David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

I have an email address I use for spam messages. If I sign up for freebies on the Internet or sign up to download documents, I use this email address.

After 3 days, I had 1,000 emails. There is no way I am reading 1,000 emails so I selected all and deleted.

Most emails that I get are from Internet marketers. The ones that claim not to be guru's just very knowledgeable. They obviously cannot be that knowledgeable if several send exactly the same messages as each other.

These messages invariably contain 'My friend [insert name] has just released a new product'. I don't know about you but that is a sure fire way of getting me to press delete on the keyboard.

Mind you, some of these are interesting reads. I usually sign up for freebies and 99% of the time never buy the e-product (usually priced at $79, $97, or $997). I have bought two e-books before and felt ripped off. You pay $97 for a document that tells you to buy another $200 worth of materials. Why? I paid $97 for the information!
 
I don't think Tesco would turn around tomorrow and start charging £10 just to enter the store and then you have to pay for shopping on top.

Anyway, believe it or not, there is a point to all this.

I sign up for freebies. I give my email address to marketers who then send "occasional" emails to me, recommending their products and other marketer's products.

This is a great marketing tactic. I get something for free which I believe is of some value. The marketer gets my email address to which they can try and persuade me to buy something.

This strategy is exactly what I want to implement on Compare Sat Nav. I have said before that I will allocate the first £500 of affiliate revenue to getting some printed merchandise. This will be tied into boosting the visitor count on the mailing list (probably) though will almost definitely be tied into a separate competition.

For starters though, my email list will be simple. I will create a document explaining the benefits of sat nav systems. It needn't be long - around 10 to 20 pages. It can contain pictures and most importantly, links back to Compare Sat Nav. If I were to put a retail value on this, something in the region of £9.99 would be about right. This guide should tempt quite a few visitors who are looking to buy a sat nav system to join the mailing list.

Another benefit of using my dbfcsserver is that already use a licensed autoresponder program called Awake Autoresponder. It is another paid-for script but at $49.90, it is reasonable. At the moment, you can pre-program it to automatically send out 60 365 days worth of emails in the Pro version. You can send out 1 every week or 1 every day (not recommended). Each message is tailored to each subscriber with their name embedded in the subject and /or body of the message.

As I am using it on the dbfcsserver powering several other lists, it's cost has been recouped already so it is not worth adding to my list of expenses here. You could easily find free PHP scripts that do a similar job or even use hosted solutions. Aweber costs around $180 per annum, GetResponse is about $145 per annum, and SendFree is free. All have differing service levels and perks though I prefer the cheaper solution of Awake Autoresponder. In fact, there is a free stripped down version for you to try (or use if you do not need the additional features) at Awake Autoresponder.

My aim is to pre-program about 10 messages on the responder, though I am not sure what about! Perhaps messages about features on the site or reviews of some systems. I will worry about that when I set the responder up!