One of my favorite marketing blogs is by Andy Beal and his crew at MarketingPilgrim.com. They share online industry news, facts, figures, and their opinions about what’s happening in the world of search and online marketing. Since I’ve subscribed to their blog via an RSS feed, I found this new contest they are promoting to get more subscribers. Here it is:

All you have to do is subscribe to Marketing Pilgrim via either daily email updates or our RSS feed. If you love getting the latest breaking internet marketing news–and some opinion along with it–you should really consider subscribing anyway. Now you have an added incentive! (Here’s what you could win…)

Some of you may be asking, “Why are they doing this?” Good question. Here are my thoughts - they want to build their subscriber list, which in turn can help them monetize their site even more. The bigger the database of contacts one has, the more potential they have to cross promote, sell sponsors and really get to a new level fairly quickly.

I currently work with a client, Mark K., who is really understanding this concept. He is a radio announcer by trade and has developed a unique database over time in his field. That database is something he’s now using effectively to market his site. That database also has helped him “monetize”. Within the last 45 days he’s made almost $2,000 in commissions, products, and sales.

He and I are both realizing that the more he leverages the already established opt-in list, the more he can capitalize on what he has. This leverage is also beneficial to his list: they get great reviews and discounts on products he is promoting. The comment I made in regards to Andy’s contest was this:

Will be fun to hear about how many new subscribers you get from a competition like this and what that does for the company.

This is the reply:

Currently 8,824 subscribers. Up 45 since yesterday, which is a 0.5% increase. I didn’t get a pre-contest count so the total lift is most likely higher.

As you can see, the list is already growing; the bigger the number of opt-ins, the better!  Now, what are you going to do today to build your database?

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I just talked to a client who was wondering about how I kept my confidence up while developing my 1st website. Great question! It wasn’t easy, especially when it took about 5 months before I found the actual supplier I now use. Can you imagine working on something for that long without seeing much progress? I’ve also been asked how long it takes to get to the top of search engines. This is a pretty loaded question - it really depends on the industry you chose to market in. Aaron Wall, author of a great SEO EBook, has some great things to say about getting ranked in google and how long it takes.

My mentor, Mat Siltala, gave me plenty of good things to do while waiting for a supplier. Everything he taught had the intent to help me move up the search engine rankings sooner than later. He also frequently reminded me that some things are out of my control. Here are 3 of the best things I did to keep my confidence and self motivation up while working on finding suppliers and moving up the rankings in Google:

1. Sell, Sell, Sell on eBay (and now Craigslist.org). Although some of you may be gun shy when it comes to eBay, it really is a great tool to help you start seeing money come in. In the first quarter of 2006 eBay had over 190 million registerd users. They had over 500 million new listings in that same quarter, and they made $1.39 million dollars in net revenue. They are for real. They make money, while at the same time giving you every opportunity to make money as well. What are you waiting for?
2. Record all the “Small Success that is leading to Big Success” in my business journal. This really helped me as a student. I didn’t even really realize why I was doing this “business history” at the time. Maybe it was so I could prove to Mat that I’d done everything he taught me - who knows. What I learned was that writing down the day to day and week to week results on paper really helped me start to “see” what was happening. I could go back and read over things I’d learned in my first mentoring session that, 3 weeks later, seemed really easy. At the time, they didn’t seem easy at all but things were coming together, and I could see it all right before me. Even recording my first 99 cent sale in eBay helped my confidence grow and, as they say, “Success breeds Success!”. If I had any doubt about my capabilites before, they were now gone because I was filling my mind with positive reinforcers that told me “You know you can do this, look what you’ve already done, why would you ever turn back now…” It wasn’t always easy; I had my share of times (even now) where I think, “What am I doing?” but looking back at all the progress I’d made always helps me re-commit and take steps in the right direction.
3. Ask lots of questions, strive to understand as much as you can, and then put to practice what you’ve been taught. First off here, if you don’t have a mentor, get one. The majority of highly successful people didn’t do everything on their own - they learned from those that have been there and done that. I worked with a great mentor who I feel taught me a lot of what I know about eCommerce and SEO. I’m sure some of the questions I asked my mentor and the other resource advisors at Prosper were added to a list of “Nate’s Stupid Questions” but honestly WHO CARES! If I wouldn’t have asked the “stupid” questions back then, I’d still be pretty “stupid” about all this stuff today. As I tell clients all the time, “The only ’stupid’ question you’ll ask is the one you don’t ask.” It drives me crazy when I look at the history of a client and see that they have never asked any questions. Nine times out of ten I could predict without talking to the client that they are not satisfied or happy with the results they AREN’T getting. Why? Because they were afraid to ask the questions that would have taken them to the next level.

So, to some all this up, I encourage you all to EXPECT SUCCESS! If hundreds of thousands of others have seen results with their online businesses, why not you?

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