Dear Marketer,
The year was 2002, Spider-Man ruled the box office, Bennifer Version 1.0 was going strong and computer games had more pixels than a TV with bunny-ear antennas.
At the time I was working as the head of IT for a small internet service provider company.
The only thing lower than the customers' dial-up connection speed was my salary, even though I held a string of qualifications. So, one night, in desperation, I searched ( google was still 4 years away from becoming a verb ) for the phrase "Making money online"
And so began my career as an internet entrepreneur. I would love to tell you how I struggled to make it work, but I got the whole concept right out of the gate and managed to make around $500 a month from the get go. It was not enough to make me quit my job, but inspiring enough to keep me going, learning more and trying new things.
About 3 months later, I launched my first money site.
Yup, that is me staring down at a monstrosity that, today, I find hard to believe came from my creativity.
As ugly as the site was, it did bring in sales, so there's a lesson in it for you. However, I would be surprised if it brought in $10,000 in its entire lifetime, which incidentally, was not for life.
What the site did do, was to get me to create my first mailing list through GetResponse. ( yes, they were already big way back when... ) I created the list, purely to have an easy means of communicating site updates and informing members of interesting things I found online.
Not once did it occur to me to use the list as a promotional tool...
... and YES, by the time I started the list, I must have heard "The money is in the list" a hundred times or more, but I knew it was utter bulls#%!.
I mean, here I was, a member of hundreds of safelists. I even bought a tool that allowed me to post emails to all those safelists in one go, literally sending thousands upon thousands of emails to other members of the safelists and getting tens of thousands of emails back in return on a daily basis.
Eventually I got another tool whose sole function was to empty my saleflist mail accounts every day, so I did not have to do it manually.
Well, duhhh! If the money was in the list, why would people come up with tools to help you automatically empty your mailboxes without even seeing the mail in it?
I sent out more emails in a week than the energizer bunny could multiply in a year and considered myself lucky if all of that got me one sign-up/sale. I was convinced the "Gurus" proclaiming the money is in the list kept the real secrets to themselves and just threw out smart-sounding sound bites.
The year was still 2002. The lord of the rings trilogy passed the halfway mark, MyCash4Life had been running for 3 months and I had 160 members which means I also had 160 subscribers to my list.
Then, along came some MLM opportunity.
For the life of me, I cannot remember what it was called, but I liked the concept and joined right away. I thought it might be something the members of MyCash4Life would also find interesting and sent off an email to my list before going to bed.
The last thing on mind was that i would earn commissions from it. After all, my list was only 160 subscribers strong and I already knew the result of sending commission-making opportunities to tens of thousands of people through safelists on a daily basis. As such, the email was sent out under the category of something interesting I found online.
That was my first thought when I woke up the next morning and found 32 emails telling me I made $20. I was still fuming, trying to figure out where I messed up because safelist emails were now coming in on my main email account when I noticed all the messages were from the MLM company I joined.
I Immediately pointed Netscape Navigator ( Can you still remember it ) to my login page for the MLM site and found that...
Yeah, Baby!! For the past 6 months I have been working my highly overrated intellectual butt off trying to make more than $500 a month, and here I made more than that with a single email.
The money is in the list!
Not the safelist
Not the shared list
All this time the freaking money was hiding in my personal mailing list. Who would have ever thought that?
With my newfound respect for the "Gurus" ( who, as it turned out, evidently did tell the truth ) I started focusing all of my attention on building my list and 6 months later I quit my job and began working online full-time. I have not looked back since. I have been earning a small fortune working from home since 2003. The year is now 2024 and brings this personal letter to
Over the years I got so many questions from people I referred asking me how I manage to get so many referrals in the programs I promoted. When I told them I mainly promote to my list, I usually got replies such as:
- But what if you don't have a list?
- Or the angry ones would actually reply with something like:
Thanks for nothing. Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a list.
And don't think for a moment they will thank me when I told them they will earn much more if they focus on building their list.
Nooo sirreee!! I was now the "Guru" who kept all the secrets to myself.
My frustration grew bigger than Mount Toba ( the biggest volcanic eruption ever recorded for those who didn't know -- yes, I am a smartypants ).
Not only did these people not heed my advice, they went right back to doing things the hard way. Talk about insanity...
I really wanted a way to give back to the community that has given me so much. For years I've been thinking of a tool or service people could use to quickly start building their own mailing lists, but I wasn't going to put my development skills to just another generic list builder. I wanted it to stand apart from other list builders by setting the following, almost impossible to reach, criteria for the it:
- Must have incredibly fast results. (Not Negotiable)
- Must be 100% free. Always! (Absolutely Not Negotiable)
- Add participants to one, and only one person's list.
- Richly reward those who commit to building their list.
The Result...
Other than running paid ads to a capture page, I do not believe you will find a faster way to build a list of significant size. If you have not watched the video, click here to see how fast your list will grow in a popup light box
This project has always been very close to my heart. For this reason, membership is 100% free. There is nothing to buy. EVER! You will not be bombarded with offers to upgrade to a higher level. While I will show you a method to monetize your membership, your participation is optional and will in no way impact or hamper your ability to build your list at the same speed or even faster than other members who do decide to monetize their membership.
In Fact...
Not only will this site be 100% free, if you commit to building your list, and you follow through, then...
That is my commitment to you. No more excuses that you need money to make money. I will literally give you money just for building the biggest money making asset you will ever own in your online marketing career.
Finally, with my one-up-to-infinity referral system, when you join today, you will only ever end up on your sponsor's mailing list. I have seen a number of other list builders where the referral program was structured like an MLM, meaning you end up on countless mailing lists. What is the point of that? You might as well just join safelists again.
This should not be a difficult decision.
You now have two options. You can continue on the same as you have before, doing things the hard way and believing the "gurus" don't want to share the real secrets with you. Nothing in your life will change, and you will still struggle to make money online. I also have it on good authority, you will die a virgin 😜
or...
You can believe that this "guru" is really sharing the biggest secret about making money online with you and grab your free account to make that secret a reality.
Whatever your decision, I wish you only the best.
PS. Although this letter was written tongue-in-cheek, it is the honest-to-God's truth of how I got started. If any part of it offended you, you may not have a thick enough skin for online marketing. Seriously though, you will not find a better offer online. If you skip this offer out of spite or because you don't like me, I can live with it, but ultimately, you're only shooting yourself in the foot.