First, a few definitions for those new to the subject:

Single Opt-In Email Form: the subscriber enters their email address, clicks submit and is then taken straight to the free content or thank you page. They are now subscribers and no further action is needed on their part.

Double Opt-In Email form: the subscriber enters their email address, clicks submit, and is then taken to a page that tells them they need to check the email box they just entered. The email service then sends that email address a confirmation email containing a link that must be clicked in order to join the list. If they don’t click the link, they never get subscribed and never get the free content.

Double opt-ins, while growing your list more slowly (because a certain percentage of subscribers will never click on the confirmation link) result in a cleaner, more responsive list because you don’t acquire bogus email addresses or 3rd or 4th tier web-based email addresses the owner never checks. It also ensures someone isn’t getting subscribed to a list without their permission.

There is a compromise though and it’s the behavior we’ve settled on that works well for our lists.

All of our lists are double-opt in, but the confirmation link in the first email takes the new subscriber directly to the promised content. It’s the most “friction-free” way we know to both confirm the subscriber’s address AND take them to the content in one click.

The trouble with most standard double opt-in strategies is that it adds one unnecessary step to the process and it truly hurts their ability to grow a great email list. The standard Aweber double opt-in process goes like this:

1) User subscribes
2) User gets sent a confirmation email that must be clicked
3) User clicks that confirmation email link and then is told they have to wait again to get content in another email
4) User finally gets email with the link to the content or the content attached (which is email #1 in your auto-responder chain)

That step 4 is what can really kill your list building efforts - eliminate it! Why should your subscriber have to take action and then wait AGAIN to get yet one more email before they get your content?

In my opinion, that’s simply asking too much patience and effort from your subscriber.

Thankfully, the fix is simple. In Aweber, you can specify the page that your user gets taken to once they click the confirmation link. Instead of taking them to a “thank you, now you have to wait again” page, make that URL the link to a page on your website that contains the promised free content.

They will still get your first email in the follow-up series (that likely takes them to that same page) but that’s OK. The user gets to your content one step faster and you get the full benefit of a clean, responsive and double opt-in email list.

She immediately noticed that we don’t personalize our emails with the subscriber’s first name like many of the “gurus” do. Why not?

Good question and there are several reasons:

1) We don’t ask for the subscriber’s first name on our opt-in pages because the conversion rate for people who actually sign up is lower when you do (or I should say, when we do – others may have different stats but from what I hear it’s common across the board). The more information you ask for on your opt-in page, the lower your conversion rate will be for that page. In order to achieve the highest conversion rates (views vs. actual completion of the form), we ask for one thing and one thing only: their email address. Even one more field – something as simple as asking for a first name will decrease your conversion rate significantly.

2) Personalization was awesome and cool and unique when the technology was first available, but in the years that have passed since it was the cool thing to do, everyone knows the email wasn’t written just to them. Initially, conversions and clicks and opens on emails that included the subscriber name went through the roof. That just isn’t the case anymore. And since it doesn’t help conversions (see #1) we simply don’t see the need anymore.

3) There are too many chances for it to get screwed up. How many times have you received an email that started exactly like this:

Dear {first name},

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah (Where the sender somehow mistyped the fill-in code that was suppose to insert your first name but instead the raw code is the only thing that was inserted.)

——or——

Dear Chris

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah (when your name isn’t Chris)

——or——

,

I wanted to tell you about….blah, blah, blah. (where the first name area was blank where the software was suppose to insert it)

I’ve received emails just this week with all 3 of these mistakes. Anyone on the planet who still thought the guru was emailing them personally now knows that isn’t the case. Bottom line, there are just too many chances for error in inserting the first name and when you or the software screws up, it’s embarrassing.

So there you have it. All the reasons we no longer personalize our autoresponder emails. If there was a minor reason #4, it would be that it’s simply one more line of text to read before they get to the “meat” of the message and the link we want them to click.

Anything we can do to get them to that “take action” link faster is a good thing.

Of course, I welcome your opinion on the matter!

We’re constantly tweaking, adjusting, deleting and adding to the emails that are in our autoresponder chain at Aweber. Our email follow-ups have become the single-most important tool we have to bring a prospect in and convert them to paying members of our sites.

A few weeks ago I snuck in a new email at around #6, meaning they received it about two weeks after joining our list. The idea was this: we’ve given them some great content and pointed them to some great resources on our site. Let’s show the subscriber we know what they are feeling and can relate their place in the learning curve. Our sense was that most people who joined our email list for our online trading membership site were relatively new and would appreciate a “we’ve been where you are” type of email that then also invited them to become members and join the community.

Within 3 days I knew we had a problem. Unsubscribe rates doubled for this specific email number and it quickly became the leader as the email that resulted in the most unsubscribes of all the follow-ups for that week.

Part of the unsubscribe issue was that it was the first “all pitch, no content” email in the chain so that accounts for a lot of the unsubscribes. But there were just to many on a percentage basis for that to have been the only reason. But it also genuinely pissed people off. We started getting some nasty email replies – not good (I’ll share a few of them with you in a moment just for kicks).

Here’s the email in full and then I’ll tell you why I think it didn’t work…

Ok, I assume you listened to the interview I sent a few days ago. Let me make a few more assumptions – this time about you: You’re smart. You know you have what it takes to trade well, you just need some good information from someone who knows what to do.

Perhaps you’ve even traded a bit – and lost some and made some. But…you just can’t seem to get consistent – as in month after month of gains. You feel like the market seems to know when you enter a trade – and loves to reverse right after you get in.

When you do get a winning trade, you exit too early or worry that you’ll give it all back if you stay in much longer.

You’ve tried all the “guru” free trials and it hasn’t helped much.

How am I doing so far? How did I know? Because I’m describing myself just a short time ago. Then I decided to talk to a few traders who were consistent.

And it made all the difference. It finally clicked. It’s not hard, it’s not complicated, and it makes perfect sense when you hear these traders describe it.

Sign up now with TraderInterviews.com – I’ve even slashed the price for you:

http://www.TraderInterviews.com/traderinterviews_signup.php

Call me or email me anytime.

All the best,

Tim Bourquin, Co-Founder
Trader Interviews
(direct email): tim@traderinterviews.com
(direct phone): 1-949-348-2590 ext. 15

P.S. How much longer are you going to wait to find the perfect trading service? This is what you’ve been looking for!

http://www.TraderInterviews.com/traderinterviews_signup.php

Our intentions were good. I honestly thought that by describing the state of mind the subscriber was probably in, we would generate goodwill and a few sales from folks who understood that we “got them.” That may have been the case for some people, but what we found out is this:

People don’t like being told how they feel – no matter how right you may be.

I think people said to themselves, “Dude, you’ve emailed me 6 times and you think you know me? You don’t, so don’t assume you do!”

They were right. Even reading it now, I somehow get a flash of “We’re better than you but if you become a member, you can be as good as us.” It’s not something I felt when I wrote it and it definitely wasn’t meant that way, but stepping back I can see it plain as day.

The lesson learned: certainly we can all make assumptions about our subscribers and write emails and offer products that help them achieve whatever goals they have. All the surveying in the world can get you close to the facts, but ultimately you’ll have to make some assumptions to fill in the blanks. But in most cases, stating that fact outright just makes people feel you are taking liberties with the relationship and acting like a know it all.

This may be a perfect case of, “Do it but don’t say you are doing it because no matter how you say it, it won’t come out right.”

And the email replies? Here are a few:

1) “You know what they say about “assume” – it makes an ass out of you and of me!” (of course we’d get that one)
2) “This isn’t me at all actually, and I’m a little annoyed that you think so…”

Plus a few others with colorful language, to say the least.

So obviously that email is now gone from the follow-up chain. We’ll keep testing, tweaking and trying. It’s the only way to improve and hopefully our experience here. You never know which emails will work and which ones won’t until you give them their chance on stage.

I enjoy reading his blog because like Emile and I, he doesn’t come from the “make money online” crowd. He has real experience selling content to a niche target market and talks about his success on the Startup Freedom blog. He also does interviews with other online entrepreneurs. Like us, he believes that interviews make great content.

A funny thing happened. I contacted him about doing an interview and he agreed – but we each thought we were interviewing the other. So when the agreed time came for the interview and we realized we each thought we were taking the lead, we just decided to have a conversation about how we both got started and things we were doing to sell memberships and content.

Below is the video. Some of this I’ve already talked about here on Membercon, but there are some nuggets in there that I haven’t mentioned before. Plus Sean has some great advice for membership site owners as well.

Note: One thing I realize – I move my big grape head around a lot during interviews. I need to STOP! So, if you can get past my ugly mug being front and center the whole time, I think you’ll get some good info from our talk.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Yet it is a transition that must happen if traditional media companies are to survive. Advertising just isn’t working as it used to and it is much harder these days to spend a dollar on ads and make two. I can attest to it first hand from our recent ad spends.

There is no question that Condé Nast and magazines in general are in for a tough time. The reason can be summed up in just a few sentences from the article:

The transition could be made all the more difficult because consumers have grown accustomed to paying so little for Condé Nast’s magazines. “They’ve been one of the biggest offenders for undercharging for their products,” Mr. Janson added. “But having said that, I think there is a certain type of content that people will be willing to pay for.” Mr. Townsend expressed confidence that the consumer would come around, noting, “They pay $180 a month for a cable bill.” The company’s goal is eventually to reach parity in profits from advertising and consumers, he said.

Consumers pay $180 a month for cable because they never got used to paying nearly nothing for it because it was subsidized by advertising. Cable companies charged for their content (or more appropriately, to deliver that content) from the beginning and there was never an expectation that it would be nearly free.

I don’t believe the new strategy is doomed to failure, as Jeff Jarvis seems to. But I do know just from our experiences on a much, much smaller scale that going from free (or nearly free) to a paid model can drain the soul.

As long as traditional media companies keep in mind that the people who will never pay are the most vocal and simply forge on, it will happen. Traditional media companies can fight through the tough fight that is coming and come out on the other end stronger and more powerful.

The article is about as strong an argument as I have seen to charge immediately for content, especially online and especially for smaller players.

ConsumerReports.org starting charging for their content from day one because they don’t accept advertising for their magazine or website in order to stay unbiased. Turns out they were right along.

Creating content for sale is the right way to go for 99% of websites out there. Unfortunately the 98% of them that try Google AdSense first haven’t figured it out yet.

Or maybe I should say fortunately for us. The more people that realize people will pay for content, the more competition we will have. But I also believe that the more niche and specific information you can deliver, the more sales you will make.

Our sense is that while many people understand that joining a list means an occasional sale pitch for the products of the website owner or their partners, many do not – or at least appreciate a direct statement to that effect in the beginning.

In part, the emails now say something similar to this:

Here it is: we’re going to be emailing you ideas and tricks we use but never publish on our blog. And we’ll explain it in a step-by-step way that you’ll be able to understand and use them on your own website right away to make some coin (or euros, pounds, dollars, pesos, etc.).

That’s what makes our list so valuable to subscribers.

But we’re also going to introduce you to products and services we think are top notch and worthy of your attention and dollars – things we’ve bought ourselves.

In other words, we’re going to ask you to buy stuff too.

So if capitalism, grandma’s apple pie, or marketing offends you, you’ll want to find that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email and put yourself out of your misery right now. Go ahead, we’ll wait….

So are we seeing more people click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of that email? The answer is YES. Not a lot more, but before we implemented the more direct text, very few unsubscribed after the first email. But, interestingly yet not surprisingly, less people are unusbscribing, percentage-wise, on the first sales pitch email that comes around email 6. This is across the board on all our sites.

So we’re just getting rid of non-buyers sooner in the follow-up chain. Which is A-OK by us. If there is no chance they are ever going to buy something then the sooner they are off the list, the better.

This is all based on just 6 days worth of data, but I think it’s encouraging and wanted to update you.

One of the things Rob said was that the trick to keeping subscribers on your email list, even while you are pitching something, is to set the stage early and simply tell them to expect it.

It’s a simple idea. Manage your subscriber’s expectation right up front and when the sale pitch comes, they won’t be surprised. Even with this website, which focuses on on how to make money online with content, I just assumed that our subscribers knew we would pitch them occasionally. This site is about making money, right? So isn’t it obvious that we’re making money ourselves? No, it isn’t.

Even though we haven’t pitched much to Membercon list yet, when we did about a month ago, we still got replies saying something to the effect of, “Hey I thought you were giving us free info – what the heck?” I take full responsibility for that – we never said straight up that we would be occasionally asking subscribers to buy something.

So, to make sure we are managing expectations of our subscribers right up front, this morning we changed the first email to what you see below. Using straight talk and a bit of humor, we’ll be doing this with all of our sites going forward.

It’s a bit like how Zappos.com offers new employees $2,000 to quit after the training program. They end up with committed employees who understand what they are getting into.

Let me know what you think. Does this do the trick? How are you managing the expectations of your list subscribers?

Well howdy doody! You found our secret mailing list. Welcome to the
potluck and party! The secret handshake lesson comes later…

Glad you decided to leave that boring “internet marketing guru”
party at that website down the street. Their stories are getting
pretty old, don’t you agree?

Leave your car keys in the bowl next to the door, because you’re
about to experience the intoxicating sounds, tastes and smells
of real online success.

Let’s get something straight right away. Can you handle the truth?

Here it is: we’re going to be emailing you ideas and tricks we use
but never publish on our blog. And we’ll explain it in a step-by-step
way that you’ll be able to understand and use them on your own website
right away to make some coin (or euros, pounds, dollars, pesos, etc.).

That’s what makes our list so valuable to subscribers.

But we’re also going to introduce you to products and services we
think are top notch and worthy of your attention and dollars – things we’ve
bought ourselves.

In other words, we’re going to ask you to buy stuff too.

So if capitalism, grandma’s apple pie, or marketing offends you,
you’ll want to find that unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email
and put yourself out of your misery right now. Go ahead, we’ll wait….

Still here? Wonderful! You’re in for a real treat. Stay tuned for the
next email and get ready to finally make some real money online by
selling content.

You can call or email us anytime.

All the best,

Tim and Emile (brothers and all-around good guys)

——————————-
Tim Bourquin | Emile Bourquin
MemberCon | Interview Income

30251 Golden Lantern Suite E-358
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677-5993

phone: 1-949-829-3049
email: tim@membercon.com
——————————-

Each of our sites will have a similar email so let them know that while we are going to be sending them great information, we’ll also be asking them to buy things we trust and feel are worthwhile.

I’ve been in this game long enough to know that when I sign up for an email list, I’ll be pitched occasionally. But it’s not obvious to everyone, so I want to make sure we make it obvious!

Here’s the hypothesis: A list of subscribers that has paid for something is as valuable as a list of prospects that received something for free – that is 100 times as large.

In other words, we think that a list of 100 people who paid for content is as valuable as a free list of 10,000.

Are we right in our assumption? We’re going to find out!

I’ve always said that I would rather have a small, well-trained list than a large list that isn’t so. But there is probably a point where a freebie list will match the profit potential of a smaller list simply because the people willing to buy something are also on that freebie list.

But can we actually make more money from a tiny list where the subscriber has paid $1.99 for the squeeze page content rather than just giving their email address? We think so and we think it’s time to be tested.

So a few days ago we changed the squeeze page for InterviewIncome.com to charge $1.99 for the series of 4 videos that we previously gave away for free in exchange for their email address. We think that not only will we get higher quality email addresses, but that the people who do pay $1.99 will convert to other paid products at a much higher rate than those that paid nothing.

The 4-part video series is one hour in length when combined, and we do give solid information in the series. It’s easily worth $25 or more, but I doubt we could get that kind of spend from a squeeze page. But $1.99 seems more than reasonable for a one-hour class and we’re curious as heck to see if this works.

Old school internet marketers are probably rolling their eyes at this point, and that’s OK. We may be totally wrong on this – that’s what a test is all about.

But there is no denying that when someone pays for something, they give it much higher value – even if it is just a dime.

Our list will grow at a much slower rate, but dollar for dollar we think we can make more money charging for our squeeze page content. We will be growing an instant list of buyers and it also sets the right tone for the list – content is valuable and we are going to charge for it.

What do you think? Are we crazy? Wouldn’t be the first time someone called us that. Let is know in the comments.

Not only has he made over $1,000 since it was listed 40 days ago, more importantly it’s been an incredible new source of leads for his higher-priced website content. In this discussion we talk about how you can list your E-Book for sale in the Kindle store and some tips, tricks and lessons learned that Rob shares to save you literally days of time getting it uploaded and listed.

Most of the information out there about how to publish for the Kindle is flat out wrong. Rob talks about his experiences and how it has helped him get new traffic to his content website.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Related Links:

- Kindle Publishing page on Amazon
- Rob’s book in the Kindle store

Transcript:

Tim Bourquin: Well, let’s kind of move on to the distribution and the way you find new people that haven’t heard about you because –

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: Trader Interviews has been around for five to six years now and everyday there are people that have never ever heard of us and you think that at some point that’ll end, but it never does.

Rob Booker: Yeah, right.

Tim Bourquin: I like the idea of you put out some content — one of the things you do is sell a book for the Kindle on Amazon for $1.99.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: The book we talked about. Why did you decide to do that? What’s the process of getting of my eBook put on for sale there? How does that work?

Rob Booker: Everything that I’ve ever done well that has generated interest in my membership website — and I honestly and humbly submit to you — has been done by mistake; trial and error. And I have for a long time wanted to publish for the Kindle, not because I thought that it would generate a lot of interest, but because I was fascinated by this platform. I was fascinated by the idea that it would be a new outlet for distribution. But I had no idea whether it would work or not and I simply, I originally did it more out of interest in the process than I did out of sort of generating interest. Because I just can’t pick the one thing that’s going to do it. I’ve just given up on picking the one thing that’s going to do it.

So, I did it out of interest to begin with because I realized that digital publishing probably five years from now is going to have an even greater — almost every book that I read myself, I’m reading on my iPhone on the Kindle application. And I had a Kindle but I gave it to my friend in Japan where the Kindle wasn’t available yet years ago. So, I gave him a first generation one. And I’ve told like 50 people they’ve got to start reading on it, and I just realized that it’s catching on and that people can go anywhere with all of their books.

So, it started out as this I want to publish for that and I want to be an early adapter if I can. I still consider it very early on in the process. I wanted to be an early adapter in figuring that process out for myself. Of course I could outsource it, but I did every single step of the way on this project by myself.

Tim Bourquin: And at $1.99 I can’t imagine you’re getting rich off of this.

Rob Booker: Correct.

Tim Bourquin: It’s definitely — so they’re paying for it which is always good.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: But it’s a promotional tool in the end.

Rob Booker: It’s a promotional tool in the end. And that eBook is actually free and has been for actually five years, six years. It’s been free. It’s been downloaded; it’s probably a million times. Five hundred thousand is when I lost count because I switched servers and I no longer counted physical file downloads and that was three years ago, it was at 500,000.

Tim Bourquin: Wow.

Rob Booker: I mean the eBook in its free form has been downloaded maybe more than any other — it was the single greatest promotional tool that I ever did and it was the first eBook I wrote. I saved the Microsoft Word document with Adobe Distiller all those years ago and then I put it on the web and it just like – and I mean it’s easy to share, you could put your email address in it. It would automatically send it to you and then you could put — this is kind of like a no-no but you could put your friend’s email address in and it would send a copy to your friend.

Tim Bourquin: Right sure.

Rob Booker: And it would say that you know, “Bob thinks you should read this.” And then it went from person to person to person very quickly. And this is an expanded version. So I thought I improved it, I expanded it, I could charge for it and it would the best version of what I’ve done or the best issue of my eBooks or whatever you want to call it to put on the Kindle because it had been downloaded so often I had a built-in audience that would be ready to say, “All right, I’m ready to download that and give it a try.” And it was my first attempt to see if I could even make it work, if the pictures would show up, if the text would be formatted correctly, and boy it was like wrestling with –

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: It just drove me crazy at first.

Tim Bourquin: Well talk about the process…

Rob Booker: Okay.

Tim Bourquin: How do you get the — do you email Amazon? What do you do there?

Rob Booker: Well, I logged on to Amazon. I went to, I think, it’s DTP.amazon.com I think it’s the digital text platform or whatever that stands for. I think it’s DTP.amazon.com. And what you can do is you can actually log in to that website with your regular amazon.com log-in. So, they recognize you as a publisher as long as you’re a customer. It’s a seamless process so you can just log in and you’re ready to go.

Tim Bourquin: So, if I bought a book there, I’m already good to go?

Rob Booker: You’re already good to go. And then what it has is a very simple layout at the log-in screen. It’s my stuff or my bookshelf or my projects and my reports and then like a dashboard on the front page. And what you can do from that page is start a project and it goes through a five-step process where there are five sections all on the same page on amazon.com. And you can expand them by clicking on them just like a Gmail email that expands if you click on the title of the email, it expands down. Each section will expand down if you complete the section or if you click on it. You go through the process of naming it, doing a short description. You upload a file that’s an image of the cover so they can display it as an image of the cover and they give you very, very clear guidelines for what the size of that image should be. I think it’s 800 x 600 or 1280 x 800 or something along those lines. You could just make — I just went into an image program and wrote a bunch of words on a background and then just uploaded it. Did it by myself, I didn’t do anything special. You set the price for the book. You write your name in as the author. You check off if you’ve got the rights to publish it around the world and –

Tim Bourquin: Do they suggest a price for you or they want kind of the Kindle range in there?

Rob Booker: Yeah, that’s a good question. They say you can’t charge less than 99 cents for something and you can’t charge less than a $1.99 if it’s of a certain file size. So, you can start to work the process out in your mind that they’re paying for it to get distributed and downloaded to people’s phones and so forth so they’ve got to make that content available. So, if it’s a very big file, you have to have a minimum price. So, it’s the opposite of what you think Amazon would say. We’re accustomed to Amazon saying you can’t charge more than something, but what they’re really doing is they say you can’t charge less than something.

Tim Bourquin: They figured out what the costs are –

Rob Booker: Yeah, exactly. And so, I simply went through that five-step or four-step process. I went from the basic description of the material to saying that I did have the rights to publish it worldwide to uploading the actual content. And that Tim is where I wrestled with the beast.

Tim Bourquin: What kind of format did you have to upload?

Rob Booker: Strangely enough if you buy a book on Amazon — and anyone I don’t care which one you pick because I bought them all. If you buy a book and it says here’s how you publish to the Kindle, that book will be essentially full of stuff that I would advice everyone in the world of potential Amazon Kindle publishing to complete ignore.

Rob Booker: It was the worst — it was the worst information because every time I tried to upload it in the form that had been — it’s going to be simpler this way Rob, it’s going to be easier this way Rob, they’re going to be able to read it easier. So for two days for 10 hours, I did it the way that they said I was supposed to do it. And they said, “Whatever you do, do not just write it in Microsoft Word and then uploaded. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. And definitely don’t do it in Word 2007 or above. Don’t do that.” So of course I didn’t do that for three days. And of course at the end Tim, it was the simplest thing in the world. I finally got mad and I said, “Well I’m just going to try that.” I had my Microsoft Word document formatted exactly as I liked it — and maybe I could speak about that for a moment.

Tim Bourquin: Sure.

Rob Booker: And it had the images in line right in the documented; pasted right there, the charts, the pictures, everything in line with the text, laid it out like I liked it — and everybody knows how to use Microsoft Word.

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: I did a table of contents that linked to heading sections. So, I highlighted content in the table of contents and then I right-clicked and chose hyperlink and then I chose a place in the document where I wanted it to go. And then I formatted the text on the headings and all the subheadings just like I wanted; bold, underlined for each heading. Chapter heading, I wrote the letters and the numbers just like I wanted them and I gave them a heading format in Microsoft Word just like you would ordinarily do, and then I uploaded the stupid thing and it was perfect.

Tim Bourquin: So, when you were uploading it in like PDF or something, was it giving you error messages or was it looking right?

Rob Booker: It wasn’t even uploading the images. It couldn’t upload it correctly. The formatting was screwed up. Then they said, “Do html. Save it as a webpage and then upload it as a webpage.” Well then the images didn’t come out. And then upload it as a .mobi. What’s a .mobi? Is that a DJ? I mean what is that?

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: I mean I don’t even know what that is. So, I found out what .mobi was and I spent four hours doing .mobi. And I downloaded software packages that would convert this stuff that I did. And I realized at the end of the day…

Tim Bourquin: It was exactly what they told you not to do is what worked right?

Rob Booker: Exactly.

Tim Bourquin: So, it was a Word document you uploaded. It took it?

Rob Booker: It formatted it perfectly.

Tim Bourquin: Okay.

Rob Booker: And it put the images in line. It gray scaled the images. There was all this discussion about you’re supposed to choose the right color formatting and you’re supposed to — don’t use this certain type of image quality. And I finally gave up and all then I just put the images in just like I wanted. And guess what? Amazon reads it just fine. They got it all — really it was actually so simple that I looked back on the process and I said, “I’m going to do that again.” Like, “Now, I’m going to do that again because it was so easy.”

Tim Bourquin: Now how about the approval process? I mean are you allowed to put a link to your website at the bottom of every page? How do they see that kind of promotional part of it?

Rob Booker: You can put anything you want inside your book. You could put — I mean if you have the rights to put it meaning they’re more worried about copyright than they are about anything else. So, you could put a link to the website and what I put inside the eBook is an invitation. I say, “Listen if you trade conservatively and if you build up your account over time, there are some spectacular gains that you can make in the world of trading.” So, that’s a simplified version of what the eBook actually says And it says, “But if you don’t believe me and you don’t think then here’s my email address and here’s a special link that you can go to right now and we’ll send you even more information than what you’ve just read for free.”

Tim Bourquin: Wow.

Rob Booker: And that –

Tim Bourquin: Or for $1.99.

Rob Booker: Oh, no we’ll send a separate addition to the eBook for free.

Tim Bourquin: I got you, okay.

Rob Booker: It pushes the conversation further because now they’ve sent us an email, now they’ve subscribed. And so a reader of the eBook now is a member of our email family–

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: –by doing that. And almost every person who reads the book, almost every single one will click on that link and get that — so we say something very specific, it’s a call to action about a very specific thing. It says, “We need your email to send you this information” and our response back says, “We’d like to stay in touch with you. Here’s the free information that you requested. To stay in touch with us about this and get the next report or get the next whatever, go to the website, put your email address in and we’ll stay in touch with you.”

Tim Bourquin: Outstanding. Now, how has Amazon worked in terms of being a search engine? People type in Forex? Just like podcasters get great search from iTunes –

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: Does Amazon work? Does it get you a lot of people?

Rob Booker: Well, time will tell. I mean it took me about 24 to 48 hours for the book to get approved.

Tim Bourquin: Oh, I forgot to ask about that, do they approve it?

Rob Booker: Yeah.

Tim Bourquin: Is there some sort of an approval–

Rob Booker: There’s a 24-hour period of time to approve the content.

Tim Bourquin: Okay.

Rob Booker: And that means that someone reads through it and they says, “Yeah, it’s approved.” And I suspect that as long as you have the rights to do it, they’re just flipping through that material. And it was faster than 24 hours. It was really quick.

Tim Bourquin: Okay.

Rob Booker: And it was available for sale, but it didn’t have the description for another 48 hours. And it was available for sale for the first 10 hours without a picture of the book. So, you don’t want to panic if it goes on sale and it doesn’t have some of those elements. They’re coming, they just take awhile to update on the site. And then after that, it goes on sale.

What’s fascinating to me is that it went on sale and I don’t know how it did as far as search engines, but I went to 160. I sent you the image this morning. I took a screenshot. It actually went to 120, but I didn’t catch the screenshot. It went to 160 out of every book available on the Kindle store within about 48 to 72 hours and stayed in the below 200 range for like a week and a half or so, and it sold hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of copies –

Tim Bourquin: And you didn’t do anything different? You didn’t buy — you didn’t advertise it? It just did that organically?

Rob Booker: After that process was done, I sent out an email to my database. I wanted to see –

Tim Bourquin: Ah yes.

Rob Booker: – like first what can Amazon –

Tim Bourquin: Of course.

Rob Booker: – do for me. Then I sent an email out and then I did a Twitter update and I said here’s a little contest. And I did a contest. I said if you’ll write a review on Amazon about the book or if you’ll twit about it or if you put it on your Facebook status or you’ll send an email to all your friends, and you send us an update with a screenshot of what you did or the link to the review you wrote on Amazon, we’ll do a two-hour webinar for everybody that did something like that. We’ll put you all in there and then we’ll do a drawing and I’ll spend a couple of hours on the phone with somebody that did something extra special.

Tim Bourquin: Nice.

Rob Booker: And then it took off from there and it stayed — the ranking stayed really good for awhile even after that.

Tim Bourquin: Wow.

Rob Booker: So, I did do promotion after that. I kind of asked myself do I really want to use the trust that I have with my database to promote a $1.99 eBook? And the answer was, I don’t know; like I don’t know yet. I don’t what this will generate. I don’t how many people I’ve never heard from. And the answer is there were hundreds of people that I didn’t have on the list, I’d never known, never heard from, that came in the door because I published for the Kindle. Like hundreds of people that I never — they weren’t in the database.

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: They weren’t people who already knew me that I wouldn’t have had access to unless something had been available for them to find on Amazon.

Tim Bourquin: because they’ve never been on any other platform that you were there already –

Rob Booker: Exactly.

Tim Bourquin: So, this was a brand new platform where obviously there are millions and millions of users.

Rob Booker: And there’s a lot of people at home with a Kindle right?

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: They don’t — I mean they’re searching for — you know their brother does Forex or whatever, and a lot of people they’re finding it on their Kindle by searching for Forex or whatever and they’re seeing the book pop up and…

Tim Bourquin: All right. So, having said that now two questions: How much of the $1.99 do you keep and then I’ll go right out there and ask you how much money have you made doing this?

Rob Booker: I think I keep 60%? No 60 — I don’t even know, 70% that’s what it is.

Tim Bourquin: Okay.

Rob Booker: Like I’m the least interested guy. I don’t have any goals. But I’m like, oh work what did I do? So, I think I’ve made about $1000 from the sales of the book. It maybe more than that now, but it’s about $1000. But in terms of people who signed up for other products or services what’s the lifetime value of publishing that? I would conservatively put it in the $10,000 to $15000 range. I would say that I am most likely going to sell a couple of webinar subscriptions and possibly down the road something even more personal than that. It’s a fairly good — I mean I do a pretty good job of converting people you know–

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: – once they’ve come into the family of email addresses or whatever.

Tim Bourquin: Now, this is good because Amazon is obviously kind of the premiere site. You could go out and try to find other places to publish this. I don’t know maybe on a Sony Reader.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: If Amazon is 80% of the way there, do you go out and try to find all the 15 other sites that are the next 20% or do you say I’m happy Amazon – you know, my time is too valuable to go wherever else.

Rob Booker: Amazon made it so easy and has such a large universe of people available to me. And I’m such a fan of Amazon to begin with that that’s where my loyalty was and that’s what I decided to bite off to start with.

I did initially go to the iTunes section that says how to publish content for iTunes, and I realized that I do not understand a word of it. It was complicated and the submission process was burdensome. It was done by email, it was done by — it was a far more complicated process to keep a smaller amount of the revenue in the end for the iBooks application which I do have for iPhone as well but which I have absolutely, positively decided it’s not easy enough to publish for yet. It’s just not simple enough. The process isn’t a three-step process to upload it. It’s a contact us and then we’ll email you back if we feel like it. I mean they don’t even — that’s it. They just say, well just email us and we’ll let you know. And I thought email you and let you know like — I mean –

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: It’s like they’re going to approve whether my content — and you know maybe it’s worth it, maybe one day it’ll be worth it. But I like something that as seamless and simple to do the first time around as possible. And I’ll probably have to hire somebody to get me into the iTunes thing because it’s not a simple process just yet. It’s in its infancy.

Tim Bourquin: That’s pretty typical of the Apple too. The same thing happens with the app store here, a lot of grumblings about –

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: – how long it takes and they don’t approve things. You don’t know why. So, I would imagine it would be very similar for the iPad so…

Rob Booker: When I went down the road of wanting to develop an application for my subscriber database, for my membership site, to access their trading account and generate reports and implement different strategies, I had the option of going through the Apple app route. They keep 30% of the revenue and they go through an approval process and it’s searchable in the store. There are some really great benefits to that of course. And then also I had a friend come to me and say, “Rob, why don’t you just build it for a mobile browser? Why don’t you just build so that it’s a mobile browser based thing and you keep all the subscription revenue and people just log in through the browser, and then it’s just not available for the iPhone, it’s available for the Blackberry, for the Android and for the — which is huge in Europe is the Nokia whatever that operating system is. It’s huge. It runs on more devices in Europe than any other platform.” And I realized, oh my gosh, like I could just bypass the store the first time around with an application that’s simpler to build, there’s no approval process. I can put it out there.

And then secondarily, Twitter built a mobile application, a mobile website before they built an iTunes app store app. And it’s a really good analogy, like get it working for people on a mobile browser for free first with no application process and then maybe I’ll go down the road of building an app specifically to do the same thing.

Tim Bourquin: Yeah. And there is some value just like there’s value to being in the Amazon store that people can find you so…

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: That’s down the road, but there will be some value there. All right. Just back Amazon really quickly there and then we’ll finish up because this has been great Rob, I really appreciate it. Did you do anything special in terms of just writing a description that would be keyword rich? Anything like that you thought helped?

Rob Booker: There are two things about that. One is, I wondered if I could change my description or actually change the file if I had a mistake in the file after it was published. Because like I don’t do it as much as you do, I wish I could go back in time and learn as much about testing keywords and sentences as much as you do and I’m trying. I’m doing a better job thanks to some of the stuff that you published. I’m like putting more time into it. But I thought once I published this, is set in stone and the answer is, no. What’s interesting is that I could change my description and I could even upload an updated version of the Microsoft Words document as many times as I wanted. And what happens is it goes through another 24-hour approval process and during that time, the older version of your description stays put and the older version of your actual eBook download stays put. So, it’s still for sale, you don’t complicate that process. And once they approve it, they put the new file up on their servers that’ll be downloadable.

So, what’s nice about this is I can actually test keywords in my description and track if I can time it. I can go from one week to the next and say I’m going to change my description this week and I’m going to see what kind of difference that makes in the store. And so I’m definitely going to go down that road. I don’t have anything different than the original description right now. But that’s exactly what the next step in the process for me will be is, does changing the description make a difference.

Tim Bourquin: Absolutely. All right. Well, that’s just great. I’m definitely going to publish either some text transcripts of the interviews I’ve done and do a fancy cover. I’ll probably outsource it to Elance for 50 bucks and have a nice cover made or something along those lines. But this is great. I never considered publishing this as a platform. Obviously, a lot of smarter people than I am -you — have done this already. This is great. It’s just one more huge place that people that are hanging out that is a door for them to find you which is terrific.

Rob Booker: Yeah, I decided that if I did it now and we’re still very early on, we’re only a couple of years into this whole thing. If I did this now, 15 years from now, I’m going to be really glad that I learned how to do it this early, I learned how to do it right early, and I learned what did and didn’t work early. I mean this is it. This is where a lot of books are going to be published and I realized that down the road I may decide to do a lot more of this if it’s profitable. But down the road, I don’t want to be trying to learn this or figure it out when it’s all a crowded space and it takes too long to figure out.

Tim Bourquin: Right. Well Rob hey, I really appreciate you coming in the office today and sharing all this. This is huge. I’m going to break it into two parts probably. The first part is about giving away free content and then second part about the Kindle. Thanks for your time. I appreciate it.

Rob Booker: Thank you Tim.

In part two we talk about how he published an E-book for the Amazon Kindle platform.

But first, our discussion about how he markets his content.

4 ways to watch/listen/read:

1) Listen to the audio here (click on the triangle play button):

2) Download the mp3 file here
3) Read the transcript (below the video)
4) Watch the video:

Related Links:

- Rob’s website

Transcript:

Tim Bourquin: All right everybody, hello and welcome to MemberCon. Another interview here today, I’m going to speak with Rob Booker. And actually, I’ve spoken with Rob at our other membership site over at Traders Interviews, but he’s also an entrepreneur outside of all the things he does in the trading realm. And so, I wanted to talk to him specifically about one thing today and that was the way he sells content. He just told me about a book that he’s selling on Amazon for the Kindle called, “Forex Strategy 10: Low Risk/High Return Currency Trading”. We’re not going to talk about that obviously, that part of it, but just about selling the content and his ideas for getting the word out there. So, Rob thanks for joining me here.

Rob Booker: It’s good to be here Tim.

Tim Bourquin: So, Rob lives nearby me now and is here in the office which is cool, I don’t have to do the interview over the phone. So, you’ve always had this kind of thing in the middle where you are a trader and you do all that and you’ve got your following there, but you’re an online entrepreneur too and you like to sell content, to put stuff out there. Most guys aren’t into it as much you. You read our MemberCon blog.

Rob Booker: Right. Right.

Tim Bourquin: So, how did that happen? How do you — kind of are in the middle there?

Rob Booker: Well, I’ve gone from trading for myself to being a CTA, which is a Commodities Trading Advisor, so I manage for families and friends and I’m licensed by the National Futures Association. As you know, trading and the world of the markets can be a really lonely endeavor especially early on when you feel like you don’t know very much. So, like some other people, including you and others, I started writing a blog maybe even before the term had been popularized, which turned into a regular column which turned into a newsletter service which turned into a membership site which turned into a huge ball and chain around my neck — no just kidding.

Tim Bourquin: Having to always update it?

Rob Booker: Yeah. And it became an excellent way for me to repeat the concepts that I believe in with respect to trading. It helped solidify those beliefs. It’s so you know everything that I gave out in the subscription site, I felt like I was getting back in spades and it just sort of took on a life of its own. So, it’s been about six years now that I’ve run the membership site, publishing eBooks, content, actual published books, and selling subscriptions right on the website to members that have been around for years and years.

Tim Bourquin: Have you found a good balance between offering the free blog content, offering free eBooks like I saw on your site that you offer and transition those people over to actually become buyers or something?

Rob Booker: That’s a really great question. I think I’ve struggled with that as much as anybody or more than anybody. And I read just voraciously to try to increase my understanding of what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to do it. And I feel like to a certain extent, I’m self-taught, but I have found, to answer your question, I think a happy methodology for offering something to people to become interested in the content to begin with and then asking them to take a step further. Absolutely, yes.

Tim Bourquin: Okay. So, is it a matter of one free eBook and then you’re pitching them afterwards? What’s kind of your mode of doing that?

Rob Booker: I actually had lunch yesterday with a fellow who’s kind of at the beginning stages of where I was six years ago and I’m happy to sort of talk about it openly. I have a multi-step, fairly simple process that I implement now. It’s more principle based than it is rule based. Meaning I try to offer on a regular basis once every 30 to 60 days something of value that’s absolutely free and that’s easy to share and in the past, an electronic book, a Microsoft Word document saved as a PDF, published by me, designed by me, done by me, which sort of generated enthusiasm for something authentic because it didn’t look I’d had a designer or graphic illustrator do it — something every 30 to 60 days that was absolutely free and easy to share. It could be an eBook. Sometimes I did mini websites about trading around an economic report. Sometimes I would do an interview. Sometimes I would actually do a full on video. I would answer questions that people had submitted to me by email and I’d put the video up on YouTube. And I would always try to make the content something that was of value in and of itself that really almost seemed like borderline, I probably shouldn’t be giving this away. Like other people would stop and say, “Well that’s too much, like you’re probably giving away too much.” But I wanted to do it to say, “Listen if you don’t ever want to do business with me that’s fine, but I don’t want to waste your time either.” I don’t want you to think, “Oh, another email from Rob Booker.” I want you to say, “Oh, it’s an email from Rob Booker, I don’t have to buy anything and it’s going to be interesting.”

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: So, that was the first stages of it. And that generated, over the course of the last six years, about 30,000 regular opt-in and double opt-in subscribers to my email database, which are waiting for me to send them out something from time to time.

Tim Bourquin: Right. And I guess between 30 and 60 days is a long enough time between that it’s not something where if you’re putting a lot of paid content between those, they still feel like I’m missing something here. I guess there’s a point at which you get to the point where you’re putting out so much content that they don’t feel like they’re missing anything. I think that’s a dangerous place to be.

Rob Booker: Yeah. And I think that’s something that’s been really hard for me to figure out how to do. But a lot of times the eBook or the questions that I do in the video or lately every month I’ve just been doing a video and publishing my actual live trading account statement or I actually do a mini question and answer session for 15 minutes about what trades I took and how I did it — and you can’t get the whole thing out in 15 minutes even if I wanted to. But what it does is I say — and this is what I’ve been doing for the last 30 days while you haven’t seen me. I’ve been working with the latest class in producing these trades. These trades were taken with the class. And so last time you saw me, the account was at x, y, and z and now it’s at 400 or whatever it’s at and in between we’ve talking about it the whole time. I’m happy to let you know what I’m doing, but I don’t have time and it’s just the honest truth, I don’t have time in 15 minutes to share the whole thing, but I’m completely transparent about it.

And people say, “Oh, my gosh, what are you doing like showing your account statement online? Like that’s insane. Who would ever do that? Your numbers are on there, you account, everything’s on there. Why would you do that?” And there answer is, because it’s about authenticity. It’s about saying, “Listen I’ve got something I think I can share with you in a short amount of time that might help you out, but listen if you want to go a step further, I have something that will allow you to do that.”

Tim Bourquin: And we should tell, for people that aren’t in the financial industry that that’s completely unusual. Most guys, they put out software out there, you know for a fact that they’re not traders. They’ve got somebody else to write it, it probably doesn’t work, it cost $5000.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: So for somebody to actually show their account statements and prove that they know what they’re doing is extremely rare. And right there, you’ve got huge credibility.

Rob Booker: Right. It’s like a person who maybe runs a marathoning or a running site or somebody who runs a medical site that helps people monitor their heart rate or whatever; things like that. It’s like somebody saying come into my life for half a day or come into my life for 15 minutes and I’m just going to let it out. I’m going to let you know what the story is behind here and what’s going on. And it really goes a long way ’cause you get so many emails and there’s so much stuff out there that it’s just who is really behind all this. And I think that goes a long way for me in keeping people around on the list.

And it’s been sometimes — two months ago I had somebody that said they joined the list three years ago and they’ve been just getting emails on and off, they’d never written me back, they’d never talked to me on the phone, all they’ve been doing is just hanging out on the list. You know, I’m pretty low key about the whole thing. And then something came out, I said I was ready to take on another private student and work with them privately as a trader and he wrote in and he said, “I’m ready to do it” and it’s a very expensive sale. It’s a very, very expensive deal and he did it on the spot and had been sort of like all these years that I’d never heard anything from him — you know all I had been doing is basically he’d been freeloading off of that content for awhile.

Tim Bourquin: Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Booker: But really in the end, it built enough trust that over those years he was ready to do something.

Tim Bourquin: See that’s where I really am trying to find my way there too because three years in terms of the sales process, I can’t even imagine right? I mean I’m glad to have those people on the list, but my kind of MO has been if you haven’t bought within the first three days, I’m going to push you until you’re off the list. And if you had done that —

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: – you wouldn’t have made that sale so… I mean it’s good to keep in mind and it’s a good reminder for me that just because somebody is not ready to buy right now, doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be ready to buy in two years. I mean it just seems like an awful long time but they’re there.

Rob Booker: Right. Every like 90 days, I’ll do a larger class, an online webinar based class that’ll have between 20 and 30 spots available. And what I’ll do is go through a process of saying — I’ll email more frequently right at that stage and that’ll be more of a sales driven — it’ll almost look like an auto responder at that point where I will actually say it’s coming, get ready and then email me here to be on the early, you know, warning list. And then I’ll go from the early warning list to okay, it’s coming out tomorrow, get our keyboard ready — you know get ready –

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: – and then it’s tomorrow. And then usually I’ll build up to that over a three or four-day process, sometimes over a two-week process. You know, I’m pretty disorganized so I do the best I can by myself. And then by the day it comes out — I’m only doing 20 or 30 people for something that costs between $1497 to $1997 and it’s gone. It’s one day — on the day that it goes on sale, it’s gone.

Tim Bourquin: Wow.

Rob Booker: It’s over and it’s done. I only do that every once in awhile but when I do, I do. I hit them — like every day I say it’s coming and here’s my account statement. And then the next day, it’s coming and here’s an interview with a person who went through it three months ago who’s doing well now. And then the next day, I hit them again and I say here’s the full schedule. And then the next day, I hit them and I say, listen it’s coming out in three days and I’m not trying to be a jerk and I’m even trying to — like I’m telling you that if you don’t do it the it won’t be available.

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: I don’t really do this very often and the only reason I do it is for these reasons. And the fact of the matter is, it’s gone, it’s over with, and I fill the class up and then every time I feel like I really should do another one of these. I should do a bigger class –

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: – or I should do something else.

Tim Bourquin: So, you’re using product launch formula for all intents and purposes. It sounds like you’re doing it. You close it down, you lead up to it, you generate that excitement, which is kind of the product launch formula.

Rob Booker: Okay. That’s great.

Tim Bourquin: Okay.

Rob Booker:

Tim Bourquin: And that works. Because we’ve had things on sale and when you leave them on sale, if you had left that open as a recorded webinar for day in and day out, it just doesn’t sell.

Rob Booker: Oh, yeah.

Tim Bourquin: There’s something about that urgency.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: There’s something about that buildup. But now do you get a lot of unsubscribes during that four or five day process?

Rob Booker: I get about — when I look at my report than goes out it’s between 24,000 and 27,000. It’s been higher than that. But I’ll get 1% unsubscribe and like 0.05% complaint. I don’t know if your service logs a complaint.

Tim Bourquin: Right. Yeah.

Rob Booker: And usually those complaints are you know unavoidable right? I mean you just can’t –

Tim Bourquin: They just hit the spam button.

Rob Booker: Yeah. Or somebody’s email — they don’t remember even double opting in or whatever else and I’m totally fine with that. I mean I wish everybody well on their way if they want to be a Mr. Grumpy Gills. But generally speaking, no I don’t. Because I tell them, I tell them pretty regularly you know, here’s my account statement and listen I’m going to email you in three weeks. I’m going to email you, you’re going to be hearing about it.

And I kind of like remember when I took my first sales job I took it for three months specifically for the purpose of getting trained by this internet service provider. I went and worked in there in the afternoons in the sales department just for the training, just to sit there. And I remember people, you know, sharing things about like only letting people have it for a certain amount of time and the price is only available for a certain amount of time and principles like that. And one of the biggest one was this guy sat like three rows down from me — it’s like 15 years ago and he said, “Listen what you got to do is got to do small contracts.” You’ve got to say, “Listen I’m going to ask you a month from now for three minutes of your time to look at something so get ready for it. I want you to know that I’m going to send a bunch of stuff on this list, but a month from now or every once in awhile I am actually going to ask you to buy something from me. Get ready for it.”

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: So it’s like there in their mind. They’re like, “All right, I got. I got that there’s a mix here.” That this email list is a mix of, you know, free content that’s just enjoyable and then sometimes it’s going to come out and it’s going to say, “I’m ready to ask you to buy something from me.”

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: And they’re like, “Oh, okay. Well at least, I’m not caught by surprise on that.”

Tim Bourquin: Which that is a great idea and something we haven’t done. Maybe in that first email we sent where it’s nothing but a free piece of content, maybe the second one, but somewhere in those first two, you say, “Look, we sell something, it’s obvious to you” and even though you know it’s obvious to them, you haven’t said it. So, it is almost a surprise and I’m surprised that they’re surprised.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: But if you just come out and say, “Look this is a business –

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: – I’m going to send you some great stuff here, but at some point I’m going to ask you to buy something too. I hope that’s okay.”

Rob Booker: Right. And I say usually I’m going to do as much as I can to help a large number of people for free. I speak for free. I don’t ever take a fee for speaking. You know almost all of the things that I’ve ever published in writing are totally free. I have a whole website page that’s dedicated to everything you can get from me for free. And then I say, but some of the stuff that I do involves proximity — it gets closer to what I’m doing. The closer you get to me, the more expensive it gets.

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: It’s a proximity thing. And everybody’s like, “Oh.” And so I have something that, you know, if you’re an arm’s length away, like a long way from me, it’s free. And then if you want to kind of trade with me for a three-week period of time over webinars, then it costs the next level. And then there’s only one other thing that you can do and that’s work with me alone for like six months and it’s ridiculously expensive and I’ve never lost touch with anybody that ever did that.

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: And that’s really expensive. But they get it, they know that that’s coming and I think that they say, “Ah, okay well at least he’s trying to do everything he can for free.” But then you can’t please everybody and some people are always going to well sure you know? You know, “Why can’t I come to the webinar?”

Tim Bourquin: Right. Why can’t I come to your house and sit next to you while you trade for six months for free?

Rob Booker: Exactly, for free.

Tim Bourquin: And feed me and put me up, yeah.

Rob Booker: You know people say that all the time. I think sometimes it’s a valid criticism. They say, “Well, you put yourself out there and you promote yourself as knowing so much” it’s like well, you know, if you’re going to put yourself out there then you better be ready to tell me — you’re spamming me or whatever, you’re emailing me or whatever, I deserve to know more. And I’m like listen — every time I hear something like that I’m like, “Well, what do you want to know? I’ll do a webinar presentation, what do you want to know?” I’m usually willing to say to that person, “Gosh, there’s probably some people out there like you that would like to see more of something.”

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: I’m not so like full of myself that I can’t realize that you know there are some people out there that maybe I haven’t given as much as I should have or could have. But then when it comes down to that proximity, I’m going draw the line there and say; “Listen there’s only enough room for so many people.”

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: And that’s that.

Tim Bourquin: In the financial industry I see it’s a little more of a problem than other places. But you get the fact that some people say, “Look, if you’re so good at this why are you teaching?”

Rob Booker: Yeah.

Tim Bourquin: The same thing with the interview income course that we do too.

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: So once in awhile we’ll get that, “Hey, if you’re making so much money doing this, why are you teaching it?”

Rob Booker: Right.

Tim Bourquin: What do you kind of say to those people?

Rob Booker: Well, one of my favorite players in all of baseball and I’m a reasonably interested baseball fan is Mariano Rivera of the New York Yankees, and there was a wonderful profile written of him in the New York Times magazine recently. Mariano Rivera says in that profile or it said of him that he will teach anybody his cut fastball. In the middle of the game actually, you will see him out in the bullpen with an opposing pitcher with his hand outstretched with his fingers over the ball and him putting his hand gently over the hand of the other pitcher showing him how that cut fastball is pitched. And people say, you know “Why would Mariano Rivera do that?”

Tim Bourquin: Yeah.

Rob Booker: Why would he — you know if it so important. And the answer is the more he teaches the better he gets. The more he shares, the better he feels about himself. And the fact of the matter is 99% of the people are going to take that information and they’re –

Tim Bourquin: Exactly.

Rob Booker: –they’re just not going to be able to use it anyway. But it doesn’t mean that he isn’t interested in the improvement of others. And I’ve always said — like why is success in one endeavor — why is that supposed to be related to disinterest in people who are just starting? Why are those two things supposed to connect to each other? Why wouldn’t it be the other way around? Why wouldn’t it be, well if you’re so successful also, why aren’t you giving back?

When Warren Buffett gave away his entire fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, nobody said to Warren Buffett you know anything. They just said, “Wow, that’s great.” And I think that’s the true spirit of the people who really do it actually very well, is they realize how difficult of a struggle it was of them. Now, when they take money for it, the criticism is why would you need this money to take it?

I just remembered something that a friend of mine told me once. He said, “Rob, you just tell them, whether you pay me this money or not is not going to affect my lifestyle. It won’t and I’ll be honest with you about that. But it might affect yours.” And that’s all I have to say on the subject is that I can’t take it any further than that, that I’m here to help you. Yes you could see my account statement, I am actually doing well enough that I don’t have to take your money to teach you, but I’d like to, if you’d like to do it. I become better as I do it. I absolutely reinforce principles that every day I forget. I forget them too. I’m no different or no better than anybody else. And it reinforces those principles and we take that journey together and it’s enjoyable for all of us. And it’s just something we’re never going to get away from are people who say, “Well, if you’re doing so well why would you teach?” And the answer is, “If you hate me so much why are you emailing me?”

Tim Bourquin: Exactly. And for me I think the answer is, look I’m a business owner, I’m an entrepreneur and there are ways that I volunteer my time with the police department. That’s what I do now.

Rob Booker: Right. Right.

Tim Bourquin: But I am not obligated to offer this for free just like you’re not obligated to pay.

Rob Booker: Yeah exactly.

Tim Bourquin: And it’s a choice. And to some extent you value what you can measure and you value what you pay for. I know that the people that take the course who pay for it are going to work harder at it and actually take it seriously.

Rob Booker: Uh-hum.

Tim Bourquin: If you don’t pay for it, you’re probably going to watch a few lessons and be done with it.

Rob Booker: Yeah. I have a one-page PDF that is written and it’s called why.PDF and I don’t where it is on my website. Wes who helps me with email — whenever that email comes in, that PDF goes out immediately. It says, “We get this question all the time. We totally understand it. We welcome your input. We’re looking forward to a dialogue about this subject with you and here are some answers because your question isn’t as unique as you might think it is” — which is the underlying implicit statement.

Tim Bourquin: Right.

Rob Booker: You know, “This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this. I’d love to share the answer with you and you’re going to have the take it or leave at that point,” and then you move from there.

And on the subject of letting people in for free, I have taught probably seminars in person over the last six years to probably about 1500 people separately in chunks of between 50 and 100 and sometimes as many as just 5 or 10. I have probably on 10 different occasions or more given a seat to somebody out of, you know, just pity. You know? Here’s –

Tim Bourquin: Right. Sure.

Rob Booker: “Yes, you can sit in my seminar.” And I felt good about it at the time. And I tell you in every single — and there are no exceptions — in every one of those instances, it was a complete disaster. They asked more questions, they sat in the front, and they interrupted the rest class –

Tim Bourquin: Taken more of your time.

Rob Booker: They interrupted the rest of the class. And what happened was they had a sense of entitlement about their spot there which was completely disproportionate. It was almost like I had welcomed them to take a bigger spot in this seminar than someone that paid. And it was my fault, I take complete responsibility for it, and I’m certainly not speaking poorly of those people. I mean some of them are still my friends. But I regret having done that not for my sake. I regret having done it for theirs. They made less progress. They felt less inclined to do the work that I asked them to do. It took them longer to work through the materials. In some cases they didn’t even show up for the second day or the third day of the seminar because it didn’t mean anything to them.

Tim Bourquin: Right. Right.

Rob Booker: And I just felt — I felt cheapened, they felt entitled, nobody felt better off. It was just a big mistake. I now have somebody else answer the questions from my friends. ‘Cause every time I do a seminar I get 20 very close friends who say, “Hey is there a spot?” And I have my West who’s my good friend and he’s worked with me for 10 years, he writes them and he says, “We have 30 people who are waiting for that free spot and the best we can tell you is if you really want it, just buy it. And if we can make it fit we’ll eventually try, but we can’t make any promises to everybody who asks.”

And then they realize that the pressure that I’m under as somebody who’s travelled all over the place, I feel this obligation to do as much as I can for free and I feel bad when I say no. And West tries to communicate that. He says, you know, “Try to not put all that pressure on ’cause we just don’t know how to fit everybody in for free.”

Tim Bourquin: Right. Right. It’s a business and everybody has got to make their own decision about it, but you have a lot of valid points.

Stay tuned for Part 2 about how Rob published his E-book for the Amazon Kindle…