Author: Jay Shaffstall

Anyone who is interested in Internet Marketing is probably on a lot of email lists.

I’ve taken advantage of getting back from vacation to use that “unsubscribe” link on the bottom of a lot of emails that were waiting for me. I’d highly recommend this after a time away, since it’s a great opportunity to get some perspective on the lists.

Wading through hundreds of emails, many of them multiple emails from the same list, is a time when you can pretty accurately measure the ratio of content to advertisements in the list. Most lists are heavy on advertisement, and light on content. Going through multiple emails is also a great time to see which ones are all pushing the same affiliate products.

I unsubscribed from a lot of the lists I was on, and stayed subscribed only to those that were providing some decent content. One benefit is that it’ll take me far less time to process my email every day, now that I won’t have as many to simply delete out of hand.

Even if you aren’t going on vacation, I encourage you to put all those email list emails into a single folder for a week, and then go through them to see which ones are actually providing you value. Get rid of the rest.

Following up on my post about niches and cracks, I thought it’d be fun to hold a contest to see who could come up with the best crack to be filled.

To enter, just post a comment here with the details of your idea. Include:

1) The crack that your idea fills (e.g. the stumbling block that currently exists)
2) How your idea fills the crack (e.g. makes things easier for people)
3) How your idea might be monetized, while still providing significant free services

Judging is entirely subjective, based on which idea I like the best. I’ll pick a winner July 1st, and announce the winner in July 2nd’s post.

The winner gets a month’s worth of 125×125 banner exposure here (in the spot currently occupied by the Brain Foggles banner). This exposure will start at the end of July, and run at least until September

The ideas that seem most doable will also get the opportunity to follow through on them over at The Advisory Panel. I can’t promise any of the ideas will get successfully implemented, but having a team of people working on it instead of just yourself raises the odds considerably.

So, what cracks have you run into lately?

When you think about finding your niche online, you probably think in terms of topic areas that you either know a lot about, or that you enjoy. And that’s a good thing. Picking a topic area allows you to create knowledgeable content on the topic, attract traffic, and make money from the traffic.

But it’s important that you don’t forget the cracks.

The cracks are the areas where it’s just a bit hard to get things done online. The bits about working or living online that make people stumble, every time they hit one. You can make an enormous amount of money by filling in the cracks.

Picture the world before Paypal. Sending money online was a hard task, a crack that people stumbled over. Paypal changed all that, and made a lot of money in the process. Ebay filled in the crack between people who wanted to sell online, and people who wanted to buy.

The cracks these days are smaller, but they still exist. Look at my recent reviews of Oronjo or OblinQ. Those are services that fill in the cracks, making it easier to do what you could already do.

Filling in the cracks makes you a service provider, not a content producer.

You don’t need to be a programmer to fill in the cracks. You just need to spot a crack, and be willing to partner with programmers who can make your vision of a service to fill it in a reality.

So when you’re online, doing your normal business, look for those things that are just more difficult than you think they need to be. That might be an opportunity!

I said in Monday’s post that I’d post more when I’d had a chance to think about what my ideal advertising co-op would look like. Here are some of my thoughts so far.

Inexpensive to Join

This is a big priority, because many people who could benefit from an advertising co-op are people just starting out in Internet Marketing. They can’t afford big ticket co-ops, but need something that provides a ramping up process. This is where, in my opinion, Rick Katz’ co-op fell down, when he eliminated the lower price points.

If it costs more than $50 for someone to get started, then you’ve priced yourself out of the majority of Internet Marketers out there.

Profit Sharing

Paying to advertise is one thing, but getting cash back when you do so is the big win. In some way your advertising must generate income for you. Revenue Magic does this by forcing you to buy into a co-op that advertises Revenue Magic itself. Rick’s co-op did this by having all advertising promote the co-op itself (you advertised your own programs to leads you received as part of the co-op).

Some part of the co-op must be targeted toward getting more members in order for profit sharing to work. Having multiple levels of paid participation helps to continue to bring more profit to share, as members upgrade to higher levels as they make money.

Lead Generation

Getting people signed up under you in an advertising co-op is nice, but you really want leads you can use, whether they sign up or not. Revenue Magic’s non-co-op advertising is all among the members of the program, so you’re not reaching a wide audience.

What would be ideal is for co-op members to get together and buy outside advertising (safelist solo ads, banner ads on popular web sites, magazine ads, etc), so that they can promote what they want to promote to people other than other members of the co-op.

In this, I think Rick Katz had the right idea, getting leads by advertising a squeeze page that provided a free report. Those leads were divided among each member who had paid into that advertising co-op, and they could then start trying to build a relationship with those leads. Some of them would also join the co-op, and part of their membership fees would be split among the people who’d paid into the co-op. It was possible that you’d make more back than you spent in advertising.

My Ideal Co-op

My thoughts aren’t completely cooked on this yet, but here is how I think a co-op could work to satisfy my requirements.

You join the co-op for a relatively small fee. This entitles you to participate in one campaign at a time. Higher levels of membership are possible that increase the numbers of campaigns you can join at one time.

Each campaign focuses on a specific topic (earning online, golfing, losing weight, etc), with the aim to generate leads of people interested in that topic, via a squeeze page/free report combination. 10% of the funds for each campaign will go into advertising the co-op itself, and any income that comes from that 10% is split among the campaign members.

By participating in the campaign you get targeted leads and, perhaps, a bit of cash back. Note that membership upgrades would be tracked through the lifetime of a member, so if a member joined due to a campaign you were in two years ago, and then upgrades to a higher membership level, that upgrade is also shared among the campaign members.

There would be a lot of details to be worked out, but that’s as close as I can come right now to my ideal. An advertising co-op that gets you targeted leads on a subject of your choice, with the possibility of profit sharing and future earnings.

What do you think? Does that sound like something useful?

I ran across a site called Revenue Magic the other day.

The main page for the site says it provides “cash back advertising”. The idea being that you can pay for advertising, and get some cash back from the exchange. The implication being that you can get back a whole lot more cash than you put into it, eventually. On a first read, this reminded me of Rick Katz’ Co-op Ad Club, which had a similar theme.

The Revenue Magic site is low on details, though, promising a full explanation in the member’s area. Since you can join for free, I figured I’d bite and see what was inside.

There is a lot more detail inside, but it still doesn’t do a good job of spelling out exactly how it all works. They do a good job of explaining the cash back aspect of it. You can refer others, and you can also be put into a rotator that promises to fill out your first level.

But it was the advertising side of things I wanted to know more about. There are plenty of plans that are little more than self-contained MLM schemes out there, the magic would have been combining that with a truly useful advertising co-op.

The advertising works with ad credits. You get 500 free ad credits just for joining, so you can try out their advertising options. You can get banner ads, text ads, full page view ads, email ads, and top sponsor ads. That sounds like a pretty full offering, but, ultimately, you’re only advertising on Revenue Magic itself. The banner and text ads are displayed on their web site, the full page view ads are just a traffic exchange, the email ads are solo ads mailed out to the Revenue Magic membership, and the top sponsor ads are displayed in any emails Revenue Magic sends out.

All of that isn’t particularly bad, but the prices are high. They have several packages, most of which include membership in the rotator at $49.95. You then pay approximately half a cent per ad credit. It takes 40,000 ad credits to send an email ad (the most effective of the advertising options), so you’re talking about $200 for a solo ad.

While the idea is attractive, the implementation isn’t. But it did get my mind going about what a truly useful cash back advertising co-op would look like. What Rick Katz was doing had elements of it, but fell short, and Revenue Magic’s approach has elements of it, too. When I’ve worked through the brainstorming and come up with my ideal program, I’ll post the details of it here.

In the meantime, click here to see Revenue Magic for yourself.