30 Responses to “Subscriber Survey For 2011… (+ REAL WORLD $1993 Value “Gift”)”

1. Sue Harris, on November 04, 2010 at 3:19 pm, said:

   hey guys
   great idea. nice to see someone actually bothering to see what we want instead of selling us more stuff we dont need lol. cant wait to see what the results are
   all the best
   sue

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2. Buzz, on November 04, 2010 at 3:22 pm, said:

   Thanks.

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3. BarbaraBrooke, on November 04, 2010 at 3:22 pm, said:

   Didn’t click the link to get your offer as I wouldn’t know what
   to do with it if I had it. You have to remember I am an
   internet marketing ignoramus.

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4. rayjohnson, on November 04, 2010 at 3:24 pm, said:

   Hi Sue,

   Thanks – we’ll be publishing the results soon, interesting to see your results too – thanks a lot for taking part.

   Regards

   Ray

   [Reply]

5. rayjohnson, on November 04, 2010 at 3:32 pm, said:

   Hey Barbara,

   I’ve been there too – it’s fine

   There are almost 200 videos to follow so I am sure you will be fine

   Regards

   Ray

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6. Robert Black, on November 04, 2010 at 3:38 pm, said:

   Hi Barbara
   We’ve all got gaps in our knowledge, that includes both Ray and I. That’s why we need as many people as possible to complete this survey *honestly*. We want to hear the good and the bad.
   Once we know WHERE the gaps in our knowledge are we can start filling them. Internet marketing, like most things, is a daily learning process. But we won’t get anywhere unless we can identify EXACTLY what we need to learn.
   No point in Ray and I writing about “how to get traffic” if most people don’t even have a web site. No point in showing people how to create a web site if everyone knows this already.
   Don’t forget we’ll be publishing the results together with our public analysis, and we’ll be interested in your opinions on that too. This is to benefit ALL of us.
   Regards
   Robert

   [Reply]

7. Paul Power, on November 04, 2010 at 4:04 pm, said:

   Hi Ray,

   Gotta say, an awesome blog post, loved the survey. As someone who is permanently looking for help with these issues, you are my go to guy on these matters.

   Keep up the Good Work,

   Paul.

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8. vincent william wice, on November 04, 2010 at 4:09 pm, said:

   HEY RAY-

   TALK ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO GET IT GOING

   FIRST YOU HAVE YO HAVE THAT CREDIT CARD

   WHICH I DON’T HAVE ANY MORE DUE TO MAJOR

   OVERLOAD OF BUYING AND FINDING THAT OLD BOTTOM LINE IS A DEAD END, AGAIN!

   SO SICK OF IT RAY SO SICK,

   YOU HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THERE BUT I FOR WHAT EVER REASON DIDN’T LISTEN, CAN YOU UNDERSTAND WHY?

   THANKS FOR LISTENING RAY!

   VINNE

   [Reply]

9. Paul Power, on November 04, 2010 at 4:09 pm, said:

   Hi Ray,

   Just thought I would leave you another comment, I have read this blog for some time, and always keep coming back to it as a reference for all those fiddly little things in Internet Marketing I don’t comprehend.

   All I can say is, that the content is dynamite, and your honesty is awesome.

   Cheers Buddy,

   Paul.

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10. Robert Black, on November 04, 2010 at 4:17 pm, said:

    Hey Vinne
    Forget the credit card for now, forget Paypal for now and forget the folding cash for now. Leave them, we don’t want them
    This survey is about finding out whats working and what isn’t. Got some very surprising results on the poll so far – stuff that we thought was working for people obviously isn’t, and other stuff we never considered is making some people a lot of $$$.
    Totally unexpected.
    Please – keep all your replies coming, do the survey it’s only 4 minutes of your time. The more responses we get the more we will all be able to help each other. Just give your HONEST opinions
    Cheers
    Robert

    [Reply]

11. James, on November 04, 2010 at 4:52 pm, said:

    This is one of the major problems with the IM industry. Your e-mail said: to say THANK YOU, we’ll even “give” (emphasis added) you a cool $496 gift just for completing the survey.

    Then you charge a dollar. I know, it’s only a dollar but the principle is the same. If you are going to give a “gift” give it. If you are going to charge something for it say so upfront. I would have, (and did) the survey without the incentive but once again it seems that someone is not really delivering on what they say.

    On the up side it is nice to see someone taking an interest to develop targeted products and services.

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    Robert Black Reply:
    November 4th, 2010 at 6:17 pm

    Hi James
    Take your point but let me say this. When Ray and I put this together we had 3 choices
    1) Give no free gift at all
    2) Give a gift of a free ebook with a value of let’s say $20
    3) Give a “gift” of a genuine reduction in price from $497 to $1 of a product that has literally taken Ray 3 months of full time work to put together
    In an ideal world option 1) would be best but it’s a fact of life that if you give away a free gift you get a better response. We would be fools to ignore that, whatever our personal opinions.
    I personally wanted to go for option 2) because I have seen the $497 product and frankly it is worth at least treble that, and I felt Ray was selling himself short by reducing the price that much. On the other hand we had several emails since the last blog post saying they loved the product but they couldn’t spend that much money in these uncertain economic times. We listened to those concerns from subscribers and came up with this compromise. It allows anyone to test drive it for $1, if they like what they see they can continue to use it without having to find an extra $497 in one lump sum.
    We could have given that for free rather than $1 but there is a very simple reason why we didn’t. I bet most people’s hard drives are full of “free products” they have downloaded. Mine certainly is. How often do you, I or anyone else ever actually bother to look and read those free ebooks? I admit I don’t; because I got them free they actually have no perceived value to me. One day I’ll delete them all, unread. By paying a token $1 a person is showing that they’re at least being serious and they’ll take a closer look.
    Anyway Ray’s argument won the day. You’re right, $1 is not the same as “free” and we’ll take note of that in future. But I’ll leave others to decide which is the better “free” gift
    1) a $20 ebook
    2) a $496 discount off a $497 product
    As regards the reasons why we are doing this, interestingly product development is actually only about number 4 on the list. We will be posting the results together with our analysis. For everyone else reading this who is in the same market as us it should make interesting reading. We’re not just doing this for ourselves but we’re going to be sharing the data.
    We’ve had some VERY unexpected results so far which, if those stats are maintained as more people do the poll will very much change how we do things on this site – in a positive way. Indeed one set of results, so far, actually makes a nonsense of one of our recent log posts
    So keep your eyes out for that, and many thanks for taking the time to do the poll – greatly appreciated.
    Best regards
    Robert

    [Reply]

12. Andreas Spyrou, on November 04, 2010 at 5:42 pm, said:

    Hi Ray and Robert,

    I’ve just finished the survey. (Where is my FREE gift?)
    BTW there is a mistake on the question 8 and 9. I couldn’t give an answer on everything because only 3 different answers can be given. I am sure you want to give you more information..

    Anyhow honestly, this survey make me thing twice because I almost gave the greatest answer and it was further from what I could actually answer. For example

    1. How long have you been marketing online?
    Why is More than 2 Years the biggest answer I can give when I could answer like 8 years?

    or

    2. How many web sites do you have? the biggest answer I can give is “More than 5″. In reality I own more than 50!!

    or even question 7.

    “would you be interested in personalized coaching to help you?” the greatest answer is “Yes – I would be happy to pay over $1000 if it was worth it”.

    I paid more than $6.000 and it worths every single penny!! So definitely Ray I would invest more than $1.000 on you because you are a trustful guy that really cares about the “smaller” guys out there.

    Thanks for everything and all the best!

    Andreas

    [Reply]

    Robert Black Reply:
    November 4th, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    Hi Andreas
    Thanks for doing the survey and thanks for your comments. Yep there is an error in Q 8 and 9 in the first poll. It was the first time I used Survey Monkey and I put a tick in the wrong box. The same questions have now been corrected and they are the 2 questions in poll 3.
    But there is a good lesson here. I always give out this piece of advice – “don’t wait for conditions to be perfect before you get started because they NEVER will be – just TAKE ACTION. don’t worry about making mistakes because you WILL make them, just learn from them”.
    That also applies to me. I made a couple of small errors with the poll, I have learned from that and it’s given me a couple of future ideas. I could have waited before doing this poll until I had learned every aspect of the software, but I decided not wait for “perfect conditions”, instead I “took action”.
    The outcome – on the plus side we have a massive amount of very interesting data, on the negative side I am left a little red faced for screwing up a couple of questions I can live with that.
    So on balance it has been worth it!
    All the best
    Robert

    [Reply]

    Ray Johnson Reply:
    November 4th, 2010 at 6:39 pm

    Couldn’t agree more Rob… ACTION TAKERS make things happen.

    Enough said!

    Ray

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13. rayjohnson, on November 04, 2010 at 5:51 pm, said:

    Hi Paul,

    Thanks so much for your awesome feedback. Glad to know you approve as usual!

    Regards

    Ray

    [Reply]

14. Bob, on November 04, 2010 at 5:56 pm, said:

    I agree with Sue and please can we have soem sense in future promotions when the current fashion seems to be multi upsells before you have even tried the product, it takes sometimes as many as 8 clicks before you can get rid of the website from your browser:-)! I won’t buy anything more until I fonsd out how good soemthign is first. Does it deliver, is it easy to follow (mostly not), can you get an upgrade later at a discount (mostly not as well) Etc you get the picture.

    Also the other thing that really irritates me are the long 30-45 videos about how good they are and why you should buty the program, Why? If they can’t say what thay have in five minutes then I don’t bother and I guess reading other blogs and forums that most people would agree.

    Rant Over.

    What I believe most people want is to have their hands held until they actually make money and are then able to make it on their own. The target should be $100 a day averageing over say 4 weeks before they are safe to go out on their own.

    Thanks

    Bob

    [Reply]

    Robert Black Reply:
    November 4th, 2010 at 8:56 pm

    Hey Bob
    You raise some interesting points. A lot of the criticisms you make I have also made about products.
    1) Upsells – yep that gets me too. You haven’t tried the standard product yet, you haven’t even downloaded it yet and you’re being hit for several upsells!!!! Annoys me every time. Problem is – it works for the marketer. They make a LOT of extra sales, quite often they make more from the OTOs than the actual product. So what would you do in their position? Sure quite a few people get annoyed by getting hit with upsells, but for every one like you or me, there’s another person filling out his Paypal details and buying all these upsells. Actually I think we as marketers can find a happy medium (offer OTOs without annoying those who don’t like them) and we’ll be incorporating that in future products.
    2) Videos – couldn’t agree more. Ray will laugh to himself when he reads this because we have had this conversation many times before and we don’t agree on this subject . I have bought many IM products over the years (bought one this morning in fact) but I have NEVER watched a sales video. Never. I can’t be bothered. Would rather read a few pages of text than watch some video for 28 minutes. I spent 22 years running my own business doing face to face selling – never mind getting your point across in 5 minutes, in my experience if you can’t get your point across in 30 SECONDS you’re out the door! But…you and I have to bear in mind that people do watch 30 minute videos and do buy from them. If they didn’t then no-one would go to the trouble of recording them. The sensible thing that we try to do is cover both bases – a video for those who like video, and the same information in text below for those who don’t.
    Anyway thanks for your comments, keep them coming in
    Robert

    [Reply]

15. rayjohnson, on November 04, 2010 at 6:01 pm, said:

    Hi Andreas,

    Thanks for your comment here – I am sure that we will be improving on the survey at a later time, to take into account your view etc.

    However, you can still use the answer fields given as a general rule, so do not worry about that.

    Andreas – watch this space,, I predict good things happening for you soon enough – your investment will pay off over a short time if overcome the FOCUS issue – and we WILL.

    Regards

    Ray

    [Reply]

16. rayjohnson, on November 04, 2010 at 9:07 pm, said:

    RE Bobs comment, thanks for sharing your view.

    RE Rob’s reply, don’t get me started! lol….

    As marketers, they have every right to sell their products, just NOT unethically.

    I DONT mind the popup/exit issue, as LONG as the marketer REMOVES “something” of value as the price goes down to make it FAIR for everyone.

    As subscribers, of course you should be STRIVING to become marketers online, and having views is ok – PROVIDING you take action.

    When you have the marketer “hat” on, you’ll see things a little differently.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Over and out,

    Ray

    [Reply]

    Robert Black Reply:
    November 4th, 2010 at 9:22 pm

    You see Ray makes a valid point here. The question is – are you thinking as a marketer or as a consumer? If you’re a consumer (and there’s nothing wrong with that – ALL of us are consumers at some point) you’re going to see things differently. I also think it makes a difference what niche you are in with your online business.
    We get annoyed with
    a) Pop ups
    b) OTOs
    c) Video
    d) Promo emails
    e) Loads of bonuses added to products
    f) False scarcity (eg saying there are only 500 available of a product when that obviously isn’t true)

    etc etc etc
    However… the reason some marketers do this is because it works. It makes their sales letters convert better, it brings in more money. This is not just theory but its fact.
    Back to what I said above about it depending what niche you’re in. If you’re looking to sell “standard non IM” products like hobbies, entertainment, whatever (anything outside of “make money” products) then I guess you just want some kind of system that shows you how to set up and market your site – finished.
    On the other hand if you’re in the “make money” niche you SHOULD be viewing these products as a MARKETER – even if you are at that point a consumer considering whether or not to buy.
    Why?
    Because if you’re in the “make money” niche then today you may be the “buyer” but tomorrow you’ll want to be the “seller”. And it’s well worth seeing what methods other marketers are using because you may well want to copy them. Or do you say “I won’t use OTOs because I don’t agree with them” even knowing that you’ll probably make more from the OTO than the standard offer?
    Thats the dilemma – for every person who complains about pop ups, 30 minute videos, OTOs there’s another person entering his credit card details BECAUSE of them.
    And we’re here to make money aren’t we?
    Hmmmm
    Cheers
    Robert

    [Reply]

17. John, on November 04, 2010 at 11:33 pm, said:

    Hi guys,
    It is most likely my mistake, in fact I am sure it must be because no-one else is talking about it, but this “free” gif t for a $1…when I went to buy it I was faced with $1= 7 days and then $97/month.
    Did I miss something here?

    Cheers,

    John

    [Reply]

18. Best CPA Networks, on November 06, 2010 at 3:29 pm, said:

    Most internet marketers who are having success these days are using Cost Per Action, or CPA ads. This is because affiliates don’t need to close high cost sales in order to get commission for a conversion.

    [Reply]

19. Antony Cecil-Wright, on November 07, 2010 at 11:06 am, said:

    Good idea guys!!!

    [Reply]

20. Ray Johnson, on November 07, 2010 at 12:22 pm, said:

    BEST CPA:

    Yeah, ur right – were actually IN a CPA network with one of our products too…….

    Good point you make. Thanks.

    Ray

    [Reply]

21. Ray Johnson, on November 07, 2010 at 12:23 pm, said:

    Hi Ant

    Thanks for your comments, we thought that too

    The feedback has been nothing short of superb so far!

    Ray

    [Reply]

22. BarbaraBrooke, on November 07, 2010 at 3:35 pm, said:

    Videos annoy me as I don’t have time to watch them all the
    way through – some are rather long. I hate being told to
    watch a page because it’s important. How do they know it’s
    important to me? Mostly I don’t give a toss and I hate being
    told to buy anything. I can make my own mind up. Right now
    I am economising like mad because I have large bills to pay
    for my husband’s care. I don’t know what they expect me to
    live on. All the ordinary bills don’t go away!

    [Reply]

    Robert Black Reply:
    November 7th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

    Times are difficult. I was going to write a longer reply about why that is and why it isn’t going to change any time soon but people don’t want to hear that.
    So I’ll say this instead, all of us have 3 choices:
    1) Cut back on spending
    2) Earn extra income
    3) A combination of the two
    I’ve been going for option 3) since 2005. I stopped spending on unnecessary things and at the same time looked for ways to get extra income. Internet marketing is ideal for me because I travel a lot, I can run my business (sorry Ray – OUR business ) from anywhere.
    Nope, your bills like my bills and everyone else’s bills won’t go away. The answer is to earn extra income – but that is a choice for you, and you alone to make. However, just as you wouldn’t expect to be able to open up a shop and fill it full of stock for free, the same applies with an online business. But opening up a shop will cost you a MINIMUM of $100k. You can get started with an internet business for less than $50…..
    Cheers
    Robert

    [Reply]

23. Mike, on November 07, 2010 at 11:08 pm, said:

    As already mentioned I really, really need to know the easy and safe way to upload a Web Site and then master the Autoresponder problem. This comes easy to the so say Gurus but I can’t say I have seen any of them coming out with probably one of the major issues ( for a Newbie as we are dubbed ) with being able to really get up and running in a confident manner.
    With regard free gifts I simply regard these as a ‘Sprat to catch a Mackerel’ the biggest problem here is if one downloads all the ‘freebies’ offered on a daily basis surely they would find the Computer would start to groan in a big way, perhaps they do. After all said and done do these offers ever ALL get addressed once downloaded ??. Regards to you all in the back office. Mike

    [Reply]

24. rayjohnson, on November 08, 2010 at 12:34 pm, said:

    Hi Mike

    Thanks for joining in.

    I’m really not on the “sell” here – but our 52 week mentoring progam REALLY does solve the FTP/Web uploading & Autoresponder issues you are having.

    RE the free gits, yep you are right to a degree, but you really should view this from a marketers perspective, you have to get lead flow of some kind in your business or you are dead before you start….

    I STRONGLY suggest you contact us, on contactray@ray-johnson.co.uk and we will help you out.

    Thanks Mike

    Ray

    [Reply]

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