Don Nicholas
Managing Partner
Mequoda Group, LLC

Dear friend and fellow Internet marketer,

If you're a writer, editor, website designer, or publisher of any kind, you know the challenges of marketing information products on the Internet.

You know that in order to be successful over time, you need to acquire lots of new customers, build long-lasting relationships with them, and keep selling them more and more of your books, newsletters, special reports, videos, audios, CD-ROMs, webinars and live events.

That's not an easy task. But there is help available.

Sure, there are plenty of so-called Internet marketing gurus who are eager to take your money in exchange for sharing with you their theory of online marketing. I say theory because many of them have never actually done what they claim.

And then there are the niche topic experts who will happily charge you a premium for relating how they achieved one aspect of Internet success such as copywriting, or search engine optimization, or using Google AdWords.

But very few of them have a fully developed, replicable program for producing consistent marketing results. And almost none of them will tell you exactly how much profit they achieve, in each area, using numerous marketing channels and media.

Nevertheless, there are a handful of publishers—large and small—who are succeeding with online marketing beyond your wildest dreams!

What sets them apart from the hundreds of others who fail or enjoy only modest success?

The answer is this: They have a system.

• Not a haphazard collection of out-dated and disconnected habits
• Not a hit-or-miss ad campaign in a couple of media that sometimes produces a few sales
• Not a website featuring a mediocre sales letter landing page that's cobbled together from previous print campaigns

They have a marketing system that, when executed with precision, produces regular, predictable and quantifiable results.

Marketing success leaves a trail of clues

I have spent my entire adult life working with publishers, from huge, media giants like Gannett, Hearst and Time Inc. to hundreds of small and medium-sized, special-interest magazines, newsletters, book and website publishers.

When the commercial Internet came along, I jumped onboard immediately. Since 1994, I've studied every scrap of Internet marketing and online publishing information I could lay my hands on.

I have one client who calls me a genius for helping him build a network of websites that sold for $85 million.

And I helped a print publisher triple their total revenues to more than $100 million per year with an aggressive strategy to sell both online and print subscriptions from one website.

Then in 2004, I assembled a team of top copywriters, authors and consultants to help me dig even deeper into what works and what doesn't.

We began to study some of the most successful online publishers in an effort to determine what strategies, tactics and techniques are the most effective for making money on the Internet.

To date, the Mequoda Research Team has spent thousands of hours researching and analyzing Internet marketing systems from over 2,000 different media websites including Amazon.com, ConsumerReports.org, CooksIllustrated.com, DailyReckoning.com, eBay, Fool.com, Forbes.com, LendingTree, Tim Carter's AsktheBuilder.com, University Health Publishing and WSJ.com.

• Some are very large, very successful Internet companies.
• Some are quite small, mom-and-pop publishing enterprises that nevertheless make an astonishing amount of money.
• All are Internet publishing companies from whom we have learned precisely what kind of online marketing works—and what doesn't.

Based on these findings, we've identified the key behaviors, metrics and actions essential for website marketing success. We call it the Mequoda Marketing System.

The system is the solution

The Mequoda Marketing System is a two-step program that methodically attracts new customers, captures email addresses and builds customer relationships.

It supports a robust multi-channel database marketing program that includes 27 paid and free media sources that any publisher can use to drive people to its all-important Mequoda Internet Hub.

Once names are gathered, successful publishers use six database marketing distribution channels—links, promotional email, editorial email, direct mail, phone and fax—to contact the people in the database and drive them to one of the company’s marketing satellites to be monetized.

It sounds complicated, I admit. And it's not exactly easy, but it is quite simple once you understand all the components.

I'm convinced that any publisher with a viable niche topic can succeed using the Mequoda Marketing System.

Answers to your most pressing questions about online marketing

How do you convert subscribers to a free email newsletter into paying customers?

We've studied successful Mequoda Marketing Systems that have email subscriber files with a circulation of just a few thousand people, as well as files as large as eight million. And we've seen annual spending per email subscriber that ranges from $8 per subscriber to a high of $180 per subscriber per year.

In How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System from the Mequoda Group, we reveal just how the best Internet marketers maximize conversion rates and monetize their free email subscribers for the highest possible profits.

How to create website system architecture, design and set-up to:

• Attract media users searching for information on a specific topic
• Capture email addresses using free premiums and floaters
• Implement upsell order flows and rapid conversion landing pages

In How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System from the Mequoda Group, we'll also explain:

• How to use subscription premiums as catalysts for your customer acquisition campaign
• How to create different kinds of website pages and optimize them for the search engines
• How to create a series of both free and premium reports to increase circulation and profits

Plus you'll find the details of how some of the most successful online publishers:

• Use both paid and earned media sources to build email circulation
• Monetize customer relationships using five separate channels of communication
• Measure the key metrics of their online enterprise with an integrated budgeting and forecasting tool*

The great fallacy of opinion research vs. marketing research

When people tell you what they do/buy/believe, that's opinion research. When you can actually observe and measure what they do/buy/believe, that's market research.

Hard facts. Tested techniques. Proven procedures.

That's what the Mequoda Marketing System is all about.

For the How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System report, we've used our very own Mequoda Website Network to illustrate the Mequoda Marketing System components.

The Mequoda Website Network is owned and operated by the Mequoda Group, a small, rapidly growing B2B publishing organization that is just over two years old. The Mequoda Website Network is a living laboratory used to explore and document best practices for online publishing using the Mequoda Marketing System.

We have a full-time staff of three (Editor & Publisher, Creative Director and Business Manager) based in Bristol, Rhode Island near Roger Williams University. At any time, an additional 15 to 20 members of the Mequoda Research Team are engaged in active research and testing using parts of the Mequoda Website Network.

Additionally, the Mequoda Design Team, comprised of system architects and website designers, is currently working on 15 Mequoda Marketing Systems operated by a variety of B2B and B2C special-interest publishers. Six of these systems are now live.

We developed much of the Mequoda Marketing System from building out these website networks for our clients. Much of what we learned is incorporated in the How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System report.

That means you get to see our actual results. Not theory but real numbers from a genuine Mequoda Marketing System user—us!

Why the so-called gurus and their products seldom work

Have you ever bought someone's Internet marketing information product and been disappointed?

There are generally two reasons.

Either the so-called guru isn't really an expert and can't prove his performance.

Or the product covers only one aspect of a much larger marketing program that can't be replicated in isolation.

It's just like a writer trying to create content without the proper context. If the words don't fit into a larger framework, they don't make sense.

The incongruence of the so-called guru's advice and your inability to achieve the expected results creates an unbearable dissonance.

In other words, you're disappointed because the so-called guru's advice doesn't match your experience.

Learn to model the precise methods used by successful publishers

As I see it, if you're a serious information publisher (in any medium), you have these choices:

• You can flounder around trying to learn Internet marketing by trial and error.
• Or you can buy advice on individual aspects of marketing from any of the hundreds of so-called gurus who may or may not have actually solved part of the Internet marketing puzzle.
• Or you can discover what the Mequoda Research Team and the Mequoda Website Design Team have learned by studying the world's most successful Internet publishers and incorporated into the Mequoda Marketing System.

Now, wouldn't you really prefer to have a proven system than a collection of dysfunctional procedures and unsubstantiated theories?

* Order How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System from the Mequoda Group today and you'll also receive, TWO FREE BONUSES, valued at $97 each! You'll get the Mequoda Online Publishing Model Excel spreadsheet file ($97 value) and the Mequoda Source Analysis Model Excel spreadsheet ($97 value). These interactive, budgeting and forecasting tools are indispensable aides to measuring the key metrics of your online publishing business and are available to you at no additional cost!

With my sincere wish for your marketing success,

Don Nicholas, Managing Partner
Mequoda Group, LLC

P.S. One person attending our recent Mequoda Summit (online publishers conference) told Newsletter on Newsletters Publisher Marlene Jensen that he'd cancelled his subscriptions to a number of e-marketing publications (free and paid).

"They're tips and tactics, but nothing says they work together," he said. "I'm here because Mequoda is a system, an entire business model."

I couldn't have said it better myself!

P.P.S. Remember, if you order How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System from the Mequoda Group today you'll also receive, at no additional cost, the Mequoda Online Publishing Model Excel spreadsheet file (valued at $97) and the Mequoda Source Analysis Excel spreadsheet file (valued at $97). These interactive, budgeting and forecasting tools are indispensable aides to measuring the key metrics of your online publishing business and are available to you at no extra cost when you buy this report!

P.P.P.S. As with all our products, How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System from the Mequoda Group is covered by our 10X guarantee. If at any time during the next 12 months you're dissatisfied in any way with How to Start and Run an Effective Internet Marketing System—if you're not absolutely convinced you received a minimum of 10 times the value for your investment—write to me, and I'll send you a prompt refund of your entire purchase price.

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