• Use ads, but use them for reasons other than generating a large percentage of your revenue: Money Morning uses ads to help with branding and to reinforce product messages. We place ads for MM products throughout the Web site to bolster our legitimacy and to create a cohesive message by echoing ideas you’ll find in other places on the site. But I wouldn’t dream of relying on those ads for the magnitude of revenue that I need to operate – and grow – the Money Morning Web site.

• Run ads on your Web site if they help to build up your brand: Some financial Web sites (and I marginally endorse this) will use ads from high-value clients (Rolex, Porsche, Cayman Island Bank accounts, etc…) to make their brand look more appealing and classier (for those of you out there taking notes, this is known in marketing circles as a psychographic association). If you are utilizing this kind of ad model to bolster your own image, then I would recommend doing so on a small level. But don’t expect to generate copious amounts of cash – that’s just not going to happen. The best you can hope to gain from this kind of ad placement is clout with the reader that you are of the same quality as your ads.

• Be consistent: Run ads that correlate directly to the products that you sell or endorse: Most of our affiliates run some sort of image ad and we endorse this – but only when it aligns with the content that someone is reading (reinforcing the message). Now this may actually hurt the perception you have of the affiliate business model but I don’t want to lie to you and say that your site (with a small amount of traffic) is going to be able to sell large amounts of product based on space image ads. The only thing you can do with online ad space is to maximize its relevance. Companies such as Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Adwords and Doubleclick Inc., and AOL LLC’s Advertsing.com cannot serve you ads that tie in directly with the content you run (they say they can – but they REALLY can’t). But our affiliate network can. We can give you ads for products that are made by the same people that write the content that someone just read. That level of synergy is powerful. You stand a much better chance of selling something if the ad that is on the page of content correlates directly to the author, the tone, and the product mentioned in the piece of content.
• Run ads in your e-mails in exchange for lump sums: Email ads have a much better change to convert a sale simply because it is direct marketing. It’s the strongest direct marketing in the world but it will work better than just putting ads on a website. Many key theories go into the scenario. First, an e-mail ad is always worth more than a Web site ad – to both parties. That’s because an e-mail ad is a targeted ad – a Web site ad is not. You can easily make good on an e-mail ad by sending it out as much as possible until both parties are happy with the results. And second – the ad is going to a targeted audience of people that you know are interested in the correlated company – a Web site cannot make that guarantee. Plus, a Web site publisher shouldn’t waste his time and weaken his Web site’s brand by trying to sell someone else’s product to people who aren’t part of his e-mail list (especially since that non-list member is probably a newcomer to the Web site). Instead, the publisher should use his resources and the fleeting goodwill that exists between him and a first-time visitor by trying to convert that newcomer to his list.

• Would you rather sell a product .01% of the time, or gather an e-mail address 3.0% of the time? A good Web site will convert 1.0% to 3.0% of its daily traffic to a list. Once you have that name on a list, you can market to the person behind that e-mail address much more efficiently than by just swinging for the fences and trying to hit a home run with a space ad. Use the space that you are using for such ads to offer free reports (in return for a person’s e-mail address). With that e-mail address in hand, you can market and sell to that person much more effectively.

• Newspapers in Education Glossary: Dateline.
• How Stuff Works: Web Advertising.
• Wikipedia: Banner Ads.
• MarketingTerms.com: Skyscraper Ads.
• Macloo.com: Writing for the Web: Chunks.
• The Drudge Report: Web Site.
• Seeking Alpha: Web Site.
• USHistory.com: Seward’s Folly.
• RolexUSA: Web Site.
• Porsche.com: Web Site.
• Answers.com: Psychographic.
• The Wall Street Journal: DirectTV Will Offer Targeted Ads Beginning in 2011.
• For previous aritcles: Money Morning Affiliates

“If it wasn’t my idea… then I don’t want to implement it.” - A guy that was fired from here.

Sorry for the delay. I am coming back from a short deserved vacation. On to the meat…

1. “I don’t want a list:” Let’s cut to the quick on this one. Unless you are averaging – and I mean, averaging – 100,000 visitors a day to your Web site, and are paying an exceptionally low cost in terms of overhead for design, development and hosting, then there is no ad model, or product model (unless you are extremely lucky) that will support a viable business model that does not have a list. A list is your ticket to success. You have the ability to market directly to a concentrated list of people – many of whom already like your product and who are therefore going to be easier to “sell.” You can provide them with the information that you deem the most important. Posting information on the Web site and then just sitting there as you hope (pray?) that people will come is a proposition that absolutely depresses me (c’mon people, we’re talking about the Internet, not the “Field of Dreams” – ie: “Build it and they will come.”). If I create something that I am proud of, I want to be able to push that to people that have shown a higher level of interest (those who have provided me with an email and joined my list). I want to talk to them openly and directly about what I can offer and the only way to do that successfully is via a list. [Sidenote* - Annie and I have already started four accounts on Aweber for our affiliates for free - saving them more than $190 for a one-year account. If you are interested, please contact us.]

1. “I don’t want to solicit to my list:” Solicit is such a dirty word. At Money Morning, we “solicit” to our list and our list knows that in order to continue to receive all the great free content that they see on Money Morning – we have to be able to bring in enough revenue to pay our bills and keep the lights on. However, we do listen to subscribers’ concerns and do the following to try to help with the idea of “solicitation:”
   1. Maintain a ratio of 3:1 in terms of content versus ads.
   2. Will not release a product that we do not personally endorse. You have to stand behind the things you are selling. In doing so, you will hold yourself accountable for the quality of a product. As a byproduct of this stance, you will end up always selecting products that you feel will be beneficial to your audience – and not just products that will be profitable for you.
   3. Provide fulfillment for the list and only the list. We also give subscribers free reports, free Webinar links, links to conference calls, and possibly free issues of paid products. Take care of the people on your list.
   One final thought – do you get mad at magazines or television shows for having ads or commercials?
2. “I have a list but I don’t want my list size to go down by sending out advertising:“ Well, your list size is important. And the people on your list are the most important thing about your business. When dealing with this issue, you want to be as up front and honest as possible. Some people don’t want to lose anyone – the industry standard is about 4:1. However, when first starting out, you don’t want to lose people and I completely understand that. To counteract this you want to take the same steps outlined above and you also want to develop a very close relationship with your list. Poll your subscribers; ask them if they’ll accept advertising and, if so, how much they’ll be willing to accept. Personally, I wouldn’t do this; at Money Morning, we put the same effort into our ads and promotions as we do our content, for we believe our subscribers should read the promotions with the same interest that they read our great content. You can also try embedded ads in the content, images ads, and what we refer to as “insert ads” (a short paragraph of copy in between stories or at the top of your email). These are much less intrusive advertising messages then our standard full e-mail dedicateds (If you would like an example of any of these – because I know sometimes the proprietary direct marketing language can be cumbersome to decode – please ask Annie or myself. Don’t feel bad about doing so, either – heck; it took me six months to know what all this stuff meant)

1. “I don’t want to endorse products but I will send out as an ad:” If you don’t endorse what you are selling, than there is really no reason to sell it. Retailers don’t put certain items in their stores because they won’t endorse those wares. You won’t find plastic chairs advertised at Neiman Marcus because that’s not what this high-end retailer does – even if someone came in and said, “You can make a million dollars off of these plastic chairs.” Neiman wouldn’t do it because it lowers their brand to share their floor space with something that they would not want to endorse or be directly associated with. If you aren’t willing to do direct endorsements of the products that you are going to sell, then why sell them at all? Wait for something that you really like and then use your voice to tell your audience:  “This is something viable that I believe in and I think it would be a great product for you.” If you can’t do that, then continue to write great content and run tangential, unrelated advertising that will bring you almost no money – your choice. But I have to tell you if Money Morning did that – we wouldn’t be having this conversation. 

1. “I don’t want to send out a dedicated:” For folks in our business, a dedicated is the “tip of the sword.” It is the ultimate advertising commitment and, as a result, receives the greatest response from your readers (both positively and negatively). When Money Morning sends out a dedicated, we huddle around the screen to watch the orders roll in. Two or three times a week, a dedicated gives us the opportunity to talk directly to our customers, and to do so via an in-depth report that is personalized and endorsed and that delves deeply into the details of a product that we believe our subscriber/customers would love. It’s a commitment, but it’s essential if you are to get to the next level of making real money. Use your own voice. Don’t send out anything that you can’t enthusiastically endorse. And have confidence in the quality of the product to do the rest. If you’re one of our affiliates, the hard work is already done for you: We provide our affiliates with thousands of dollars worth of man hours spent on some of the world’s best copywriters and analysts. The products that we are sharing with you are among the very best in this industry and we can say so – and quite proudly – using the “dedicated” as the vehicle to do so.

1. “I can’t do your kind of advertising because I don’t have a list:” Contact Annie and I and it is 100% free to start your list RIGHT NOW. We can feed you traffic to start converting people on to your list and we can teach you how to refine your own voice to funnel people in so that you can market directly to them.

• “I don’t want to syndicate content.”
• “It’s just too time-consuming to do all the campaigns.”
• “I’m a one-man show and I can’t spend time on this.”
• “The Affiliate Web site is so hard to use.”
• “I didn’t see huge returns from my first mailing…so now I’m stopping.”
• “I’m not doing sales because I don’t have enough traffic to click on the ads”

• Issue #1 - SeekingAlpha and the Content-Aggregating Crowd: Friend or Foe
• Issue #2 - Mute those Bells and Whistles and Focus on Your Voice
• Issue #3 - SEO and YOU: What your tech guys are afraid to say
• Issue #4 – How to Build a (Web Site) Hit List
• Issue #5 – List 101 – Cornerstones and Building Blocks

“Always start with something simple… do it! And move from there.”

• I’m very to the point about discussing topics and I expect people to be able to implement things quickly and see immediate results.
• I believe in the Ready, Fire, Aim approach that we employ at Money Morning.
• And my dominant work philosophy (especially when it comes to the Internet) is that there are new things to learn every single day. Every day there is something more that you can be trying in order to improve your business (the Japanese call it kaizen, which basically means consistent, ongoing, incremental improvement – with no ‘finish line’).

• Average time on site.
• Bounce rate.
• Percentage of visitors from search, direct (typed it in or came via an email link), and other website links.
• Which stories are syndicated where.
• Total traffic.

• Wikipedia: Pay Per Click.
• Wikipedia: Search Engine Optimization.
• Wikipedia: Blog.
• Wikipedia: Black Hat.
•  Wikipedia: Pay Per Click.
• Wikipedia: Search Engine Optimization.
• Issue #1 - SeekingAlpha and the Content-Aggregating Crowd: Friend or Foe
• Issue #2 - Mute those Bells and Whistles and Focus on Your Voice
• Issue #3 - SEO and YOU: What your tech guys are afraid to say
• Issue #4 - How to Build a (Web Site) Hit List
• Issue #5 – List 101 – Cornerstones and Building Blocks

It has come to my attention that my articles may be a bit too much to digest in a weekly e-mail. Starting today, I’m going to shorten them. And that brings me to an important point: I want you to think about the attention spans of your customers. That’s of particular importance in an e-mail format. We may think what we have written is brilliant, but even my good friends at work will sometimes say to me: "Hey man, that e-mail was really good – but it was SOOOOO long." And they don’t finish it.

If you really want to run your Web site as a business – as a profitable, going concern – you need to understand what’s important, and what’s not.

Here are some goals that are typically viewed as being important – but really aren’t:

PROBLEM: Driving traffic – with no clear objective: Traffic, traffic, traffic. Every time I get on the phone with a Web site manager, all they want to tell me is how much traffic they do. And that’s when my eyes start rolling.

Your traffic isn’t worth anything unless you monetize it. Having a million unique visitors a day is sometimes as much a hindrance as it is a blessing. Imagine, for a second, that you chug along at 1k viewers per day and then you write a masterpiece of an article only to find out that it has been syndicated by Seeking Alpha, Yahoo Finance (Nasdaq: YHOO), and Google News (Nasdaq: GOOG). All of a sudden, you have 200,000 visitors.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO: Figure out a way to transform this new herd of people into a subscriber list that you can then market to. Traffic doesn’t mean anything unless you know how to convert it.

PROBLEM: Court non-English speaking countries: "Hi, How are You? Have a nice day. I happy, too. We all play well finance market." Sound familiar? Yeah, it’s probably like some of the comments that have been left on your Web sites throughout the year. It’s also in some of the e-mails you have received from people living in foreign countries.

Some lists can be built on the back of foreign countries. We’ve seen it done here. And then we’ve seen those lists fail. Why? Our strongest customers are the ones that can digest and act upon our message clearly and quickly.

Foreign countries often do not allow international investments and the language barrier causes serious miscommunication of simple ideas.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO: If you are running pay per click (PPC) campaigns on your Web site, you want to make sure to limit those campaigns geographically to your target audience (defined by the demographics of your audience). For Money Morning, we are talking about the United States, Canada and Great Britain. We also extend our borders to Australia and some of Europe, but not by much.

How to define such limits? Think of it this way: If you couldn’t go to that country and get a loan to buy a house, then more than likely that country’s demographic cannot take advantage of your products or your message. Ex-pats in Asia and Africa will eventually find your site if they need to, but don’t court the masses. It’s not worth your time.

Spending time researching SEO is like spending time researching when or if an asteroid is going to hit your house: Research all you want, but the bunker you built, the year of supplies, and the gas masks will only collect dust as you wait for your asteroid to hit.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO: If you do want to give yourself a chance to succeed with SEO, check out the tips I outlined in that past article [Click here to access  that article].

Next week, we’ll look at the things you should be doing right now. And I will tell you more about the correct way to worry about traffic and SEO, so that you don’t achieve the metrics you’re striving for – but then end up not monetizing it.

Past Columns and Related Links:

• Wikipedia:
  Pay Per Click.
• Wikipedia:
  Search Engine Optimization.
• Issue #1
• Issue #2
• Issue #3
• Issue #4
• Issue #5

Sorry that I was absent last week. I’m in the middle of buying and moving into a new house and – well – it was opening day for the hometown O’s and the game was in Baltimore. The Orioles thrashed the hated Yanks … which is always great … and did so again in Game Two.  Too bad it’s probably our only chance this season to actually lead the division.

So … getting back to the topic at hand …

The last time we talked, I explained just how crucial it is to have a list – a good list. We’ve learned here that 90% of all revenue generated by Money Morning comes from its list. We talked about the basics of what goes into list building (PPC, landing pages, deliverables, and marketing e-mails). This week we’ll talk about some more of these topics, and I’ll also take the opportunity to explore a couple of other philosophical list-management ideas on an in-depth basis.

The Power of the List

In case you have been asleep at the wheel for the past 3 issues – I’ll reiterate a core concept yet again:

"THE LIST IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ASSET OF ANY ONLINE BUSINESS."

The great thing is that list technology is an easy technology to implement. With that list, you can market directly to your customers, and in a very clear voice. But here’s the thing: To maximize the returns your list generates for your business, you need to have a very clear idea of how you want to proceed – and precisely what you hope to achieve.

In other words, you need a clear strategy, and some specific goals and objectives.

Let me cite an example of what I’m trying to say. Just the other day, I spoke with our good friend Stephen Oakes of the Jutia Group. He had a sign-up box on his page that pointed people to get his RSS feed. I asked him, "Why?" and he didn’t really know. He knew that we had a sign-up box and the he assumed his would serve the same purpose. It doesn’t. I advised Stephen – after a 40-minute phone call about his business – to start using Aweber Communications‘ e-mail product immediately. He seemed to take the advice quite well and I hope he is moving forward.

But back to some numbers – because this is basically a "How to" and "Why" article. Money Morning currently has a list of more than 380,000 people. We entertain about 20,000 casual viewers per day on our Web site. Every morning we churn out great original content that about 15% of the list digests. That means that – each day – about 50,000 people read our news stories, market commentaries, investment-strategy pieces and stock-analysis stories. That’s 2.5 times the number of people who just happen to wander onto our Web site. In short, when we send out an e-mail, our voice is amplified to an effect – in my opinion – that is 20 times what we would generate if we operated solely as a standalone Web site.

Every Web site has a group of dedicated users – what I’d label as a devoted audience or group of fans or devout followers. And many people running those Web sites receive steady feedback from those users (and not so much from the more-casual user/visitors). Many times, a Web site operator will look at the e-mails, the posted comments and the debates that certain stories seem to ignite, and will conclude that he or she has forged a very strong bond with the site’s user base.

I’ll bet you a year’s wages that you’re wrong.

Just because 30 people a month tell you how awesome a job you are doing doesn’t mean that you are reaching your audience effectively. A list – and the response that list generates – is a much-better representation of how effective your Web site actually is. Without my e-mail list, I would essentially have no compass by which to steer the Money Morning ship. My list tells me what products sell the best, which authors are writing the best columns, and precisely what information my people really want to see.

I hope I’ve made my case as to the importance of list building.

Now I want to tell you how to do it.

The Ingredients of a Winning List

I wanted to write this column because my phone conversation with Stephen left me thinking: "There are so many people out there that have not read this recipe for success. There are so many people – smart people, hard-working people – who are walking around in the dark, muttering over and over that ‘I know this Web site is good – but why can’t I generate any revenue?’ Or, even worse: ‘What do I do now?’"

To the vast majority of the Internet world, I now present to you the recipe for success. Let’s look at each ingredient in detail:

WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?): We talked about this a little last time, but I don’t think we delved into it quite deeply enough. When it comes to determining WIIFM, you basically start by asking yourself: "Why would someone want to give me an e-mail address?" And by the way – that has to really be the focus of the Web site. If you can answer this question – "How do I get people to trust me enough/need me enough for me to send an e-mail to an address that they’ve willingly provided?" – you’ve probably got a good handle on precisely what your Web site needs to contain.

Whether you offer them a free report for their e-mail address, or a compelling idea that they only can get via e-mail – there should be a very clear-and-concise reason for you to take the short amount of time that they are with you on the Web site and convert that into a possible long-term relationship with them via e-mail.

Money Morning is looking for new answer to the WIIFM question all the time. Right now, what we have works, but, as we spend more time together you’ll start to hear the phrase "testing is a necessity. And we think we can always do better.

The Sign-up Box: Once we have our WIIFM message (and this should take a bit of time and go through multiple versions), it’s time to actually gather an e-mail address. For this you’ll need a sign box. One of the best one’s that I’ve seen is earlytorise.com. It has the WIIFM message pretty much perfected and then they make it very clear that this is where you put your e-mail address in order for us to help you and give you more information.

Technically the sign-up box should be created from whatever you are using as your "List Database" – whether it be Aweber, or e-mail blast, or some other application (for the purposes of this article, we’ll assume we’re using Aweber). Your Name List Database will provide you with the HTML code for the form.

The Landing Page: The sign-up box should be located on every page, but sometimes that isn’t enough of an incentive and a landing page is used as the stick and a free offer as a carrot. Whether you get someone to the landing page from a PPC Advertisement or from a free offer on your Web site, it should be very short and very specific. Someone stays on a landing page for an average of 8 second. Yep, like the bull-riding metric, 8 seconds is all you have to convert a visitor to your list.

Here are a couple of examples to look at:

• http://www.moneymorning.com/ppc/etf_k1a6.html.
• http://www.moneymorning.com/ppc/gold_ah8.html.
• http://www.moneymorning.com/ppc/libor_agj.html.

The Welcome E-Mail/Deliverable: After you have collected the name from a sign-up box, either on the home page or on a landing page, you need to communicate – and welcome – your new customer. You should send them a "Thank You" note and/or the report that they signed up for. You can do all of this in even the most basic e-mail delivery systems like Aweber. (Again feel free to use Annie and myself to help you get started with this. We’re happy to help and offer our time as yet another benefit of being an affiliate).

 

Your welcome e-mail should introduce your voice and reemphasize why they signed up. You can also give them additional reports or provide them with additional information about your Web Site. Keep it short, but make it warm and welcoming. Your welcome e-mail should be sent either the same day they signed up, or the next day (but no later). Don’t send them anything else (unless it was the report they signed up for) before you send them the welcome e-mail.

The Voice/Free Deliverable: After you have sent them their welcome letter, you should fulfill your promise to them and send them what they signed up for. Money Morning sends out a daily e-mail featuring our top stories. It is our most powerful message. Yours does not have to be daily – it could be weekly. A publishing schedule of three times a week seems to be the "sweet spot" with other financial broadcasters. Money Morning’s small-but-efficient staff of writers allows us to go out daily; if you don’t have eight professional writers, I wouldn’t recommend going out daily – unless you decide to aggregate other people’s news. This is a fundamental question that should probably be answered by the WIIFM part.

The Direct Promotions E-Mail: Most people who sign up for something that is free and informative are not ill-equipped to deal with the realization that they are going to receive advertising. This is where Money Morning has to make money.

This is not an inconvenience to your list. This is an unspoken agreement that all free Web sites should have with their users. It is also a way to allow them to partake in the products that you create and trust. (If you do not have a product – obviously the affiliate program can make preparations for us to make this e-mail for you).

You should be selling a wide array of products for your customers. You should be offering them different products that may fit their needs or desires. No one person has a one-stop shop for financial advice. There are new ideas being hatched every day. Currently, Money Morning is looking at having upwards of 12 new products/ideas by the end of the year.

You should be sending direct-marketing advertisements to your list. You should be promoting them and endorsing these products. If any affiliate needs a subscription to our products in order to see what they offer and look like, please let Annie know about it and we can set this up for you.

I would never try to sell a product that I didn’t full understand and neither should you.

The Insert Ads and Web Advertising: Inside the e-mails that you send out on a recurring basis – and also on your Web site – you should be using advertising. That might take the form of an insert ad (a paragraph of custom content about your product that clicks through to the promotion or order page) or graphical ads. We can help you set up either or both of these, and will happily do so.

This may be a lot to take in if you have never done it. But, that’s why we pride ourselves for being a different kind of Affiliate Network. We want to help you make this extra money that you may or not be taking advantage of – and may not have the ability to capitalize on. Even those of our affiliates that have lists and do these things – we feel there is always room for improvement so even if you have a list we can still help with consultation.

The best way to really immerse yourself in this process is to sign up for Money Morning‘s newsletter. You can do it right on the site in the top right hand corner. Notice when and how you get all the pieces identified above and dissect them. I’d be happy to talk with you about feedback or ideas surrounding them.

Past Articles and Related Links:

• Money Morning Affiliates Network Newsletter (Issue No. 1): SeekingAlpha and the Content-Aggregating Crowd: Friend or Foe?
• Money Morning Affiliates Network Newsletter (Issue No. 2): Mute those Bells and Whistles and Focus on Your Voice.
• Money Morning Affiliates Network Newsletter (Issue No. 3): SEO and YOU: What your tech guys are afraid to say…
• Money Morning Affiliates Network Newsletter (Issue No. 4): How to Build a (Web Site) Hit List.
• The Baltimore Orioles: Official Web Site.
• Aweber Communications: Official Web Site.
• Wikipedia: Bull Riding.

Ok, it’s story time: The story of a man and his list.

Let’s take a time machine back to 1998. I had just started my career working for the now-defunct (and to be honest … then-defunct) Mom.com. It was a portal site that provided content about being a Mom. The business model was … wait for it … online advertising via graphical ads. We (well, actually, they) had hoped to make mountains of cash by selling space on a Web site the same way race cars reap revenue by reserving space on their hoods for big Hooters logos.

That was 1998. Not much worked. Mom.com folded after six months. I think the Harpo company owns it now (because Mom.com was a valuable name). Unfortunately, they didn’t blame the ad network business plan … they blamed design, and lack of venture capital combined with a – wait for it – saturated market. If they thought it was saturated then… Lord knows what they would think about the market now.

Fast forward to 2001. DoubleClick Inc. and Advertising.com (who I worked for, oddly enough) burst on to the scene. They are planning to provide everything from Web ads to wireless telephone ads that activate if you pass by a certain fast food restaurant. Seriously, they also wanted billboards to be able to change based on the demographics of cars sitting in traffic nearby. Obviously, none of this came to fruition. And right about that time, the dot-com bubble burst.

People didn’t know how to generate sustainable revenue. It was the California Gold Rush of 1849 all over again, and only the people that provided the pick axes, whiskey, and pans made the money. The prospectors stumbled out of the hills, disillusioned – even shattered – while Cisco Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp., Rackspace Hosting Inc. and AOL counted their dollars.

That was 2001. Not much worked – probably because most of the startups that came along didn’t have real business plans: People got rich off of the idea of people getting rich. There were actually these crazy hyper-chamber ad network systems where apparently every American now wanted to buy things online, and suddenly had an extra $10,000 a year in cash to blow on used CDs and little troll dolls. It was a sad time to be in business. Looking back at the dot-com-bubble business practices is akin to remembering your leisure-suit wardrobe from the Disco-supercharged 1970s – you just wince and ask yourself: "What was I thinking?"

So, after my youthful brush with the online industry and then having my own design-and development-company, I decided to put my computer science degree to use and become an engineer – designing applications to help people learn. I came to Agora (Money Morning’s parent company) in the summer of 2007. In all, about six years passed before I came back to the bosom of the true "Web business."

Agora preached this thing called "direct marketing." I had read "Ogilvy on Advertising" and I had worked for Advertising.com, so I assumed that right there I had the equivalent of a Master’s Degree in online everything.

Boy, was I wrong.

I heard all these things about "copy," "landing pages," "conversion rates," "long copy" vs. "short copy" and WIIFM (don’t ask – at least, not yet). I thought to myself: "How hard could it be?" Put up some ads, drive some traffic, and wait for the money to roll in.

It took all of two months for me to realize how naïve – and arrogant – that I’d been. I was humbled. But I also learned something – a lesson so basic, and yet so crucial, you’re your business can’t succeed unless you’ve learned it, too:

"BUILDING YOUR LIST IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR BUSINESS."

I’d repeat that but the capital letters should drive the point home. Unless Bill, our editor, edits that out…

So, what is MY list? The Money Morning list started around what we call a "front end" – a simple, modestly priced product called The Money Map Report (MMR). MMR generated a subscription base of about 10,000 or so through our "godmother" affiliate, The Oxford Club, and thus presented itself as a viable, sustainable product that could be supported by a free Investment News Web site called Money Morning.

Money Morning was born from a product – not the other way around.

On the first day I worked where my full focus was on Money Morning, the list was at 17,000 names. That was in the fall of 2007. I knew very little about the main components of building a list. Things such as PPC, landing pages, deliverables, WIIFM, conversion rates, etc.

Therefore, within the context of Money Morning I’d like to define them for you. Before I do so, however, let me urge you to trust what I’m saying. And here’s why: The list that was at 17,000 when I came on board 18 months ago now contains 367,000 names. And we achieved that with the very tools I’m about to detail right here:

• PPC: This is the chief driving force for name acquisition. We use Google Adwords to place ads online to drive people to free reports in exchange for their e-mail address in hopes of marketing our great products to them.
• Landing Pages: This is what people "land" on after they click on an ad in Adwords. It’s a very direct page that should get across the message "Give Me Your E-mail and I’ll give you what you came for." Plain and simple
• Deliverables: This is the report that people receive combined with the page that they are served after signing up. First and foremost, the deliverable should be a quality representation of Money Morning. If I promised you a report on the current state of the U.S. economy, that report should be timely, well written, and useful to your typical reader/investor. Second, that deliverable should also prepare them for what they are about to receive by being on your list. Don’t hit people over the head with marketing emails and daily e-mails if you haven’t specifically explained what they will be receiving.
• WIIFM: An acronym for "What’s In It For Me" was first introduced to me by Agora’s top consultant. He described the Money Morning site as a "vessel" that’s designed to capture e-mail addresses and provide a great free service. WIIFM can apply to the landing pages associated to PPC, or to the Money Morning site itself. When it comes to WIIFM, the bottom line is this: You to pretend that you are a customer looking at your Web site and ask yourself: "Why would I feel compelled to give you my e-mail address?" If you can’t answer that question, then you’ve found a spot where you need to start defining your business. Many of the WIIFM names are also called "organic" names – in other words, "free" names that did not require the use of Advertising to attract. Those subscribers found your article – and decided that your Web site was compelling enough for them to essentially "hand over" their e-mail address, knowing that you’ll likely market to them.
• Conversion Rates: "How much did I spend to get that name?" vs. "How much did that name (or the total accumulation of names) spend on my products?" You should be able to say – with certainty – that "I brought in 1,000 people at $5 per name using Adwords, combined with my organic WIIFM website. I should be able to sell $5,000 worth of product to those 1,000 people."

What tools do you need to get started?

Within Agora and Money Morning, we use a lot of expensive, proprietary software, but you don’t have to do the same thing. As a matter of fact, I’ll give you an example – just this week – of how I used an outside vendor to capture e-mail addresses, send out a welcome e-mail, a confirmation e-mail with a link to view a "Webinar," and then a dedicated sales e-mail. And I didn’t have to spend more than $40,000.

It was fast, easy – and inexpensive.

Some of you may have seen that we ran our Geiger Index Web Summit. If you haven’t, here are some key pieces –

• My Landing Page (http://www.geigerindex.com/webinar.html): This is actually located on what we call a "mini-site" (an important topic, but one for another time), which is situated outside of Money Morning. People were pushed to this landing page via our daily Money Morning e-letter e-mail and an ad on our home page. They clicked on a link or on the ad and they then went to my landing page to sign up [Editor’s Note: Feel free to go through the process to experience this just as a prospective subscriber would see it.]
• My Deliverable / Confirmation Page (http://www.geigerindex.com/archives/what-the-geiger-index-is-telling-us-about-gold%e2%80%a6oil%e2%80%a6commodities%e2%80%a6-and-the-recovery/): It says "thanks" and lets you know that you’ll receive an e-mail soon. It also has an "upsell" message to a product and some other important elements, which are worth the time to search out.
• My Service Vendor: As noted, the e-mail for this event was handled externally, and was actually sent out by a company called Aweber.com. (BTW – I have no affiliate deal with Aweber, nor am I here to promote their product. I mention the company’s name because it underscores the point I’m making here). I used them because their service is simple to use, because they are very reputable, and because they’re able to deliver e-mails without being "blacklisted" – a very critical ability. I use them for small, quick and cheap projects like this that require more nimbleness than our internal IT department – with its big-project focus – can deliver. You can also use any of the companies in this PDF provided by business-software.com. I took the liberty of downloading their PDF (via a landing page) and making it available for your perusal and use. There is also some other decent information on "why a list is important" inside of it. It’s a decent read if you are a robot. It shocks me that companies write like this and expect their material to be read and remembered (must have been the same people that wrote my 400-level college calculus textbook). If you want, you can also sign up for other stuff from them here.

As far as building a list goes, that’s really all there is to it. The e-mail the folks who signed up for the Webinar contained a link that would take them right to the Web Summit site. I built a list of 13,000 people in one week and then I had 70% of that list read that e-mail and watch that video. We don’t have the numbers in on sales yet, but – from my end  – it was a successful list development and launch.

Getting Down to Brass Tacks

The list gives you the ability to market directly. That’s the bottom line. You want to be able to make your ideas desirable, yet limit them to digestible, delivered packages. Waiting for someone to come to your Web site to buy a product is like having someone release a balloon into the wind in Boston and hoping someone receives it in Oklahoma.

Wouldn’t you rather mail them the balloon directly? And wouldn’t you like the ability to have the balloon carry a note that says: "Hey, I heard you like balloons. This one is from us. It’s high quality. And it’s free. We have many others. We’ll be sending more later but, for now, enjoy this one and we’ll be back to talk to you more about our exciting balloons later."

Needless to say, if you answered "yes" to that question then you need to build a list.

In this week’s marketing missive, we’ve introduced you to some of the key industry terms, and given you a quick example of the list-building process. The rabbit hole can go much deeper, of course. But when it comes to acquiring new customers to market to, if you aren’t doing a combination of the tasks we’ve detailed above, then you are really fooling yourself into thinking that you’ll be able to turn large profits. I hate to burst your bubble … but that’s the truth.

Building a list may not be for everyone. I have spoken with some who are not ardent disciples of list building.  They’ll tell me "I don’t want my people to feel like they are being marketed to." That’s fine. We understand that sentiment and we don’t want our readers to have that fear, either. But that’s where this big monster called "reality" creeps in from the market’s shadowy edges: Unless you have a full-time job, or are planning on hosting a telethon, you aren’t going to be able to support yourself financially from just a Web site.

For those of you who are still reticent about traveling the list-building route, let me ask you to try one thing: Find a Web site out there that is successful, but that doesn’t build and use a list. There are some examples, and if you want me to analyze how those businesses make money (or that don’t make money, meaning the operator lives in Mom’s basement and does the Web site as a hobby), I will gladly do so for you.

I’ll give you an example of someone on the Money Morning affiliate network that marketed our monthly newsletter, MMR, to his or her list last week. They sold eight front-end MMR subscriptions to a list of 30,000. Now, that isn’t a bad start. A list that is being exposed to a product for the first time will more then likely not react as well – unless the product is personally endorsed and this message is echoed throughout the Web site.

Unfortunately, this lead did not endorse the product or write about it personally. Money Morning would never run a product it didn’t endorse personally and neither should any of our affiliates.  However, understand that writing a personalized letter or endorsement is most of the battle.

Nevertheless, I will tell you that eight sales to 30,000 direct users is more than the site would have done just passively running banner ads to 200,000 users over the course of a month. But what this tells Annie and me is that this is an open doorway that leads directly to a time when you really start marketing our products the way we know how. Once you trust the product enough to send it out to your list – there are now a myriad of support systems we can put in place to build up the branded message to make the next direct mailing more efficient. The content, the ads, the endorsed mailings all start to make sense and we can really start to see sales accelerate.

The idea of building a list is the cornerstone of our business model. We provide great free content written by industry experts. We provide amazing services that give our customers access to some of the world’s best financial minds.

But without our list, all these benefits would go for naught.

P.S. For those of you that have a list, we should be talking one-on-one about how Money Morning can help you to build it up. As I mentioned, we are now approaching 400,000 names and are pushing to exceed 600,000 by the end of this year. We would love to bring our affiliates along for the ride as much as possible, helping out however we can – wither it be running an opt-in to your list, advising you on PPC strategies, or just driving more traffic your way. Please don’t hesitate to give us a shout.

I know not all of us have technical people to run our website. But for those who do, or think they need one I want to give you some cautionary tales about the illusion of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

At some point in your web life you have been talked to about, or pitched on the idea of SEO. When I started working at Money Morning I was told it was the end-all/be-all of web marketing. I quickly found out that it was not the holy grail of web marketing and trying to predict it’s successes is much like predicting the weather or stock market…you have a general idea… but you have no concrete facts that can lead you to results.

The basic premise for SEO, as books tell us, fellow SEO employed people, and my bosses and mentors even, is that it is something we MUST do to attain quality web traffic. To that…I thumb my nose for one very simple reason… trying to tackle SEO is like throwing a fishing line out into the ocean to catch one very specific fish. It won’t ever happen that way, and if it does… it was probably dumb luck.

Should you do very basic things to help your SEO chances? Absolutely. I would never tell you not to put yourself in a position to get lucky – but I will tell you that if you are going to make it a focus of your business then you may as well take up hobby as a rainmaker as well. Because, from what I’ve seen, very few people can predict it or even get it to marginally work.

I for one have more important things to focus my attention on. Dumb luck doesn’t rank very high on my list.

Here is what you’ll hear from everyone attempting to sell you on the quality of SEO work: "SEO is easy and we can guarantee results that will help to drive traffic." I have one thing to say to them – "Prove it". And prove it, mind you, within a relevant marketing spectrum. Don’t show me a hideously designed page with no relevance, no action to take, and an awful design that would never attract or keep a viewer. For example – show me a quality piece of content about say… "price of oil" ranked in the top 10 on Google and I’ll change my tune.  If you search the phrase you’ll see it’s owned by HUGE websites, sham artists, and ugly sites that have little or no change of being used.

But, SEO people can never do what they say… as a matter of fact the only way they COULD get that keyword phrase in the top 10 on Google (and we all know by now that Google is the barometer by which we measure our SEO successes) is to do the following –

1. Purchase the URL "priceofoil.com" – which makes no sense because you want someone to find YOUR article – not a website based around an article. That’s just a giant waste of resources. If you ran a website called risingpriceofoil.com then – this would work… but for the most part. That’s not what people do.
2. Get a link to their website from a giant website like Bloomberg, fool, or WSJ that specifically said in the incoming link "rising price of oil" – fat chance of that ever happening.
3. Make a scumbag page with 500 links on it that direct people to "rising price of oil" content or black bag tricks that entertain the ideas of hidden text etc… – Obviously this is not an example of a quality piece of content that would retain readers and thus does not fit into the boundaries of my challenge.

Since SEO is a HUGE topic with many angles, I don’t have the bandwidth in this one article to provide you with a complete break down of what will work and what won’t. So what I will do is tell you what works for Money Morning and hopefully we can talk more about what may work for you over the phone or via email (please don’t hesitate to use me as a resource to help with ideas about your website – schedule a time and I will be there to assist you.)

Like I said, SEO isn’t that important to my business model when it comes to driving traffic. When I say it isn’t important that doesn’t mean I don’t succeed at it – it just means that I refuse to put SO MUCH energy into something that should happen naturally.

When breaking down how much time you should spend on SEO I will tell you right now I spend about 30 minutes per day(for 5 articles), total, on the idea of SEO and I still succeed at getting "organic content" placed all over the web. Money Morning receives 1/3 of its traffic from organic search …but it’s not because I hired an SEO professional or read every false prophet SEO article on the web. I advise the writers of Money Morning to do the following (and that’s pretty much it – sometimes I tweak their efforts but we don’t labor over minutia):

1. Choose the right keywords – if you want organic traffic you have to be specific about your message, product, and website focus. If your website/page of content is about Gold – do you think "gold" is a viable keyword? No, it isn’t. Too much competition out there for the word "gold". "Investing in Gold", "Gold news", "Gold investment news" are better choices. Choose one. For example, when we write about the current financial meltdown it’s more important to be true to the granular identity of the article then to the general theme. We would pick something like "Madoff’s Role in the Financial Crisis" instead of just "financial crisis"— Once you have the right keywords…
2. Choose Your URL and Title Tag – when making a new page make sure that the keyword is in your URL for example "invest in gold" would look something like this – http://www.moneymorning.com/invest-in-gold and then make sure the title (title tag in the HTML) of your piece is also using that keyword.
3. Populate your content with your selected keyword – instead of using words (Bill don’t know what the correct English definition of those kind of words are) like "it", or "they", or "them" use the actual word you are refererring to. Use the keywords often in the first 3 parragraphs and use <h1> tags that to create suheads with those keyword.
4. Get links and give link- This is the real reason that SEO is such a "make believe" system. Links are the most valuable thing that can happen to your website. And not just links to your homepage but links to content. And not only links to content but keywords that are linked to that content. This is why SEO is more about busines development work, making relationships, and providing great content that can be syndicated then it is about some smoke and mirror snake oil salesman saying they can get you a number 1 ranking on Google in a week by writing meta tags or using white text. On the bottom of Money Morning you’ll find that we link out to tons of websites and this is how we have made most of our success. Being viral with your content is the most important thing that can happen for you.

Again, what I gave you up there isn’t going to be helpful on a huge scale. Why? Because I can’t claim to tell you that it will work. No one can. There are also many more variables to take into consideration like page rank, linking between sites, clean code, search algoryhtms, robot files, submissions to other search engines and directories,  time on site and bounce rate.

What I can guarantee is that it will put you in the best position to succeed, right now. Whether or not you win the lottery has so many unforeseen variables that anyone who tells you that they know everything about SEO… you can be certain that they are 100% lying. As – a matter of fact I was once giving a talk at a conference and I said that right after someone who gave a speech on the "Power of SEO"   got finished. My first line was – "Well it’s getting pretty deep in here. You may want to pick up your feet to so you don’t get crap on them."

So what does work?

I hate to say it, but, good old fashioned elbow grease. There aren’t many short cuts for someone that wants to sell a great product, have a lasting resounding voice, and a conscionable qaulity website. I assume that’s what we all want because in the long run – those will be the sites that make it through the storm…not the flash in the pan SEO manipulator sites. They never last. They never will.  So build your business, follow the 4 rules at the top (and learn a little more as you go), and create quality.

I created traffic for Money Morning by going out to other websites with my content. I contacted people about syndication, content swaps, and I gave them the keys to beat me at SEO. "Why would I want to beat you at something you already told me was pointless?" Because it doesn’t take any effort to syndicate content. And it’s the only way anyone can mutually benefit from that relationship. I give content and I allow syndicators to repurpose it (change headlines, put in their own links to their own content, and write their own leads). This benefits them 100x more than it benefits me… but if I have 100 people that do it… then it’s an even swap. And that’s the goal for Money Morning at the end of the day when it comes to generating traffic: allow our syndicators to benefit from our content more than we do.

The content world is shrinking. If you have a quality voice, other people will want to hear it and post what you are saying.

I can generate traffic for you by providing you with great content that is already ear marked for top aggregators including Google Finance – if you haven’t had one of our articles syndicated on your website and then picked up by Google Finance… you will soon…if you syndicate us…properly. I can teach you more about that on a one on one basis.  But using Money Morning’s content or anyone else’s content is just like producing it yourself (always get permission obviously). Search Engine’s will crawl it, index it, and rank it. Along side the original content  as if your’s WAS the original… my editor bill Patalon is reading this write now and saying "I hate you." LOL – but once Bill sees the numbers he knows that it works.

But aside from the 4 points for success that I made above, I wouldn’t focus that much effort on SEO. I would focus on providing quality content and using your own voice to pontificate on other’s content.  Give yourself a shot for success but don’t expect to catch fish just because you throw one line out in the ocean.

With all that you currently know about Money Morning, at this point you may be asking yourself " Why don’t they have a REALLY nice site?", "How come this ‘multi-million’ dollar company still looks like a blog and why should I trust what they say about my site’s design?" Well, it’s because we don’t think about design the way most people do… as a matter of fact we rarely think about it at all.

Designing for your design test at an art college or for some booth at a trade show and designing for name acquisition, sales, retention and content are totally different things. As a matter of fact, it is often heard in meetings around here… "Please, don’t make it too nice."

The other day I was in a meeting with my boss Mike Ward, whom you no doubt receive countless Direct Marketing messages from, and he was telling a story about a copywriter from the 70′s (need name), who sort of invented Direct Marketing letters. He would send out a mimeographed looking piece of paper that almost looked like it was from his own typewriter. It looked like inside information written directly to you. It had little to no polish and it didn’t need it. The words are what carried the message, not the beauty of the layout. With that said, Aogra as a hole is one of the most successful direct marketing companies in the world and in no way, not ever, are we going to be winning any we awards for design. We wouldn’t want to.

Website sales count for about 10% of our business. 10%. I’ll let you read that number again, only 10% of our direct sales comes from our website. While our 10% is still in the 10′s of thousands it’s not our main focus and to be honest… it shouldn’t be yours either.
Within our affiliate program we will stress the following things over and over and OVER again; build a list, market to them on a regular basis. 

Many of the first steps that we have taken with our affiliates have revolved around getting ads up on sites, links to work on navigation bars, and sizing up different ads for different spaces on the site. This is only the 1st step and in all honesty – it’s a very, very, very small one. We need to take the next stop towards profitability because if the affiliate network is going to work – we can’t just depend on 1% of your traffic clicking on our ads and buying products 1%-5% of that time. Neither of us would be happy with that solution – but shockingly – that’s pretty much a standard industry metric… .01% – .05% of people that come to your site will buy something. Good luck keeping the lights on with that. 

If Money Morning depended on just ROI from our ad buys and ad sales on the web we would have closed shop long ago. Even the most successful gurus on the web that have blogs (Cramer, …) wouldn’t dare dream of living off ad revenue from their site.

So while running ads are great – it’s your voice combined with good marketing that sells products.

So…

Step 1 – Put up ads – check.

Step 2 – Use content to provoke excitement around products. Use YOUR VOICE to sell. Don’t just place ads up in some far reaching section of your site. Don’t let double click or google adwords tell you that prime real estate means ANYTHING. It doesn’t mean a thing when it comes to making real sales. It means something to ad brokers because they get money off of those clicks (much more than they pay you BTW). It shouldn’t mean much of anything to you. What means something to you is that you have a dedicated audience reading your words.

Step 3 – Build a list. 1 out of every 10 people that come to your site should be on your email list. You should be marketing to 10% of your daily traffic on a weekly if not daily basis. Provide them with your quality content, good "insert ads" that sell ideas, and use your own voice to sell products that you endorse.

Without steps 2 and 3 you and I would have never met. I wouldn’t be writing this letter, and you wouldn’t have any idea who Money Morning is.

If you haven’t started to write advertorials as defined in step 2, or if you haven’t seen examples of Money Morning’s advertorials click here. Annie Driscoll will soon be sending you some examples of content you can put into your site and start converting off of right away. Money Morning’s affiliate network makes this easy to do and we encourage above anything else you to do it and can’t wait for you to see the increase in sales from taking this step.

Building a list is a bit tougher and something that we can get more into detail with over the phone or in future broadcasts. Remember, Annie and I are here to help your site improve, not just to sign you up and feed you ads. I can provide you with a good foothold with any technology you would need and a great head start to marketing to your customers via email.

So, focusing on design should be the final mile of the marathon. Building a strong foundation and following of people looking forward to hear your views is much more productive. For an example – I point you to http://www.fiendbear.com/. A site that has a growing following of thousands of people and who has given us 10′s of thousands unique visitors and hundreds of new users. Great design right? Lol – While they don’t use their own voice in words – they do use it in a way. People know that the person who runs this only puts up quality links and they trust his ability to glean away BS articles and only provide quality to them every day.   I wanted to prove to you that dedication to your reputation and voice can mean far above any design. Because I’m willing to bet Fiendbear hasn’t seen an update design wise since… 1996.

The content world as we know it, the professional content world as we belong to, is shrinking. Despite what you may think about the web and it’s seemingly "millions" of writers, very few of them produce quality work, and now, especially right now, the world needs people to write about what’s going on and to provide them with information and… hope. You fill that void.

Ask yourself a question. Can your average college student create a website? Yes. Can your average person anywhere write what you write? No. That should be your focus. Let the design come as your message becomes more powerful. 

SeekingAlpha.com, the Internet’s top aggregator/syndicate of financial news content, is starting to hear grumblings from the very population that helps to support it.

Some of the most commonly heard complaints include:

• "Why can’t I get a link back to my original post?"
• "How can I get my stories picked up more?"
• "How do I get my own advertising on my own articles?"
• "Why can’t they leave my links in to other articles?"

Across the Web, financial writers want to be picked up by SeekingAlpha (SA). It is the second-tier pinnacle (under, of course, The WSJ, Forbes, etc…) for Web writers, and many of them are so thrilled when their first article is picked up by the mighty SA … until their second, third and twentieth articles are picked up. And then they start to ask the question: "What’s in it for me?"

Before we weigh the pros and cons of the SA train let’s first look at Money Morning‘s relationship with the syndicate giant, and why we continue to hoist their flag and look forward to their syndication of our content.

We were lucky. We started submitting and talking with Seeking Alpha in December of ’08. They were just getting started and were more than willing to give us concessions for the content that we were providing.

SA knows how to play the SEO (search-engine optimization) game; their business depends on it. What does this mean? Well, it means that when they take your content, they will change it for their own purposes. We’re not talking about the "body" of your essay, or even the main idea. What we mean is that they’ll change the title (headline) and byline. By changing the title, they can trump your rivaling offering when it comes to search. And by changing the byline, it looks as if you are on staff at SA – and aren’t writing for some other Web site (such as your own).

SA will also place links within your article to link to other articles on their Web site.

By the time they’re finished, you’ll be lucky to receive 5% of the traffic from that article to your Web site. Again, that’s if you are lucky.

Because Money Morning had an early relationship with SA, we were granted the following things that you more than likely are not afforded:

• A by line that reflects Money Morning‘s ownership.
• A direct link back to our original article.
• Some of our reference links left in the article.
• Our own ads to landing pages, and promotions running alongside our copy.

If you have any of those four – then you are faring much better than most authors who submit to Seeking Alpha. The fact that we have those four is the reason we love the fact that they syndicate us.

But your needs from SA may be different. You may just want the exposure. You may just like that so many people read your articles, or hear your ideas, and may possibly remember your name. You may even develop a following on SA – many writers do.

Perhaps your readers will one day even search for your name, articles, ideas or publication out on the Internet because they first read you in SA.

Whatever your reason for using SA, there are some things you should do to try and make your relationship better. (This works with all aggregator/syndicators, BTW).

1. Contact SA directly. Most professional aggregators and syndicators have a team of editors and managing editors that are there to handle your content. And believe me – my views in this newsletter aren’t going to be groundbreaking to them. They know your concerns, but they also know exactly where else to find the low-hanging fruit; to be honest, the only reason Money Morning has been permitted so many advantages is because we created a personal relationship with SA. So believe me when I tell you that this is the most important step you can take.
2. Submit only your very best work. Submitting every article you write can be counterproductive, and will not put you in SA’s good graces. Besides, with the bigger audience, you’ll want to put your best foot forward.
3. Don’t write abrasive e-mails in which you make demands or issue ultimatums. SA has a ton of content to choose from – I don’t think they are going to lose a ton of sleep over the loss of someone who comes across as a prima donna.
4. Take part in the SA community. Read their e-mails about or even attend their conferences. Be proud to have been syndicated on SA by carrying their logo on the article that they syndicate (not all of your content), and they will notice you. Picture it like trying to be the head of a fan club. If you actively participate in any fan club for an entity bigger than yourself, more than likely you will receive benefits that casual fans do not.
5. Ask for small things first and let them know that you understand exactly how the aggregation game is played. The more educated you are about what they do – the more serious they will take your requests.
6. Get unionized. If you are an individual writer, try to align yourself with other writers that you see on there that may have the same issue. Make requests as a coalition and obviously you’ll be taken more seriously.

I think SA is a great site. I think they are a pioneer in the syndicate industry and by no means is this email a descending voice to their acclaimed website. I think they have done right by Money Morning and this year alone they have made us thousands of dollars. The main reason we have a relationship with them is the long-term value we see in working with a heavyweight like SA. That’s why we continue to put a lot of elbow grease into our dealings with them, why we continually remind them how much we value their work – and, in turn, to also remind them that they should value ours… and yours.

In the end, as the old adage says, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and for you to be taken seriously by other aggregators and syndicators you’ll have to do more than just write great articles.

Onward and Upward,
Bret Holmes

PS – If you are a new member of Money Morning’s Affiliate Network and have not scheduled a consultation of your website please contact Annie Driscoll (annie@moneymorningaffiliates.com) to talk more about maximizing your online sales potential.

[Editors' Note: Bret Holmes is the director of eCommerce marketing for Money Morning. Under his stewardship, the subscribership has risen from about 60,000 to more than 340,000 in 15 months and traffic has risen almost 400% outside of the direct relationship to the email list size. In his weekly column, Holmes will take readers inside the Internet publishing game, providing the kind of behind-the-scenes insights you can use to build your business. For more information on Money Morning's new affiliate network or requests for topics on future articles contact Bret Holmes at Bholmes@oxfordclub.com, or telephone 410-895-7972. For other information on the affiliate program and for an archive of these articles, check out the Web site at www.moneymorningaffiliates.com.]