A Discussion with MATT BACAK Interview – Podcast
Host Gavin McCoy:
My guest on the Internet Marketing Newsletter today, the podcast, is Matt Bacak, from Atlanta, Georgia.
Hi, good afternoon Matt.
Matt Bacak:
Hey, thanks for having me.
Host Gavin McCoy:
Matt, you’ve had a fantastic career in internet marketing, and if we can start with just taking the clock back a few years as to what you did before you became an internet marketer.
Matt Bacak:
I’d have to go back more than few years. But what I did before I was an internet marketer, I was pretty much doing it in college. So back then, I was doing sales, I mean, I guess. I had my own company, so I had been running my own company since I was a kid.
When I got started, we called it the information superhighway. So everything that we know today wasn’t existing, pretty much. There’s really nothing that was around back then, maybe AOL, if that’s even around. So there’s not much. But before, initially what was I doing? I was just a kid that wanted to make a lot of money, I mean, really in my dorm room.
Host Gavin McCoy:
What was your first kind of interest in using the internet to market? How did you get that idea?
Matt Bacak:
So I was going out knocking on doors and trying to get people to buy stuff, and it was a pain in the butt. So instead of me chasing people down, I figured I wanted people just to come to me. And that kind of was the big thing. I was like, “If I could just get people to come to me instead of me, instead of me chasing them down, that would be a great scenario.” And that kind of caused me to start looking at this internet thing and get started doing stuff.
Host Gavin McCoy:
Did you initially sell hard products or did you go straight away for information?
Matt Bacak:
Yeah, I did. I sold cassettes. Information, yes. But on cassette tapes, on VHS tapes, so all of that. That was before the DVD, and now actually DVDs are going obsolete, so I’m actually seeing the next wave of things being obsolete, the stuff we were selling with information. But I was selling other people’s information, not my own. Actually it was Kiyosaki stuff, right, when he was getting started? So I sold the books, and I sold just hard stuff.
Host Gavin McCoy:
Everybody says the money is in the list. You’ve all got to start with one name and one small list.
Matt Bacak:
Well, I think for a lot of people that are listening, I mean, just to speak to them, I think there’s really two ways we could do it. One, creating, giving somebody an ethical bribe or something for free is always a great way to get people on your list. But I will say over my years, I would always tell people that … today, I would tell people, really, I think you have two choices.
Actually this latter, this new choice is a better choice I would believe for everybody is instead of giving something away for free, you might want to create it and make it a lower ticket product and have people opt-in with their credit card, so you can actually build a buyers list. And that’s going to be the best list you can ever build.
You know, you could build 100,000 people or 10,000 people. From 10,000 people giving away stuff for free, or you can buy and get a thousand people that bought something from you, even if it’s a dollar, that’s going to be so much better than the 10,000. So my point to a lot of people is, you can go one of either route, just realize all subscribers aren’t equal, but the best buyers you can ever get are the ones that opt-in with their credit card.
Now a lot of times today, you know, people will say, put an opt-in page up, drive traffic to the page, have people sign up, give them something for free. That’s what I’ve taught forever. But today I tell people, “Well, you have two routes and it’s which route do you want to go?” I prefer the newer route.
I didn’t think about that before, but more and more I start utilizing data, more and more I started looking at things, the more and more I realized the power of somebody opt-in with a credit card is so much bigger than the power of somebody just looking, because you get tire kickers, plate lickers, you get all these.
The thing is, you get complaints, more complaints. Somebody that gave you their credit card, now you have more, even they have bare commitment, but also you have more backup to say, “Hey, look you did, you bought this.” Instead of, “Hey you opted in.” Because today, people do some crazy stuff with opt-ins, but buying is a good gate too or a good hurdle people can jump over to really prove, to show you that one, they’re interested, and two, it’s going to make your list more powerful and more responsive than anything else you could do.
Host Gavin McCoy:
So definitely the starting point for a new internet marketer is try and find something to catch people’s attention?
Matt Bacak:
High value, and now it’s just according to how you want to price that. I mean, because there are people who sell 2,000 odd products for a dollar. You know what I mean? You’re going to get a lot of opt-ins if you do something like that. I’m not telling anybody to do it, but really, yeah, something of high quality, high value, because the first impression is the most important thing for everybody. If you do deliver something that they just pay $7 for something that’s worth 500 or a hundred dollars, they’re like, “Oh my gosh,” imagine what they’re going to give me when I give them more money.
Host Gavin McCoy:
So the definite thing to remember is high-value information, but low cost to get people hooked in. And, from that, I think you can kindle a sense of indebtedness because people think, “Wow, you’re really generous in giving us all of this stuff for next to nothing.” That sometimes opens the door for the next transaction.
Matt Bacak:
And the loyalty and the trust factor. I mean, that’s a big thing too. That’s one thing that’s underlining with all the lists that we’re ever going to build, the biggest thing is, when somebody comes in, especially the first time they meet you, people talk about building rapport, and that’s great, but the best way to build the best rapport is to build trust.
Everybody’s like, “Oh, you want to build these relationships?” The best way to build a relationship is do what the heck you say you’re going to do, and do it better. You know, under promise and over-deliver, you’re going to build so much more trust, and so much more better relationship with that people.
The other thing too, for a lot of people, because you know, I made millions, multi-millions from email, and I will say everybody’s like, “Oh, go out and build these … once somebody signs up, send out these relationship things.” It’s great and that’s a good idea, and it does make people all excited and feel good about it. But the point is, how you train your list at the beginning is how they’re going to treat you in the end.
So my point is, if you do let them know, “Hey, I’m going to give you good value stuff. I’m here to give you good value stuff that’s going to change your life or whatever feeling you have.”
Host GavinMcCoy:
In terms of once somebody gets onto a list of yours, email people often or not very often?
Matt Bacak:
Well, that’s really dependent on the individual, I think. So the most important thing for everybody listening is the decision you make at the beginning of the relationship. So if it’s how you want to train them, like it’s not just training them to give them good value and volume, but if you’re going to be sending emails every single day, then you better do it from the beginning.
If you choose to send three times a week or once a week, you want to be careful with that, especially on once a week, be very careful with that. If you train people, and I’ve seen this happen before with clients where they’re like, “You know what? I’m not going to mail every day like you do, Matt. What I’m going to do is once a week I’m going to mail every Wednesday.” If you miss a Wednesday, they’re going to get upset with you. If you change your behavior a little bit after they’ve been trained a certain way, it could cause some issues. So realize that when you are going on, it’s what you choose to do.
Now, I will say this for everybody listening. I mean, there is such thing as an opportunity cost, right? There’s also another thing, two things really is, opportunity costs and subscribers expire. My point is two-fold.
One, well let’s go with expiration thing is, so most people don’t realize, depending on the market that people are in. For example, if you’re building a list of people that are looking for a quick fix on something. I usually tell people, “Look for bleeding necks.” Like somebody who has a bleeding neck, they get it fixed, they don’t need you anymore. So they’re going to go away. I’m using that as an example, but they’re going to go away.
So the life of that is very short. So every market … people don’t realize this, but there is an expiration date. The average subscriber is going to leave. Now, in, for example, the internet marketing space, we have three months. That’s all we have a lot of times.
Then there’s going to be some people that stay around, but really people expire. People are like, “Oh, I want to go online. I want to go make money.” Then within three months, after three months, those subscribers will start dropping off because it kind of like there’s an expiration date…
This is a bridged version of the full interview which is available to listen to separately in the video at the beginning of this article.
