Episode 160 - Joel Comm’s 2 Things He Knows That Will Radically Generate More Revenue For You

Transcript

Susan Bratton: Welcome to DishyMix. I’m your host, Susan Bratton, and on today’s show you’re going to get to meet Joel Comm. Joel is the CEO of a company called Info Media, but it could be like Info Conglomeration of All Media In the Universe, because

Joel produces some content, and I know you’re going to like what he does. I met him recently at AdTech San Francisco. I had had my database –what do you want to call it – processed by Rap Leaf, and I wanted to know who my most influential connections were.

And Joel was in my top 10 list, and I didn’t know him. And I saw that he was coming to AdTech and I emailed him and I said, “Hey, you’re one of my most influential connections and I don’t even know you dude. I need to know all about you.”

We ended up having a fantastic lunch. He’s an amazing person, I’m humbled by the amount of great content that he’s produced, ‘cause as you know, I’m a content producer too. And I can’t wait for you to meet him, so lets get him on the show. Welcome Joel.

Joel Comm: Hey Susan. Wow, thanks for having me, and an introduction like that I’m going to have to pay attention, see what I might say.

Susan Bratton: Well I know you’re going to pay attention. So one of the things that I do Joel when I do a DishyMix – and this is the system that I teach in my books, Talk Show Tips and Masterful Interviews, is the system called The Grid and The Grid is a series of questions that give you the order of the questions you’re going to ask your guest on your show or in your interview. And my grid looks like a Post-It note explosion for you, because it’s not in an order, it’s just like a crazy number of Post-It notes stuck all over my piece of paper that I use because I want to…

Joel Comm …my brain.

Susan Bratton: That’s what your brain looks like dude, yeah. I want to talk about TextCast and Ka Ching and the next Internet millionaire and how you’re giving away all your e-books and your speaking and your Top One Report. I mean, we just have so much I want to cover. So what I want you to do is bring some structure to how my DishyMix listener, my fabulous DishyMix listener, should get you in their mind. What’s the organizing principle that we should use for you?

Joel Comm: Do good stuff. That’s (unintelligible) standard. That’s the way I sign my emails, “Do good stuff.” You know, for all your fabulous DishyMix listeners I appreciate them giving time and entertaining the notion that I’ve got something of interest for them, and you know, what I’ve done is very natural for me. And I think when you do what’s natural for you you’re bound to have the greatest success that you can have. I’ve been online since 1995, so I’ve been digging Internet dirt with a shovel for a long, long time. My website, one of my first websites worldvillage.com, was one of the first 25,000 sites in the world, and now that was 15 short years ago and it feels like yesterday and an eternity all at the same time. And it seems like my career in technology has been following a one bright shiny object that captures my heart and my mind after another, and it’s led to a number of really wonderful successes and opened up doors in areas that I never dreamed would be there.

Susan Bratton: Well lets start from the latest things you’re working on first. You’re launching a company called Text Cast, I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about your new book coming out, KaChing: How To Run An Online Business That Pays and Pays, and has an adorable iPhone app that goes with it. So where do you want to start?

Joel Comm: Well, you know, you mentioned Text Cast Live, and Text Cast is a project that came to my mind about four years ago when my, one of my employees, Joel Olmby, was evaluating the future of where technology was going, especially marketing. And we realized that the old forms of marketing – and even email now, you know, has joined the ranks of old forms of marketing, along with radio, TV and print – are just not nearly as effective as they used to be. But with mobile being such a huge trend with everybody having devices, you can reach people on their mobile device, you have what we call the most direct marketing. We use Aweber for our auto responders; a lot of people use them, some use Constant Contact or iContact or email, and we felt what if we could create a mobile marketing platform that would be to mobile what Aweber and Constant Contact are to email so that people can join the service, instantly be able to create a keyword that would tie to their own mobile list, and provide their customers an opportunity to join that list and receive mobile updates. And so we created a platform that’s very sophisticated and it allows people to create as many lists as they want and to do auto responders, schedule messages, broadcast messages, campaign targeting, a number of really cool features, and this is all at textcastlive.com.

Susan Bratton: Now when a customer gets an auto responder from me or a message, a broadcast, whatever it might be, are they getting it as an SMS, as a text message or are they getting an email in their email inbox?

Joel Comm: No, it is an SMS message. This is a complete SMS platform. And…

Susan Bratton: Is it 140 characters or longer? How’s that working now on the phones?

Joel Comm: Twitter is 140, SMS is 160. And so it’s going to get 20 characters extra, and of course we append every message with a press type style to cancel, which is to be compliant with the characters.

Susan Bratton: So there’s an opt out or an unsubscribe with every message.

Joel Comm: Absolutely because this is not a system to be used for spamming. This is for people to build client lists of opt ins who wish to hear from that particular business. And, you know, we’re talking this is something that’s universal, whether you are a service business, a retail operation, an online business, perhaps a consultant, an expert maybe or a stock broker or, you know, in the medical field or maybe you’ve got 200 employees that you want to be able to text on demand. Whatever the reasons are, it’s something that just about everybody, business can apply.

Susan Bratton: Well the place where I see this having a really good application is for bands who do live, any kind of live artists who want to say “Hey, come to the Belly Up on Saturday night. Our set starts at 11.” That could be a very powerful application I think for Text Cast Live.

Joel Comm: Absolutely. You know, people are conducting their teleseminars or webinars to be able to tell your subscribers your teleseminar starts in 10 minutes, call 1-800 and there’s the phone number and it’s click to call so that you have a much higher attendance rate than you may have if you’re just notifying them via email.

Susan Bratton: Now one of the things that I really like about what you do Joel is you are all over the map. You’ve written so many books, you’ve produced this television series, Next Internet Millionaire, you’re launching a technology company. You know, you’ve got your hands in a lot of things over the last 15 years, but when you go to Joel Comm the website there’s a couple things I notice. One, it’s a good, you know, one click away to all of the various things you do, you know – your KaChing book site or whatever they might be – but in each time that I come to a new section of your site, your speaking site, you are, you have a pop up overlay that goes above it – and your sites are blogs – you have a pop up overlay that goes on the site and then it asks, you give them something – you know, “Get my free, you know, How Do You Do Social Media For Speak Ops” or there were three or four different ones – you give me something to get both my name, my email and my telephone number. I see you’re collecting phone numbers, which is really smart with that email pop up. I really like that, and have you started using Text Cast Live to, with any of those phone numbers and how has that worked for you?

Joel Comm: Well the numbers we’re collecting on those opt in forms are what we call our ‘ethical bribe forms’. I believe in always providing value to people when they come to my site and I don’t want them to come eat and leave without knowing what was there and being able to continue the relationship. So we’re not actually collecting mobiles there because you don’t know what phone number somebody’s going to put in. They put in a landline – and believe it or not there’s a lot of us who still have those in addition to our mobiles – and you can’t text that and it’s just a waste of money to try to. But we are using mobile on some of our sites and with Text Cast Live you can actually create a mobile form so that people not only can they text them directly to join your particular list, but if you want to put a form on your site where they sign up they can join that way as well.

Susan Bratton: Give me your best practices for the ethical bribe form on your site. What have you found – obviously you’ve monkeyed with the format, and maybe what you have up there isn’t even exactly what you want and you want to edit some more; what works best?

Joel Comm: You know, I find that it depends on the value you want to bring. If you come to my blog right now at joelcomm.com the first thing that you visit, you’ll get a pop up that offers you 2 free chapters from my book Twitter Power. This is what a lot of people know me for in social media. The books about selling the book on Twitter, and I thought here’s an opportunity to give people a taste if they haven’t read the book yet. On some other sites you’ll find that it’s just “Join list for notifications.” What I find works best is not only to give them something of value that they can download and consume right away, but if you can include video on that page as well – and this is something we haven’t done with this particular pop up – people can see, you know, we’re very much a visual generation and if we read it that’s great, if we hear it that’s even better, if we see it we really believe it. In fact I just did something really cool; if you go to my Facebook fan page at facebook.com/joelcommfan there’s a tab that says “Meet me” and it’s really cool. We use the face up markup language to create a landing page on the “Meet me” tab and there’s a video embedded in it that welcomes you to my fan page and tells you, you know, “I’m at my fan limit, so you can’t friend me but to connect with me on Facebook this is how you do it.” Simply click the “Like” button. So that’s been really effective.

Susan Bratton: I’m going to go check that out. It’s too bad that it’s buried on another tab, that it’s not something that can be, you know, above the wall or something like that. That would be pretty good.

Joel Comm: Yeah, but what you can do is you can actually, there’s a unique URL for every tab, and so what I’m doing is I’m redirecting joelfacebook.com to land on that tab.

Susan Bratton: Got it. That makes total sense. Okay, good. Very good. So, and Ryan Dice is the big Internet marketer who’s the proponent of the video versus the, you know, long pages or anything like that. Have you read any of his work and do you think that that movement toward information product with video landing pages is a smart one or where are you on that?

Joel Comm: Well actually we’ve been testing that for three years. We did one of the first video landing pages back in 2007. When it came down to the finalists for Next Internet Millionaire one of the finalists was Charles Trippy of YouTube fame.

Susan Bratton: Right, he was the viral video guy.

Joel Comm: Right…

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Joel Comm: And Charles insisted on doing the video sales page, which, you know, had the video above the fold and just instantly greeted you and began telling you about the product and then there’s information below and it was very effective. I think it depends on how authentic you come across on the video – which if you’re not you need to reshoot your video anyway – and how much detail people need in order to make a decision to buy.

Susan Bratton: Right, so you have to test a lot of different long form, short form, you know, what’s the call to action, etcetera, multiple testing. Now you’re giving away your e-books for free right now – AdSense Secrets, give us the list. I just Tweeted that out this morning. Why are you giving all your e-books away all of the sudden?

Joel Comm: Well, you know, my e-book on AdSense is in its fourth edition. We released the first one in 2005 and sold thousands of copies at $97. There’s a couple other contextual ad services out there that we’re using to monetize our sites, one of them is called Comtara and one of them is called Chitika. And you know I test a lot of services and I was so impressed with both of these that I wrote e-books on those and sold them both for $47, and another e-book’s called How To Build Profitable Websites Fast. You know, the Internet community has given so much to me, I’m really so privileged to be able to have books that sell in the stores, to be able to go and speak at conferences like, you know, Tony Robbins conference and Marketing Association conferences, I thought, you know, here’s an opportunity to really give back and if people go to my blog – I think you’ve got a link to it – they can click to download all four of those books now for free and, you know, I’m seeking to bring value, and of course there is an opt in form ‘cause I want to know who you are and be able to share some of what I’m doing with you.

Susan Bratton: I don’t buy it. I don’t believe that you’re, so what I heard was you wanted to just give back to the community, but then I heard you say “Well there’s an opt in form there, so when you get those books I get your email address.” So obviously you’re using some of your older content that’s probably still legitimate but maybe you don’t want to put a lot of effort against marketing to catch your net of new prospects for some of the new things you’re doing like Text Cast Live. Would that be fair?

Joel Comm: Absolutely. You always want to keep marketing, and you know, we evaluated where these books were at and saw the value of them. Two of them were updated just three months ago, rewritten and revised, so it’s a lot of very new content. But, you know, we find as the economy is tough right now, people are skeptical about the things that they see online and whether or not they really work, and I like to prove that what I teach people actually works and here’s an opportunity to do it. So yeah, I could be selling them and generating revenue right away, but I think that I would rather build a following that knows I’m willing to bring value first and then see the money on the backend.

Susan Bratton: Top One Report, tell me about that because I thought there were some really interesting pieces of content on Top One. Is that all your writing or what is that as a part of your business model?

Joel Comm: Top One Report is to online business as Mashable is to social media. Our focus is really to have high level content – it’s myself, my team, as well as our guest writers, people who are actually in the trenches in doing this, you know. No hypothetical stuff. And we update it everyday with new articles and SEO, traffic, viral marketing, best business practices, social media. You name it, we cover a pretty full spectrum and it’s really wonderful content, it’s at toponereport.com and it’s Top One because what we’ve discovered is that out of 100 people that have the notion that they would like to do an online business, the sad truth is that really only the top one percent get to the place where they can say “I have wildly succeeded at this.”

Susan Bratton: What’s your revenue model for Top One?

Joel Comm: It’s advertising.

Susan Bratton: AdSense or some of the other contextual services or some other things?

Joel Comm: Right now we really haven’t added right now; we just want to gain traction to the site and of course we’re leveraging our other sites to make that happen and we know that good content breeds word of mouth and then people will Tweet or post on Facebook that they (unintelligible), so it’s just, it’s kind of taking on a life of its own.

Susan Bratton: Got it and of course you have email capture there too when people come to that site, so that makes a lot of sense. When we come back from the break I want to talk more about KaChing, I want to talk about this event at which you just spoke, JV Alert Live, and some of your other speaking engagements. I want to talk about your love of sound and I have a few other surprises. So shall we take a break and thank my sponsors?

Joel Comm: Well bring the dish.

Susan Bratton: Bring the dish, lets do it. All right, I’m your host, Susan Bratton. We’re with Joel Comm – that’s c-o-m-m. He’s the CEO of Info Media and as you can see he’s got a lot of media and info, so he’s well named. We’re going to go to a break. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned.

Susan Bratton: We’re back with Joel Comm, CEO of Info Media. So before we left for the break I wanted to, I’d mentioned this JV Alert Live. I’ve never heard of this event, and I wanted to hear more about that.

Joel Comm: You know, Ken McArthur, I met Ken McArthur about four years ago at another event and he is this big teddy bear of a marketer. He’s been online probably as long as I have and doing business, and he wanted to create an Internet marketing event that would do more than just teach people, it would really force them to network with others and attempt to create joint ventures, and so he does two or three of these JV Alert Lives each year. I think he does Philly, San Diego and Orlando, and instead of your traditional conference seating, in the past what he’s done is more banquet seating, so you’re at a round table with speaker or teacher at the front of the room and you’re forced to interact with the others at your table and a lot of joint ventures have really been born out of that. And I gave Ken the moniker “Nicest guy in Internet marketing” probably three or four years ago and now that’s his brand, and it’s true ‘cause that’s who he is. He’s very caring, very compassionate. His focus really is to see other succeed and if he makes some money along the way that even better.

Susan Bratton: You really come from that Internet marketing space, and I’m not sure that everyone understands what the JV world is. Would you both explain it from your perspective, ‘cause a lot of traditional marketers and digital agency and digital marketers listen to DishyMix, as well as people who are in the information product world, and describe it and then talk about some of the other events that for you, if you’re in the Internet marketing space, that are the can’t be missed events, whether you’re speaking or not.

Joel Comm: Yeah, well you know, for most small businesses a lot of us, it’s, you know, you’re working at home in your pajamas, right, with the dog barking and the kids demanding something or another from you. And what we discover is that it’s very difficult to do everything that you need to do to accomplish everything. And I know what my skills are, I know what my gifts and talents are, but it’s not building web pages, it’s not coding. It’s not even creating long form sales letters. I’m more of a creative person and I can put together a marketing plan. You know, I enjoy speaking, writing, but to take my ideas and bring them to fruition requires a team. And so in the past I’ve found people to joint venture with where they, I’ve got gaps, they got gaps, right, like they said on Rocky, and together we fill them gaps with each other. And so for example Eric Holmlund was my JV partner on The Next Internet Millionaire. I did not want to deal with the actual production of a reality show, but Eric was very passionate about video and scripting out the storyline and putting the production together. So we shook hands and did a joint venture deal where this was something we could do together, each bringing our talents to the table. You know, there’s fewer and fewer great Internet marketing events in the United States right now. More and more of them are going off to Asia and Europe. But if you want to get in the Internet marketing crowd and see what’s going on, Yanik Silver puts on an event once a year called The Internet Marketing Underground. I think usually he does them in D.C. and I’ve missed the last year or two, but he likes to find people who are not well known in the space, that they’re the unsung heroes that are making a lot of money and that are willing to come forward and share with people how they’re doing that. Armand Morin has traditionally put on some great seminars in the States as well. And those are the larger ones – sometimes the better ones are the smaller ones when you can really begin interacting and form those joint ventures.

Susan Bratton: Your next book is a print book. It’s, got to go buy it from Amazon, KaChing: How to Run An Online Business That Pays And Pays. What was – and you’ve done a lot of print books, Click Here To Order, Book.Com, The AdSense Code, which looks a lot like another book I’ve seen somewhere. The Da Vinci code, that was a clever idea. I know it came out about the same time and you leveraged that, which was smart. So you’ve done some print books, you’ve done some e-books. Tell me what your logic tree is when you’ve got a book idea, how you decide what to do.

Joel Comm: Well, you know, I had, it’s amazing ‘cause, you know, the publisher says “What’s your next book going to be”, and I just finished this one, I don’t want to write another one. And they, you know, they push you, “Come on, what’s your next idea? We want to do another book”, and I’m like “Really, when it comes to me I’ll know.” And so I don’t force these things. And last year I had been out on the circuit and speaking at several events and the topic had been “Five ways to make a fortune online.” And what I did is I took the different ways that I’ve made money via content sites, affiliate marketing, member sites, coaching programs, information products, and I would teach on that and people were extremely receptive to it, and that’s when the idea hit me that, you know, the Internet is not an ATM. You can’t just push a button and it makes money, but when it does make money, when what you do is successful you like to celebrate it. And several years ago my friend Mark Whithour, who’s another great Internet marketer…

Susan Bratton: Yeah, love, love, love Mark Whithour. What a great guy. I mean heart of gold.

Joel Comm: He really does, and he sent me a wav file and it was a ka ching sound, and he said, “Joel, put a script in your Outlook that every time a sale comes in it makes this ka ching sound.” And now that’s somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, ka ching became something that I associated with making money online. And I thought what if this next book is all about helping people see the opportunity that exists online and helping them focus in on what they are passionate about, what it is that lights their fire, that they would do no matter what the revenue, you know, came from it because they love it so much, because I think, you know, we’re all made to do something, at least one thing, and then go into detail on how you can enter into each one of these different ways of making money online using that passion, and that leads to KaChing. And that’s the, I’ve actually got a ka ching button in hand right now. I’ve had them made for those who purchase the book in June, they’ll be able to go to the website and get a Ka Ching button for the price of shipping it to you.

Susan Bratton: Okay, and Joel gave me a KaChing button and I got home and Taylor stole it within 14 nanoseconds. She took it to school, she was ka chinging her little brains out. First we went through this thing at our house where we would hit the KaChing button but every time we did it it would hit it in a different way, so we would like bounce it off our butt, we would hit with our elbow, we would smack it on our forehead, we would stick a little pinky down, we would have the dog do it – he didn’t like that. So we ran out of those things, then it made its way to school and Mrs. Harris took her KaChing button. So what did I have to do? I had to go get it from iTunes, from Apple, from the apps store. You have a KaChing app now, which I think is a brilliant idea, and I’m trying to get my KaChing to go for the first time. I just downloaded it. So KaChing for me one more time ‘cause mine’s a loading… There you go, KaChing. I think it’s super clever that you built the app. So tell me, when you were building the app and you’re getting to launch the book, what are you doing? How are you leveraging the app and what kind of promotion are you doing to build – you know, are you doing one of those big, you know, book launch circle swirls, I almost (unintelligible)? What are you doing?

Joel Comm: (Unintelligible) Susan. Yeah, we’re definitely going to be doing a big launch around it, and I expect, yeah, a lot of my partners will be helping to promote it when it comes out, and of course the KaChing button itself is just a wonderful draw, what a great little perk, ‘cause everybody who sees this says they want one. It looks like a Staples Easy Button, only it’s green with a white dollar sign on top instead. And, you know, I know Staples sold a million or so of those Easy Buttons. And it’s the type of thing what when you have it there by your side and you push it, it makes you smile.

Susan Bratton: It absolutely does. So you’ve got the KaChing, you’re going to give those away as promotions. You’ve got your app. Your network’s going to promote the book on the day it launches to try to drive up your sales. What else are you going to do?

Joel Comm: You know, that’s really the focus of it. If we get some book signings that would be fine, but you know, I’m trying to cut back on my travel somewhat. I’ve got a wife, I’ve got two kids, one of them getting ready to enter college, and, you know, there’ll be more time for travel later. Right now I’m trying to be more of a homebody.

Susan Bratton: Yeah, I understand. Let the Internet work for you. You don’t have to hurl your body through space; you can… But now you do like public speaking, I would think that there are some things that you want to get out and do. Is there any place that you’re speaking soon that you’re really excited about or some place that you’d like to speak that we can help you with?

Joel Comm: Well I am and yes. In June, I believe it’s the 21st or… I think it’s the 21st of June I’m keynoting and opening up the Appcon 2010, which is an affiliate conference right here in Denver, you know, in the Rockies, and that’s just 45 minutes drive from me. And I think there’s going to be about 2000 people, affiliates, affiliate managers, affiliate marketers that are attending this conference, and I get to get up and share whatever wisdom that they got in the affiliate marketing space. And I’m also speaking in Singapore – well I can’t tell you the event because I’m actually sworn to secrecy - but there’s an event coming up in Singapore, and I asked them if I could do a live video feed to the conference room rather than fly all the way on a 27 hour airplane flight, and that’s what we’re doing and I’m really excited about that because the way we’re organizing is there’s a webcam on the stage pointing out to the audience, and so right below my camera in my studio there’s a television so I can see the audience there of 900 or so people in Singapore while I’m speaking to them live. And it’ll be the evening here and the morning there, so that’s going to be a lot of fun. As far as where I would like to speak, you know, my speaking page is very new, it’s speaking.joelcomm.com, and I speak on a number of topics including mobile and site monetization, affiliate marketing. I’ve got inspirational talks and really trying to get out into the corporate world and have more keynote opportunities because out of everything that I do it’s really the thing that I do best and that I enjoy the most.

Susan Bratton: I think you’re speaking page is really well done Joel. You did an awesome job. It’s one of the nicest I’ve seen. So if you are a speaker and… You know, I just had Scott Berkun on; he did Confessions of a Public Speaker, you know that great book. If you haven’t read that Joel, I think you’d really like it. As a matter of fact, if you want to post on my DishyMix fan page on Facebook, I have a personally autographed copy to give away, you might win.

Joel Comm: Yay!

Susan Bratton: I’m totally giving you crap. You can borrow my copy. Okay, here’s my next question. Tell me two things that you know everybody thinks are true about Internet marketing but they’re actually wrong because the world has changed and nobody’s caught up but you and maybe a couple of other people. And these pieces of information are so powerful that just by telling us we’re going to have to go change what we do and it’s going to help us generate more revenue.

Joel Comm: Okay. Long form sales copy, I think people are becoming immune to it. You know, for a long time there’s been this, the conventional wisdom is that you have to write long form sales copy in order to sell your products. And people are so weary now of the long form because they’ve seen so many offers that video really is the way to go. If people can see you – and believe me it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a face for radio or not – you know, it doesn’t matter what you look like, people are looking for authenticity. And all you have to do is look at the success of the videos that show up on YouTube to see that that’s true. You don’t have to be the best looking, you don’t have to use the highest quality equipment. You could use a little flip video camera as long as what you’re bringing is valuable to the audience you’re speaking to, they won’t judge you based on the actual production itself. And I think that video intimidates a lot of people. They’re scared because they think “I don’t have great equipment” or “I’m not really good on camera.” If you just share what you know with people you’ll be amazed at how responsive they can be.

Susan Bratton: I definitely agree with you, and I actually think, I use video on both Masterful Interviews and Talk Show Tips, and I get dinged because people think it’s too perfect. And what can I say Joel? I’m perfect. I’m just perfect and I do it really well. And so screw you people. No, seriously, I just deliver lines really articulately and it’s how I speak, so if anybody knows me they know that’s me. But people will, they’ll give me shit about being like “Oh, it’s just so perfect.” But that’s my authentic self, so screw it. But I agree with you, you don’t have to be perfect and it actually hurts if you are and I’m living proof of that. And I’m not perfect, you know, I’m kind of kidding myself.

Joel Comm: Well and the other thing we already talked about, it’s mobile. You know…

Susan Bratton: Right.

Joel Comm: I could just about bang my head against the wall in telling people – and one of the ways I like to communicate how important mobile is and how important that they start now, right, that they begin now, because usually small business waits for big business to move. Once big business shows the success that they’re having small business goes, “Oh okay, we should do this.” Well, you know, imagine email circa 1993, ‘kay. That’s where we are with mobile right now. If you had been building your list early on in the game before people were inundated with mail – because back then you got email you actually opened it and read it and clicked on links. You know, when the web came about in 1994 people were clicking links. But as time went on and spam becomes so prevalent and peoples email was not deliverable – they’re changing addresses and it’s going into spam filters and then we get can spam – it’s no longer as effective as it was. Mobile marketing right now is so incredibly effective because you’re deliverability rates are near 100 percent, that, you know, you can get a 100 percent deliverability in a newspaper, that doesn’t mean people are going to see it. With mobile not only do you get 100 percent deliverability but your open rates are near 100 percent because you always look when that thing goes ding to see who it is that’s messaging you. So with that kind of deliverability, that kind of open rate, your convergence are naturally going to be significantly higher than anything else you’re doing. And so, you know, run, don’t walk, whether it’s Text Cast Live or another service – though there aren’t any as sophisticated as ours – get onto a mobile platform and begin building that mobile list for your clients. It breeds incredible loyalty.

Susan Bratton: Do you have any promo codes for Text Cast Live where someone can try it for a month for free or something like that?

Joel Comm: No, we actually don’t. But, you know, text messaging has hard costs associated with it from our end, and it’s not like email where, you know, it doesn’t cost you squat to send a bunch of messages. Mobile does have those costs and the carriers are all too happy to charge us for every message that we send. But there’s some very inexpensive programs. You can get started for as little as $27.95 a month and be able to test it out with a small list.

Susan Bratton: That makes total sense Joel. Thank you. Hey, I know I want to wrap the show and you’ve got to get going too. So the last thing I wanted to ask you, you’ve got ten, fifteen thousand marketers, Internet marketers, agency folks, online publishers, listening to you today, and you give away so much. You do help people so much. Is there anything that we can do to support you? Anything that you’d like from your followers?

Joel Comm: You know what, just come and enjoy the content that we’ve created. The more people that we’re reaching out to, you know, I really believe the way I sign my emails is a way of life. If you’re passionate about what you do and you do good stuff for others, and good stuff comes around naturally so I don’t really go out and ask much, I just want people to enjoy what we create and let us know if it’s of value to you and, you know, if there are any speaking opportunities that you think would be appropriate then give us a call or let me know, go to speaking.joelcomm.com page and contact me.

Susan Bratton: We’ll do it. Sounds good. Joel, thank you so much for being on DishyMix. I really appreciate it. It was great to get to know you even more. And thanks for sharing everything that you do.

Joel Comm: Thanks so much Susan. I appreciate you.

Susan Bratton: My pleasure. All right, I’m your host, Susan Bratton. That was Joel Comm and I hope that you’ll avail yourself of some of his great content and find him a speak opp, he likes doing them. I am looking forward to connecting with you next week with somebody else equally as amazing as Joel. I hope you enjoyed this and have a great day. Talk to you soon.