Are You Wasting Your Time and Money Buying Leads?

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I’ve seen a rather disturbing trend in the training that some people are passing down to their referrals. Not just in NPN but all over the place.. No wonder people are getting frustrated. It’s difficult to keep up the enthusiasm when your sponsor is giving you mis-information on the best ways to promote your business online.

Have you ever been advised to do this:

“After joining my program under me…”
Step 1. Go buy some leads
Step 2. Import them into an autoresponder
Step 3. Sit back and wait for the money to come in
Step 4. Goto step #1.

Honestly those were the same instructions (more or less) that I saw yesterday being sent to someone’s downline as a “how to make money online” message. Sheesh! Either the sponsor is the one selling the leads, or they’ve been told the same thing from THEIR upline sponsor and are just passing it along. Giving out those instructions to a new marketer is sort of like saying “Start with the most inefficient and costly marketing method, then do nothing and hope it works, then do it again”. On the positive side, it sure looks easy to do. In reality, it doesn’t work like that and you’ll quit if you try and do it. DON’T FALL FOR IT!

The problem is the “shortcut mentality” that is out there that dictates that since you need leads to build your business, it’s better to skip the steps of actually generating leads and go right to the followup. What you might not realize is that it’s actually NOT a shortcut. It’s actually faster, cheaper, and more profitable to do it the right way.

Yes, emailing to bulk leads can have a place in your marketing plan but you need to know a bit more about it before you can just go at it. Point being you should NOT be importing leads as your MAIN method of generating leads for your business. Here’s why..

There are many variables that come into play with regards to blasting emails to leads lists that you have purchased.

1. Lead quality – exclusiveness, age, country, origin etc.
2. Outgoing letters / subject lines / spam trigger words
3. Quantity of leads
4. Consistancy of mailings
5. etc..

One of the complaints I’ve had about email blasting is “I’ve imported 10,000 leads into your mailer and haven’t had one single signup. What’s going on?”

My answer: “Because you’ve only imported 10,000 leads and your leads are probably crap.”

Any time you’re dealing with “bulk” anything (leads,traffic,signups,clicks..), you need to keep in mind the number 1,000,000 (yes one million). That is how many leads you’d need to blast to in order to have any idea of the quality of those leads and the quality of your email campaigns. I guess the point here is that importing and blasting emails to people that probably don’t want to hear from you is not a very efficient way of advertising anything. It is “a” way of advertising, but shouldn’t be “the” way in your overall marketing strategy.

As a side note. A few months ago I spoke on the phone to an online marketer that ONLY does bulk email to generate her income. She was sending around 1.2 MILLION emails PER DAY through various email servers that she was paying for herself, to leads she was purchasing herself. She told me she was barely earning a full time income and she was now earning half of what she was earning a year ago, doing the same thing. Sound like fun?

Fact: Your money would be better spent in other kinds of advertising.

I’ll give you an example. Generally speaking, in this industry you should aim to spend between $1 and $2 per generated lead. A “generated lead” would be (in our case) someone that enters their name into one of your NPN capture pages as a double opt-in lead. These leads would be generated from your own advertising.

So…  If you bought 10,000 leads at 1cent per lead (which is really cheap) you would have spent $100. Out of those 10,000 you might get a couple people that say they might be interested in your opp. Maybe you won’t get any. A percentage of those leads will never see your email due to spam blocking, and a percentage will bounce back as undeliverable. To get to the $1-$2 per lead point, you would need to get 100 of those leads to optin to your capture page. I’m sorry but with cheap leads, that will not happen. Period. You’ve just wasted $100 and the time it took you to find, purchase, and to import the leads. This is where the frustration and the blame game starts kicking in.

So what’s your solution?

Answer: solo ezine ads, safelist ads, traffic exchange hits.

First off, what am I talking about here..

What is an “ezine”? An ezine, is, essentially, an “electronic” magazine. What exactly does that mean? Like a magazine, an ezine is something you subscribe to and it is “delivered” to you via email (ie. not spam). The beauty of an ezine lies in the fact that you receive articles, information and more, “specifically” on the topics that interest you. The owners of these ezines often sell advertisements either in the newsletters themselves, or as “solo” ads sent to their entire ezine database.

What is a “safelist”? A safe list is an email list you can join for free, and in return for joining you are allowed to email out to the entire list of members that join. Usually most safelists have different levels of memberships you can join at, and each different level will allow you to email more members more often. The best type of safelist to join is a ‘credit-based’ safelist. In this case the members would need to earn their mailings, racking up credits by clicking email ads from the other members. Most safelists sell ad credits as well which can save you from clicking all day.

What is a “traffic exchange”? A traffic exchange is similar to a credit-based safelist except that to earn credits you would be viewing other people’s websites for a determined amount of time (usually 15-30) seconds. Traffic exchanges will also sell you credits which would allow you to avoid having to click on other people’s websites all day to earn credits.

Now, for your $100 that you wasted on leads, you could have put out a number of targeted solo ads to probably thousands of people. And remember that these people are already expecting to receive emails like yours since they’re already active and in the same industry as you (The leads you bought are not). You would use your ezine ads to direct prospects to your NPN capture pages (or your own capture pages) where they would opt in and become generated leads.

The same can be said about safelists ads, and traffic exchange credits.

As I said above, you should aim to spend between $1-$2 per lead. So if you purchase an ezine ad for $20, a good return on your investment would be 10-20 leads that signed up through your capture page. You may get less, you may get more. If you don’t get as many as you’d like, change your ad, change your subject line and run it again. Use the NPN Ad-Tracker to see where your leads are coming from. Re-run what works, don’t run what doesn’t work. DON’T take your next $20 and buy leads. Remember that an ad that doesn’t work in one ezine, may work wonders in another ezine. Test, test, test. It’s what successful marketers do.

Basically, you will get more out of placing these types of ads than you would EVER get in buying and blasting to leads lists. I guarantee it. And it will even take up less of your time, and less of your money – which sounds good to me. We all want to make more money, perhaps we should do it the right way?

Have a great day.

And please please please don’t pass information to your downlines just because your sponsor sent it to you – unless they are actually using it and actually making money with that information.

– Geoff.

P.S. The guy you bought the leads from has already made more money from those leads than you will, just by selling them to you.

🙂 Feel free to COMMENT below..

Who makes all the big bucks in Global NPN?

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Something really cool has been happening at NPN over the past month or so. We have had more account upgrades in the last month than we have in quite a while. What I mean is people are either joining immediately at the DIRECTOR level or higher, or they are upgrading from a lower level. In fact by comparison very few people have joined NPN at the PRO level this month.

What this is telling me is that more people are seeing the benefits of being an upgraded member of NPN. It also tells me that more of our current members are pushing the higher levels of membership in their advertising. And when you do promote the higher levels to your prospects, what that does is immediately put you in the position of being a leader in your industry.

Put it this way, if you are trying to sponsor people, and you’re at the $10.75 PRO level, it’s a lot more difficult to sponsor quality people if all you can say is that you’re still at the entry level position. I’m not saying you can’t do it, but it’s a lot more difficult. The reason it’s more difficult is because these days, people are looking for two things.

1. A team (or leader) to join under.
2. An opportunity to join with that team.

The key here is that people are looking for other people to join, they’re not looking for businesses to join. So it’s much easier to sponsor people into the upgraded levels when you’re an upgraded member yourself and when you’re promoting yourself as the business, which is what you should be doing.

Don’t worry so much about asking people to join you at the director level instead of the $10 level. If they see that you’re at the Director/Silver/Gold, whatever, and if you’re promoting yourself as a leader, as someone of value to them, they will join you at the same level you’re at. Because they want to see some success and if joining at a higher level means they’ll be part of your organization, or your team, they will do it.

In fact I’d strongly recommend promoting the director level as the best place to start in NPN, because it is. That’s what I do. You get way more product access, and you’ll make a big worthwhile jump income-wise, 2 referrals at the director level and you’re already $10 in profit every month.

Bottom line: The people making good money in NPN are upgraded members sponsoring new upgraded members. That is a statistical fact.

Have a great day!

Be sure to comment below…

and..

Subscribe to my blog.

– Geoff.

Alertpay funding delays

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Here`s a copy of the email update I just delivered to our members:

Hello NPN’ers,

Just a quick update on Alertpay funding delays.

Some of you have not yet received commissions
for your October earnings as of yet. Rest assured
that your commissions should be paid within the
next couple days.

The delay is due to a couple reasons.

Alertpay decided to ‘re-verify’ all business accounts
shortly before the end of last month, which involved
re-submitting documents etc, which delayed the
funding of your commissions. I could not deposit,
withdraw, or send funds during this waiting period.

Plus there was a holiday on the 11th, and a couple
unfortunately ‘placed’ weekends. Alertpay does not
work on holidays or weekends, they only count
business days.

Anyways, all remaining commissions will be paid
as usual, and as they have been for the past 4 years
without fail. There are only a few of you waiting, and
I apologize for the inconvenient delays that Alertpay
has imposed on my funding schedules.

Note that the monthly bonuses will be part of the
remaining payouts as well.

Thanks, have a great day!
– Geoff Stephen
GlobalNPN Admin.
http://geoffishere.com

What’s the Best Way to Advertise GlobalNPN?

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A question I get a lot from newer marketers is simply: “What’s the best way to advertise (promote) NPN??”

It’s a very good question, and it sounds like a simple enough question to answer. However, answering it isn’t as simple as it may seem. There are probably hundreds of ways to “best” advertise Globalnpn. It depends on who you are, and what you are good at, and what you “want” to be good at, and how much time you have, etc. etc. The fact is, there are people promoting NPN successfully in all aspects of online advertising, so I can’t give you a definitive answer… at least not something that will absolutely work for everyone that uses it.

I can, however, speak from my own experience, and from what others have told me that works for them.

So.. that’s how I’ll answer the question, which now is: “In Geoff’s experience, what’s the best way to advertise (promote) NPN??”

When I first started “The New Plan Network” before it was the business that it has become today, I built my entire organization almost exclusively using Safelists and Ezines.

Right to the point, here’s how I did it..

I would advertise my free downline/marketing club using safelists and ezines. However the way I went about it might not be what you think. I tried many many ways of advertising to these lists, and I had many many failures, which I learned a lot from. And I learned enough from them to turn the whole thing into many many successes. I learned that when trying to build a downline organization, it was a bad idea to try and advertise a business opportunity directly to a list. There are more than enough biz opp. ads out there to go around, and nobody cares about reading about them or joining them, at least not the people you’d WANT in your downline.

Here’s what I did with my advertising to really make it more successful. All I really did was to change the ‘focus’ of what I was really advertising, or what I really WANTED to be advertising. (think: Where’s the real VALUE?).

  1. This focus worked, but not too well: “Hey join my club, it’s great, it will help you make money”.
  2. This focus worked all the time: “Hey this is me, I’m great, I will help you make money.”.

See the difference? My downline club was still at the end of it all, but the focus of the ‘front end’ changed. In the first example, the focus is on “IT”, being the downline club. In the second example, I changed the focus to “ME” instead.  You see, downline clubs (and similar tools) themselves do not help you make money, PEOPLE help you make money. As soon as I started advertising what “I” could do to help on a personal level, the response was enormous. What I learned back then is that successful people do NOT join businesses, successful people join PEOPLE (write that one down)…

.. Okay.. I’m getting off subject here. What was I talking about..?? 😉

So basically, I built my entire business using Safelists and Ezine ads. Which means I was building my own list (my downline club) by advertising to other people’s lists. How easy is THAT??  Of course I continued to communicate with everyone on my list on an ongoing basis, which is something you have to do to be able to continue to make money in this crazy online world.

So to answer the question that was asked way back at the beginning: “What’s the best way to advertise (promote) NPN?? — In Geoff’s experience??”

The short answer: Safelists, Ezine solo ads.

The long answer: Safelists, Ezine solo ads that ultimately direct prospects to my own list, via my own ‘membership-type’ website. Then I would “supplement” my traffic using articles, blogs, videos, web 2.0 postings, press releases, classifieds, bookmarks..

There ya go. Now I’ll say again that this is what worked for ME (and still does). It might not work for you at all, which is fine too. But find out what DOES work for you, and then kick ass at it. Then find out what ELSE works for you, then do that too. BE valuable and you’ll be successful.

I always recommend safelists and ezines for newer marketers, because it’s easy to start (and relatively cheap), and it will really teach you how to get attention directed towards yourself and your businesses. After you learn how to do that, start moving into the other online advertising mediums and it will just get easier.

Go and DO IT!

Feel free to comment below, I love comments!!

And don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to my blog. <= Click..

– Geoff.

Why is GlobalNPN the most important program in your marketing funnel

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Why is GlobalNPN the most important program in your marketing funnel

Many people ask me “why do I need NPN when I already have a business to promote?”.

The answer is fairly simple but a lot of people still don’t really get it.

Let’s assume that your main business that you want to promote is a ‘Health Drink’ business. You will probably find out pretty quickly that it’s very difficult to find quality targeted leads for your business. After all, you have a very specific business, with a very specific market. It’s not easy (or cheap) to find the right leads that will want to join you in your business. This is also the case no matter what your ‘primary’ business is.

Here’s where NPN comes in. As you know, NPN is a suite of marketing tools and training material that ‘every’ online marketer needs to succeed in generating leads for their own business. Lead generation is the most difficult part of online marketing, especially when your business has a very specific market. That’s why we need GlobalNPN at the top of our marketing funnel.

20091106 002
Geoff's whiteboard presentation

Which scenario would you rather be a part of?

Scenario #1: You’re trying to get distributors for your Health Drink business. So.. you go out and buy some advertising for your Health Drink website. You get lots of visitors to your website but only a couple people actually decide to contact you about it. Your advertising cost you $50. Which means your ad campaign cost you $25 per lead and those 2 people may not even join you in your business. How much longer can you do that before you give up?

Scenario #2: You’re trying to get distributors for your Health Drink business. BUT, this time you go out and buy some advertising for your GlobalNPN business. You get lots of visitors to your website and a TON of people opt-in to your capture page because they know they need these tools to succeed. Your advertising cost $50, but this time 35 people opted in to your capture page. Your leads only cost you around $1.50 each this time. BUT a number of them joined you in NPN and now you’re making money from that, which means your advertising for your Health Business has essentially been taken care of. Now you can focus on ‘upselling’ your NPN referrals into your Health business, which is much easier since you’ve already qualified them as good quality marketing leads.

What’s my Point: You are making money and getting free advertising from the people that would’ve said a flat out “NO” to your Health Drink business, thanks to NPN. Plus down the road you can recruit your NPN referrals into your Health Drink business, which was the point in the first place right?

Use NPN to generate leads, and qualify leads for your other businesses. You will get leads, you will make money, your advertising will essentially be free, and you will realize how important having GlobalNPN at the top of your funnel is and why it’s essential for your ultimate success.

THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE FOLKS. This is not a theory or a guess as to how it works. If you don’t ‘GET IT’ (or refuse to), you won’t make it.

Now, I know that the next question may be “… but NPN IS my primary business, what then??”. In my opinion the most attractive feature of NPN is that it has is it’s own ‘internal funnel’ system. That is exactly what the NPN Ladder System was designed to take care of. Think of the ladder upgrades as your upsells instead of the “health business” I mentioned above. It works in exactly the same way, but in this case it’s completely self-contained and self-feeding. How cool is that? GlobalNPN can be your feeder system, while at the same time it can be your big dollar earner as your primary business.

Have a great day and have fun! Feel free to comment below…

– Geoff.