The Magic of the Autoresponder and the Long Tail (Part I)

In 2003, I was trying just about every online marketing program there was. I tried numerous autoresponder systems, online MLM programs, web site builders and marketing systems, viral ads, you name it.

Towards the end of the year I had just about exhausted myself working 30+ hours per week at it on top of my regular job. I had also exhausted my finances after spending well over US$10,000 on all of these programs. I think I had made less than $100 by then.

You hear this a lot in the online world. All that time and money, and nothing to show for it, right?

I belonged to so many mailing lists that I couldn't keep up with the newsletters. It seemed that everyone was making money on the Internet within months, except me. Each "guru" had their own success formula, which they would either sell you, or let you in on if you joined their latest "program." I had just about had enough, but I knew that there was gold in "them thar web sites."

Well, following the advice of Joe Schroeder, Will Haven, and a few others, I took a second, third, and fourth look at what I was doing. I found that what I was doing was actually not at all what the gurus were doing. I was simply dancing to their tune, while they were pulling in profits. Profits that, in many cases, were being made by people like me dancing around and writing checks.

My new formula for success, and my mantra became... "Do what the guru does, not what the guru says."

After seeing what the gurus were actually doing, I changed my methods. The canned web sites and marketing materials were out. I stopped spending money on the latest thing that would make us all rich. I focused on a few programs that worked together to first, build a mailing list, and second, build a downline in an online MLM I had chosen.

You see, the guy who was building a downline of hundreds within weeks was doing it because he either a) had an inside track with the company, b) had a mailing list ready to roll things out to, or c) was building a mailing list faster than you or I could hope to. Well, I didn't have a or b, so I opted for c... and it worked.

I wrote my own autoresponder series, and I modeled it after what the gurus had done. I put my own personality into it and I made it playful and interesting. I wrote my own capture page, and I didn't oversell. I overdelivered on information, freebies, and provided an insight into what was going on within the process. Information that the gurus had left out, and I learned the hard way.

The result? Nothing less than amazing. In The Magic of the Autoresponder and the Long Tail (Part II), I'll describe how my success turned around, and how I learned about the long tail of marketing, and lasting online success.