Broke, In Debt, and Building a List: The Posture Rule Vic Strizheus Never Broke

You’ve got maybe fifteen opt-ins on your list. No sales yet. Maybe you’re in debt from getting started at all. And somewhere in the back of your head is the thought that you should probably just wait until you look more successful before you start talking to anybody. Vic Strizheus started exactly there in 2005, broke, having borrowed money just to get in the game and blown through most of it before he understood what he was doing. What he did with those first fifteen opt-ins, and what he refused to do with them, is the real teaching buried in this call.

What do you actually do when you’re starting from zero?

No fancy funnel. No paid software stack. Vic built his first list with solo ads bought from other people’s lists, posts on Craigslist, and traffic exchange sites called safelists where you surf other members’ pages to earn credit for your own. That’s it. Cheap, manual, and slow. The part that mattered wasn’t the source, though. It was what he did the moment those names landed in his inbox.

• He tracked every source in a spreadsheet, noting which ones actually converted so he could rotate back to them later.
• He emailed every new opt-in personally, as himself, not as a company.
• He gave away his own phone number in that first email and meant it.
• He asked for nothing in that first message. No pitch, no link, no offer.

Compare that to what most people do with a fresh opt-in, which is blast them into an autoresponder sequence that opens with a pitch. Vic’s read is that you should opt into other marketers’ lists yourself and watch what lands in your own inbox. Almost every one of those lists just pitches you, over and over, with nothing else in between. Vic built the opposite of that on purpose.

Why does sounding desperate cost you more than a bad landing page?

Here’s where the call gets specific instead of motivational. Vic calls it business posture, and he’s blunt that it isn’t optional. The idea is simple: prospects can smell need, even when you never say the word out loud in your copy.

Never come from a needy position.

He’s talking about a felt quality in your marketing, not a script rule. You can write a technically flawless email and still leak desperation through pacing, through how many times you ask, through the whole shape of the pitch. And once a reader picks up on that, the relationship is over before it starts, no matter how good your offer actually is. As Vic Strizheus puts it, “it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.”

That’s why he answered every phone call from those early opt-ins the same way: he’d talk less than the person on the other end. Most people trying to close a sale talk fast and don’t really listen, because they’re already rehearsing their next line while the prospect is still mid-sentence. Vic’s version of the same call looked almost boring by comparison, and that was the point.

When are you actually allowed to tell your success story?

This is the rule most people break without realizing it. Once his first sale landed, Vic didn’t turn around and use his own struggle as the hook for the next pitch. He waited.

As he puts it on the call, “never, ever, ever, never talk about your struggles until you have overcome them.” The logic is straightforward once you hear it: telling somebody you’re barely making it while asking them to trust your advice is a contradiction they’ll feel even if they can’t name it. Share the struggle after there’s a result attached to it, not while you’re still living inside it.

So instead of pitching, he ran his early wins as private, no-strings webinars for the small list he’d already been personally emailing. No hard sell, no scarcity language, just his actual strategies, freely given, framed as a thank-you to people who’d stuck around, with no expectation attached to whether anyone bought anything. One small win turned into a webinar. That webinar turned into a next wave of buyers who already trusted him because he’d shown up for weeks without asking for anything.

None of this required a bigger budget or a smarter funnel. It required doing the unglamorous version of list building (safelists, Craigslist, cheap solo ads) paired with a version of yourself that wasn’t performing confidence, just refusing to fake it in either direction. Not overselling the struggle, not overselling the win.

The full session goes deeper into how Vic tracked and rotated those early traffic sources, plus the exact split-testing habit he still runs on every landing page today. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

All righty. We are live. How are you guys? Hope you're doing well.

My name is Vic. Welcome to the, this is our third, third get together, together for Internet Traffic Formula and I am, I'm happy to be back with you again. Hope you guys have been doing well. Hope you guys are excited.

Let's see, we got 847 people in the room, looks like here, and counting. So, that's a good thing. All right. Quick check before we actually dive into this.

I want to make sure you guys are with me here. If you would, as soon as you hear me, please give me a quick go ahead or something so that I know that we're here. All right. We are rocking.

All right. Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. Cool. So, here's what we're going to do, okay?

I will just assume that we don't have a lot of new people here because we're not excited. We're not accepting any new people to the Internet Traffic Formula. So, you know, hopefully this is not your first time here with us. Well, if it is, basically what we're doing here is we're just hanging out, you know, and I'm just answering your questions and what we're going to do today is we're just going to continue.

We got over 300 questions that came in since, you know, I sent out that last survey for questions and I figured there were a lot of really, really, really good questions and I think it would be good for us to kind of continue with that theme. Although, if you have questions, we may have a little bit of time at the end to where you can submit your questions here as well. Okay. Couple things before we get started, folks, okay?

Couple things before we get started. You may have noticed that – I'm just taking a look here. Okay. So, I'm going to go ahead and – I'm just taking a look and make sure you guys are – okay.

You may have noticed that – what is it? Modules 5 and 6, they're probably just showed up today. And the reason for that is because of me, really. I have been going through some personal stuff and did not have access to computers and so that should be available to you in the back office, you know.

Cool thing about life is that you never know what's going to happen, right? You never know what to expect. You never know what to expect tomorrow and that's the beauty, you know. Sometimes, you know, sometimes people think that, you know, people like Dave Wood and Jonathan Cronstand and Tony Rush and, you know, and Tracy Walker and Justin and Vic, you know, sometimes, you know, they don't have anything going on.

You know, a lot of times we do. We're all human beings but the thing is, is what's – what separates people in this life, you know, is you know, winners from people who lose of the thing that people who lose, they typically quit, you know, when anything happens. Like when you put up your first campaign, when you put up your first ad, when you know, when you try to build your first list, when you try to make your first sale and if it doesn't happen at the moment where you want it to happen, you know, a lot of people just throw in the towel and they just quit.

They just say, well, this is not for me. I'm just going to go try to find something else. You know, not realizing that that's the reality. And you know, the reality is, you know, it's an that everything is up to you.

A lot of times if we take responsibility for our own results and just do everything as if this is it, nothing else. When you started in this business and I saw a lot of questions came in from people who are new in the industry. Some of you guys are asking, Vic, I'm just getting started here. What do you recommend?

What's the first step? Another question I saw, actually quite a few people saying, hey, I've been trying to make money and I still haven't made any money, about to give up. Here's what I can promise you. If you're going to give up easily, chances are it's going to be very, very, very difficult for you to succeed.

I don't know anybody who's truly successful who did not encounter any issues and had to stay in the game far longer than the logic would say, you know what, just get out. Typically people who know exactly what they want, especially in business. It goes through for everything in life too. People who never, ever, ever give up.

There is one thing, guys, that my message to you today is. There is one thing that I can portray to you today that would be, just never give up. Just never let go of your dream. You just never stop persevering.

Just never stop searching, never stop doing stuff, never stop. A boxer gets in the ring. He gets knocked out, he falls down, he gets a knockout, whatever. He gets up and he goes at it again.

Maybe the first round he lost, maybe the second round he lost, but you know what? Maybe the third round. you know it's a victory right I and I promise you I promise you I promise you you will have a victory in your business you will have I you have a breakthrough if you just stick around long enough if you learn if you treat this as a real business game and you just do something every single day to take yourself closer to your ultimate goal you know to ultimate destination alright my friend so I'm for the I'm I'm you know usually we have the modules coming out on Monday I'm and this last week it got delayed until like this week so I apologize for that there's nothing you know it's it's all on me so I sorry about that I this next Monday's all on schedule I'm and we have PPC traffic really really cool stuff I want you guys to go through this stuff because some some things I'm I'll you know you guys will be learning I'm and next call is gonna be very interesting I actually wanna get your your guys's feedback on that on this stuff because I'm I'm showing you some some really really cool I pay per click stuff I in the modules coming up here and then we are diving into some some Facebook stuff I were diving into some I I I mobile stuff I'm and then ultimately I nobody by the time we're done you know I really couldn't really excited about I teaching you I traffic intelligence I stuff you know where to work to find your own source working what to go to to to search for traffic how to test new new ideas in in a hot prophetic bone you ideas noted that's not so exciting stuff coming up I'm awesome okay so next question was I'm about the I'm super agents okay so separate images address it real quick right now are superagency on we've got your registrations your applications were processed if you did not get your login you'll be getting a login came so that's that check your spam for folders just to make sure it's not in spam.

Sometimes it goes to spam, but if it didn't, you will be getting. So we were able to approve everybody, so if you submitted your application, you will be getting your login. Watch for that. Let me go ahead and address some questions here real quick.

Get back to my survey monkey here. Alright, so I'm just going to go down the list and I think you guys will get a lot from it. Again, we're just going to tackle these questions as they came in. So here's a good one.

Which copywriting books, seminars, will you suggest to read or visit? From where to get ideas for landing page titles? Thank you. I get my copywriting books, seminars, from where to get ideas for landing page titles.

I get my copywriting books, seminars, from where to get ideas for landing page titles. I get my ideas from just watching what's going on in the industry. I get my ideas from just being out there and just opting in and just looking around. You want to develop something and I teach this to people that I work with personally.

I say, as a marketer, if you want to be really truly successful, you want to take yourself and develop yourself into a marketer that would be, there is the 80 percenters, right? Or 98 percenters that are just kind of scraping by, right? Then there is a mediocre kind of level, okay? And there is great, and there is great, there is like great with a little bit of an extra, you know, on it.

So I want you to, if you would, right? Start seeing yourself as, you know what, I'm going to strive to get to the very top as, because I'm going as being a marketer. Why is that important? It's important because how you see yourself as a marketer from the very beginning goes through for everything.

How you see yourself, that self-image as a marketer, as promoter, as a business owner, as somebody who is out there providing value to the marketplace. If you're seeing yourself as somebody who is just, I'm just mediocre. I'm just average. I'm just trying.

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever say try. Never see yourself as somebody who is trying. Don't do that. If you do that, you're sabotaging yourself.

You're sabotaging your success. See yourself as somebody who is doing. What you do if you don't get the results that you expect, you're still doing. You're not trying.

Never say, I'm trying. What is trying? You're either doing or you're not doing. As a marketer, I say you always want to develop something called marketer's eye and marketer's ear.

I don't listen to the radio a lot. I don't watch TV a lot because there is nothing good anyways on it. What gets my attention is when I see different commercials, when I hear different commercials on radio. When I see, I actually watch commercials on TV.

I actually watch infomercials. Why? Not because I want to buy that stuff or because I just have nothing better to do, because I'm a marketer. I want to know what gets my attention.

When I watch a TV infomercial, when I watch a TV commercial, they only got 30 seconds. Imagine, 30 seconds people pay millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 30-second TV spot. That's a lot of money. I want to know what's their strategy to get my attention.

So as a marketer, I want to see how many ideas can I model after that TV infomercial or TV commercial. When I am driving in the car and I see a billboard and I look at it and I go, wow, that's, sometimes when you look at something and you kind of like you look at it and then you glance away, then you want to look. You know, you kind of, you got to be able to see a little bit. When you get there, you don't necessarily have to be like… because that's not how you're going to go.

And you know, you want to be able to see a little bit. And you know, you want to be able to see a little bit. And you know, I want to see a little bit. And then you check, you want to look look at it again right well I I I jot that down what was it about that banner or that post that got my attention that made me turn my head again sense and what I do is I just think you know I got my phone with me right you got your phone with you I just take a snapshot and I and I and I snap you know take a snapshot I all that alright alright write down an idea right and I think about it how can I implement in my in my business okay so always have this marketers I I'm gonna show you another our resource something really cool you guys can can implement right away I one sec here I will I'm I'll show you here in a minute this is really really good really good place to get good ideas can when I share my screen alright alright so there's a there's a there is a site called offer bolt game hopefully guys can see my screen here okay so this you know if if so you guys you know may may know this already but something a lot of you guys I would assume you don't know what this is okay so offer bolt I is a place where people go to you I take a look at others 33,000 over 33,000 result here and these are all pretty much CPA offers okay so these are these are different offers that people pay so I can go here right and I can take a look at okay so here's an offer name here's a payout right and here's a type so a payout look at that they put this offer pays forty eight cents when I I can go here and I'm and I can I I can create myself an account you know with a quick dealer I and I can promote this offer right here and I'm when somebody when somebody fills in a an opt-in form right when the lead just opts in I get paid forty eight cents can look at this when a lead fills out a form here for this offer I get paid thirty dollars okay when a lead fills out this former year I get paid forty dollars that sense so as a marketer don't get sidetracked it's very easy to get like suckered in into I you know and and and just kinda lose your attention as to what you're doing primarily right use this as a resource okay so what I go what what I do is I go here and I take a look at all these different no good fifteen dollars per lead so if somebody is willing to pay forty three dollars every time somebody fills out a an opt-in form right it doesn't matter if they purchase anything or not right I want to tell take a look at what is their landing page look like okay so a lot of times I it's gonna give me a it's gonna give me a preview but sometimes you know I have to have a see you gotta have a an account for this one here which I did but I don't remember my login here on this computer let's see if we can find something that would give us so what I do is I just go here and I just browse through different landing pages I just browse through different you know for the three different offers and and you know and to see what is that about that offer and and that particular landing page right right here we can we can view this landing page here oh it's not even working look in that beautiful landing page nope not working okay that these guys pay $30 you know for a CPA let's go back to… back here real quick.

Okay, I actually don't know if it's my internet or if it's something with… it does run a little bit slow so I'm not sure. Can you guys hear me? Okay, give me a quick why or something like that.

Let me know if you're still here, if my sound is okay. Yeah, I think I have to be signed in. Yeah, because it's not redirecting me to the right place. But go check out Offer Vault.

Offer Vault is a pretty cool place. It'll give you a lot of ideas. We can actually select different… we can go based on keywords.

So let's say, what do you want? What kind of keyword do you want? If you're into work from home industry, let's see what we can find there. Okay, so we got 62 results.

Now check this out. Some of these places pay out over $100,000. Over $100,000 every time somebody fills out a form. Okay, that is pretty crazy.

That is pretty crazy. So if somebody can afford to do that, do you think their landing page is converting? You know what I'm saying? Do you think you can model after that?

Probably, right? Probably. So Offer Vault.com guys. We're not going to take too much time here.

Just go check it out. Yeah, what a CPA is, it's cost per action. Okay, so… Okay, so…

Okay, so I have a product and I say hey, I'm going to put my product up on the CPA network and I'm going to say hey, I'm going to have all these affiliates promote my landing page. And every time somebody fills out an opt-in form on my site, I'm going to pay an affiliate that referred that opt-in. I'm going to pay them $3, $5, $15. Some of these companies pay out…

Some of these offers pay out $100, right? Every time somebody… But the reason they can do that is because they know their numbers. You see, if I know that for every lead that I have, right, that's a good lead, and in most cases, probably a double opt-in lead.

For every lead, you know, I will… On average, I will make, let's say, $300, right? Well, I can afford to pay $100 to acquire as many of those leads as possible if I'm doubling my money on the back end, right? So it's very important to know your numbers as a marketer.

And again, this is a little bit more advanced stuff. We do have a module coming up on CPA traffic. I'm going to teach you guys how to tap into these different CPA networks to promote your stuff if that's what you want, right? And pay somebody, you know, let's say you want to pay $1, $1.50 or $2 for a double opt-in lead subscriber.

That's a very, very clever strategy to get a lot of leads and have other people pushing traffic for you, and you only pay for results. Pretty cool stuff. We're going to talk about that. All right.

Let me go back to address some of these other questions here for you. Okay. GetResponse, by default, requires integration with other services via API. Okay?

Such as Leadpages. To be double opt-in. So if you use Leadpages and you integrate with GetResponse through an API, they require you to be a double opt-in. Okay, makes sense.

Do you use GetResponse with Leadpages? If so, no. All right, thank you. Thank you for the question.

Thank you. And now I'm going to drop it into the panel. First, Do you petition for your connected campaigns to be changed to a single opt-in? The answer to that is yes.

You can very easily contact GetResponse and say, hey guys, I connected my campaign to my lead pages through an API, it automatically put me on double opt-in, please set me up with a single opt-in. Either a phone call or an email will do and they'll put you on a single opt-in, not a problem. They do it all the time. Hey Vic, I think I missed this.

When will we get traffic from Super Agency? Where do we redirect it to? When we get traffic from the Super Agency, where do we direct it to? Anywhere you want.

With Super Agency, let me tell you something about Super Agency guys, I test stuff all the time. All the time. $250,000 is my testing budget per month, ongoing. So we test tons of stuff.

Different publishers. What I've learned in this industry is that there is so much garbage, it's ridiculous how much garbage there is. When it comes to traffic, it used to be, back in the day I remember the good old Google days to where everybody would just advertise on Google and pay very little money to Google and stuff like that. Kind of like mobile right now.

Okay? What I'm marketing right now is like Google used to be in 2005, I'm telling you. Mobile is hot. When you get that module on mobile traffic, just dive into it and just start experimenting because it's in its infancy right now and very, very inexpensive.

You can get traffic for like five cents per click. Good stuff. But back, I remember like 2005, 2007, 2008. Yeah.

It was very easy to get high quality traffic. There was hardly any shenanigans going on. Right now, there's a lot of stuff that's just not worth anything. Especially with different brokers and resellers and all these guys.

They sell traffic to like 50 different places and they just burn through those leads like crazy. So what we do with the traffic agency, with the super agency is we test a whole bunch of different lists, a whole bunch of different publishers and vendors and brokers and the stuff that actually is legit, that converts, we strike a deal with them and we say, hey, we're going to bring you and offer your stuff through the super agency to make sure the quality is high and we kind of monitor everything. So that's kind of the idea.

Now. I just negotiated a contract with a company. They have 3 million buyers that we can tap into and getting 30 to 40,000 fresh buyers per day. Very very good stuff.

I'm excited about that. Where can you redirect it to? There is currently internet marketing called IMNiche. There is business opportunities.

There is personal development. There is, I believe, health and wellness and maybe a couple more niches that we're able to get traffic for. However, if the demand is high for a particular niche, we can go out there and we'll see if we can open up another channel for a particular niche. But the demand has to be high enough for us to do that.

So next question, will Leadpages be a good platform to create landing pages? Absolutely. Leadpages is good stuff. Yep.

You can use Leadpages. All right. So next question. Will the super agency have lists?

Okay. Just explain that. Cool. Haha.

Can I take you out to dinner? Haha. That's a good. That's a question.

Can you take me out to dinner? That's a good question. I like that question. Will the conversion code work with Leadpages?

Will the conversion code work with Leadpages? I assume you're talking about conversion code for opt-ins? Yeah. You can put conversion pixels through Leadpages.

Vic, what is a good number of opt-ins to have on the landing page to make a decision on which is good to go with? Okay. So basically the question is. How many opt-ins do you need to get per landing page to decide if the landing page is good or not when you split testing?

I don't look at the number of opt-ins necessarily. What I look for is the percentage. So if you're rotating, right? If you're rotating landing pages and you're tracking conversions, well, you take a look at the percentage numbers.

So if you have one landing page converting at 34% and another one at 52%, it's obvious. It doesn't matter how many leads. It's the number, it's the percentage of conversions. So you just take the one that's converting the highest, keep that, drop the lower one, and then create another one and try to beat your highest converting one.

That's kind of the game. That's what I do. I just try to beat my best conversion. That's constantly, constantly, never-ending process.

That goes for a lot of things. That goes for my ads, for my landing pages. Pretty much everything. Yeah.

Pretty much anything that I can split test. When you started in 2005, how much budget did you have, did you start with, paid traffic, and what source was it? Okay, so when I started in 2005, I did not have a budget because I borrowed a lot of money to get started. I blew through the money not knowing what I was doing.

So I wouldn't call that a budget. I would call that a start. I would call that a good lesson. You know what I mean?

Because I didn't make a dime out of that. And I started out completely broke. I was fortunate enough to be learning from somebody who was very successful and I read a lot and I was just a good student. I was at the point where it didn't matter.

You know, I just did not, you could not convince me. First of all, I think this is important to understand folks, okay? You know, it's how you, it's how you pre-frame yourself, how you condition yourself every single day. You know, most people, they're, they're like, they're like that, that, that ocean.

I mean, they're just like one, one day they're here, another day they're there, and a third day they're, they're who knows where, right? They're like, they're never stable. They're never steady. They're just all over the place.

Their thoughts are all over the place. Their business is all over the place, right? They're just, they're just a big mess, you know, if you can call it that. And you know, and so, and that's, that's exactly how they see themselves, right?

They're just like, it's, they're very easy to be, you know, swayed different directions. When I got started in this industry and I was looking at people who were successful and I was looking at this guy and this guy and that guy, right, and I just said to myself, you know what? I'm going to be, I'm going to be a millionaire. I'm, there's, there's, there's nobody could convince me.

I was broke. I did not have any money, right? But nobody in the world could convince me that I wasn't already earning a million dollars a year. You just couldn't convince me even though I was broke, okay?

In my mind, I was already earning a million dollars a year and I saw myself as such, right? The, the, the, the road to success was very bumpy. The, my road to success was very, you know, I did not count hours. I did not, you know, I did not, you know, I, I didn't, I didn't say to myself, well, you know, I think I worked hard enough today, you know, it's, it's 11 PM, it's 12, you know, it's midnight right now, I should probably go get some sleep, you know, I didn't do that.

For me, that was either, I'm either going to do this or I'm going to die trying, basically, virtually. You know what I mean? And I just didn't, I, there was no other way of, when I, when I look at a lot of people, you know, a lot of people, they say that they want it bad, you know, I say, how bad do you want it? They say, I want it bad, man.

I, I want it really, really bad. But where, where the rubber is going to meet the road, you know, they want to be in bed by 11 o'clock, you know, in the evening. They, they want to get their eight hours or six hours of sleep, you know, and I say, well, look, if you want it that bad or, or people come to me, they say, Vic, you know, you don't understand that I have to work a job and, you know, and, and, and I only have two hours, two hours to work on my business. I'm like, two hours to work on your business, man, you got, you got two hours to work on your dream, right?

That doesn't make sense to me. You know, when I was getting started, that, what I wanted to do was, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to free my family. I wanted to free myself and, and nothing really mattered, right? Because I knew that was temporary.

And that mindset carried me through those bumps and, and obstacles and I was constantly listening to people who were making it. I just, I ignored everything. Any negativity from my, from my life, from my business, I ignored every, everybody who, you know, who would not support me in my vision, right? And what I did, because I went into the business with that kind of mindset and with that, you know, conditioning every single day, conditioning myself over and over and over again by just watching videos of, you know, success, success stories and, and testimonials and people who are making it and reading about people who overcame struggles and, and listening to interviews, right?

And just feeding my, you know, just feeding and supporting and nurturing my dream, right? That allowed me to, to, to hang on to that vision and kind of, it's like fueling that fire, right? That was already inside me. And that, when I, you know, when I first started to get my first opt-ins, I remember, how I did it is I, I did it through solo ads.

You know, I, I learned a con, this lesson or a concept of solo ads, right? To where I can send out a solo ad to somebody else's list. Get some opt-ins. I was also posting on sites like Craigslist.

I did some, some, some online, you know, some online traffic exchange sites, you know, to where, you know, what I did is I went to, what's those sites called? I'm blanking out on that right now. Safelist. Okay, I went to Safelist and, and these like traffic exchange sites where you can surf other people's sites.

And and what I did is I purchased solo ads from there. Okay. But see, what I did differently is I think it's not how, it's not what you do, it's how you do it. It's the attitude that you do it with.

You know, if you read a book, The Science of Getting Rich, right, Wallace talked about this principle. He says that it's not what you do, it's how you do it, right? It's you have to do a certain thing in a certain way. It's doing something in a certain way.

Because a lot of people can buy solo ads. A lot of people can buy traffic. A lot of people can buy, you know, can create a landing page. A lot of people can create the best looking website in the world, right?

But it's not, you know, it's doing a thing in a certain way. Well, a certain way to me was, you know, it's your, it's the angle that you approach your business with. It's your intention. It's the energy that you put in your business.

You know, if the energy you put in the business is like worry and frustration, well that's exactly what you're going to experience, in my opinion. Okay. So my energy was, you know what, I was fired up when I got my first 30 opt-ins, when I got my first 10 opt-ins by running a solo ad or by posting on Craigslist, right? When those opt-ins came in, you know what, I celebrated like crazy.

I haven't made any money yet. I'm in debt. But I celebrated like crazy, you know, because, you know what, I am a step closer to becoming a millionaire. I'm a step closer to, you know, to living my dream, right?

I'm a step closer to freeing my family. I'm a step closer to freeing myself, right? I'm a step closer to living my dream. I'm a step closer to freeing myself.

I'm a step closer to living the kind of lifestyle that I'm envisioning. Does that make sense? And so what I would do is I would email those leads myself. I did not rely on anybody.

I did not rely on the company. I did not rely on my sponsors. I did not rely on anybody. I was relying on myself and my passion for what I wanted to accomplish.

And what my mentor was telling me was, hold on a second, let me see if I've got a water here. I'm getting thirsty. What my mentor was telling me was, he says, Vic, you have to outsmart, you have to out cool your competition, okay? And he says, the way you're going to do that is by being yourself and being genuine, knowing exactly what you want and just don't worry about money, worry about improving yourself and sharing your little nuggets, right, that help you personally.

So that's exactly what I did, right? I got my first 15, 20, 30 opt-ins and I would email them, right? I would say, hey, my name is Vic. Thank you for visiting my site.

You were just on my site. I just wanted to let you know I'm a real person. I'm here for you if you're looking for a way to generate some income on the internet. I was promoting a business opportunity at that time.

So basically just a personal message, like never try to be this professional dude that would write this professional letter. Everything has to be correct and kind of flow. I was just writing like I would write to a friend, like to my best friend. And that resonated with people.

But it's not even what you write, it's the kind of energy that you put into that, right? It's what you expect. When I wrote those early emails, I remember this like it was yesterday because I will never forget it. My expectation was, you know what, if this person buys from me or not, it doesn't matter.

I want to build a relationship. That was my intention. I want to build a relationship. And I did a lot of personal contact.

I would just give away my phone number in the email. I would say, hey, if you ever need me, here's my phone number. But see, what I was doing was a little bit different from what everybody else was doing. Here's what you can do.

Opt into other people's lists. Opt into other marketers' lists and see what they're sending out. Okay? Take a look at the emails you will get from them.

Most of the time it's going to be buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, that's it. If you want to be successful, you've got to do things in a certain way. Connect with people. But I was building my business on small successes.

Little opt-ins turning to bigger opt-ins. And then I got my first sale. And I shot a video. And I said, hey.

Check this out. I just made $1,000 or $2,000 in a day. Most people work a whole month to make that kind of money. I was able to do it in a day.

I would like to show you how I did it. I learned one thing in marketing is that if you're being too pushy with your stuff, and this is just my opinion, guys. I'm just sharing with you my stuff. This is all private stuff here so that we don't have any outsiders.

And I promised you that. That I would just talk about stuff that works for me. So again, I can't teach you something I haven't done or don't do. But what – and I just lost my train of thought.

What I would focus on doing is I would just – I would build on small successes. But when that first sale came in, I was promoting business opportunity. I think I made like $2,000 my very first sale. I am broke.

Right? But I look at that and to me, that was like $200,000. I was so fired up. And then I would do a webinar and I would say, hey, I'm going to teach you how I did it.

I was never pushy with people. I learned that if you push people too much, they will resist. If you try to get them – if you're desperate, they will run away from you. But if you say, you know what?

It's working for me. I have no idea if it's going to work for you, but I'm going to share it with you. Just my way of saying thank you for being my subscriber. I'm going to do this webinar, this special conference call just for my subscribers exclusively and you're invited.

And just share your heart out, man. Just share your best ideas. Just share your best strategies that you learned, that you know so far. Just share it without any expectation of any sales.

Just do it. And do it from the – you know. Do it by being genuine. People will resonate with that.

And people will start looking at you and feeling a little bit differently about you and about your business. And then that first sale turned into two sales and three sales, right? But here's the thing, never, ever, ever, never talk about your struggles until you have overcome them. Never.

Never. Nobody will give you an illusion that you're just getting started and you really, really need the money. Never come from a needy position. That make sense?

For a couple reasons. Number one, it's going to scare people off. It just will even though you are not saying it, but if there is an ounce of the energy in your marketing, you're done. Okay?

Never come from a needy position. Even if you're the most desperate person in the world. Okay? Okay?

Because that's just going to kill your business. It's all about business posture. Why do people want to do business with you? There are thousands of other marketers out there.

Why would they want to do business with you? You've got to have posture. You've got to have – when you talk to people, I would leave my phone number in my email, right? And when people would call me up, I would talk to them, and I would try to listen twice as much as I would speak.

A lot of times when people are desperate, they try to – they talk fast, right? They don't let people – they don't let that prospect tell them anything. They just – and a lot of times, they don't even listen, right? They think they're listening, but what they're doing is they're thinking about what they're going to reply or how they're going to reply to that prospect.

And that's a bad thing, right? That posture thing is important. But that's how I got started. I was just building on small successes and gave away a lot of value and learned a lot and just read a lot, right?

I read books on human psychology. I studied solo ad marketing solely, just all by itself. I was – that's what I was doing for the first, I'd say, probably a good year. You know, that's all I was doing is just solo ads.

And what I would do is I would start a spreadsheet. And, you know, people or places that got me positive results, I would note them, and I would rotate them. So I would come back to that same place maybe, you know, every other month or something like that. So I would develop myself a list, right, of sources that I ran traffic with that worked okay for me.

And – Okay. Okay. Okay. And I would contact the publisher, and I would just say, hey, if you continue to give me, you know, good quality traffic, I'm going to continue to buy from you.

And just try to strike that good relationship. Guys, in this business, relationships can go a long way. If you know a publisher, right, if you run an ad and that publisher sends you good stuff, reach out to him or her, right, and just say, hey, I just wanted to introduce myself. Just let you know.

You know, if you get me good traffic, I'll be buying a lot of stuff from you, okay? Same thing with, like, network publishers, with network account reps, right? If my account – if I do – you know, if I start a campaign, whether it's pay-per-view or pay-per-click or whatever, right, and a lot of times I will assign you an account rep, okay, you want to be – you want to strike the best relationship you can with that account rep. Why?

Because – Because they can help you, okay? They can take your business to another level. They can recommend stuff. When we get to CPA stuff, okay, in the training a little bit later on, you want to strike good relationships with those CPA, you know, reps because they can make you or they can break you, okay?

And one idea, one place, one source, okay, if you master it, okay, if you get good at it, if you polish it, okay, it can make you a good person. It can make you six figures, okay, a year. I'm telling you. Why a lot of people fail in this industry is because they just jump on way too many things, you know, all at the same time.

They never master one thing long enough. They never polish one thing, you know, to the point to where it's really good. You know, it's shiny. It's sparkling, right?

It works. They, you know, they get a little bit in here, a little bit from here, a little bit from there, and they don't know what's working, you know. Where their traffic is coming from, what's converting, what's not converting, right? And that's a big mistake, okay?

All right, next question here. What is the FTP server in connection with Easy Learning Page Pro? Okay, so FTP server is when you sign up for a hosting account, okay, they will send you an email with your FTP login information, okay? Okay.

So just, it's going to be sent to you in the email, and then you just take that and then enter it into the Easy Learning Page Pro, okay? I have no questions. Just wanted to say you are awesome. Thank you.

I appreciate that. It was more of a comment than a question, okay? How do I use blog with ITF? Okay, so how to use blog with ITF?

It depends what your purpose for the blog is, okay? Okay. What are you using your blog for? A blog is a very cool place to kind of, you know, to create like a sandwich campaign.

So you always send people to your landing page. I never send people directly to your blog. Like, I never want to send people directly to my blog, especially, you know, invest in money on traffic. And then when they get to your blog, there's a lot of different places they can go to.

There's a lot of different distractions. They can go here. They can click on this. They can click on that.

They can get off your blog. I mean, there's just way too many opportunities for them to get out without opting in, okay? A visitor is a visitor, but a subscriber is somebody that you can market to over and over and over again, okay? So every single traffic that I run, every single campaign that I do always comes to the landing page, okay?

Whether it's, you know, if it's going to go to my blog, it's still going to come through the landing page if I'm paying for it, okay? If it's a campaign that I'm running. So blog can be a good idea if you're promoting, like, a higher ticket item, for example, right? And you want to build that little bit of a relationship with people.

Or maybe if you don't know what you're promoting yet, right? Maybe you're just getting started. Or maybe what you're promoting is not quite converting yet. Well, you know, you can send people, have them opt in, okay?

Create a lead magnet. Put it on your blog. A lead magnet is something, you know, hey, free report reveals how to X, okay? That can be a lead magnet.

Report is, guess what? It can be a blog post, right? Free video reveals whatever, right? Or, you know, five, you know, number one secret to blank, okay?

Whatever it is that you're into. So then you can start driving traffic through your landing page to that blog post, but now you captured their email. So now you can start marketing to them. So what I do a lot is I would actually, you know, start a campaign.

Put them through a landing. I would put them through a landing page and they opt in to my list and I would, you know, I would, you know, I might offer them something right away. But my intention is to really build and cultivate a relationship with these people, okay? And then I prepare them for some sort of an event, usually like a hangout or a webinar or private, you know, something, right?

Teleconference. And then just kind of cultivate these people to the, you know, to the point to where, you know, if I have, if I want to, if I want you, just do a massive explosive promotion in my business, right? I can do that, you know, because you have these people who have been cultivated already. You know, these people who are already paying attention to your stuff.

These people who are already looking for your next piece to come out, okay? We cover a lot of that stuff in the, your biggest month ever, okay? For those of you guys who have been through that. Okay, next question.

Will we be able to sell this course in the… The answer is probably, okay? Stay tuned for updates from Empower Network. Do you use different rotators for different traffic strategies?

The answer is yes. I use different rotators for different traffic strategies because I want to know precisely what's converting and how well. Is the URL scraper good to use? In the ITF, you said to do it manually.

URL scraper is a good tool. Okay, there's plenty of them out there on the internet. This is used for pay-per-view, okay, to scrape your URLs. You've got to be careful, though.

With URL scrapers, they… You can get thousands of URLs, but you just need to make sure that they are very targeted, okay? A lot of times, you know, you may find that URLs might not be very targeted. The reason I did not want to recommend any particular URL scraper is because I did not want to…

You know, I wanted you to do it right, right from the beginning. It's going to take a little bit longer to do it manually, but, you know, if you have the time, do the manual process because, you know, you're actually looking at every single link yourself, okay? But if you're going to do a URL scraper, I would say you've got to watch your reports, like, you know, multiple times a day to make sure that… See what keyword…

See what URLs are, you know, pulling the most traffic and see if they're converting or not, okay? Okay. Can we use the Empower or Prosperity Team disclaimer, Terms of Service and Contact, in the ELPP setup? Then you would have to contact Empower Network or Prosperity Team.

See if they will allow you to do that. I would not be able to answer that. All right. Is the ELPP in the back office the same as the…

The original version. I clicked on the back office version and none of my landing pages were there, Jerry. Jerry, that is… I'm not sure what version you're referring to.

There's two versions. Now, this is version two. This one, even though if you had the same version, you would probably not see your landing pages here because it's hosted its own by Empower Network, okay? So, that's probably why it's a different database.

Vic, along with Capture Pages… Would you suggest rotating Thank You Pages and Sales Pages as well? Heck yeah. If you have the ability to do that, why not, right?

If you can rotate, if you're promoting something of your own, or if you have different versions of Sales Pages, yeah, rotate them, you know, see which one is going to convert the best, okay? Okay, let's see here. What is the… This is a good question.

What is the very easy… Very easiest… Traffic method for beginners? What's the easiest traffic method for beginners?

Hmm. You know, I don't know if there is an easy… I don't know if there is the easiest one or not. You know what I mean?

It depends on what you resonate with, what kind of makes sense to you personally. You know, if… When you look at different traffic sources or different traffic getting methods, you know, maybe banners are not… You know, are a little bit confusing to you, so, but maybe, you know, an agency, right, getting traffic from an agency is more appealing, or maybe getting traffic through, you know, a PPV network is more appealing, or PPC, or mobile.

Kind of take a look at what you're kind of gravitating towards naturally, right, what kind of makes sense to you personally, and just try to master that, right, just try to polish that as well as you can. That's what I would tell you. I mean, it's not difficult to get traffic nowadays, folks. It's…

You know, people just presume and assume that getting traffic is difficult. It's not. I mean, you go to, you know, you go to a banner network, you just place some banners, take a look at your tracking, that's pretty much it, right? You go to do a pay-per-click, and by the way, I give you guys some really, really cool pay-per-click networks in module six, I believe it was, that's five.

You set up your campaign, right, you tell where you want the traffic to go to, set up your keywords, take a look at the traffic, take a look at the results, okay? If, you know, if you don't want to do any of that, then I guess, you know, you would have to do either a solo ad or just get traffic from, you know, one of the agencies. You know, agencies is probably the easiest because you really don't have to do any work except just give them the link and say, hey, you know, I want, you know, 300, I want 1,000 clicks, I want 5,000 clicks, you know, and they'll send it to you.

But don't take the easiest route. Okay? You know, the easiest route is not always the best. You want to know your game because what if something happens to that traffic next time, you know, or a month from now?

You want to, this is a profession, okay? And I think it's important for all of us to see ourselves as, you know what, this is my profession, this is my, you know, business, I'm the CEO of my own company, and I want to know how this machine runs. I want to learn it. I want to master it, you know?

Okay? And I think if we together, right, marketers come together with, and it's going to be up to the individuals, of course, but if every marketer, think about it, think how awesome, what we could do together, right? If we said, you know what, let's just be the best, let's decide to be the best marketer I can be. Okay?

I'm talking about, you know, doing things right, providing value in the marketplace, and just trying to, you know, be the best marketer I can be. Okay? Just trying to contribute more than you take. Does that make sense?

How awesome could this place turn to be? Does that make sense? I mean, we can do something, we got like, we got 1,300 people in the room right now, right? If every one of us decides, you know what, let me be the best version of marketer, let me get to the mastery level myself, and you know what, I'm going to share what I know with the rest of the world.

I'm going to just go out there and start doing it. I'm going to just go out there and start sharing. I'm going to start building my business through value-based marketing, right? I'm going to be out there, and I'm going to claim a leadership role.

I'm going to be out there, I'm going to put my stake in the ground, and I'm going to say, you know what, this is my territory, and I'm going to take care of my subscribers. I'm going to take care of my list. I'm going to take care of people who follow me on Facebook. I'm going to take care of people who buy my stuff, right?

You know what, we can literally change the landscape of this industry. Okay? And so it's a matter of just whether you're a beginner or not, it's a matter of just deciding, you know what, I'm just going to study this, I'm going to master it, and I will never give up. Okay?

That's it, because if somebody can do it, I can do it. Okay, let's take a couple more questions here. What should we do with follow-ups when we start to get leads? Okay?

I think I kind of addressed that a little bit already. Hey, Vic, thank you for all the price information. Should we be segmenting our lists for every email blast? It depends.

You know, I assume that you're talking about your opens from your clicks, from your non-opens and all that stuff. You know, if you want to do that, you can. I don't always do that. Okay?

You can segment them. Let's say if you do a campaign, right? If you do, like, preparing them for a launch event. You know, preparing them for a launch or something like that.

Or if you do a series of promotional emails to the same list, then segmenting would be a good idea. Right? So that you don't, you know, you don't piss people off who have already opened an email on a particular topic, and then you're just kind of sending out follow-ups with the same topic. You know, that would be a good idea.

Hey, Vic, in reference to the super agency, what website is it asking for us to enter on the registration form? If you have a personal website or a blog. Or something like that. That's what it means.

But that is, I believe that's optional. Okay? Vic, if I send you a link to my three landing pages, would you tell me what am I doing wrong? Okay, so this person is asking for a, like, a landing page critique.

You know what? We can do that. You know, if you guys want to critique. Do you guys want to critique some landing pages maybe next time or something like that?

Because we can, we can probably do that. We can probably do that. I can have you guys submit, you know, your landing page URLs and we can take a look at it together and kind of go through them and give you some feedback on that. Okay.

Hey, Vic, is there a registration form or website to access ITF or just from Empower Network? Okay, so Internet Traffic Formula currently lives inside of Empower Network back office. I'm hoping a day would come soon that, you know, Internet Traffic Formula is going to have its own house. You know, and it's going to, you know, it's going to say, you know what, I'm, you know, I'm going to live by myself.

And that day, I believe, is coming because this is not a, you know, a fly-by-night. This is not a just, like, one-time shot kind of deal. You know, the cool thing about what you guys just did, you know, when you invested in Internet Traffic Formula, is because, you know, we're talking about strategies that, you know, I mean, the stuff we're talking about right now, you know what, maybe a year from now, we're going to be talking about something different, right? New stuff that comes up, right?

Well, the thing is, is you guys are first students with Internet Traffic Formula, right? And you invested in this and nobody's going to take your login away from you ever, okay? So when we have the second round of students coming in and we have these types of calls, and maybe, you know, there's an update or something that comes out for the next round, well, you guys get access to that as well, okay? So this can literally be an ongoing learning for you for, you know, years to come, okay?

So, yeah, for that, we, I would personally like to, you know, to see Internet Traffic Formula have its own place, which I think it will. Again, just kind of watch your emails for updates from Empower, and they'll tell you. Vic, first of all, I want to thank you for the great trainings. You are welcome.

Okay, question about solo ad. And is there any service that you use or recommend to buy a solo ad? Yes, there is, as a matter of fact. There is, go find, I don't remember what module that was on solo ads.

I think it might have been three or something like that. But I give you a resource. There is tons and tons and tons of solo ad providers and vendors you can go to. That I personally, I personally, you know, rent solo ads with.

Now, I cannot tell you that, you know, all of them are still providing the same quality of traffic today like they used to. I mean, it's just my collection that I've accumulated over the years, right? So just kind of test them out, right? And, you know, and see if you like them.

I don't do solo ads as much as I used to. I buy traffic now more individually. I buy traffic now more in bulk from, you know, different, you know, vendors. And I try to cut out the middlemen as much as I can.

I buy from a lot of networks. I do a lot of, you know, PPV, mobile PPC type stuff as well as agencies. So, but there is a resource for you, okay? Let's see.

That's a good question right here. My name is LeManuel and I want to say you're the best. I appreciate that. Thank you.

My question is if you have a list of people who have, who has not opened your emails over the last 60 days, should I delete them from my list? That's a good question. I think 60 days might be a little bit too soon. But I think maybe 90 days or 120 days would be good enough, you know, time period.

If you want to keep your list, you know, especially if you're paying for, you know, based on how many contacts you have in your autoresponder, that might be a good idea, okay? So, but you have to, you know, there has to be a way for you to be able to pull them up like that. So if somebody, if you send, if you've been sending out emails for, you know, for three months, you know, and there is a segment of your list that never, ever opened your email, in the last three months, you know, it might be a good idea to just get rid of them, okay?

It's going to help you in a couple ways. Number one is, you know, it's going to cut down your, you know, your cost, hopefully, for how much you pay for the autoresponder per month by having a little bit less contacts. And two is it's going to help you with deliverability with your emails because if you have a lot of contacts and, you know, you get like 2% open rates on your emails, you're going to be able to pull them up. All the time, you know, and nobody is opening your emails.

ISPs and, you know, Google and Yahoo and Hotmail and AOL and all those companies, you know, they know that, right? And so what's going to happen eventually is they'll start sending your emails to spam, okay? So that's another reason for you to, you know, share good stuff with your list. Really take care of your list so that your email open rates are going higher, right?

You know, if you're having a 2% email open rate. Right? On your broadcast, you know, you got to, you know, that has to be improved. I mean, it's not acceptable, okay?

Because, I mean, with that kind of, you know, open rate, you're not going to be in business for very long, you know? And how do you change that? You change that by start, just decide, you know what? I'm just going to start providing good value to my list, right?

Not being pushy salesman, not always asking for money, right? How would you like people to talk to you? How would you like people to, you know, how would you like people to market to you? What gets your attention?

Okay, if I'm going to email you all the time saying, hey, this is the next best thing, this is the next best thing, and you should join here, and this is why, this is why, this is why, every single day. Would you feel good about it? No, right? So why would you do something like that to other people?

Okay, so put yourself in that prospect's shoes. And base your marketing, you know, based on that. All right, I was getting emails from my sponsor for two years before I finally signed up. I'm keeping people on my list.

Yeah, Chris, that's, you know, you've probably been opening his emails and reading his emails, right? So there is not, guys, don't take, what I'm telling you right now in these trainings, you know, this is not like, okay, this is how it's supposed to be and everything else is just, no, not going to work. You know, I know some people who make a fortune just hammering their list, you know, five times a day. Works for them, great.

All right, great. I'm not going to teach you that because that's not what I do. And since you purchased a product that I developed and develop, right, I'm going to teach you stuff that I do. So what you need to do, ESC, you're not going to, you never, you're not going to, you're not going to, you're not going to, you will never be me.

You will never be Dave Wood. I will never be you. I will never be Dave Sharp or Jonathan Cronstand or Tony Rush or, you know, or Aaron Rashkin, right? But you know what?

I will be me. And that's what you need to be is you need to be yourself. Find your own style. Find your own way, right?

Find yourself as a marketer and stick with that, okay? There is going to be a, you know, a character that you're going to embody, right, as a marketer. How do you want your people? Like my character as a marketer is, look, I just, I'm just very real.

You know, I don't put any facade like when I'm talking to somebody, when I'm on video. I'm just, it is who I am. I mean, I don't resonate with a lot of people. Great.

I don't want to resonate with a lot of people, you know, but I want to resonate with people who resonate with me. Does that make sense? So that way, I don't have to constantly walk in this, you know, like, you know, every time I turn on the camera, I turn into a different person or every time I talk to somebody, I turn into a different person. You know, it is what it is.

And now marketing becomes fun because, you know what, you are who you are. You don't have to worry about trying to please everybody, right? And people who resonate with you, they'll follow you. That's great.

All right, guys. Listen, what we're going to do next time probably is let's do some Lending Pages critiques. I think that would be a good thing to do for all of us. We'll send you out another survey.

And, again, I want to keep these calls down to an hour. Hopefully, you guys got a little bit of value tonight, you know, maybe another two. Go check out the Offer Vault, you know, if you want to get some inspiration, some ideas for Lending Pages. You know, what I do is start journaling, right?

Start, you know, having a swipe file, you know, of ideas. That can be for Lending Pages. That can be for, you know, email headlines or subject lines. That can be for emails.

That can be for sales letters. That can be for videos. That can be for, you know, just like people you want to market. Model after, right?

That kind of stuff. And create yourself this swipe file, you know, that you can come back to for inspiration, for ideas, you know, and do that. So I appreciate you all. Have a great day.

I look forward to seeing you guys here again next week on Thursday. And until then, make today and this week the best way you have ever had. I'll see you guys around.