Tips and Tricks for Making Money with Interviews

The tools we can all use to monetize original audio and video content are getting better and better. Today UStream.com opened up the application process for their pay-per-view platform.

I’m not sure what their cut will be, but it’s just one more way independent content creators like us will be able to make money creating valuable information products.

The application form can be found here.

There are several ways I can see using this:

1) You have a particularly high-profile guest that you think will convert to dollars well
2) Allow prospective members to get a taste of your content without committing to a membership yet (but still charge them for something)
3) Just one more revenue stream you can use to make money in addition to traditional sponsorship and membership revenue

Now if Apple will just open up their e-commerce platform in iTunes to allow podcasters to charge for individual shows or create paid memberships, we would really be on to something!

selling content online pay-per-view, ustream

Emile and I will be attending Blogworld Expo next week in Las Vegas (October 14-16 @ Mandalay Bay).

If any Membercon readers will be there, let us know in the comments – let’s have a small meet-up – beers (or the beverage of your choice) are on us. We’ll pick a day/time as we get closer.

Blogworld Expo is the show we sold Podcast Expo to a couple years ago and it has really turned into a tremendous event. Honestly, Rick and team were able to turn the event into something I wasn’t able to – a huge industry-wide spectacle that everyone attends. (If I had to name my biggest business fault, it’s not letting things mature enough before selling it and moving on, but that’s a subject for an entire post I’ll write during the show.)

There are a few reasons we’ll be attending:

1) I’ve always approached any event, webinar or research project with one goal: if I can pick up just one tip, trick or nugget of information that helps us increase our revenue just 1%, the entire trip is an awesome investment.

2) Emile and I have been so focused on our niche membership and content sites that it is helpful to take a few days, step back, and get a broader view of what other successful site owners are doing to make more money.

3) Events like these are great for “recharging your batteries” and getting fresh motivation to do more. Making money online is terrific motivation, but sometimes you need more than that to confirm you’re on the right track and seeing the world with clarity. It is easy to get a skewed version of reality because you’re spending so much time on the “nitty gritty” details. Meeting other site owners face-to-face is a terrific way of making sure your business goggles are on straight.

Hope to see a few of you there. Feel free to call my cell phone on-site if you want to chat: 1-949-677-4905.

online entrepreneurs, taking action, website launches #bwe10, Blogworld Expo

I’ve addressed this issue in a previous post here, but wanted to give you an update.

First, a few definitions for those new to the subject:

Single Opt-In Email Form: the subscriber enters their email address, clicks submit and is then taken straight to the free content or thank you page. They are now subscribers and no further action is needed on their part.

Double Opt-In Email form: the subscriber enters their email address, clicks submit, and is then taken to a page that tells them they need to check the email box they just entered. The email service then sends that email address a confirmation email containing a link that must be clicked in order to join the list. If they don’t click the link, they never get subscribed and never get the free content.

Double opt-ins, while growing your list more slowly (because a certain percentage of subscribers will never click on the confirmation link) result in a cleaner, more responsive list because you don’t acquire bogus email addresses or 3rd or 4th tier web-based email addresses the owner never checks. It also ensures someone isn’t getting subscribed to a list without their permission.

There is a compromise though and it’s the behavior we’ve settled on that works well for our lists.

All of our lists are double-opt in, but the confirmation link in the first email takes the new subscriber directly to the promised content. It’s the most “friction-free” way we know to both confirm the subscriber’s address AND take them to the content in one click.

The trouble with most standard double opt-in strategies is that it adds one unnecessary step to the process and it truly hurts their ability to grow a great email list. The standard Aweber double opt-in process goes like this:

1) User subscribes
2) User gets sent a confirmation email that must be clicked
3) User clicks that confirmation email link and then is told they have to wait again to get content in another email
4) User finally gets email with the link to the content or the content attached (which is email #1 in your auto-responder chain)

That step 4 is what can really kill your list building efforts - eliminate it! Why should your subscriber have to take action and then wait AGAIN to get yet one more email before they get your content?

In my opinion, that’s simply asking too much patience and effort from your subscriber.

Thankfully, the fix is simple. In Aweber, you can specify the page that your user gets taken to once they click the confirmation link. Instead of taking them to a “thank you, now you have to wait again” page, make that URL the link to a page on your website that contains the promised free content.

They will still get your first email in the follow-up series (that likely takes them to that same page) but that’s OK. The user gets to your content one step faster and you get the full benefit of a clean, responsive and double opt-in email list.

building your list, email marketing, list building double opt-in email marketing, single opt-in email marketing

I received an email question today about our follow-up emails in our auto-responder series at Aweber. One of our awesome readers here at MemberCon joined several of our email lists on our membership sites just to see how we do things.

She immediately noticed that we don’t personalize our emails with the subscriber’s first name like many of the “gurus” do. Why not?

Good question and there are several reasons:

1) We don’t ask for the subscriber’s first name on our opt-in pages because the conversion rate for people who actually sign up is lower when you do (or I should say, when we do – others may have different stats but from what I hear it’s common across the board). The more information you ask for on your opt-in page, the lower your conversion rate will be for that page. In order to achieve the highest conversion rates (views vs. actual completion of the form), we ask for one thing and one thing only: their email address. Even one more field – something as simple as asking for a first name will decrease your conversion rate significantly.

2) Personalization was awesome and cool and unique when the technology was first available, but in the years that have passed since it was the cool thing to do, everyone knows the email wasn’t written just to them. Initially, conversions and clicks and opens on emails that included the subscriber name went through the roof. That just isn’t the case anymore. And since it doesn’t help conversions (see #1) we simply don’t see the need anymore.

3) There are too many chances for it to get screwed up. How many times have you received an email that started exactly like this:

Dear {first name},

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah (Where the sender somehow mistyped the fill-in code that was suppose to insert your first name but instead the raw code is the only thing that was inserted.)

——or——

Dear Chris

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah (when your name isn’t Chris)

——or——

,

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah. (where the first name area was blank where the software was suppose to insert it)

I’ve received emails just this week with all 3 of these mistakes. Anyone on the planet who still thought the guru was emailing them personally now knows that isn’t the case. Bottom line, there are just too many chances for error in inserting the first name and when you or the software screws up, it’s embarrassing.

So there you have it. All the reasons we no longer personalize our autoresponder emails. If there was a minor reason #4, it would be that it’s simply one more line of text to read before they get to the “meat” of the message and the link we want them to click.

Anything we can do to get them to that “take action” link faster is a good thing.

Of course, I welcome your opinion on the matter!

building your list, email marketing autoresponder services, Aweber

If you’ve followed Membercon for any length of time, you know Emile and I love to talk about the tactics and strategies that have failed as much as we do about what led to success (maybe more).

We’re constantly tweaking, adjusting, deleting and adding to the emails that are in our autoresponder chain at Aweber. Our email follow-ups have become the single-most important tool we have to bring a prospect in and convert them to paying members of our sites.

A few weeks ago I snuck in a new email at around #6, meaning they received it about two weeks after joining our list. The idea was this: we’ve given them some great content and pointed them to some great resources on our site. Let’s show the subscriber we know what they are feeling and can relate their place in the learning curve. Our sense was that most people who joined our email list for our online trading membership site were relatively new and would appreciate a “we’ve been where you are” type of email that then also invited them to become members and join the community.

Within 3 days I knew we had a problem. Unsubscribe rates doubled for this specific email number and it quickly became the leader as the email that resulted in the most unsubscribes of all the follow-ups for that week.

Part of the unsubscribe issue was that it was the first “all pitch, no content” email in the chain so that accounts for a lot of the unsubscribes. But there were just to many on a percentage basis for that to have been the only reason. But it also genuinely pissed people off. We started getting some nasty email replies – not good (I’ll share a few of them with you in a moment just for kicks).

Here’s the email in full and then I’ll tell you why I think it didn’t work…

Ok, I assume you listened to the interview I sent a few days ago. Let me make a few more assumptions – this time about you: You’re smart. You know you have what it takes to trade well, you just need some good information from someone who knows what to do.

Perhaps you’ve even traded a bit – and lost some and made some. But…you just can’t seem to get consistent – as in month after month of gains. You feel like the market seems to know when you enter a trade – and loves to reverse right after you get in.

When you do get a winning trade, you exit too early or worry that you’ll give it all back if you stay in much longer.

You’ve tried all the “guru” free trials and it hasn’t helped much.

How am I doing so far? How did I know? Because I’m describing myself just a short time ago. Then I decided to talk to a few traders who were consistent.

And it made all the difference. It finally clicked. It’s not hard, it’s not complicated, and it makes perfect sense when you hear these traders describe it.

Sign up now with TraderInterviews.com – I’ve even slashed the price for you:

http://www.TraderInterviews.com/traderinterviews_signup.php

Call me or email me anytime.

All the best,

Tim Bourquin, Co-Founder
Trader Interviews
(direct email): tim@traderinterviews.com
(direct phone): 1-949-348-2590 ext. 15

P.S. How much longer are you going to wait to find the perfect trading service? This is what you’ve been looking for!

http://www.TraderInterviews.com/traderinterviews_signup.php

Our intentions were good. I honestly thought that by describing the state of mind the subscriber was probably in, we would generate goodwill and a few sales from folks who understood that we “got them.” That may have been the case for some people, but what we found out is this:

People don’t like being told how they feel – no matter how right you may be.

I think people said to themselves, “Dude, you’ve emailed me 6 times and you think you know me? You don’t, so don’t assume you do!”

They were right. Even reading it now, I somehow get a flash of “We’re better than you but if you become a member, you can be as good as us.” It’s not something I felt when I wrote it and it definitely wasn’t meant that way, but stepping back I can see it plain as day.

The lesson learned: certainly we can all make assumptions about our subscribers and write emails and offer products that help them achieve whatever goals they have. All the surveying in the world can get you close to the facts, but ultimately you’ll have to make some assumptions to fill in the blanks. But in most cases, stating that fact outright just makes people feel you are taking liberties with the relationship and acting like a know it all.

This may be a perfect case of, “Do it but don’t say you are doing it because no matter how you say it, it won’t come out right.”

And the email replies? Here are a few:

1) “You know what they say about “assume” – it makes an ass out of you and of me!” (of course we’d get that one)
2) “This isn’t me at all actually, and I’m a little annoyed that you think so…”

Plus a few others with colorful language, to say the least.

So obviously that email is now gone from the follow-up chain. We’ll keep testing, tweaking and trying. It’s the only way to improve and hopefully our experience here. You never know which emails will work and which ones won’t until you give them their chance on stage.

email marketing autoresponder chain, Aweber, marketing assumptions