One of the biggest names out there in the world, certainly here in the US and North America, Matt Bacak is a guru to the gurus. An entrepreneur from the time he could pull a wagon, he started his first company with employees at the age of 12. He hasn't slowed down since and now helps others benefit from his experience and gifts through his consultations and coaching program.
Matt has a unique ability to take a vast amount of complex information-often conflicting-and boil it down to the core essence of what works, the easiest path, and he makes it simple all at the same time. Called "The Powerful Promoter," he's not only a sought-after Internet marketer, but also has marketed for some of the world's top experts whose reputations would shrivel if their followers ever found out someone else coached them on their online marketing strategies.
RIC THOMPSON: I'm looking forward to a great call. There is certainly no better expert to have on the line talking about promoting our sites, building up a business and getting things going. You are certainly the go-to guy in the industry. You're highly recommended by a lot of other folks. Of course, there are great reasons for that. Before we get into all the details and have people writing notes furiously, give us some background, Matt. How did you get started in Internet marketing?
MATT BACAK: I don't know. It seems like I fell into it, but I've always had a passion. I fell in love with computers when I was a little kid. When I was little I grew up in a small town, Youngstown, Ohio. My dad worked in a steel mill. We didn't have much money. We were a lower middleclass family. In order to have money, I had to have a paper route. I was delivering papers.
Actually, I turned all my paper route subscribers into lawn care clients and started doing that. I started running a business. The interesting thing is that we had an old AT&T-I don't even know what it was-a 195, maybe; I can't remember what the names were back then, but it was one of the first computers that came out. Somehow, my dad's dad, who worked at AT&T, got it for a steal. My dad ended up buying it.
I've actually been online since I was a little kid. I don't even remember. I forgot all about that until recently. I started doing stuff. I was playing around with it. I always had a passion for it. I remember the modems. We were able to talk and do things like that way before things went mainstream. That was a thing I just forgot about that really spurted on later in college. I started falling more in love with computers.
I got my B.S. degree in Marketing and an Associate's Degree in Technical Engineering. You combine those two things together and you pretty much get Internet marketing. Not only did I build the Internet, but I also knew how to market. Of course, school education never got me far. I knew how to build [indiscernible] but I didn't know how to really market it, because half the stuff I learned in school was a bunch of BS anyway.
They weren't very practical things, but after awhile I came out of school and started promoting the Internet. I didn't know I was doing email marketing. I didn't know what I was really doing. I was doing Internet marketing, but I didn't know it. One day I went to a seminar and I just woke up. I said, "Oh, my gosh! I'm doing Internet marketing." I didn't know I was doing Internet marketing.
That led to my passion to get more deeply involved in it because I saw the power of it. We were putting on events. I was putting 50 to 100 people in a room in less than three days. People said, "How in the world are you doing that?" I was doing it locally. I started doing stuff like that. People started coming to me wanting to learn what I was doing. They wanted to team up with me. I built empires from there.
RIC THOMPSON: You were doing local events? How long ago was that?
MATT BACAK: That was in 2000, so 10 years ago.
RIC THOMPSON: You've been at the game quite awhile then.
MATT BACAK: Yes. Actually, it's funny. I was just talking about it. I totally forgot about it. I don't think I've talked about this anywhere, so this might be the first time people hear this, if they know anything about me. I was just talking to somebody last night, and he said he was getting on a ship to go make government contracts. He was one of my students.
A long time ago when I was in college-in '97 or'98-we were building Internets, extranets, data bases, and websites for politicians and political parties. The first deal we got in that company we ended up getting every single county for the state of Alabama. We built every single one of the websites for the Republican Party. We also did things for both parties, just so everybody knows. We didn't care. We just wanted to get them. Our first deal building websites was a $65,000 deal.
I was just a kid in college. It was really cool. That company started taking off. Actually, that company was built in the Watergate Hotel. It was funny how that worked. We were actually putting up websites in Flash. Some people might not even remember it, but if you remember back then, if you had to have Flash, it wasn't added onto your computer. Literally, we built these websites for people. We'd give it to them and they would say, "I can't see my website. A lot of people can't see the website."
I said, "It's there. Hold on. You have to download this thing." We were a little too advanced for it. We should have gone straight to HTML, but it was cutting-edge. It was fun. We actually utilized college professors to build our sites for us so they could earn extra income. We had the college website design professors and graphic design artists working for us. We contracted them out, when I was in college, to do our work.
RIC THOMPSON: Nice. Obviously, a lot of things have changed on the Internet from your perspective. Nowadays, you wouldn't even think about putting up a site that required people to download to get involved in the process. I remember back then it was all very much about tech perspective. The tech perspective is, "Let's do the absolute cutting-edge stuff. It's whatever looks the prettiest; whatever looks the best."
That's not necessarily what works the best in terms of marketing or sales. Let's talk about that today, Matt, because a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have evolved. What you did to get started back then, obviously, would be very, I would think-but maybe not; correct me if I'm wrong-different from what you would do to get started today.
MATT BACAK: Yes. I learned one thing. Just putting up a website doesn't make sense. I didn't make my first million because I had a nice little brochure website. We were doing okay, but the ones who were really making the money were us. It wasn't the people, especially back then. It wasn't the people because they weren't building lists. They weren't building that asset.
In order for me to make my first million I came to a conclusion. I said, "These are great to make money, but the people who are actually getting them aren't making money." You spend $65,000 for website, and it gives people great information. They go there and look around and get lost. You'll want true results, especially from a direct response perspective. Actually, I don't even have a website anymore that has all my 'here's-all-about-me' stuff.
I don't even utilize it anymore, because quite honestly, I was looking at one of these sites we used to build, which I call a brochure site or a branding site, and I took it down. The reason is because my daughter's four-years-old, which tells you how much I cared about it because it wasn't bringing in the cash. One of the things we want to talk about here is how to bring in the cash and how to make things happen.
RIC THOMPSON: Exactly, and what's working right now, today. Let's get into this. Someone's getting started right now, today, online. What's the most important step that someone can take when they're starting to build a list from scratch and they're just getting started?
MATT BACAK: I think it needs to be narrowed down to a simple formula; probably a six-step formula. You guys can start taking notes now because building a list is how I made my first million dollars online. I didn't do it because of any website. It was because I was building a list. For a lot of people, especially those just getting started, we're going to narrow it down to six important steps.
Number One is you have to identify what market you want to get into. I can get more into that specifically in a bit. Number Two is creating content for that niche or finding things to sell to that niche. That's really important, whether it's your words or somebody else's. Number Three is building-which is the focus I know of the call and is actually the focus of everything-that lead generation system.
Just having a website up to capture information doesn't make sense. That's why you need Step Four, which would be to drive traffic. You have to drive traffic to that page. Without traffic, nobody's going to see and nothing's going to happen. Of course, once you do have that, folks, here's the biggest thing and one of the biggest mistakes almost everybody makes, and I see it all the time and it drives me insane.
Actually, I just wrote about it in my Internet Marketing Dirt newsletter. I think I narrowed it down to three different types of people who have lists: the protectors, the mailers and the idiots. Let's just talk about these idiots quickly. The idiots spend all their time, money and energy building their list, and then they never communicate with them. They say, "I'm afraid if I mail to them, they'll unsubscribe. I'm afraid. The last time I did it I got this many unsubscribes," or "The last time I did, I got this many people emailing me and calling me all the names in the book."
You're going to get it. That's one thing to realize. People have muscles, and actually, that's another thing to talk about in my newsletter this month. Yes, people have Internet muscles. When people are behind the computer, they're going to say whatever they want about you, but if you call them out and pick up the phone and talk to them, they'll say, "Oh, my gosh. I didn't realize it was a real person who has feelings on the other end."
People just don't realize that. Number One is identifying the market. Number Two is creating the content for that niche. Number Three is building a lead generation system. Number Four was driving traffic. Number five, like I was talking about, is sending emails. There are three different classes of individuals that I narrowed it down to, which would be those three.
We'll get into more stuff, too, but just to clarify what I said, the three things are idiots, which we talked about, and the protectors. Protectors are the type of people who-just so you know-really protect their lists from the perspective of not letting anybody else in. They'll go out and have all these J-V partners mail out for them to build their lists and everything else. When it comes down to it and they ask, they don't mail for them.
That could be good and bad. There are many positives and negatives to that. First, you'll probably never get people to mail for you again. The mailers are people who look at their lists as a business and are analyzing numbers, looking at their open rates, looking at more advanced stuff, looking at their clicks and looking at their EPC, which stands for Earnings Per Click.
They're looking at these things because they know that the list is a valuable asset. There's an opportunity cost. If you don't mail, you'll lose out. If you know you can drive so many clicks to a promotion and you don't mail on a single day, it's like a hotel room. A hotel, for example, if they don't fill a hotel room, they lose revenue. It's the same thing. If you don't mail, you lose revenue. In my newsletter I talked a lot about that.
It's different costs if you have to send emails. Step Six, if you send emails, you'll collect checks. That's one of the things. That's the next thing, collecting checks. That's really the six-step formula. I can get into more of that if you want me to, but before we get into any list-building stuff, let me ask you this question. I know these are VIPS, but how advanced are the people listening? At what level? I hate to generalize, but do we have people who are brand new and starting out who are listening to this?
RIC THOMPSON: Yes. We're going to have a wide variety, Matt. I do want to pick your brain a little bit later on for the folks who are already established and already have a list, but I think for right now, let's focus on folks just getting started.
MATT BACAK: Yes. We promise we'll get to more advanced stuff, but I think we need to be very clear here for somebody who's just getting started because this will really help you out. One of the biggest questions I always get is, "What niche or what market should I get into?"
Want even more tips and tricks? This article was just a small portion of an hour-long interview. And this interview was just ONE of 24 top interviews conducted by Ric Thompson for Internet Marketing TNT. If you'd like to get your hands on ALL 24 interviews, simply >>Click Here<< and check out Internet Marketing - Very Important Profit Systems.
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