Establishing My Business – Part 3 (Email List and Plotting My Platforms)

From my last post, I emphasized that the key to my success is my email list. To make money I must make sales. To generate sales I need to have people to show my offers to. To have people to show those offers to, I need to build an audience of people who want and/or need the offers I want to make. The second critical part of affiliate marketing is Capturing Traffic. As I build an audience, I want to capture them onto my email list so I can reach them whenever I wish. At first this concept was a bit intimidating but as Dean said, look at it as being able to hang out with people who have things in common and help them while helping myself.

My niche is showing retirees, Veterans and those about to retire how to make money online to live the life they want. While affiliate marketing is for anyone, I anticipate the vast majority of people who want to join my email list will be in that niche because we have things in common. Emphasis on Want. I am not trying to “coerce” or “trick” anyone to join my email list. I only want people on my list who Want to be on it. They like what I have to say or post and decide they want to follow me by joining my Voyager Newsletter, and want to open my emails. The money is in the relationship with my list. People will buy from those they know, like, trust and/or have something in common with and my content is a unique and personal way to create that opportunity.

This is especially true now since the rules of online marketing have changed. Unsolicited mass emailing and spam emails are longer acceptable and may get your email capability suspended or disabled. To be successful, you need to maintain a low spam complaint rate and low bounce rate. Your email sender reputation is key. Under Dean’s amazing Beginner’s Advantage program, I learned to create a double opt-in for my Newsletter email list. This is my fan focused email for those who want to follow my journey. With a double opt-in, once someone clicks the link to join my Newsletter (the first opt-in), they receive an email thanking them and then asking them to confirm they want to join my Newsletter and email list. When they click on that confirmation link that is the second (double) opt-in. This manifests they are interested in me and want to join. Those are my fans that I can focus my content on.

Well this sounds great, but how do I get people to want to join my Newsletter email list? The average person sees 4,000 to 10,000 ads and offers per day. (goadfuel.com). When we show our offer, no one cares about going to another offer, or join another email list. What they do care about it what is in it for them? Is there something in it for them by joining your email list? We get people to want to join our Newsletter email list by providing value.

If what I am posting on my Blog is valuable to those in my target niche, they will most likely want to join and get updates and inside information. If they like and/or enjoy what I post on my FB page, they will most likely want to join and see what else I have to offer and provide. What’s in it for them? I know I will be successful in my business. I want to help other beginners be successful as well and not make all the mistakes I made. My Blog is about you; documenting my journey, both good and bad, so you can learn from my mistakes and duplicate my successes and not waste your time like I did. I also provide detailed documents and explanations of what I am doing and/or learned, in my Newsletter, because that takes time and research to bring you that information. It is not for everyone. It is only for those who are following me on my journey in the Voyager Newsletter. It is about me wishing I had something like this to help when I first started and doing it for others instead of complaining. That is my content and I choose to only share it with my Voyager Newsletter friends on my journey to the top.

The other value I provide are two free short videos from Dean Holland himself. The first is his Beginnner’s Business Blueprint Training and the second is his Perfect Path to Seven Figures. Those really helped me understand the whole affiliate marketing process and how to be successful. I refer back to them from time to time to stay focused. They are also called Lead Magnets. Magnets providing incredible value and a free incentive leading them to join my Voyager Newsletter. If you give me your first name and email address, I will give you these two incredible products. Again, if you choose to join my Voyager newsletter, I will give you something of great value. A win-win. There is no sales pitch in the videos, just Dean explaining how he became successful and how you can as well.

Now that I know how I want to build my fan-focused email list, the next step is about putting my business all together so people want to join my email list and get to know, like and trust me. To do that I needed to visually plot how my business will interconnect.

• In review, to this point I have created the following for JClouse Business:
• – Owned asset: Voyage to the Top of the Sea Blog
• – Email list: Voyager Newsletter
• – Primary platform: Jordan Clouse FB page

• I still want to create the following:
• – Secondary platform: Jordan Clouse Youtube channel
• – Jordan Clouse FB group

How do I plot, or link, those five assets? I will use LinkTree, which is a feature of Dean’s Affiliate System. LinkTree is an all-in-one page that gives a quick description of myself and has links to my key pages and sites. I decided on something basic. I chose a recent picture of myself in England for a profile pic. For the background, I chose a picture I took at a Paris cafe looking out on the people and city life going by. Next, I had a three sentence description, wherein I invited people to watch me document and share everything I was doing online to grow my business. I said they could vicariously watch my failures and successes, and my call to action was for them to follow me on my voyage. The very first link below my description was, of course, to my Blog site. Next link was to my FB page. Thirdly was a link to join my most important asset – my Voyager email list. The fourth link will be to my YouTube channel once I create it, and the fifth and last link, will be to the FB group I create. The nice thing about LinkTree is it is scalable. If I wish to do TikTok, Snapchat or any other platform in the future, I can add those links.

I have established the basics of the advertising/marketing aspects of my of my business – plotting the links to my Voyager Newsletter from my Blog and FB page, and eventually my YouTube channel and FB group. Now it is on to the real advertising and marketing strategy of getting out there on Facebook and creating stories and content, as well as creating a YouTube channel, to let people know who I am and what I have to offer and build a following. As Sophie explained, you can be the best affiliate marketer in the world, but if no one knows about you, no one will buy from you. I need to post content and be consistent. It takes time for people to notice you, then follow you, then trust you. I want to help people with their problems of not being able to live their dream life. This doesn’t happen over two weeks but over time and, as I mentioned in my April 24th Blog post- Have You Ran a Marathon, it takes determination and perseverance. As Dean consistently says, it’s not about getting rich quick, but getting rich forever. Time to step outside my comfort zone and create the content on Facebook and YouTube to build a following. Like everything here, I will take you on that Voyage as well. I am so fortunate to be part of the Beginner’s Advantage program and also part of the Saturday Share group that I derive such inspiration from on their successes in content creation on those platforms. Let’s keep moving upward!