If you read my prior post on list building you know that it’s something that I have some knowledge on, but it’s not something I’ve put a whole lot of effort into in the past few years and that I’ve finally “seen the light” and decided to get serious with it.

Well, after the explosion of sales that Jon’s mailer created I’m more excited than ever to get going with a solid list building campaign.

Jonathan is one of the most honest, intelligent, giving marketers out there, which is something you probably already know if you’re on his list or you keep up with him in any other way.

He’s also extremely good at what he does!! He’s created some of the most popular, useful products out there in the IM niche and I’m honored to have had the chance to learn a little about him.

Jonathan has allowed me to share a short email “interview” (similar to the one I did with CPT. Tim Gorman) with you on the topic of list building. If you have a list or you think you may start one any time soon I highly recommend you take a look and absorb his expert advice on the subject!

My Short “interview” with Jonathan Leger

Josh: Could you give us a short introduction? sites/blog/products that you author.

Jonathan: I’m a computer programmer by trade. Started writing code when I was 8, got my first PC at 12. Wrote my first commercial software at 14. So I’m rather the geek.

I have a lot of products, but my focus right now is 3WayLinks.net. Another “big hit” product of mine is InstantArticleWizard.com. I’ve sold more than 5,000 copies of that software (as of today) in the last 8 months.

Josh: Can you give your thoughts on the effectiveness of the more helpful, personal approach of managing a list compared to the “standard” IM newsletter (sell, sell then sell some more?)

Jonathan: Lack of a personal approach will seriously cut your effectiveness. If you don’t treat each person on your list as a truly valuable list member, encouraging their feedback on blog posts and responding to them when they email you personally — you can expect your response rate on promotions to be 1/10th of what they would be if you were being personable with people.

Teaching people things for FREE, whatever industry your in, establishes you as an expert with your list members. Just as importantly, it lets people know that you are interested in more than just their pocketbook.

Josh: Although I don’t have a list nearly as valuable as yours, I’m sure you’ll agree that the most important aspect of a list is not the number of subscribers, but the conversion rate. Could you share a few tips on how you’ve been able to make your list convert so incredibly well?

Jonathan: I send out, at most, one promotion after every 2 educational emails. I routinely make educational blog posts and invite interaction with my list by encouraging them to post comments to the posts (and RESPONDING to their comments — that’s very important).

Sending promotion after promotion might get some results from the new members on your list, but those new members quickly become old members, grow tired of your greed and stop being responsive.

I know this from personal experience. Take our experience together, when my list of 40k resulted in 700+ sales of your report when another person with a 200k list pulled in less than 1/3 of that. That’s the power of being in touch with your list.

And you have to mean it. You can’t fake interest in them. You really have to care about their success. If you don’t, that’ll show through.

Josh: How often do you contact your list? Is there a schedule you go by that has proven to convert better or do you just write to them when you feel you have something good to say?

Jonathan: I try to write 2 educational articles a week, and send out one promotional email per week at the most. Some weeks I’ll just do 3 mailers. I only send out promotions if I really have something I liked that I think they will benefit from.

I don’t really plan a schedule, no, though lately Monday and Wednesdays have been my article days, and Friday my promotional day. But it won’t stay that way, that’s just how it’s fallen lately. I try and send something to my list 3 times a week, though, to keep them “in touch” and reminded of my presence in their business lives.

Josh: What have you found to be the most effective technique(s) to build a list? ie. free reports, blog etc.

My best list builder to date has been paying affiliates to send people to my site to download a free report. It takes some up-front cash, but really grows your list fast.

If you don’t have the money for that, my next biggest list building is my blog.

Josh: What is the best piece of advice you could give someone who is new to list building, but serious about doing it correctly?

Jonathan: Don’t follow the crowd. Teach, teach, teach your list to be successful BEFORE you ask them to buy anything. Earn their trust and deserve it. I’ve yet to see any better method than that at being a successful list builder.

For the past year or so I’ve been following a guy by the name of Tim Gorman. I first heard of Tim when I came across a few YouTube videos of him speaking at an Adsense Immersion workshop. He was giving great tips on how to effectively put up white-hat niche sites for Adsense income. That’s the exact day I started doing a little niche marketing myself.

About CPT Gorman

Many of you have probably heard of Tim, if not I’ll tell you a little bit about him.

Tim Gorman is a U.S. Army Captain (Soon to be Major), who also runs a very respectable, profitable online business. As a former U.S. Army Sergeant I can assure you that officers don’t have much free time, especially Recruiting Company Commanders as Tim is, so he’s actually running his online business with VERY limited time.

For those of you who know Tim, you know he’s very well-known for niche marketing. In a nutshell he puts up small, quality, white-hat sites and promotes them primarily with articles. This is something many of us do, but very few of us are 6 figure earners doing it, as Tim is.

After watching those videos I went to the Warrior Forum and asked who had heard of him. I have quite possibly the worst memory in the world but I remember exactly what the first response was:

Tim Gorman is the real deal! If you want to make money with niche marketing follow him!

There were several other replies which were very similar, but the first one stuck.

Since then Tim has expanded his business and he is quickly broadening his “brand” from Niche Marketing Guru and Article Marketing Guru to a well rounded Internet Marketing Guru and I’m glad to know him!

Tim has been making money above the radar with his niche marketing, but he’s also been making cash below the radar by Creating and Flipping Websites. He’s even created one of the best courses on the subject that I’ve ever seen at http://www.createandflip.com/ I just purchased a copy earlier today and I’m truly amazed.

The thing that I really like about Tim, other than the fact that he’s “the real deal” is that he’s not just out to get your money. He’s a good guy and you know how I treat people that lack ethics (see my review of John Chow dot com)

I was lucky enough to score a 5 question email interview with Tim and he’s allowed me to share it with you, so enjoy!! If you learn something from the review, consider picking up a copy of his site flipping course at http://www.createandflip.com/

My Interview with CPT Tim Gorman

Josh

Tim, first off, thanks for the interview, I know your time is valuable. One question that comes up all the time when discussing Article Marketing is whether or not “mass submission” using services such as ArticleMarketer.com and iSnare.com is looked at as duplicate content. Whether it is or not, do you see better results “mass submitting” or being more selective with your submissions?

Tim

Josh – No problem. I’m always glad to discuss article marketing concepts with folks that are eager to harness its power. There is probably no subject that causes more heated discussion when it comes to article marketing then the duplicate content penalty and whether mass submission is a valuable tool or not.

Let me start by saying I have had excellent results using article marketing on sites where I used mass submission techniques and on sites where I didn’t use mass submission techniques. Now before I start to dissect whether or not mass submission is good or bad let’s make sure we know why we use article marketing. There are many reasons why article marketing techniques should be used as part of your online business marketing arsenal. These include:

1 – Generating search engine traffic
2 – Generating article directory traffic
3 – Generating one way backlinks
4 – Generating webmaster’s traffic

Now based on those 4 observations I can easily tell you that an article that is mass submitted will generate more article directory traffic (because your article is on more article directories), it will generate more one way backlinks (because your article is on more article directories) and it will generate more webmaster’s traffic. This in turn can have a viral effect for your website because those folks are actively searching (or in some cases scrapping) the article directories for articles to put on their site which will in turn will be seen by visitors to those websites. So if you follow what I’ve just mentioned then you can see that perhaps the only negative aspect of a mass submission would be the effect it has on generating search engine traffic but I can tell you that I have seen the benefit of having an article in the number 1 position on Google even though it was a mass submitted article.

What I will tell you is that I don’t mass submit every article I use for my article marketing efforts. In fact I think I generally use a ratio of 1 mass submission for every 6 articles I submit with the other 5 submissions going to a few of the quality article directories such as EzineArticles.com. Also I don’t advocate the use of iSnare.com or ArticleMarketer.com instead I prefer to rely on a quality article submission software such as Article Post Robot. That’s not to say iSnare.com and ArticleMarketer.com don’t work (I’ve never personally used them) I just think you can get more value for your money with less headaches if you have total control of your mass submissions.

Let me talk about duplicate content real quick – First, I’m not an expert nor do I pretend to be when it comes to duplicate content but I’ve often mentioned that in my experiences duplicate content was not the issue – mirror content was the main problem. What’s the difference?

Duplicate content is an article that you submit to an article directory and is used by others to populate their website.

Mirror content is where you write an article for your own website on Arizona Car Insurance and then use the same article 50 more times but replacing Arizona with the name of another state. So now you have the exact same article but covering California Car Insurance, Missouri Car Insurance, Idaho Car Insurance…..etc

I’ve personally lost a website that was disowned by Google for using the procedure I use to describe mirror content (pity because it was making $3000 a month just from adsense).

Additionally, I routinely use unchanged PLR on many of my websites and they do well in terms of making income for me. I’ve seen my submitted articles on the websites of other webmasters (they downloaded them from the article directories) occupying the number 1 position in Google. I’ve seen my submitted article on a directory occupying the number 1 position on Google.

I don’t worry much about duplicate content (although I do make sure and use a different article on my site and never an article that I have submitted to a directory).

Josh

I’ve heard you mention in the past that you like shooting for more competitive “niches” because they are the ones that pay. I do the same, but I target “long-tail” keywords or “sub-niches” inside these high competition niches. Is this more or less what you do as well?

Tim

Lol – Yea, that’s correct. I absolutely love the high paying competitive niches (insurance, loans, debt relief, credit repair, acne…etc). You actually mention the key to becoming profitable in these niches in your question and that’s targeting the long tailed keywords (sometimes referred to as the low hanging fruit). Here’s a real quick example using the insurance niche:

Keyword 1 – Insurance – Pays well but extremely difficult to rank for and very broad.
Keyword 2 – Home Insurance – Again pays well but still to broad and difficult to rank well for in the search engines.
Keyword 3 – California Home Insurance – Getting better (easier to rank for and still pays well).
Keyword 4 – Riverside California Home Insurance – Clearly a long tailed keyword phrase that can be dominated
Keyword 5 – Riverside California Home Insurance Policy – Make a page now because its waiting to be dominated!!!

That’s an example with the keywords but in order to truly see the power of the long tail try putting each of the above phrases in Google search (with quotes) and see what the results are for each.

I would rather rank number 1 for 100 long tail keyword phrases that each get 1 search a day then rank number 20 for the most competitive phrases that receive thousands of searches a day.

Josh

I know you are a little picky when selecting niche site templates. Can you provide a few tips that any niche marketer could use in order to optimize their niche sites for the best conversion?

Tim

I want to be honest with you I use a very simple site template for almost all of my sites because it works for me at achieving an unbelievable CTR and continues to make me money no matter the niche topic. It would be rather time consuming to explain the layout so with your permission I’d rather just show a website that uses my layout – Free Online Instant Credit Reports

What you’ll notice on that site is I have a very small menu on the left, a nicely done graphical header at the top , a large heading followed by my adsense ad above the fold. Next I have my article then a Google search box followed by some additional content. Also you’ll notice I have an affiliate ad on the left side. As you can see a very simple template yet extremely effective for monetization purposes. One final note – Notice I only have 1 adsense ad on the site. I feel that’s very important for earning purposes but that’s for another interview.

Josh

With my own niche sites I feel that I have a good layout and presentation of my adverts. Most get an adsense CTR of around 30%. But, I’ve never been able to get my affiliate links/banners to convert well at all. Is there any advice you could give my readers and I on selecting affiliate adverts that convert?

Tim

The only real way I’ve been able to get higher then a 3% CTR on my banner/affiliate ads was by removing adsense completely which is something I don’t really recommend doing unless you have a well paying CPA offer that only requires your site visitor to enter something simple like a zip code or an email address. I have found that a good affiliate ad placed on the left side under your menu will generate a CTR of 2-3% and can be profitable. I have one site that does between $3-$9 a day on adsense but also does between $1.78 – $10 a day just from 1 small affiliate ad.

I think the key is if the ad/banner addresses the visitor’s problem. For example if your site is on warts and someone comes to your site wanting to know how to remove a wart and they see a nice graphical banner that clearly says “safely remove warts now” I believe they are more apt to click on that ad then an ad that simple says “wart removal cream”. That’s probably a poor example but hopefully you get the idea. Remember be very selective as to which banner you use on your site and if you use a site like Commission Junction to get your affiliate banners they normally tell you which are the best performing banners.

Josh

As a U.S. Army Captain you have very little time to work on your Business, yet you still manage to earn 6 figures. What advice would you give those with limited time, who want to run a profitable online business, to get their business off the ground?

Tim

The best advice I can give is the following:

1 – Dedicate a set amount of time to work on your business each day
2 – Work your tail off during that set amount of time
3 – Master one monetization model at a time. First instance I started with adsense, now I’m on to rehabbing PLR material and creating and flipping websites. Next on the plate is to create my own products and start a membership site.
4 - Don’t be afraid to invest some money into your business provided it can be justified to help speed up your learning curve or help simplfy a task you are currently doing. However, don’t go wasting money chasing every new pot of gold.
5 – Don’t be afraid to spend time in some of the Internet Marketing forums. They can be a wealth of free information.
6 – Choose a mentor and follow everything they do.
7 – Never give up and always have a positive mental attitude.

Josh – This has been alot of fun for me. I want to thank you for this opportunity and I wish nothing but online success and prosperity for you and your readers.