When the $15k Challenge blog first launched (August 2006), I signed up and followed along. The goal was for this guy Dan to make $15k, in one month. The catch was that he only had $200 to spend on anything he wanted. He couldn’t use any of his existing resources (contacts, websites, newsletters, email lists, etc).
I decided that I would give it a shot as well. He was going for a viral lauch and was promoting a craft membership site, and I followed along, just with a different niche. Each month this craft site was going to give away free books and patterns, etc. Stuff that interested people involved in craft…stuff.
I decided my niche would be scrapbooking and created this site for Scrappy Jackie (my alter ego…she needed to be female). I didn’t spend anything beyond the cost of the domain (and JackieWinton.com my alter ego’s full name) so less than $20 total.
I created an account at scrapbooking.com and a few of the larger forums. I created personal pages, and went full steam ahead. Over the course of a week, I posted about 200 posts in 6 different forums. A few days later I got some signups to my email form, but in a weeks time I had about 30 people signed up.
When Dan made his list he had over 6,500 people sign up. That told me that I either missed a part of the process or he was cheating!
Thankfully I didn’t spend any money promoting this site because it would have all been for nothing. Anyways, I learned my lesson, stay away from email marketing. I’ve never been able to get anyone to sign up for anything email related anways.
I guess that doesn’t really have to do with an idea for a way to “make money online”, but it does tell you how to not lose money online!
p.s. If the Jackie Winton is out there, I have a few websites for you!
How much money did you make?
$0 total. In fact I lost a little if you count domain registration.
You really don’t think email marketing can be profitable? I’m not trying to be too harsh or critical here, but maybe nobody signed up because that landing page doesn’t really provide a whole lot of value to your target market.
Besides that this is my first time reading your blog and I’m enjoying it so far. I’d love to see a post outlining why you don’t think list building is a good way to go.
Scott, I know that email marketing can be profitable, that is why I get 10,000 spam emails per month. I however, haven’t found it to be profitable for me. I know I’m not doing something right, but also have realized that my time is better spent with something I know I can monetize.
interesting contest. i love these little contests.
as for the question about email marketing – its not dead – it just has to be done with the intention of building a relationship and delivering value to your readers.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head:
“I guess that doesn’t really have to do with an idea for a way to “make money online”, but it does tell you how to not lose money online!”
Excellent words indeed. You can not understand success without understanding failure, thanx for this great reminder Brandon.