Welcome WELCOME The pool party is ON. You can find the margaritas and soft drinks over in the corner... ... the DJ has set up and is playing already... ... and after you've had a chance to dip yourself in the pool, and as the party heats up... ... perhaps you'd like to also take a look at this little offer I am making? The offer in a peanut shell: I am offering to take the winning bidder — let's imagine it's you — and... 1. To give you a NAME and credibility on the Internet, along with MY FULL ENDORSEMENT, and... 2. To DRIVE MY RESPONSIVE READERS to the optin for your list, and... 3. To work with you and co-create a SEXY ACQUISITION FUNNEL (free giveaway + paid thank-you page offer), which you can use to build up your email list AND make money on day zero by turning new subscribers into buyers right away, plus... 4. I'm guaranteeing, with my two hands, that if you win this auction you will MAKE BACK 100% OF YOUR MONEY before I'm done endorsing and promoting you. Again, I will send out a dedicated email to endorse you and your offer, and to drive my audience to you. If you don't recoup all your investment with that first email I send, I will keep sending more dedicated emails, for as long as it takes, to promote and endorse you until you do recoup your winning bid. (If needed, we will also keep working together to tweak your funnel to make sure the right people sign up AND turn into buyers.) That's the little auction offer I'm making, for you to consider while you baste in my pool. I'm also offering a few POOL PARTY FAVORS if you happen to win the auction: 1. Wine and tapas on me whenever you get to Barcelona. (I know a good place around the corner from my new apartment, in the Gothic quarter. Once you finish with the pool and dry off, we can head over there.) 2. A list of newsletters you can run ads in, so they drive their own readers to you, and so you can keep growing your list at breakeven or at a profit, regularly, month after month. (And yes, you can approach these newsletter owners and tell them, "John Bejakovic already endorsed this offer... and his audience loved it.")

Following the recent discussion of list swaps: Lots of people in this group could do list swaps, and get new subscribers to their list for free... but they aren't doing it. I've learned one thing through cold, cruel experience: In situations where people won't take something for free... they will take it if you charge for it. So I got a question for you. I have long been itching to try running an auction, the way marketer Travis Sago teaches and practices. An auction works just how you think: Different people bid what they are willing to pay... the winning bidder takes the prize. In this case, the prize would be a solo ad in my newsletter. (Basically, a single email I'd send to my list, dedicated completely to building you up and to promoting your unique offer.) I would also work with you directly to define and refine the offer in your ad... so as to entice the greatest number of qualified subscribers or buyers to go to your page and sign up or buy... ... and I'd work with you to come up with a back-end offer you could offer right away, so you could liquidate your ad cost, and maybe then some, on DAY ZERO. I've never offered an ad in my newsletter before. I also don't have a huge list. But when I did run a list swap with @Alin Dragu a few months ago — basically the same kind of thing I'm offering here, but getting paid in cross-promotion instead of cash — I drove about 200 clicks and got Alin about 120 new subscribers. When I did something similar with Lawrence Bernstein last year, and promoted Lawrence's $7 offer as part of a list swap, I drove 157 buyers to Lawrence's list. If those kinds of numbers get you interested even a tiny bit, here's my question to you: If I were to make this offer, and make a monkey out of myself by running an auction to sell it... ... would you bid at least $1? Full transparency: