So someone emails you and says “I would like to promote your book/product/etc to my list”.
You jump up and down yes? Gotta love those emails.
Not so fast… we learned the hard way recently that you want to do a bit of homework first before agreeing quickly to these kinds of offers. Otherwise you could be accused of ‘spamming’ like we were… yikes!
We recently had someone ask to promote the Mutliple Streams of Coaching Income book for us, to which of course we said yes! So we set this person up as an affiliate and waited to see the promotion sent out.
Much to our surprise and chagrin, soon after this promotion was sent a few people emailed us angry at being ‘spammed’ and we were even blacklisted for about a day or so. Not a good thing.
It turns out that this fella had actually bought access to a list. It was not his own list, it was someone else’s list that he paid to be able to send a message to. So when people received an email from him promoting the MSOCI book (among other stuff) they didn’t know who this guy was and assumed he was sending spam… and of course us being featured in the email we also received the backlash of that.
The lesson? When someone offers to promote your stuff for you do a bit of research first on their list. Is this their own list? Do they regularily write to this list and have a ‘relationship’ with the readers? How was this list built, by permission or by other means?
If it is a rented list, how will the message be sent? As a recommendation by the list owner or just as a generic email?
The key is that the readers get the promotion from someone they already *know, like and trust*. And that the list is a permission based list.
The relationship is the key part of promotion to a list, without it you can easily be perceived as a spammer even with the best of intentions.