Traditional thinking (aka ‘repeating the myth without testing’)  suggests that you should only ever put ONE link or call to action in your emails to your list, on your squeeze pages (they either opt-in or leave) or on your sales pages.

This might have been true some years back – Hell I even mentioned it once or twice in my own reports, and while putting just one link still works and works well…

…I’ve been getting some pretty good results from ’round up’ emails to my list where I recap the offers I’ve mentioned over the past week or so. Obviously these emails include multiple links to products, which supposedly lead to the reader being confused and not buying anything

This is rubbish for two reasons:

1. People aren’t stupid

2. People aren’t stupid

Anyone who has been around internet marketing for any length of time knows the score. They KNOW they’re being marketed to (just like you do when we watch ads on the telly), so why not give them a choice of the recommendations you’ve made over the past seven days and see if anything takes their fancy?

I’m not an innocent by the way, I KNOW the power of forced opt-ins. multiple upsells and downsells and membership programs that are near-impossible to escape from.

It’s just that I choose not to go down that route.

I’ve never been a churn and burn merchant, forcing, cajoling and manipulating my subscribers into buying more from me. I’d probably make more money if I was.

But it’s not me. I’d rather let my subscribers choose what/if they want to buy from me and take it from there.

Sometimes the karma doesn’t work out though – I remember a few years back after a site of mine had flopped having a beer with a marketing mate who had just made $400,000 in about a week from churn and burn and an in your face launch.

Did I seriously investigate the ‘dark side’?

Course I bloody did – I’m not stupid 🙂

But let’s just say the downside involved more nasties than I fancied.

But anyway – long drawn out post just to say if you’re an email marketer try sending a ’round-up’ email to your list every now and again. Track your results against your usual emails and see what you think.

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I may need to leave a Barry White CD and a bottle of fizz next to our tiny pond this evening…

Because the frogs just ain’t getting jiggy.

For the first time EVER we don’t have frogspawn yet, and it’s overdue.

I know there are frogs in there because I’ve seen ’em but they don’t seem to fancy each other (maybe I should leave six cans of lager because that usually works for blokes on a night out) or they’re all the same sex.

There’s frogspawn in the pond up at school, we know a couple of people who even have it in jars, AND the pond on the moor which is about ten minutes walk away is apparently full of frogs getting ready to orgy…

…but none yet in our pond.

Some clever sod suggested that if I was so concerned I should get in there and have a go myself but so far that’s a last resort, as is ‘kidnapping’ frogspawn which, if not yet illegal probably soon will be under another Tory government.

It does have it’s advantages NOT having frogs all over the garden (if you’ve ever accidentally ‘mowed’ a frog you’ll know it’s not pleasant)…

…but I’m being entirely practical about this

The pond is next to our main veggie patch and frogs eat slugs.

If we can’t get the frogs in the mood, it probably means that at some point down the line the broad beans will get eaten by the slugs NOT me for my tea because there isn’t enough of a frog population to keep them down.

So I’m checking every morning like some freaky amphibian dad.

Maybe I should get some ‘mood lighting’ installed by way of one of those rocks that has a solar light in it

…or maybe I should stop being a d*ck and get on with some work 🙂

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So I’m standing in the garden trying not to look at the sun, thinking that if I aim my iPhone at it I’ll be able to see the eclipse without burning a hole through my retinas and melting the back of my head

Turns out I was quite safe because it just went a little dull and then the clouds arrived.

School were making a big deal of this (quite rightly) to the kids and ‘pinhole camera’ was the most searched term in the last 24 hours (I made that up)

So I’m going to have to explain to my kids when they get home why it wasn’t a Hollywood-style event

Real life rarely is

And that’s because we’re EXPECTING them.

We knew this solar eclipse was on the way and the media ‘bigs it up’ for weeks before so when it actually happens it’s disappointing to many people. No orchestral music, no Nicolas Cage overacting and no thunderbolts.

Personally I’d like to do it ‘old skool’ like they did in medieval times.

You’d be toiling in the fields and the sky would go dark for no reason.

You’d shit yourself because you’d think it was the end of the world, sacrifice the village idiot and all pile into the local church to wait for the apocalypse.

Three weeks later when you weren’t all dead (except the idiot) you’ presume the sacrifice worked, would make sure that you regularly attended church and your heart would just about have gone back to it’s normal rate.

In short you’d have had your money’s worth!

You’d had the ‘real eclipse experience’ because it involved terror, the belief that you were going to die and weren’t prepared for it by the Daily bloody Mirror.

And in my opinion that’s where Disney gets it wrong.

More terror less characters.

They’ll suss it out eventually you mark my words

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After spending the past couple of months – since Christmas actually – suffering from various chest infections and weird bugs which seemed invulnerable to the horrible steroids and antibiotics my doc gave me…

…I spent a STUNNINGLY ENJOYABLE two hours yesterday wheelbarrowing half a ton of logs from the drive, through the garden and into the wood store without wheezing, coughing or feeling like I had the Black Death!

Yes, sad I know – pathetic absolutely, but there’s something very ZEN about enjoying the simple things in life.

Being incredibly stubborn I tried to do the same two months previously when slap in the middle of a chest infection and spent a day in bed afterwards. Sometimes you have to listen to your body rather than trying to ‘John Wayne’ through it all

Now I’m feeling like my old self again I’m realising two things:

1. I’m glad I have a business that I can strip down so I only need to work a couple of hours a day AND I can (literally) run from my sick bed.

2. You should never take your health for granted. Yeah we’ve all heard it and yet you take bugger all notice of it when you’re 23 and feel like a gladiator BUT life isn’t half as much fun if your health is shagged, and all the money or success in the world won’t change that.

I’m guilty of not even thinking about health most of the time until there’s something that forces me to.

Good to have a gentle nudge every now and then

Anyway…

I have to spend an hour this afternoon changing a tyre on our older car.

Can’t wait 🙂

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You’ve maybe heard me talk before about him important it is to have thinking time in your business…

Time away from your desk with a pen and notebook to just let your ideas flow.

In summer I work from the garden a lot, which I find works really well because a change of scenery really fires up the old grey matter.

But at this time of year when it’s dark in Yorkshire from 6pm to 7am not to mention cold and wet (and today actually snowing – in March) it’s not always possible to sit outside.

But I’ve found there is a solution in the remote control helicopter my wife bought for me as a prezzie.

Flying this little bugger (and it’s NOT easy) around my workroom strangely enough allows me to focus on something other than my work, and the ideas seem to come flowing through.

It’s a nice distraction that takes enough concentration to not think about my current tasks, but frees up some weird subconscious part of my brain because I’m finding it very helpful when I hit decisions that I struggle with.

Clarity from a toy. Sounds like a great way to run a business eh?

Well it works for me 🙂

Luckily it only has a flying time of 9 minutes and then needs to charge for around 50 minutes so it’s the PERFECT work/life balance timer during the day.

One word of warning if you do go down this route though.

It’s small and light but DOES still hurt significantly when you fly it into your forehead.

Bounces off though.

B*stard thing.

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I rarely eat at my desk.

If I DO it’s usually because I’ve got behind with something that can’t wait…

…or possibly I’m really involved with something and I’m making a rare exception to my rule NOT to work more than a few hours a day

But when I really have to eat while I’m working my lovely missus usually makes me something I’m extremely partial to.

Home-made Kedgeree is one of those dishes.

If you’ve not had it before, it consists of cooked, flaked fish (traditionally smoked haddock), boiled rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, butter or cream and occasionally sultanas. We put peas in it too.

I’m not saying it’s good for the waistline but it’s definitely good for the soul.

Brought back from India by colonials in Victorian times when we Brits were relentlessly enslaving as much of the world as we could, it was traditionally served as a breakfast dish that would use up the leftovers from the previous night’s curry.

(Up north we usually just eat last night’s ACTUAL leftover curry for Sunday morning breakfast if a night at the pub was involved)

Ironic then that last time I had Kedgeree for breakfast  – this money-saving leftovers dish – for breakfast, it was in a £200 a night 16th Century hotel and the Kedgeree cost MORE than a night out at the pub!

But it’s a treat for me, and when you consider than in my opinion the other great import from Colonial India was Gin and Tonic, well I suppose the occasional night working at my desk isn’t too bad 🙂

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I’ve dumped all my notepads and gone for a big 90’s style ‘breakfast is for wimps’ type organiser.

I’m loving it.

It’s got a one-day per page infill and everything I do (and need to do) goes in there.

It lacks the integration and seamless file swapping of electronic systems such as my Mac and iPad but let’s face it, I’m not a very seamless person, and more importantly I don’t THINK in a seamless way…

…so a slightly disjoined ‘scribble it out and put in on another page’ approach suits the way i think.

It also kills flies, makes a great take-off pad for the various remote control helicopters we have around the house and makes me feel like I’m actually working when I put it on the pub table after sneaking out for lunch with my wife. It usually doesn’t get opened, but it looks good 🙂

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My lovely missus bought me some Yorkshire Gin 🙂

Apparently it’s ‘handcrafted’ in small batches using Harrogate spring water

We’ll be trying it in a small G&T with copious amounts of ice and lime this evening when the sun is over the yardarm.

It’s slightly stronger than your average London Dry Gin, and you don’t have all the fancy packaging or gaudy exterior

…now there’s a metaphor just waiting to be seized eh?

🙂

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Think about it…

Once you’ve created your sales letter it just sits there and sells for you.

Without your involvement…

While you sleep…

It’s one of the most amazing and most efficient selling mechanism EVER.

It’s a very nice feeling to wake in the morning and check your accounts to find your sales letter has been doing the biz while you’ve been snoring away, and there’s money waiting for you before you even drink your first coffee…

And I still remember the buzz I felt the first time I realised this…

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You want to make more money from your email marketing?

Here’s a simple trick.

Mail more.

Yep that’s it.

Obviously you’ll have to inlude links in your emails – to affiliate products, to your own products or some other way to monetize your emails.

But email more and you’ll make more.

But there’s a problem…

It’s another one of those things that you have to discover for yourself.

I (and other marketers) can tell you until we fall over exhausted that if you want to increase your revenue you should mail more.

But it’s not until you try it for yourself you’ll realise how true it is.

So why not take a shortcut and mail your list TWICE as much for a month…?

…then do the sums 🙂

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