Online chat on Internet marketing

I attended an online chat session last evening with some members from the TIMC Yahoo group.

Here’s a summary on what I learnt last evening:

1. Tracking and Testing is crucial to your internet marketing success e.g. YC found out that putting ad on the LEFT side worked better for his web page – www.optionsbooth.com

2. Some google adsense click through could pay you more than US$1 per click. YC is focusing on financial/investment related keywords.

3. Top 3 traffic generators: use SEP, PPC and publishing articles to drive traffic to your websites

4. Affiliate marketing is lucrative – you need a good quality list. quality and Not quantity counts. average size of responsive list – 5,000 subscribers

5. To make it online, you’ll need to build your own list and establish a trusting relationship with your subscribers

6. The good and bad sides of the use of of autoresponders – do not piss off your subscribers by sending sales letters every so often – weekly or longer timeframe will be acceptable.

So it was agreed that beside having a well layout website with a killer sales copy, we need to have quality traffic. And one of the most profitable traffic is those fron your own list – people who already know you and do not dislike you, will more likely to buy from you.

Next is to start a list…

The first question that comes to mind is:

“What autoresponder to use?”

These are what I use:

1. http://ebei.biz/t.cgi?a=timc

2. http://ebei.biz/t.cgi?a=icnt

Why do I use 2 different services?

No. 1 – This is for large purchased list to send out invitations to use certain free services or download free ebooks.

No. 2 – This is a premium email marketing service provider that is white listed by hotmail, yahoo and aol. People need to personally subscribe to this autoresponder. This is my smaller list that I will have to work on relationship building.

In addition, I also email blast to 125,000 business opportunity opt-in prospects every month. This is a new email blast service that use bullet-proof technology to protect you from being accuse of sp*mming.

So what’s my monthly business cost:

1. $27.47 for unlimited autoresponders and up to 50,000 contacts plus bonus 1,000 email leads monthly http://ebei.biz/t.cgi?a=timc

2. $9.95 per 500 subscribers per month premium email marketing service http://ebei.biz/t.cgi?a=icnt

3. $54.97 to email blast to 125,000 plus bonus 5,000 email leads http://ebei.biz/t.cgi?a=stnix

Total cost $92.39 per month.

Let’s face it, to make real money we have to build our own list and it will cost money and time to build a good list. For the business model minded, the cost over 2 years would be $2,217.36. And the main benefits to use automated systems are time saving and protection from being accused a sp*mmer – that’s the last thing you want to happen to you if you want to establish a respectable stature with your subscribers. What is the return on investment, I am projecting a conservative $2,000 per month affiliate’s earning from the 18th month onward.

So do you create/source the product first or start building the list?
It depends who you asked – the egg or the chicken?