The only internet marketing strategy that I know of & that ever worked very well 4 me— is that when a respected provider of info or entertainment contacts his customers or readers and gives it his favorable personal endorsement:
“This XYZ is really good and I recommend it”
Then, with this kind of plug, if you are average you will get maybe 2% of his list to order the product as the direct result of his recommendation.
You’ll usually get more orders if it is cheap (under $20 and less if it is expensive (over $99).
Without a money-back guaranty of full satisfaction, your orders will be cut by 80%.
Most people want to order with credit cards. Few will send cash.
Advertising alone does not get very good results because it lacks credibility.
After all, anybody can claim anything in an ad that they pay for.
An independent, trusted review carries more weight.
However, advertising is quite good for announcing “free information” or a free report.
A “free” offer can and will generate names for your mailing list.
Once, years ago, I got around a 20% cash order response from the Harry Schultz list. His subscribers at the time were incredibly trusting & receptive to Harry’s recommendations.
That kind of percentage never happened again.
His HSL International Newsletter was sold in 2010 to the Aden Sisters (Gold Report).
You can get a very good sized percentage response when you offer something interesting for free. However, it had better be good because if it isn’t you will have turned off a potential customer–probably for good.
When the Nigerian billion dollar scams, penis enlargers, drugs or fake watch spam goes out to 2 million email addresses, I hear they are happy with 1 order (or 1 sucker-bites!) per million.
So the question is, how will you generate orders?
Luna wrote a best selling book on Privacy.
I advise in my HOW TO BE A CONSULTANT article that if you are the person who “wrote the book” on a topic, you are presumed to be the expert in that articular field…
In Luna’s book he has at least one back end profitable product— he recommends forming an LLC in New Mexico & he suggests contacting his lady in the Canary Islands to do it. He offers in his book a free report!
This gets Luna a receptive mailing list.
We hear it is now over 100,000 “privacy seekers”. He bombards them with many privacy-related offers every week ….
Jim Straw (making money) , Jay Abraham (marketing tips) & and Groupon (consumer products at a discount) all send out many offers to their huge mailing lists every day…
A new PT newsletter guy, Simon Black recently started out cold with a free very informative daily newsletter. He got noticed and recommended by everyone just because it was good.
After around 6 months, the contents of his free newsletter became teasers for not free back-end products and services.
I don’t know how well Simon Black is doing, but probably very well… I understand his mailing list is over 100,000 names now.
Gary Scott promotes Ecuador investments, plus seminars in North Carolina and Ecuador and Jyske Copenhagen bank currency “sandwich” accounts for Americans. Good informative free newsletter.
Expat World newsletter is unique, humorous & free, they have an around 90,000 mailing list. They cover PT stuff and travel opportunities, etc. There are a lot of gloom and doom letters that sell stuff related to “survival” when the world as we know it collapses
The biggest & most successful marketer of all is the Bill Bonner Group- International Living, Sovereign Society and a dozen other newsletters promoting such things as exclusive membership only discussion groups, empty lots in Nicaragua and other swell products.
Another one, PT Shamrock has had a similar approach. Their monthly newsletter is culled articles copied from newspapers. In the opinion of some, it is too long, and not very useful. But there are those who will buy into any gloom and doom scary stuff. Shamrock has a long list of enticing, expensive back end products.
We hear they are making a lot of money (profits) because they offer such a wide range of products (like no name debit cards) and services…
All of the above proves is that different approaches work for different products and target audiences.
Everybody in the biz makes their only money from back end products and services. I think the most extensive list of these may in the P.T. Shamrock site. So, get your product ideas there folks!
I must also mention that the majority of INTERNET websites (not any of the ones I mentioned above!) are crooks who will take your money and never provide the promised goods or services.
From Grandpa:
What do you get in a $100 consultation with grandpa?
The above article was a typical short consultation answer.
Your short consultation might include answers & a follow up to another question or 2.
Any questions for grandpa?
You can send cash at our sole risk of theft or loss to an address Grandpa will supply upon request. This above report and many more like it in “PT4” are free to my consulting customers and to all buyers of my €550, 6 kilogram 3 volume book set — Bye Bye Big Brother.
My standard fee for a several hour personal conference, usually with the client buying me a nice lunch, is 1000 euros.
You will get a free autographed copy of the €500 or $775 BBBB books at lunch. They are books for people who don’t usually read books. Digital download version is available too.
This 1000 FEE is for personal (or Skype) conference. The €1000 is fully deductible from the 2 year retainer fee of Euro 15,000.
NOTE:
Grandpa only takes on 5 full time consulting clients and he is fully booked for the moment. But a spot will be coming up soon.
I (Grandpa) specialize in offering help with 2nd citizenships, residence, keeping a low profile. Also, care and feeding of wives & mistresses, real estate investing and financial matters—plus litigation avoidance, divorces/custody, estate planning, tracing missing heirs, and a wide range of PT related matters to make you happier, healthier, and richer… Sometimes consulting clients are introduced to offshore opportunities, contacts or deals that earn them many times our consulting fee.
I (Grandpa) am well over 70 years old and have been a PT for 50 years in 40 countries.
“We can’t talk seriously to anyone who does not have a basic understanding of the PT Philosophy and the Six PT Flags.”
Accordingly, a first step is to read my latest book—BBBB, or Bye Bye Big Brother. Or at least read the attachments (below)!
We can only accept high net worth clients for personal consulting on retainer although my short consultations and internet materials may be useful to anyone seeking a portable trade, or offshore opportunity.
Reader Comment from a marketing guy:
Eden Press (California) reports by the way are quite interesting and on a diverse range of topics. Free catalog online. They do a great job of marketing printed material not available elsewhere.
30 years ago, before the Internet; when <Edenpress.com> was doing a very big biz selling several hundred different short “Special Reports at all under $10; Grandpa’s predecessor author insisted that Eden sell the then new 2nd passport report at $100. See catalog as they are doing the same thing with cheap reports after all these years.
Eden put out big resistance at selling anything for 10 times their usual price! But reluctantly, they tried it! As it turned out for the next few years Eden made more money from that pp report (and later PT) at $100@ than from all their other sales combined.
One difference between him and those without a customer list was that EdenPress had maybe 10,000 people per year who paid a little bit, $5 or $10) for their catalog, and almost all of them bought something. Why? First of all the topics were interesting to a niche audience, and not available elsewhere.
Second:
The offer that worked well for Eden was that the price of the catalog was deductible from the 1st purchase. EdenPress always offered many combo package deals so that say, for instance, 10 reports that might be 100$ if purchased separately. A package deal would be offered –with “10 free reports a $200 value for only $100 plus postage.” Most customers bought the package deals because the perceived value was that they were getting stuff at 1/2 price.
From Eden’s point of view, the cost of printing these reports were pennies. Thus the mark-up was almost infinite—even at $5 or $10 per copy. Eden’s biggest seller for 40 years was “The Paper Trip.”This is the classic “underground book” about how to change one’s identity and start a new life.
By the way, a big percentage of Eden’s reports were & still are ordered by or sent as gifts to prison inmates. Still today, they are the most popular reads in “the joint” where the only other reading matter they get (for free) is religious tracts.
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