List building without a blueprint is like speed dating with no clothes on.
Sure, the odd person may subscribe out of pity.
If you want long-term success, though, you need to have the right approach.
In this post, I’ll show you how my blueprint built a relationship with 42,390 people using the SAME predictable system.
Over and over again…
What you could do with 42,390 subscribers?
Imagine what you could do with this many subscribers.
My name is Brendan Mace, and I run www.BrendanMace.com and the Brendan Mace YouTube channel and this the story of how I built a list of over 40K subscribers in less than 20 minutes per day, without spending a dime from my own pocket.
Each day I take 10-20 minutes to email my list.
In that time, I almost always make at least 5 sales.
These commissions range from:
- Measly $9 sales.
- $200+ high ticket commissions.
All-in, I’m currently getting about $3,500-4000/Month from list building.
Remember, I only spend about 15 minutes per day on this stuff.
With that money, I could:
- support my family
- pay rent, utilities, etc.
- not have a job
- no boss
- learn a new skill
- read
- travel
I’ll be honest and say that I love ALL these options, but my personal focus has been on traveling.
In the last 6 months, I’ve been to:
- The Okanagan
- Las vegas
- Cuba
- Mexico
- Colombia
Here’s a pic of me partying in Colombia:
I’m the dude that’s tanked on the right.
It’s a tough life. Lol!
As I write this blog post, the misses and I are planning a trip to the Dominican Republic.
The reality is that when you trade dollars for pesos, you really don’t need that much online income to achieve your dreams.
And you really don’t have to waste your life in a cubicle.
10-20 minutes per day is all you need for the “laptop lifestyle”
[sociallocker id=”1581″]Brendan’s Top 10 Subject Lines [/sociallocker]
Step 1: The Instant Offer + Back End
Any successful email marketer will tell ya the same thing…
Building a list costs money.
Don’t worry, though.
If you set this up right, then you aren’t really spending anything out of your own pocket.
The goal is to create a funnel that covers all your costs for you.
So that the whole thing is virtually free.
How do you create a system that pays for itself?
The key is an instant offer
What I mean by “instant” is that an offer is presented immediately after subscribers opt-in.
We’ll discuss the importance of this in a second…
The best instant offers are products that are cheap and appeal to impulse
I know you’ve probably heard a thousand times to AVOID promoting cheap products.
I’ve even heard the ludicrous claim that “high-ticket products convert the same as low-ticket items”
If this logic were true, then promoting high-ticket stuff would be a no brainer.
It’s NOT true.
Ain’t nobody gonna buy a high-ticket product from someone they just met.
Not gonna happen.
You should promote mid-to-high ticket stuff at some point in your funnel.
BUT, not on a first encounter.
That’s like a stranger on the street asking you to buy a $25,000 Honda.
He’d be much more likely to sell me a $5 glass of lemonade.
Even though he’d make WAYYYY more selling a $25,000 product. Nobody’s going to buy it.
This logic holds true for new subscribers.
Your instant offer should be in the $7-$27 price range.
That’s a cost that can be justified on impulse.
People drop $7-10 on expensive lattes on the daily.
Spending less than 10 bucks on a course or blueprint is non-threatening.
Many will buy just because they are bored.
How are we going to make anything off this?
You may be thinking, only $7-27 per sale. That’s peanuts.
How the heck do we get rich???
Upsells my friend.
Most MMO products have additional offers after the initial sale.
These upsells are targeted at people that have already made a purchase. The conversion rate on these is much higher than average.
Let’s say, for example, that a new subscriber buys your instant offer for $9.
Cool!
$9 is still money in your pocket.
That same new subscriber is now shown FOUR upsells.
Each with an average cost of $20.
Let’s say he buys just two of these upsells.
This one new subscriber has now given you $49 in commissions.
And it all started with a cheap easy-to-buy $9 instant offer.
Brendan, show me an example
A $9.95 instant offer that I use for my main funnel is called “Copy. Paste. Hack.”
Here’s a pic:
Take a look at the message in the main headline.
Desmond is saying “copy and paste your way to $58,491″
We want to attract impulsive buyers, remember?
This tells visitors that they can make a ton of money.
… And it only costs them $9.95 to learn how.
Of course, most visitors are not going to believe a word of it. We all know that it’s not as easy as copy and paste to build that kind of income.
But heck… It’s $9.95
The dream alone is worth that price and more.
Thought experiment:
Imagine you purchased a 500 click solo ad.
The vendor ended up sending you 542 unique clicks. What a nice guy…
Let’s say that your guru-style squeeze page nets a cool 50% of visitors into new subscribers.
So of your 542 visitors – you gain round a ‘bout 271 new subscribers.
Those 271 new subs are redirected to your instant offer.
Let’s say it’s Copy. Paste. Hack.
How many subscribers need to buy your instant offer in order for you to make a profit?
Let’s say the average sale nets you $29, and the solo ad costs $150
$29 is the initial sale + one upsell.
Remember, the visitor here is offered 4 upsells.
Some will buy two. Some will buy one. Some will be none.
That means, that out of 271 people, you need to make 5 sales.
5 sales = $145
… Around the price of your solo.
That’s a conversion rate of only 1.8%
The average conversion rate of Copy. Paste. Hack. is 5.0%
Over DOUBLE what you need to break even…
Does that mean I’m rich?
Not yet…
The one upsell per sale might be a bit generous.
And there will certainly be some refunders.
… That’s unavoidable.
What this does demonstrate is that it’s realistic to (at least) “break even”
If you break even on the front end – you win.
This is only taking into account whether you make your money back right away.
Most of your BIG money will come on the back end.
Let’s talk about that now…
Step #2 – The Back End
The back end of your funnel is your autoresponder sequence.
This is where you do three things:
- build trust
- get traffic to your stuff
- make big $$$
The first few emails should focus on providing value.
Subscribers will only buy from you if they trust your recommendations.
If you pitch stuff ALL the time, without adding value, your subs will notice.
My email sequence is 150+ emails
That mix in value and promotions. Meaning that subscribers trust you, and then buy from you.
You can steal this whole funnel in the next 10 minutes
in only 2 steps..
- Sign up to Aweber (Free 30-day Trial)
- Paste in this Campaign Share Code: awlist3794060-a1f00-$F
Aweber allows “one-click” sharing of autoresponder emails.
Good on ‘em.
If you’d prefer to create the sequence yourself, then make sure you loosely follow this formula.
Emails 1-8
- Mostly add value. Maybe 1-3 promotions MAX.
Emails 9-20
- Mixture of 50/50. Half value. Half promotions.
Emails 21-150
- Mostly promotions. Mine’s about 75% promo w/ 25% value-based.
… And that’s it
After email 20, your subscribers already know what you’re about.
Plus, you’re still sending them something of value almost TWICE per week.
That’s far ahead of what other marketers are doing. And it will grossly improve your ROI when you do actually promote stuff.
How often should I email?
Every. Damn. Day.
“There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.”
The moral of this quote is you want people to be talking or thinking about you.
This is especially true in MMO. Subscribers are usually on a dozen or more email lists. They have a limited supply of attention – if you’re emailing less than three times a week, most subs will forget you exist.
Yes, some subscribers are going to hate your guts.
That will be the minority – and it’s inevitable.
No matter what you do in MMO. There will be a herd of people that think you’re a liar.
I’ve published dozens of YouTube tutorials, that just share what I do on a certain topic.
For example, “how to build Twitter followers” or “how to create a niche site from scratch”
These tutorials make me very little.
They were not created to make money. I filmed them to build a relationship. To add value with my audience.
Nothing malicious about that – and yet I get comments daily that tell me to F#$K OFF
It’s strange – but it’s the reality we live in.
Don’t take it personally. If you’re providing value to your subscribers, these haters will eventually find someone new to blast profanities at.
Email Daily. Some will love you for it.
Most importantly. More subscribers will notice YOU.
Be noticeable!
Step #3 – The Landing Page
The best way to get subscribers is with a landing page.
Sure, a blog could snag a bunch of subscribers for free. Which is all fine and dandy, but the conversion rates are shockingly low. A good blogging set up converts only 3-5% of visitors into subscribers.
That’s peanuts!
A good landing page converts over 50% of visitors into your email subs.
That’s more than 10X the conversion rate from a blog.
A landing page DEMANDS attention to your offer.
Here’s an example: http://twostep.brendanmace.com
My first landing page SUCKED…
I spent the better part of my weekend, scratching through the HTML code. Figuring out how to create a headline.
Excited to finally launch it, my expectations were massive.
It looked cool to me…
The conversion was less than 20%
Then, my marketing buddy that I chat with on Skype from time-to-time said “why are you building these pages from scratch?”
There are about a dozen solid Landing Page Creators, that do most of the work for you.
So I decided to check them out.
I bought all of them: Lead Pages, Landing Page Monkey, ClickFunnels, etc.
My favourite, by far, is WP Profit Builder
- it’s much cheaper (only a one-time payment)
- copies proven winners (guaranteed results)
- easy to use (no more geeky code)
Here’s some of the pages you can set up in the next 10 minutes:
Attention grabber!
Good for FREE Ebooks!
All-time favourite!
That pic look familiar?
It’s the exact same template that I use with my main squeeze funnel.
With some minor changes. All in – took me 5-10 minutes!
… And now I have a landing page that converts at 55.6%
All I did was change the text and toss up an picture of me my beautiful girlfriend.
Here’s the final result:
That leads me to my next point.
Make it personal
There’s so many marketers that find an ebook, and think it’ll convert like no other.
This is 2015 people!!
Nobody cares about your crappy 10-page thoughts on setting up a Twitter profile.
Sorry to be blunt.
I used to be all over ebooks, and how to give them away for leads.
Think about it – does a virtual book excite you?
Prolly not.
What excites people is
- changing their life
- quitting their job
- providing for the family
They want the dream.
it’s near impossible to convey those excitements in a virtual book.
What about a video, or a personalized course.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
Who says you need to give something away?
The “typical” way to build a list is to give a freebie away.
… You don’t have to do this, though. You still have a choice.
Although it’s less popular to promote something right off the bat. It can be immensely profitable to do so.
There are two ways to promote from the start
I mean, there are probably a thousand ways. But here’s the two that are most effective.
1) Promote an Offer
This one’s self explanatory. The landing page building excitement and anticipation for a course, instead of a freebie of some sort. This is usually more profitable, but breeds less goodwill with your subscribers.
2) Send direct traffic to your click trading partners.
This one is definitely controversial, but it’s one way to damn near guarantee (supposing that you have a good landing page) that you can get free traffic on autopilot.
In the next step, I’ll be discussing traffic.
Part of our traffic strategy is to trade clicks with marketing friends.
This means that we send 200 or so clicks to our buddy. We’ll call him “Mike.”
Once Mike gets our traffic, he sends back 200 clicks to our offer.
One way to get the 200 clicks to Mike is to promote his squeeze page right after a subscriber opts-in.
Let’s say your squeeze page converts at 55%.
That means, that on a solo ad, approximately half the visitors will subscribe AND see Mike’s offer.
So on a 200 click solo, we get 105 subscribers, and 105 clicks to our traffic partner.
Let’s not to stop there…
- We bought 200 clicks.
- We gained 105 subscribers.
- We sent 105 clicks to Mike’s page.
We still need 95 more clicks to Mike’s page in order to get our original solo all reinvested in another traffic source.
The first email should get about a 50% open rate.
If we put Mike’s offer in the next follow-up email, and feature his offer as a main link, we could reasonably expect 20% of new subscribers to click it.
That means an extra 20 clicks.
Now, if our next 10 emails get a 20% open rate average.
And we feature Mike’s link in those emails…
We can expect maybe 6-10% of subscribers to click Mike’s link in EACH of those messages.
105 subscribers X 10 Emails X 8%
That’s 84 clicks to Mike’s offer.
Now let’s count our outgoing traffic.
Number of OutGoing Clicks:
- 105 Clicks directly after opt-in
- 20 Clicks from first email clicks
- 84 Clicks from email 2-11
Total clicks = 209
Ta da!!!
In 11 days, we have fully recouped the 200 click solo ad
Any further clicks, or affiliate sales are pure profit.
Now, Mike owes us 209 clicks. And the process repeats as before.
Instead of Mike, we’ll need to find someone new to trade clicks with.
That’s where step #4 comes in….
Step #4 – Getting Traffic for Free
My favourite traffic source is solo ads.
They’re:
- easy
- affordable
- predictable
If you have a landing page that averages 50% opt-in, pretty much every solo ad will result in between 40-65% opt-in rate.
If it’s lower or higher than that – something’s not right about it.
In general, if a solo’s results are terrible, a good solo vendor will compensate you in some way.
So in 99% of cases. Solo ads are predictably lucrative.
Even with a 40% opt-in rate, you can still make money. A lot of money.
So, your traffic solution is simple.
Buy traffic for cheap, and make more than you spend.
The best place to find cheap solo ads is on FaceBook.
… And best of all, it’s free.
Load up FaceBook, and search for “solo ads”
Here’s a group right here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/189347897917735/
There are at least a dozen FB groups for solo ads. All filled with hundreds or thousands of members.
Take a look through these groups, and find someone that has a proven reputation.
There’s no formula for finding solo sellers. Just use your common sense.
A good seller has:
- lots of testimonials
- very few (if any) people upset with their services
There are LOADS of good sellers on FB. And many of them are willing to sell for cheap.
My recommendation is to HAGGLE.
No solo ad price is set in stone. You can contact ANY of these sellers, and ask for a better price.
I know of two sellers that I’ve talked down from .40/click to .25/click.
That’s almost a 50% off savings.
Usually you won’t snag that big a discount. But more sellers than not will set to you for a cheaper price.
The most important rule…
KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid
- Buy solo ads cheap
- Make money
- Build subscribers
- Reinvest profits
With those simple 4-step bullets, you could build an entire business.
There’s no reason to complicate any of this.
Buy for cheap. Make more than you spend!
Solo ads typically cost about .40/click.
Many sell higher than that price, but some will list lower than that.
Haggling, and smart investing, could easily bump your average traffic cost down to .30/click.
I have a half dozen solo sellers that give me traffic for .25 per click. Finding these sellers is very doable.
If you get a solo ad for .25 per click, and 50% opt-in to your list, you only need to make 50 cents per subscriber to break even.
That’s ludicrously reasonable.
Get the potential yet??
Breaking even means building a list for free.
Step #5 – Making Money from your List
There’s a million things you can do with your email list.
But here’s the main two:
1) Trading clicks with partners.
Looking at the EXACT same FB groups from earlier, we can find LOADS of partners.
Trading clicks is easy.
- find people willing to trade
- send traffic to their offers
The best way to do this is to set up what’s called a “link rotator.”
In geek talk, this is where you have a single link, that rotates from one banking partner to the next.
The benefit of a rotator is that you can set up click deals with 4-20+ partners, and let the traffic unroll on autopilot.
Let’s say you have 4 trading partners.
- The first deal is worth 500 clicks
- Second is for 300
- third, 100 again
- And the fourth is for 150
It can be really challenging to ensure that you send the right amount of traffic to each of these partners.
You don’t want to send too little to any one. But almost as bad as that is sending too much. It’s bad for the ROI.
With a link rotator, it will send 500 clicks to the first trading partner. Once it reaches that number (that you set) it rotates to the next partner. It will finish those clicks before moving on to the third partner. And so on….
Pretty cool, huh?
It takes care of your whole traffic management for you.
The best tool that I’ve seen that does this (and much more) is called ClickMagick.
It will:
- rotate links
- track number of clicks
- tell you if traffic is real or fake
- tell you traffic quality
There are many features that I’m leaving out here. Trust me, ClickMagick really saves a lot of time, and makes you more money.
That being said, if you are determined to use a shoe string budget, there are free trackers available.
Services, like Bit.Ly offer a free link tracker.
I’ve never heard of a free link rotator. And Bit.Ly does not have the features of ClickMagick. But it will do the basic task of tracking clicks well. Which is all you 100% need out of a tracker.
Why is trading clicks profitable?
Because you can still make all the money you would have with a solo ad – except this time, the traffic is free.
So if your funnel makes $1 per subscriber, then a 200 click solo ad will make you $100 (with a 50% opt-in rate).
Traffic from trading partners can still get you the $1/subscriber.
… But this time without any costs. It’s pure profit.
The instant offer + back end is just a free ride of affiliate commissions.
2) Promoting Stuff
The second main way to make money from your list is to promote stuff.
Simple concept. You have subscribers. They trust you. Recommend stuff. Make money.
To do this, sign up an account at ClickBank, Jvzoo and WarriorPlus
These websites have thousands of products to promote.
Pick the ones that look the best, get your affiliate link, and send an email to your list
You could easily create an email promotion for an offer in the next 10 minutes.
With a 30,000 subscriber email list, that would lead to a lot of affiliate commissions.
Any time you want money, you just send an offer to your list.
I have a phrase for this:
“money on tap”
That’s what it’s like to have an email list.
- Need rent bills paid
- Flights/vacations booked
- Debt paid off
- Retirement
Press send on your email list. Collect the money.
It’s really that simple.
Where to go from here?
Follow these 5 steps.
Bookmark this page, and work on a new step each day.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. And your sales funnel won’t be, either.
Within a week, you could have the whole thing ready to collect leads and profits on autopilot.
Always test!
So what if you’ve created a landing page that converts at 38%?
Making small changes to a sales funnel makes a BIG difference overall.
A 10% swing in either direction could determine whether you make money or not. The only way to have positive swings is to keep testing your results.
And Finally!
Enjoy your life.
The benefit of creating these funnels is that you have an income stream that grows while you sleep. You do NOT have to waste all your precious daylight hours in front of a screen.
- Go outside.
- Take your family on trips.
- Learn a new language.
With the extra time granted from a laptop lifestyle, the possibilities are endless.
Wrapping Up
This list building guide covers everything you need to know.
There are no underground secrets. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist.
By taking action on these 5 steps, you can create an income stream that will change your life.
To watch over my shoulder and see it all done in video, check out my 3-Part YouTube series right here on this exact blueprint. You’ll see everything over my shoulder as I go through the entire process.
I believe in you! You should too!
My last piece of advice is this: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
If you want to learn more about how to change your life with list building, then I would love to help you.
Head over to the homepage of my blog to see more in depth guides, like this one.
Right here: www.brendanmace.com
