Two Internet marketers were in the bar of a hotel swapping stories about their online successes. Each were trading examples of their success, bragging how good they were at making money out of the web. That was until, the younger, less experienced chap said he wasnt impressed by the size of the older marketers ezine mailing list. The older chap put his drink down and said: Look, I know youve not been at this Internet marketing lark for very long, but you will come to realize that it is a numbers game. The more people you get to your site, the more people you have on your list, the more people who you get as associates or affiliates, the better you will be. But the younger marketer simply supped his drink and said: So how much is each person on your list worth to you? What is their value? The older person thought for a while and said his list was over 150,000 names long and he brought in $750,000 a year, so that meant each person was worth $5. The younger marketer now put his drink down and said: I only have 5,000 names on my list and I made $600,000 last year which means they are each worth $120 to me. What the young Internet marketer had realized was the fact that numbers are not the game you should be playing on the Internet. Far too much attention has been given to getting traffic, links and mailing list sign ups. If you get large numbers of visitors to your site, you are wasting your bandwidth. If you get huge numbers of people to sign up to your list, you are having to work very hard to convert any of them in to buyers. Our older Internet marketer had to work far harder to get his $5 per person than the younger chap. Why? Because the younger marketer concentrated on getting people who were really interested in buying. Theres a maxim in Northern England that is often used by market traders: Do you want it or what? In other words, if youre not going to buy, the trader will move on and find someone who will. In the world of Internet marketing, far too few people take the do you want it or what approach. Instead they try to generate traffic and mailing list sign ups in the mistaken belief that if you have a large list, youll generate enough income. True, youll get income, but the return on your investment will be low. Instead, adopt the UK market traders approach. Only sign up people to your list who are actually going to buy from you. To do that, your web site needs to pre-qualify your mailing list. That means having a web page which only generates real interest not free gift chasers. The people who sign up for your free gifts will help swell your mailing list and therefore impress the people who think size is everything. But the big mailing list will not help your bank balance. Like most things in life, quality not quantity is what you should aim for. |
