitched much to Membercon list yet, when we did about a month ago, we still got replies saying something to the effect of, “Hey I thought you were giving us free info – what the heck?” I take full responsibility for that – we never said straight up that we would be occasionally asking subscribers to buy something.

So, to make sure we are managing expectations of our subscribers right up front, this morning we changed the first email to what you see below. Using straight talk and a bit of humor, we’ll be doing this with all of our sites going forward.

It’s a bit like how Zappos.com offers new employees $2,000 to quit after the training program. They end up with committed employees who understand what they are getting into.

Let me know what you think. Does this do the trick? How are you managing the expectations of your list subscribers?

Well howdy doody! You found our secret mailing list. Welcome to the
potluck and party! The secret handshake lesson comes later…

Glad you decided to leave that boring “internet marketing guru”
party at that website down the street. Their stories are getting
pretty old, don’t you agree?

Leave your car keys in the bowl next to the door, because you’re
about to experience the intoxicating sounds, tastes and smells
of real online success.

Let’s get something straight right away. Can you handle the truth?

Here it is: we’re going to be emailing you ideas and tricks we use
but never publish on our blog. And we’ll explain it in a step-by-step
way that you’ll be able to understand and use them on your own website
right away to make some coin (or euros, pounds, dollars, pesos, etc.).

That’s what makes our list so valuable to subscribers.

But we’re also going to introduce you to products and services we
think are top notch and worthy of your attention and dollars – things we’ve
bought ourselves.

In other words, we’re going to ask you to buy stuff too.

So if capitalism, grandma’s apple pie, or marketing offends you,
you’ll want to find that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email
and put yourself out of your misery right now. Go ahead, we’ll wait….

Still here? Wonderful! You’re in for a real treat. Stay tuned for the
next email and get ready to finally make some real money online by
selling content.

You can call or email us anytime.

All the best,

Tim and Emile (brothers and all-around good guys)

——————————-
Tim Bourquin | Emile Bourquin
MemberCon | Interview Income

30251 Golden Lantern Suite E-358
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677-5993

phone: 1-949-829-3049
email: tim@membercon.com
——————————-

Each of our sites will have a similar email so let them know that while we are going to be sending them great information, we’ll also be asking them to buy things we trust and feel are worthwhile.

I’ve been in this game long enough to know that when I sign up for an email list, I’ll be pitched occasionally. But it’s not obvious to everyone, so I want to make sure we make it obvious!

email marketing, selling content online internet marketing, online marketing

We’ve wanted to test something for about a year. Internet marketing “gurus” have done it for years but I’ve always been hesitant. Their classes, podcasts, courses and seminars have all said it’s OK, but I’ve never been quite comfortable with it…until last week.

It was the same “uncomfortableness” we felt when we started emailing our list every day. We thought our entire list would unsubscribe within a week. It actually grew and so did our sales.

So when I was ready to hit the send button for the second time in a single day, I wasn’t sure what would happen. But we couldn’t stand it any longer. We had to know what would happen when our list received two emails from us in a single day. What happened was we made an extra $2,000.

Last week we ran a promotion to a group of just over 1,000 new email list subscribers who had never been offered a special Lifetime Membership to one of our interview sites. We have 21 emails in our autoresponder follow-up series and we usually wait until after that series has completed to offer a special membership. But I was dying to know what would happen if we made those offers while they were still receiving freebie content at the same time.

So all of the 1,000 subscribers received the first email special offer on a day when we don’t send a follow-up email. Aweber allows us to not send follow-up emails on certain days. For us those days are usually Tuesdays and Thursdays so that we can send offers on those days. But Fridays they do get a follow-up email. But we purposely had the special membership offer expire at 5:00 pm Pacific on Friday.

Most of our follow-up emails go out between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm Pacific time. That week, the schedule looked like this:

Monday: Autresponder email
Tuesday: First email about special offer
Wednesday: Autoresponder email
Thursday: Second email about special offer
Friday: Autoresponder email in morning / Special offer expiration email in afternoon
(afternoon sales pitch email sent 2 hours prior to deadline)

Being the testing fools, we tracked the links in each special offer email separately. The special offer email in the afternoon brought in an additional 4 orders at $499 that we probably wouldn’t have received otherwise. Now those orders could have been people who were going to order before the deadline anyway and just clicked the link in that email because it was the latest. But typically we don’t get a rush of orders in the last few hours. One or two, maybe.

But my sense is that at those were people who were reminded at the right time and decided to buy because of the urgency present in that last email. Even if we assume only two of them were buyers that would not have purchased otherwise, that’s an extra $1,000 in our pocket on a Friday afternoon.

(By the way, Friday is a crummy day to expire an offer – I don’t recommend it. We did it because we wanted to test the consequences of emailing twice to a segment of our list, but it would have been better to have the deadline mid-week.)

Unsubscribes were in line with the previous week, where we had a normal schedule and no more than one email per day.

Lesson learned: Emailing twice in one day, when we had an impending deadline that day, resulted in additional sales and dollars.

What we didn’t test, of course, was sending two sales-pitch emails in a single day. In our case, it was one freebie content email and one sales pitch email. Perhaps two sales pitch emails for the same product in one day will result in more unsubscribes. Even if it does, I’d be OK with that. That’s just people qualifying themselves off the list who aren’t interested in buying.

One more thing on our list to test. We’ll keep you updated.

But for now, emailing twice on the day the special offer expires will be added to our standard procedure list.

email marketing, selling content online email marketing

I’m headed out this evening to work a 12-hour shift for LAPD. Most of you know that prior to my life as a website owner, I was a full-time police officer with LAPD.

My last full-time assignment was tracking down parolees-at-large who had stopped checking in with their parole officers and were now fugitives. It was some of the most exciting law enforcement work I did while a full-time cop. Before that, I was a field training officer, working patrol with fresh recruits right out of the Academy, showing them how everything they learned there was applied to real-life situations.

I was two months away from making Detective when I quit to work on my business full-time. At 28, I would have been one of the youngest Detectives on the department. But, I had been working 8 hours a day on my websites and 12 hours a day on-duty and something had to give.

I had a 6-month old daughter and a wife who was a full-time student getting her Masters. I loved being a cop. It was a big risk. But my desire to own my own business was too strong. I “pulled the pin” as cops say and became a reserve officer – still a full police officer, but just not paid for it. (A bit like a volunteer firefighter, but with a gun and body armor).

When you’re writing email subject lines knowing if you don’t make enough money with them you put your family in a tough place (or like you have “a gun to your head” as copy writing expert John Carlton says) you make darn sure the language you write is free of fluff and softness.

Now I have the best of both worlds. I work 2 or 3 12-hour shifts a month. I still have to go through all the annual training and updates as regular officers to keep my credentials active, but don’t make a salary.

I’ve always been a good writer. As a Political Science major in college, I wrote the heck out of my papers. As a cop you do a lot of writing as well. But it’s all about exact facts – with no exaggeration. There’s a little bit of persuasion – but not much. You state exactly what happened and what is known – without embellishing – because those exaggerations will come back to bite you in court when a good defense attorney begins their cross-examination.

Transitioning to writing as a marketing tool was a bit of a shock to my system. Instead of “just the facts, Ma’am” writing, which can often be a bit dry, I now had to write in a way that was irresistibly interesting to the reader. Writing to get “opens” and “clicks” is a lot different than police reports – and a lot more fun.

The best way to improve your skills in writing email subject lines is to split test everything. Write two subject lines you think are both good and try them both. Most of the time, I already have a sense as to which one will win before I even send the email. But sometimes I’m surprised.

With each test I get a little better at writing subject lines that get “opens” and email bodies that get “clicks.”

Here are a few I tested recently and the results:

A) The “brutal truth” interview you have to hear
B) Why do most traders lose money?

Winner: A (in both opens and clicks)

A) Your trading strategy on steroids
B) Steps to improve your trading by 25%

Winner: B (in both opens and clicks)

A) The best MemberCon posts you never read
B) You probably missed these articles

Winner: A (in both opens and clicks)

If there is one thing over the past two years I’ve learned about email writing is that strong language wins every time. Weak words (I call them “loophole words” like “probably,” “might” and “usually” are death for email subject lines and should be avoided at all times.

Words such as “you will,” “always,” and “important” work well. Words like “shocking,” “disaster” and “disturbing” work too, but the trouble with those words is that they wear out your reader very quickly and when you use language like that all the time, it loses it’s punch.

The Lesson Learned: Use strong language and avoid “loophole” language in your email subject lines. The body of the email may be 250 – 500 words, but I spend more time on the 5 words of the subject line than I do on the body itself. It’s that important to the success of your email.

And finally, there’s a tendency in all of us to “cover all our bases” by making the subject lines not too strong because we feel like we don’t want to under-deliver in the email body. Don’t fall for it. Occasionally you may go a bit overboard with your subject lines, but it’s the price you pay for constantly living on the edge with your email marketing. It’s where you need to be to make a living online.

Never lie, but never hold back either for fear that it’s too much or “over the top.” It’s your one chance to make a go at this crazy business.

Related reading:

- Test: Which Font Gets the Best Open and Click Rate
- Our Top Email Subscriber Retention Trick
- Which Web Email Accounts Have the Best Conversion to Memberships?
- Double Opt-in vs. Single Opt-in Email Marketing

email marketing compelling email subject lines

Every so often I try to take a break from the matrix and go offline for a few days. I did just that the past few days and did a ton of hiking with the family in Yosemite. It was beautiful, with the waterfalls at full speed since there was quite a bit of snow this season.

On every hike at some point my mind inevitably turns to business. MemberCon has grown nicely over the past few months, but there were (in my not-so-humble opinion) some nice articles written in our early days when the only reader was Emile.

And just this evening I went back and updated one of those earlier posts so I thought I’d point to a few gems that you probably missed in those first few weeks of this blog.

Here they are in no particular order

1) Membership Site Software Plugin Reviews – a good rundown of our thoughts on various membership software offerings.

2) How To Be a Niche Content Millionaire – My interview with David Eedle about how he started and grew his very niche membership site.

3) Should You Start a Forum or Message Board? – a discussion of the value of starting a message board for your website

4) Turn Your Knowledge Into Membership Dollars – my interview with Perry Lawrence about how he promotes his membership site

We’re also starting a new membership site in the motivation and success space this month – stay tuned for tons of test results and tips on how we’re building it from scratch.

email marketing, site marketing, starting a membership site creating membership site content