if you’ve been following my last blog posts, then you know that I had a bit of trouble with my autoresponder and that I’ve finally moved my lists to 2 new autoresponders, one is GVO and the other one is Traffic Wave. I’m not sure why but I got the feeling that I should go deeper into the topic “autoresponders” and therefore I write this blog post today.

I can still remember how it was when I first started out trying to make money online. There were all these new tools and new terms of language… and one of these was the autoresponder. First I thought an autoresponder is a very simple tool that just answers your emails automatically with a standard reply… but then I found out it’s alot more than just that.

First of all, an autoresponder is also the host of your list. Your list is basically just data consisting of the names, email addresses and maybe additional data of all the people who have signed up on your list. Yes, people need to sign up, you can’t just enter them on your list… that would be considered “spamming”.

Alright, so the process that we have so far is that people signup on your list… and they do that in most cases by entering their name and email address into a signup form on your website. They hit the submit button and then the signup form processes their data (name and email) to your autoresponder into your list.

There are basically 3 forms of autoresponders that you could use: Desktop Based Autoresponder, Self-Hosted Autoresponder, Hosted Autoresponder.

Here we only want to talk about the Hosted Autoresponder because the other two are not an option for beginners.

Hosted Autoresponders are programs that a company hosts on their servers. These companies (the good ones) have not just 1 server, they have huge server-clusters so that they are able to send out millions of emails per day (as they have many customers). These companies also have people who take care of the delivery rate of the emails. They do this by keeping their server ip’s off from the spam-blacklists, by switching ip’s and with some other methods. They do this for their customers, so you don’t have to take care of that.

The Hosted Autoresponders have a monthly membership fee. Some have a Flat Fee… for example at Traffic Wave you always pay $17,95 monthly no matter how many autoresponders you setup in your acccount and no matter how many subscribers you have. Other Hosted Autoresponders like Aweber or GetResponse will increase your monthly fee depending on how many subscribers you have in your autoresponders. Personally I had to pay over $400 monthly at Aweber… so if you plan to build big lists, then consider that this increasing membership fee can grow to a significant price factor in your business. You’ll be forced to promote stuff to “finance” your autoresponder costs.  Is that the reason why some “Gurus” send out so much crap?

All Hosted Autoresponders have 2 ways of sending out emails. You can use the Follow-Up feature and the Broadcast feature.

The Follow Up emails are the emails that get delivered automatically. You set them up once and then every new subscriber will receive your Follow Up Email. You can time those emails, for example you can send out the first email instantly as a person subscribes to your list. Then you can send out the second email a day later… or two days later if you like. Some marketers setup 50 or more Follow Up emails to automate their email marketing.

The Broadcast emails are the emails that you send out manually, in most cases just once on a certain date. For example, you want to announce the opening of your new membershipsite to your list, then you would send out a Broadcast email to your subscribers.

The Follow Up vs. Broadcast features is something that is not really easy to setup properly. For example: Will you send out your Broadcast to your whole list, even to the people who have just signed up 10 minutes ago? I mean, they signup and get the welcome email and then 10 minutes later they get your Broadcast email which might be a promotional email… not good if you ask me.

What if you have setup 10 Follow Up emails all going out one day after the other… wouldn’t it then be wise to send out the Broadcasts only to the people who are already on your autoresponder for 11 days or longer?

There are several things that you need to think about when setting up your autoresponders. The Broadcast and Follow Up Emails are just one part… but in fact a very important one!

That’s because the whole power of a good email marketing campaign comes from the Follow Up and Broadcast emails. Your success basically depends on what you send out and when you send it out. For example: When you setup 10 Follow Up emails… will you try to sell something already in the second email or will you give only free information and tips in the first couple of emails and start selling in the fifth email?

Personally I think your email marketing strategy must fit to the Offer that gets people on your list.

People don’t just signup for your list because you are a nice person… they signup because you offer them something in return for signing up to your list.

And right there in this Offer is the key for your email marketing strategy!

Let me give you 2 examples:

1.) When people signup for a Free Membershipsite… like a Traffic Exchange or a Safelist or a Free Download Site… then the email marketing strategy should be targeted towards building up trust and a community within the membershipsite. All you need to do to make sales is to get people logging in to your membershipsite. There you can have Login Offers, Special Offers and Backend Offers.

2.) You have a very simple Free To Signup Page where people signup to get a free ebook… then the email marketing strategy can be very different… you could do hard-selling by pushing a product that is related to the first product that you gave away for free. I mean… people signup to get the free ebook, not to join a community. They want to download their ebook and then they want to either read it or download more ebooks from somewhere else. Isn’t that what most of us do?
So in this case I personally think it would be better to hit them right then when they care about the topic… if they just downloaded a free ebook about “How to use Twitter”… then they might be interested in buying an ebook about “How to make money with Twitter”… am I right?

No matter what strategy you think is better… best is always if you test and track different strategies. Try different things and see what works best… if you keep doing this for a while you’ll end up with the best possible conversions.

Alright… this is already a very long blog post… so I must come to an end. I could keep writing about this topic. The thing is, that setting up an autoresponder… the technical part… that’s easy if you take some time to learn how to do it. The hard part is the email marketing itself and that is setting up a good Offer that people will signup for and having good Follow Up and Broadcast emails that lead people towards taking certain actions.

OK, let me guess… now you want to know how you can setup a Killer Email Marketing Campaign… correct?

Believe me, if I’d know a formula that works everytime, then I would show it to you right here on the blog. Fact is that there are certain marketing strategies and techniques that can do wonders… if used properly and if used in the right situation and content. I would recommend you study successful marketers. Signup to their lists and analyse what they do… what do they offer for the free signup… what do they offer after the free signup… what kind of emails do they send you… etc.

Also, I think you should start small. For example, if you are just starting out with internet marketing, then don’t try to open up a huge membershipsite or starting a huge product launch. These things require skills, good contacts and a couple thousand dollars to start. You need a big server, referral contest prizes, a support team, programmers or technical people for bug fixes, big jv partners who promote etc. Way too much for a total beginner!

If you are just starting out, then build up Simple Systems like a Squeeze Page (the signup page) with a free ebook offer. Learn how to get visitors to your Squeeze Page and how to increase the number of people who signup to your list (the conversion rate). Setup different offers… compare the conversion rates for different free products… test different One Time Offers that you show after the free signup to make your first money. Once you are able to get 10 and more signups per day and a couple of One Time Offer sales, then you can move on to the next bigger systems with alot of knowledge in your hands.

The next step could be starting your own Giveaway Event. Your own Giveaway Event is like a little test before starting your own Membershipsite. A Giveaway Event runs for about 4 weeks including the pre-launch. So, you can experience how it is to do Support, how to do proper email communications with your members and other things that you can later use for starting your own Membershipsite. Your own Membershipsite with a free to signup offer and monthly recurring upgrade options plus included affiliate program is the Pro Level of Listbuilding.

Alright, enough for now… Please let me know your questions and let me know what part of the whole Email Marketing and Listbuilding topic you want to know more about.

Post your comments below!

Thanks,

Guido Nussbaum

below is a video that shows what the Social Marketing JV is all about and why becoming a contributor to Giveaway Events is a great way to build your list.

Click  Here to signup as a contributor for the Social Marketing JV

Click Here for a list of more Giveaway Events

Let me know…. what do you think about Giveaway Events… are there too many currently?  What makes a Giveaway Event a High Quality one?  What holds you back from signing up as a contributor?

Post your questions and opionions below.

Thanks,

Guido Nussbaum

You are invited to join us as a Contributor and add a couple hundred new subscribers to your list.

Click Here To Signup

For those of you who don’t know what a Giveaway Event is, let me try to explain it in a few words.

A giveaway event is basically a place where several internet marketers create a Team to add new subscribers to their lists.

Every marketer enters a Free Gift into the giveaway event that people can access once the giveaway event opens.

Also, every marketer promotes the giveaway event, that’s how people find their way to the event.

The Social Marketing giveaway event is currently in Pre-Launch, that’s the phase when all the internet marketers signup and add their gifts.

If you read this, you are invited to join us in this Pre-Launch phase.

Be aware that this is not a free-ride… you’ll either have to promote the event or you can upgrade your account to add gifts (and other stuff like banners, special offers and your profile with links to your blog, website, twitter and facebook).

Are you ready to join the Team?

Then signup now, Click Here

I’ll See You Inside!

Guido Nussbaum

PS. Contributors of this event get Early Access to Giveaway Manager 3!

it’s been already 2 days ago that I had my first wake-boarding experience at a lake near Cologne and all my muscles are still sored. So, I can’t do sports besides watching the Germany vs. Spain football match, which we unfortunately lost. So no party either today… and I got time to write this blog post.

First of all I want to say Thanks to everybody who has commented on my last post. It was an adventure moving my lists to a new autoresponder company but finally the guys from GVO were very helpful.

I’m currently using 2 Autoresponders as I had already switched the signup forms on my sites to Traffic Wave. Well… I guess that gives me a chance to compare the delivery and signup rates of those 2 autoresponders.

Alright, now that I got this autoresponder problem solved it’s time to focus on other things… things that also have to do with Listbuilding.

Let’s talk about Giveaway Events and the Giveaway Manager 3 software.

Yes, it’s coming!

In one of my previous blog posts I have asked you whether to release the Giveaway Manager 3 software or not. First of all I want to thank you for your comments and opinions, they have helped me to come to a conclusion.

I came to the conclusion that those people who want to run their own giveaway events will do so no matter if I release the software or not. So the argument of flooding the market with new events is only half-true as there are other giveaway event scripts out there.

Second, I came to the conclusion that I won’t sell the software for a one time price. It will be released in combination with a membershipsite, this will be kind of a Master Mind Community. This has 2 advantages: First of all you won’t have to hand out a huge amount of money to start your first event… this way you’ll be in profit much faster. Second, I can concentrate on coaching, support and programming new updates instead of having to keep selling more pieces of the software.

The great thing for you is, that the monthly membership will be very affordable, in fact it will be much lower than most coaching clubs where you just get the coaching but no software… and it will be limited to just 100 people, so that I can even do personal support.

The software is ready and some people who got early access are already running the first events on the Giveaway Manager 3 software. You can find these events at my Giveaway Listing Website. Signup as a contributor for these events to get a feeling of the quality of this software.

Currently I’m recording the installation, setup and promotion of my upcoming Social Marketing Gifts giveaway event for the GM 3 community. Contributors of this event get Early Access to Giveaway Manager 3. The Social Marketing Gifts event will go into Pre-Launch next week, July 13th. I’ll send out an invitation and post it on the blog, so you don’t miss it.

today I have a very sad story to share… My Aweber Account was suspended and closed and I don’t like to say this… but your account might be at risk as well.

Here is what happened:

I’ve received a support request from one of my customers at Traffic Witch. I’ve pasted the important part of that support request below.

————————
Aweber doesn’t allow me to log in:

Sorry, the account you tried to access is currently unavailable from your IP because of too many requests. If you are the owner of this account, please contact help[at]aweber.com for assistance. Please reference “Web Form Throttle: trafficwitch **ip address removed**” in your support ticket.

Frankly, I’m tired of aweber. They cause too much trouble.
————————

I contacted the Aweber Live Support. I gave them this error message, the Traffic Witch website URL and my Aweber account login as they requested that. It took them a few minutes and then they replied to me that I was violating their Terms Of Service the way I’ve integrated the Aweber form at Traffic Witch.

Well, I told them that this is how all membershipsite scripts integrate Aweber. I haven’t seen any membershipsite script that didn’t do it that way and I’ve tested many of them.

The Aweber Support people didn’t care about other websites and gave me a deadline to remove the Aweber form from Traffic Witch. I was shocked and even speaking to a Supervisor didn’t solve the problem, they say it’s against their TOS to integrate the Aweber form in the php code and pass the subscriber data to Aweber after entering the subscriber data in the membershipsite script database first. I would have to use some kind of Email Parser to do the integration they say.

Well, I took action quickly and switched the form integration of my Traffic Witch site to another autoresponder company before the Aweber Deadline was over. Seems that this didn’t matter… they closed my account without a further warning. They didn’t even ask if I’ve removed the form.

So when I tried to login to Aweber today, this is what I saw:

So, if you are using a membershipsite script that integrates Aweber in the PHP code (and I don’t know of any that do it differently), then you might most likely be violating their TOS and your account could be suspended without any further notice. Your subscribers could be completely gone if you don’t do backups!

Normally I’d suggest you go and contact their support to make sure you are not violating their TOS… but as you can see in my example, exactly this move could get your account closed.

By the way, I’m not the only one that got his Aweber account suspended. Several fellow Traffic Exchange owners had to move to a new autoresponder company as well and some of the big names in the internet marketing industry as well, including Frank Bauer who wrote about this on his blog.

So, make sure you don’t integrate Aweber with any membershipsite script (unless you use their own email parsers)… otherwise you might either get your account suspended or you might run into the problem that your subscribers can’t click on your links due to too many IP requests (don’t ask me how too many requests can be happen, I’m speachless).

Anyways, now I’m a bit out of email business, at least for a while until I’ve imported my lists into a new autoresponder company… which is hopefully soon, so that I can contact my subscribers again. I’ll keep you updated on how I solve this problem.

Let me know what you think and post your comment below.

Guido Nussbaum

There are many “Gurus” out there who “teach” you how to get traffic to your website but none of them considers the difference of the type of website that their students might have.

This is something that took me quite a while to find out: Not every traffic source works well for every type of website. Let me give you an example: If you promote a Sales Page in a Traffic Exchange you will get no or very little results… but if you promote a Squeeze Page or Splash Page in a Traffic Exchange your results can be real good.

There are hundreds of these examples that I could give you. For now let’s just keep in mind that: Not every traffic source works well for every type of website.

Now, let’s have a deeper look into the example with Traffic Exchanges. I’ve told you that a Squeeze Page or Splash Page can produce good results in Traffic Exchanges… but that’s only half the truth. There is something else that you must consider and that is The Topic Of Your Website.

If you promote a Squeeze Page in Traffic Exchanges that gives away a free ebook about how to get website traffic, then your results will most likely be pretty good… but if you promote a Squeeze Page that gives away a free ebook about how to train your cat, then your results might be rather poor.

It’s the same way with hundreds of other traffic sources… so let’s just keep in mind for now that: The Topic and Type Of Your Website must fit to the source of traffic.

To bring some order into this puzzle we’ll form 4 Types Of Websites:

1.) Internet Marketing related Free Signup Pages (Squeeze Pages, Free Membershipsites etc.)

2.) Internet Marketing related Blogs

3.) Niche Content or Free Websites (Blogs, Free Membershipsites etc.)

4.) Sales Pages in any niche (Ebooks, Software, Services etc.)

I think it should be possible to place most websites in one of these 4 categories. So, let’s have a closer look at these categories and the sources of traffic that work best for each category.

1.) Internet Marketing related Free Signup Pages (Squeeze Pages, Free Membershipsites etc.)

Now, I guess most of my readers already know that it’s most important to build up an opt-in list. And I guess most of my readers are operating in the Internet Marketing “niche”. So this first category is most important for us.

My favorite sources of traffic to promote these type of sites are:

- Google Adwords PPC
- Manual Traffic Exchanges
- Credit Based Safelists and Mailers
- Giveaway Events

These 4 sources of traffic work best for Free Signup Websites based on my experience. That doesn’t mean that these are the only 4 sources of traffic that I use but I focus on these 4 sources.

Of course I do Article Marketing, SEO, Web 2.0 Marketing etc. as well… but these “Content Based” strategies are rather long-term strategies that you should only use for your websites that have proven to convert best. If you promote a new website through Article Marketing without knowing your conversions, then you might be wasting your time. With the 4 traffic sources above you can easily track your conversions and optimize these before you start Content Based marketing.

One fact that I’ve discovered through testing and tracking is that Internet Marketing related websites are much harder to promote through Article Marketing, SEO etc. than it is with Niche Websites. That’s due to the fact that there is just way too much competition for the good keywords and even for the long tailed keywords nowadays.

When I look at the numbers inside my Ezinearticles account, then I notice that my Niche Articles received almost always at least 3 times the views and clicks than my Internet Marketing Articles.

The same goes for my SEO efforts… I can easily get 200+ daily organic visitors from Google for my Niche Websites within just 3 months but for my Internet Marketing Websites I’ve only managed that when I launched a new membershipsite with the help of affiliates.

2.) Internet Marketing related Blogs

In the last 3 years I’ve setup several Internet Marketing related Blogs. On some I’ve posted only unique, original articles… on other blogs I’ve published PLR articles, and other blogs I’ve simply automated with RSS Feeds and WP automated posting plugins.

All blogs have been pinged, bookmarked, rss feed submitted and promoted through Web 2.0, Article Marketing and Social Marketing. The results were rather poor, the blogs received between 10 and 30 visitors daily on average.

When I did the same thing with my Niche Blogs I received between 100 and 300 visitors daily.

After alot of testing and tracking I realized why this is so: Too much competition for a too low search volume on internet marketing keywords. There are of course searches for “SEO”, “Search Engine Marketing”, “Internet Marketing”, “Online Business” etc. but try to get a Top 10 or even a Top 30 position on Google for these keywords.

Below are my favorite ways to promote Internet Marketing related Blogs.

- Send out emails to your own opt-in list when you make a new post
- Exchange Links with other Internet Marketing Blogs
- Place a link inside your Membershipsites
- Creating Linkbaits

Now, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use all the other blogging promotion strategies like: Bookmarking, Twitter Integrations, RSS Feed Submission, Article Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing etc.

Use my favorite 4 strategies as the Traffic Engine and the other strategies as the Traffic Multiplier.

3.) Niche Content or Free Websites (Blogs, Free Membershipsites etc.)

These are really fun to promote because it’s very easy if you have done a good keyword research. There are many niche long-tailed keywords out there that you can target to get free traffic from Google and other search engines.

For promoting Niche Websites or Blogs I usually use certain routines for search engine optimization… Off-Page and On-Page.

But first you must find keywords that you can easily rank for.

Here is what I do for each keyword:

- Write a 500+ words article and post in on the Niche Blog, place links to your Niche Membershipsites in this Blog Post.

- Bookmark the Blog Post with 20 up to 50 bookmarking services

- Write a 500+ words article about the same topic as the first article. Then submit this new article to several article directories, linking to the Blog Post.

- Write a 1000+ words article and place it on a Web 2.0 site like Squidoo, Hubpages, Webpaint, Know etc. linking to the Blog Post

- Bookmark the new Web 2.0 site with 20 up to 50 bookmarking services

- RSS Submit the new Web 2.0 site to 10 up to 50 RSS Feed Directories / Services

This procedure should be spread up over a week. If you’ve targeted some easy keywords then this strategy should be enough to get you a Top 10 position, often the first or second position.

If you’ve targeted some more competitive keywords, then you can do some more linkbuilding on more Web 2.0 sites, submitting more articles or other strategies like Video Submissions, Blog Commenting, Link-Wheels etc.

4.) Sales Pages in any niche (Ebooks, Software, Services etc.)

This last category can be the hardes or easiest to promote, depending on your Marketing Base.

If you have a huge JV-Network or a huge network of your own websites or a huge list, then selling products online can be easy… if you don’t have all that, then I suggest you build that up first.

Selling products online as a beginner is not as easy as some people want you to believe. Fact is that people buy from you if they Know, Like and Trust you. This can’t be achieved from cold traffic… at least the conversion rates from cold traffic will be very low.

So, the best way to sell products online is by:

- Having a Product Launch
- Mailing out to your own opt-in list
- Having Affiliates who promote your offer
- Special Offers on your other websites and blogs
- Integration Marketing
- PPC (only if you know what you are doing)

Alright, I hope this blog post could give you at least some ideas on how to get some more traffic to your websites.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave your comments.

Guido Nussbaum

First of all a Big Thank You to everybody who has supported the Easter JV 2010.

This year’s Easter JV was very special as we tested several new things. The great part about this is that all of these new features helped to make the Easter JV 2010 one of the most successful events ever.

The new Twitter Box was used by at least 10% of our contributors. You can check on Twitter how many tweets were posted if you simply search for the easter jv domain name.

The new Viral Friend Inviter was hopefully a useful tool as well. Unfortunately there is no way that I can track the usage of this tool… or at least I didn’t find a way yet on how to do this.

One big change that we did this year was to only show 1 One Time Offer to member signups. We’ve done this because in past events the data has shown that many member signups stopped the signups process after the first or second OTO when we showed 3 of them. So the switch to only 1 OTO has resulted in a higher signup rate to the gifts listed inside the members area. This was also compared to the numbers from past events.

The last big change that we did this year was adding the Short Term Referral Contests. This was probably the best thing I’ve ever done to a giveaway event because it helped to keep the traffic up over the whole period of the event.

By the way… did somebody say Giveaway Events Are Dead?

I’ve taken a screenshot of the evolution of the giveaway events that I ran. Have a look at the picture below.

Giveaway Event Evolution (opens in new window)

Now that Giveaway Events are getting more and more popular we automatically attract more and more cheaters and people who try to take advantage of our events.

This year it was extreme and chasing cheaters has cost me alot of nerves and time. Unfortunately there is no way to get rid of this problem through security features in the script… cheaters will always find a way no matter if we exclude IP addresses or setup other security barriers. So my strategy is to let them do and to collect data in the database. This way I was able to search for certain patterns to find and suspend the cheaters. But I’m honestly not sure if I caught all.

Alright, let’s get to the fun part of the Easter JV 2010… The Numbers.

- 416 Gifts listed

- Over 9000 Signups

- Over $17,000 in Sales Volume

- Over $9,000 in Commissions and Contest Prizes

Below you can see the winners of our Main Referral Contest. As we already mentioned in our emails, we had to place some restrictions on this Main Referral Contest. We didn’t want to place a certain upgrade rate percentage as a barrier or anything alike, so we chose the simple rule that those who want to qualify for the Main Referral Contest prizes must have at least made some commissions from upgrades or special offer sales or that their contributor signups add gifts themselves to the event or promote the event themselves. Basically we wanted to see some kind of action from the signups.

Some contributors did not qualify for the prices. That does not mean that these people did anything wrong. Below are the final results and the cash prizes have already been paid out. Congratulations to our winners!

Position 1: $400 Abhishek Agarwal

Position 2: $300 Mawardee A.

Position 3: $150 Damian Leon

Position 4: $100 Zech Smith

Position 5: $50 Josh Abbott

A Big Thank You goes to the contributor who had by far the most upgrades, Gary Bacchetti (The Gentle Mentor). There is a reason why Gary has such a high upgrade rate: He teaches people internet marketing, step by step on his computer screen… so people trust and follow him. You can access his training for free, click here (opens in new window)

Alright, today we officially close the Easter JV 2010 but we keep the doors open a bit longer so that the rest-traffic does not get wasted. All gifts will stay listed inside the members area so that current members can still signup for them. The Top 10 gifts stay on our Outside Gifts Listing Page so that people can signup for these throughout the whole year.

Thanks again for supporting the Easter JV 2010!

Feel free to post your comments, suggestions etc. below.

Guido Nussbaum

This was always my dream but after testing different models to achieve this I realized that it’s not as easy as some people want us to think.

Most monthly membership sites that we could start have one big disadvantage and that is: People won’t stay in the program forever, most drop out after a couple of months.

For example let’s say you create a monthly coaching club. The problem here is that you can’t coach people for years, most will come to the point where they don’t need your coaching anymore.

So what’s the solution for this problem?

Well, think about it… what service do you use already for years and still pay for every single month?

Let me guess… it’s your Domains and your Hosting.

Everybody who wants to run a website needs these 2 tools and once you have your website up and running it’s unlikely that you cancel it, especially if the website is earning you money.

A third tool that every internet marketer needs is an Autoresponder. Once they have it they most likely keep it for years or even for life.

So the conclusion here is that if you could offer these services you would have the best recurring income streams.

OK, let’s get back to reality… a regular guy can’t build up these services without investing thousands of dollars.

So what can we do?

The answer is: Become a Reseller or Affiliate for a Hosting company, for a Domain Provider and for an Autoresponder Company.

Referring new members to them can build you up a huge monthly recurring income that is very stable.

But you can be even smarter!

Sending referrals to 3 different companies is not easy to do… you have to split up your traffic on 3 referral links.

So what if you could send referrals to a company that offers all 3 services in one location?

That would be a huge advantage, right?

Now you only promote 1 referral link and offer 3 services in one package… that’s an easy way to build up a stable recurring income.

But it can get even better…

… what if you could build up your own little army of salespeople who promote this service and you get a recurring sale every time they sell a package to somebody?

You think that’s not possible?

Well, I thought so as well for a very long time until I stumbled across GVO. They offer such an all-inclusive package and they offer it even for less than what you would pay getting each service on it’s own at different companies.

No matter if you just want to save money on your Domains, Hosting and Autoresponder or if you want to promote these services… with GVO you can do it.

Check Out GVO, Click Here

Please be advised that GVO is NOT a get rich quick scheme, it’s a solid business opportunity that you build up over a period of several years (just like with any other legitimate business opportunity).

GVO is NOT a push button thing, you’ll actually have to work to build up your recurring income.

If that doesn’t surprise you and if you can see the huge opportunity here then you are invited to join our GVO Team where we’ll help you to build up your residual income.

There are tons of training videos, there are online seminar rooms and there are trainers who answer your questions.

Personally, I instantly jumped onboard because I could see the huge opportunity behind GVO. You are invited to step in my footprints… come onboard my GVO Team.

Join us here

Please post your questions and comments below.

See you inside GVO!

Guido Nussbaum

Now that we are done with the Viral Traffic Bar launch it’s already time to get prepared for the Easter Giveaway that we run every year. This year I’ve teamed up with Brad Smith again, the guy who started the very first Easter Giveaway.

Many of you know that I’m still programming and testing the Giveaway Manager 3 software. We’ve used the software for my past 5 giveaway events and steadily improved it. It’s not a secret that the signup rates and conversions are way better than with other giveaway event software. This comes from an integrated tracking feature that no other software on the market has. The software is also the first one that can show up to 3 One Time Offers in a row (and we can switch it to show only 2 or 1 or even no One Time Offers, easily through the Admin area).

Many of you have seen the new Points System that only the Giveaway Manager 3 software uses and many of you have seen the new Web 2.0 Integration with Profiles and links to Twitter, Facebook, your Blog and your Website. What you haven’t seen yet are the new features that I’ve integrated this week into Giveaway Manager 3. These are again very new features that no other software out there has and you’ll see these new features the first time at… yes you guessed it right… at the Easter Giveaway 2010.

We plan to open the doors for contributors on March 9th, so watch out for our emails and blog posts that announce the opening for contributors.

Now, some of you might be wondering: “When will Guido finally release the Giveaway Manager 3 to the public?”.

Well, to be honest, I’ve been thinking a long time about this and many times I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t release it at all. That’s because with this software I have a unique standpoint in this industry… my events are different than other people’s events. With each giveaway event that I run I make a profit of between $5000 and $15000 and that is only the direct profit from the event… affiliate commissions from banner ads or the income that I make from the new list subscribers are not included.

So tell me, would you release this software… and if you would, how much would you charge for it?

But that’s not all, there is another problem: How many copies of the software would you release?

See, most people who buy a giveaway software run a giveaway event that is targeted to the Internet Marketing crowd. How many Niche giveaway events did we see?

So if I release 500 copies of the Giveaway Manager 3, the market would be flooded with giveaway events.

I guess you can see the problem… Post a comment below and let me know what you think I should do because I haven’t made a decision yet.

Have a great day!

Guido Nussbaum

in my last post I promised some insights into my business and what I meant by saying that I’ll concentrate on the 20% of actions that have resulted in 80% of my profits.

Now, what does that have to do with listbuilding?

Well, first of all 80% of my profits came and still come from my lists… or from other people’s lists (stop and think!)

There, I just gave you one of the biggest secrets to online success… and I’m happy to repeat it for those who didn’t get it:  You must get other marketers to promote your offers through their lists… so that you get their subscribers onto your list.

Now, don’t get me wrong… you don’t go out there and pump the subscribers of other marketers over to your list… this happens vise versa… you must also promote their products to your list.

That’s called a JV (Joint Venture).

Now, to setup these kind of JV’s you need 2 things:

1.) Your own product or service

2.) Some subscribers on your list to start out

The big problem here is that in most cases you’ll first have to promote other marketers products to your list. You know, give before you shall receive… that’s how it works unless you have a big name.

So your first step towards online success must be to create your own product or service. The second step is to setup a listbuilding system with your product or service. Then you promote your system on your own to get some subscribers on your list.

Once you have a couple hundred people on your list you can start to do JV’s with other marketers. Don’t try to approach the big marketers with your small list… start with marketers who have lists that are about the same size of yours and then work your way up to the big list and to the big marketers.

But wait… that’s only half of the truth!

You can actually create products or services that other marketers promote to their lists without you promoting back for them.

Still, you need to give them something back in return and that can be handled automatically through your product or service.

Let me give you an example: Many people promote my website Traffic Witch to their lists and I don’t have to promote their offer to my lists… that’s because they get free traffic if they signup new members for Traffic Witch… this all happens automatically without me doing anything.

On February 2nd you can see something like this happening again when I launch my next website (more about that later this week).

Let’s call these sites “Viral Membershipsites”.

Another related technique is: Running your own Giveaway Event.

When running your own Giveaway Event other marketers promote it to their lists without you promoting back for them… that’s because they get signups to their list automatically by promoting your Giveaway Event.

I guess most of you know how a Giveaway Event works, for those who don’t, simply signup for such an event as a Contributor and you’ll find out how it works.

OK, so let me resume the above said in one sentence:

“My two most successful strategies for building my list are: Running my own Giveaway events and running my own Viral Membershipsites.”

These 2 techniques are the 20% of action that brought in 80% of my 50,000 subscribers.

Now, I would really like to go more into detail about these techniques but I’d have to write a complete book to tell you everything.

You’ll get more information about both techniques in future blog posts here.

Maybe you have experienced similar results in your listbuilding efforts… leave us a comment and tell us what you think about listbuilding and how you do it.

To Your Success,

Guido Nussbaum