Mequoda team members
Michael Phillips, Aimee Graeber,
and Don Nicholas

Dear Colleague:

In August 1999, Rosemary Gardner* was a successful author, newspaper columnist and newsletter publisher. At age 47, she had worked long and hard to be recognized as an expert in the field of gardening — and to make a good living doing what she loved.

Rosemary was terrified the Internet would spoil it all.

From what she had read — her beloved books, newspapers and newsletters were all going to be replaced in a matter of years by the Internet — a vast offering of information that would soon be available for free to every man, woman and child in America.

She asked me what she should do to protect her life and her livelihood?

“Embrace the Internet,” I told her. “Use your knowledge of gardening and reputation to build a new media empire that is platform agnostic — one that can prosper even if print dies, one that does not rely on any single medium, channel, publisher or partner to build your brand and marketing your information products.”

“Take control of your publishing future by building direct relationships with your most loyal customers,” I told her.

Today, Rosemary owns a $75-million niche media empire that is highly profitable.

The Internet did not destroy Rosemary’s life.

To the contrary, the Internet is the nexus of Rosemary’s media empire.

Her email newsletter, Gardens Daily, ended 2005 with 2.7-million opt-in subscribers in 41 countries. While her email newsletter is free, the average Gardens Daily subscriber spent $25.48 direct-to-publisher on Gardens Media Group books, newsletters, memberships and tours in 2005. In addition, Gardens Media Group sold another 235, 403 hard cover books at retail bookstores and garden shops generating $5.9M in retail sales in 2005 and exposing Gardens Media Group to thousands of new customers.

*A Mequoda Marketing Parable: Rosemary Gardner is a composite case study based on the 35 clients we’ve taught the Mequoda Marketing System over the past 12 years and the hundreds of publishers we’ve interviewed over the past three years for the Mequoda Daily & Library.

How Rosemary transformed her book and newsletter into a $75-million media empire is a process I’ve been studying, testing, refining and teaching publishers since 1995.

We call the process the Mequoda Marketing System.

Mequoda Marketing System Facts:

• The Mequoda Marketing System is business model agnostic and can be used to sell information products, generate highly targeted advertising inventory or both.
• The Mequoda Marketing System is massively scalable for any B2C or B2B publishing operation where there is a clearly identifiable group of like-minded individuals. Media entrepreneurs routinely use the system to double their online revenues year after year for several consecutive years.
• Through hundreds of interviews, we’ve identified just 51 publishers who use the Mequoda Marketing System and average between $18 and $90 in online revenues per free email subscriber per year. We’ve identified one publisher who went from no online revenues in 1998 to $110-million in 2005 using the system.
• Since 1995, we’ve taught the Mequoda Marketing System to 35 publishers. One large consumer publisher that was in a steady-decline during the late 1990s, embraced the system in 1999 and in 2005 topped $190-million in total information product revenues — a whopping 16-percent increase over 2004.
• The Mequoda Marketing System is software and operating system independent. It is a set of seven business strategies that when practiced as a system, form an Internet-centric, audience-driven, database marketing system that can be operated by one person or a small team of marketing and publishing professionals.

How can you learn about and implement the Mequoda Marketing System?

1. Internet Strategy for Publishers Private Seminar & Workshop

   In just one day, I’ll teach you the seven business strategies that make up the Mequoda Marketing System and I’ll scope the time, budget and resources that would be required to implement the system. We’ll build a simple three-year business model that will forecast revenues, costs and profits that you could expect the system to produce for your organization.

2. Mequoda Marketing System Training & Support

   At your and my option, we can enter into a six to 12 month coaching relationship, where we will work on:

   • Exploring the information needs of your target audience
   • Creating a detailed version of our business forecast
   • Choosing topics for your email newsletter
   • Selecting sources to build email circulation
   • Setting your editorial and promotional contact frequency
   • Prioritizing your information product development efforts
   • Creating job descriptions and hiring required staff
   • Planning, executing and evaluating your first marketing campaigns
   • Communicating with staff, management, directors and investors

3. Mequoda Marketing System Architecture & Design

   The Mequoda Marketing System Design Team, led by Aimee Graeber & Michael Phillips, can scope, architect, write, and design a complete Mequoda Marketing System and Website Network for your organization that may include:

   • A Mequoda Internet Hub and a high-frequency Mequoda email newsletter to serve as the 24/7 nexus of your integrated customer acquisition and database marketing efforts.
   • Multiple free information products, Rapid Conversion Landing Pages and Up Sell Order Flows to drive your email newsletter subscription acquisition efforts using both free and Paid Media sources.
   • Information product marketplace with multiple dedicated Product Marketing Websites and Subscription Marketing Websites and their associated Sales Letter Landing Pages and Up Sell Order Flows.
   • Information Product Catalog Marketing Website with multiple information product category pages, product pages and high-performance shopping cart with quick-shop functionality.
   • Classified Marketing Websites and Lead Generation Websites to connect buyers and sellers of products and services inside your user community.
   • Membership Websites to offer your audience a searchable, in-depth library of answers to their on-demand questions and a place to share information and inspiration with other members of the user community.

Explore how you can double your online revenues every 12 months:

I am available to teach Internet Strategy for Publishers privately 12 times a year or about once a month. We’ll spend three hours in the morning teaching you and your team the seven Mequoda Marketing System best practices and sharing in-depth examples of how other publishers use the system to double their online revenues every 12 months.

Then in the afternoon, we’ll explore exactly how the Mequoda Marketing System can work for you. We’ll walk the whole process on starting and running a Mequoda Marketing System including a three-year business forecast using the Mequoda Internet Marketing Model which will be yours to keep at the end of the day.

Then you and your team can decide how to proceed:

• Engage me and the Mequoda Team to help you launch a Mequoda Marketing System that can double your online revenues every 12 months… or
• Chalk the day up to an interesting educational experience and be done.

To apply for a private presentation of Internet Strategy for Publishers, email or call Julie Ottomano, our Consulting Services Manager. If you and Julie agree that your organization and ours can benefit from the day, Julie will schedule a free 30 minute conference call with me to discuss your online opportunities, organizational needs and information marketing strategies.

I encourage you to join Rosemary Gardner and the elite group of media entrepreneurs who have embraced the Internet and are now generating 20, 30, 40 or 50-percent of their revenues on the Internet.

You can double your online revenues every 12 months using the Mequoda Marketing System just as dozens of other savvy publishers have done before you.

I look forward to hearing from you.

PS: If you’re the type of person who wants to do lot’s of research before reaching out for help, consider buying the Internet Strategy for Publishers & Authors Video Seminar. It’s the next best thing to having me as your personal Internet marketing coach.

PPS: Still not yet convinced that you can double your online revenues every 12 months? Then consider these comments made by some of the Internet’s most successful publishers and authors:

Ask the Builder currently sells about 400 e-books and 200 checklists monthly, ranging in price from $6.95 to $47. This is equal to nearly $1,000 in daily sales of downloadable content.

“The Internet has completely turned upside down the old publishing model where the publishers made all the money and the writers had no power. Now, writers can instantly become publishers, and they need to do that. Anybody can be a publisher on the Internet. And if you take your time and publish really good content, it will be found. Most people don't want to work. So if you decide to put your nose to the grindstone and you pick a niche and become the expert in that niche, it will pay off. There is just so much opportunity out there. There is this never-ending conveyor belt of people who need to learn about things. They don't have a clue what to do. Find out where those markets are, where people need information and tap into it.”

— Tim Carter, Author and Publisher, Ask the Builder

Agora Financial Group, powered by the 500,000 circulation The Daily Reckoning, generated 73 percent of its total annual revenue online in 2005, primarily by selling print products linked to DailyReckoning.com.

"We actually think of DailyReckoning.com as an e-communication website. It is the 'front door' through which all our business activity passes.”

— Addison Wiggins, Publisher and Editorial Director, The Daily Reckoning

Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the 25-year best-selling Guerrilla Marketing series, said it best in an interview in How to Become Both Published and Profitable:

“Someone once asked me how much I made for my first Guerilla Marketing book. The answer I gave was $10 million… The book, itself, only paid me about $35,000 in royalties, but the speaking engagements, spin-off books, newsletters, columns, boot camps, consulting, and wide open doors resulted in the remaining $9,965,000.”

— Jay Conrad Levinson, Author, Guerrilla Marketing

For GoalsGuy Learning Systems, Inc., the Internet and search engine optimization are key to driving revenue and profit growth.

“We sell a lot of products. This just happened two days ago. We had a human resources executive for a large oil company who was looking for some material to teach their employees. As a result of searching the words ‘goal setting’ they came to our site, asked us to overnight a package, and anywhere from 30,000 to 40,000 books will be sold as a result. And that's not a fluke.”

— Gary Ryan Blair, Author and Publisher, Goals Guy Leaning Systems

Some six million visitors per year show up on the Cook’s Illustrated website which has been the primer driver to grow Cook’s Illustrated paid circulation to more than 700,000 and facilitates the sales of more than 40 branded information products.

“We feel the publishing business is increasingly becoming a database business. Ultimately, that’s how we view the business side of what we do. But we don’t view our various businesses as separate universes. We have a single database of people with a strong interest in cooking. It’s a large database with lots of names from lots of sources, and we have lots of ways of sorting through them.”

— Chris Kimball, Publisher and Editor, Cook’s Illustrated