Today I have some really exciting results from an experiment I ran. My initial results aren’t extraordinary, but it was a half assed effort just to test out a unique list building strategy I discovered. I also did a lot wrong so my next campaign is sure to be more successful.
I say I discovered it, but it was actually something I learned from Eric James and Bruce Boretsky with their new special report The Lincoln List.
I recommended this product a few days ago and said I’d share my results using the method once I had some data.
I now have that data and in this blog post I will reveal the exact details of my list building experiment, what I did wrong, what modifications I’m going to make, and how you can use The Lincoln List method yourself to get crazy traffic, rapid influxes of new subscribers and mega affiliate commissions.
Unfortunately it would be a bit unfair of me to share exactly what the traffic source is since I’d effectively be stealing it from Eric and Bruce but I’ll share details of the traffic I received and the number of subscribers I generated and then you can make an informed decision as to whether or not to invest in getting yourself a copy of The Lincoln List.
Here we go…
On Tuesday December 13th, approximately one hour after reading through the Lincoln List, I set up my first campaign.
I paid just over $18 and in exchange I would receive 8,000 clicks. I decided to send traffic to a really short squeeze page that gave away a free report called Automatic List Building Machines – a report about list building, surprisingly.
You can buy traffic in 1,000 visitor batches and you can select the location of each set of visitors. For example, it’s $4 per 1,000 US and UK visitors, $3 per 1,000 Australia, NZ, Ireland visitors, and $2 or less for visitors from other locations such as India. You can also buy “Proxy Traffic” – I don’t know what it means but it is only $0.40 per 1,000 visitors so I bought 2k worth of traffic from there.
From inside the dashboard of this traffic source it’s showing that it has sent 8,140 visitors. Google Analytics is showing me 6,710 visitors to that page and my Aweber web form is showing 9,142 unique displays so we’ll just assume approximately 8,000 visitors saw my squeeze page.
Of those 8,000 visitors I had 111 form submissions which is around a 1.3% conversion. However, only 43 of those email submissions went on to confirm their email address so I ended up with 43 confirmed subscribers.
So, for my $18 investment I received 43 double opt-in subscribers. Not sensational, but certainly not to be sniffed at.
Plus, I didn’t notice much difference in traffic quality between the US/UK $4 per thousand traffic and the $0.40 proxy traffic. This means I could now go and spend $40 and get 100,000 visitors using just proxy traffic.
And believe me I’ll be testing this shortly. In fact, I can’t wait!
Here are a few things I think I did wrong, and a few adjustments I’m going to be making in my next campaign which I will be setting up ASAP. (I’d of done it already but I’ve been travelling the country visiting family and preparing for Daisy’s birthday in a few days and this is the first chance of been able to get on my laptop).
1. Here’s how the traffic arrives at your page. They click a link which is supposed to take them to a destination, but before they reach the destination, they arrive at your page. They have to click “Skip this ad” to continue their journey. I was simply showing people my standard squeeze page, but a more eye catching page that grabbed their attention would have converted MUCH better.
2. The traffic you get is real human beings from all walks of life and with different passions and interests. The chances are, only a tiny fraction of them knew that list building on the internet even existed, and even fewer would know why it was so important. That’s why my opt-in rate was so low – no one was interested. A more generalised offer that would appeal to more people (think weight loss, money making, health etc) would have yielded a better response. I’m getting ready to set up my weight loss campaign tomorrow.
3. If I wasn’t using double opt-in I would have 111 subscribers instead of 43. Aweber don’t allow me to use double opt-in, although I believe I can request it and they can either accept or deny. If they deny perhaps I’ll set up a second account with another autoresponder company and try using single opt-in.
This is a really exciting method that can deliver huge volumes of traffic really, really quickly. Take a look at my Google Real Time Analytics after my campaign went live.
My first campaign got me 8,000 visitors and 43 new subscribers for a cost of $18.
My next campaign is going to do much better using the knowledge I’ve gleaned and the mistakes I’ve made and I can’t wait for it to go live.
If you think this is a method you’d like to try then pick up a copy of The Lincoln List for yourself.
Sorry I couldn’t be more specific about the method but I think it would be out of order for me to buy a product and then instantly go and share the method with my subscribers.
I hope you understand and thanks for reading.
James Penn
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12/16/2011
James, I purchased on the 13th as well, so far I have added 44 subscribers (single opt-in) for $2! This method rocks and I am testing some country specific cpa offers with a bit of success as well
Keep shining bro,
Matthew
FANTASTIC Matthew!
I’ve been looking into some ways to use this traffic for affiliate marketing, too.
Glad it’s working out for you.
James
Thanks for sharing the results, it’s not often people do! I think you make a really good point in going after a the traffic with a problem virtually everyone is interested in — diet, weight loss — maybe even celebrity stuff. Probably perfect for many CPA offers on the networks.
I’d say $18 for 43 double-opt in subscribers is pretty good going.
Hey James,
I got this product the other day and I’ve been testing this out as well and I’ve already added over 300 people to my list for pennies per subscriber…
Also, to set you Aweber to single optin just go to list settings and turn the “confirmed” option off…
After you turn confirmation off you will need to create a new webform for the single opt-in to work.
I’m using it with both Imnica and Aweber and it works like a charm using this traffic source
Oh, I’m noticed that software converted stupidly high for me – like 40 optins for 1K views for proxy traffic…
Cheers,
Coby Wright
Hey James, its good you are getting the traffic and converting them to optins. I’d love to know how the convert on an offer though because since this traffic is not super targeted to your offer, I’m guessing it will be hard to turn that traffic into sales.
But keep us updated with your results and good luck.
Hi James,
Thanx for sharing the testing results and the tips for improvement!!
I have just set up the “eye catching” squeeze page! It’s my first time actually set it up myself!
I will let u guys know what’s the result~!
Cheers,
Jimmy Ting
Hi James,
I haven’t bought Lincon list WSO but I know the traffic
source your talking about well having a look at your screenshot above.
I’ve been using this traffic source 10 months now and sent over 493,000 unique vistors to my splash page. I got 17,230 optins. I can say the U.S,UK, AU traffic is alittle better but it costs more.
In all 98% of this traffic is junk traffic. Trust me on this, but it’s those other 2% that matters. What I can also say the number of optins mean jack.
It’s all about quality not quantity. This traffic is better for cpa offers because they don’t have to buy anything, and you get paid for a simple zip or email submit.
Nigel
Interesting experiment James. Might be worth having a little dabble too since the costs aren’t that bad at all.
Thanks for the share
Interesting stuff James, I think I will check out this WSO and find out more details.
By the sounds of it having a boarder niche offer and an eye catching page is going to improve your stats greatly.
I purchased it the other day, and i was just waiting for your results James.
List building was probably a bit too narrow. If it was broader, like network or affiliate marketing or even one of those – How to earn XX in XX days, probably work better.
Anyway, after learning from what you got, i’m going ahead and doing it. Never know, i might catch Coby on his numbers before our adswap in January.
I have been using this traffic source for months and have generated probably over a thousand subscribers using single opt in without spending hardly any money.
The bounce rates were a lot lower than I expected, which is a great sign, but I have a harder time converting them than other traffic sources.
Even then, if I can just earn .50 per subscriber per month, then I am definitely getting my money’s worth.
Thanks for the share James!
-Gabriel Johansson
P.S. Aweber has a single opt in option in list setup, but Aweber is really picky about traffic sources according to other people I work with, so I wouldn’t even recommend switching it.
P.P.S. ImnicaMail or GetResponse would both work out well for the single optin test.
James,
Proxy traffic is this: people who want to hide their IP address while surfing the internet are going to free web proxy service sites. Once there, they can enter the url that they want to visit ‘anonymously’. The proxy service site sends them to that url, but before they reach the destination, they are presented with your squeeze page, spalsh page, whatever.
No you can imagine what type of traffic that is.
100% untargeted
No more than 0.05% of all those people are really interested in your niche, whatever it is.
To get 100 quality subscribers (those who ARE interested and can be converted into customers) you’d have to buy a minumum of 200000 visitors each month, paying $80.
That’s about $0.80 per subscriber, in a very, very optimistic scenario. Chances are that you’d actually have to buy 3-400000 visitors in order to get those ‘golden’ 100 subs. This makes approximatelly $1.0-$1.5 per good subscriber.
To get 1000 ‘golden’ subscribers you’d have to buy 3-4 millions proxy visitors, that would cost you about $1500.
Let’s say you manage to sell a $7 product to 25% of them: 250 x $7 = $1750 . You can break even or maybe even make a small profit, $200-300.
Then you’d have a list of 300 buyers ( of low-priced product) that you have to work with in order to funnel them towards $17/$27/$37… products.
Say 10% of them buy your $27 offer along the way:
30x $27 = $810 profit
Those 30 can be considered ‘quality subscribers’.
This makes about 0.001% of your 3 million visitors.
These are very rough estimates, but that’s how it works with these types of traffic. You need to buy millions and millions of visitors in order to get 20-30 buyers onto your list.
Almin
Hey James
Great results… I started using this traffic method over a year ago, the traffic is super cheap but low quality traffic.
But the more volume you by from different countries the more conversions you get.
I didn’t quite get this to work for me, but using some effect ways to capture there attention this will work, and work well.
You can also earn money from the advertise section as well.
Here is a link to the volume of traffic I sent just similar to yours
http://tinyurl.com/cfe76zx
Be great to see how you do
Cheers
Danny
Hey James,
Would you please keep us updated on the sales you make with this, so we can see if there is any profit in building a list in this way. It is easy to build big lists but it is much more difficult to make a profit with un-targeted traffic.
Any way keep us updated please.
Taco Verhoef
Hi James,
I’v been implementing this strategy and the result is
YES, you can build a list lightening fast….it’s cheap and I’v got a squeeze page that only convert between 0.8 to 1%. But, I can have at least 20 to 30 subscribers per day.
However, as some of the other marketers have mentioned…..it is with un-targeted traffic and of course…it is affecting the conversion rate.
On the surface, it looks great to have a huge list…but the quality of the list is in doubt~!
Cheers
Jimmy