Something that is very easy to do when getting involved in the online marketing world is ending up with too much information, half of which usually contradicts the other half. You then end up spending too much time trying to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong that you never end up doing anything about anything.

With all the gurus and forums and newsletters etc out there it’s just far to easy to find yourself on a few dozen mailing lists receiving more emails in a day than you used to see during a good week. Half the time you’ll end up with 10 emails all on the same day making you the exact same offer, and the biggest irony is when these ‘gurus’ all use exactly the same email with a couple of minor changes!

So how do we end up like this?

Usually the first couple of sign-ups were for free downloads or access to the latest product launch, and in many cases the early sign-ups made a bit of sense, but then somewhere it all goes wrong. For some reason you find yourself clamouring for the latest and greatest information from as many people as possible even though half the time the emails get deleted as soon as they arrive.

You convince yourself that the next guy you sign up for information from will be different and that they’ll actually give you something useful for free, but if I’m honest, no matter how many of the gurus talk about “building value with their list to turn them into buyers…” I am on very few lists where I actually feel like I am getting anything more than the news of the latest ‘great product’ every now and then.

Sure, one or two of the people who I let send me emails actually provides me with good value and makes me look forward to receiving their latest emails. Amusingly though, I wouldn’t say that any of them are a ‘guru’ by the usual definition (certainly not the ‘make $500k in a 1 day product launch’ guru anyway).

I was on one list from a guy who is supposed to be one of the big names in IM and to be honest I don’t think I ever received an email from him that wasn’t trying to sell me something. So if this ‘guru’ wasn’t building a relationship with me and every now and then telling me about a great product that I should check out (which is supposedly a good thing) why do so many people prattle on about ‘the moneys in the list’?

I think, and this is just a random theory, that at some point your list get’s big enough or you become so effecient at building it that the whole ‘don’t over sell it’ goes right out the window. I mean, how else could these guys with massive lists be able to send something to me every second day that trys to convince me to buy?

I don’t think they worry about people dropping off as much as they did when the list was small, after all if I cancel my subscription the likelihood is that they’ve replaced my name with 10 others. Not only that, when you apply the $1 per month per subscriber rule you only need a small portion of the list to be paying attention and buying anything for you to make a fortune.

And of course when that new product of yours is launched and your list is 100k, 200k or 500k+ and you’ve only got 500 copies of something, how hard will that be to sell out of, even at $000s of dollars a copy?

My response, albeit one the gurus won’t notice, has been to unsubscribe from a lot of lists that I was on up until recently, and I tell you what not having to wade through all those emails each day is a blessing. I can actually get on with planning my own business strategy and focusing on what I want to do instead of reading about what the latest ‘next big thing’ is.

Try it, you might find that you’ll miss some of the mails, if so re-subscribe, if not, enjoy the extra time in your day.

Cheers.

Internal related posts:

1. Internet Marketing Lists – Are You Oversubscribed?

Tagged as: affiliate marketing, in my opinion, internet marketing