A little over a week ago I sent out an email to a certain 6 bloggers to see just how helpful and quickly they would answer the email. If you didn’t read the introduction to this post you can here. So, I contacted 6 “A-List” bloggers:
I didn’t exactly come up with this list myself, Bryan @ One Man’s Goal did. I added Shoemoney just to make it an even 6. The email I contacted them with is below:
Dear_________,
I am new to the whole ‘make money online’ niche and I was wondering if you
would be so kind as to help me out with a couple questions. I read your site all the time and
it is full of great articles, but I didn’t find the answers to a few important questions.
I assure you I am not looking for any promotions or links on your site, just a few questions
about blogging in general. You seem to have almost unlimited knowledge and seem to be a
sincere, honest person. I tell you that is hard to find in the ‘make money online’niche.
Everyone seems to just want to “get their’s”. I won’t keep you any longer but if
you are available to answer just a few questions that would be great. Please let me know
if you have time with an email response and I will get back to you. Also, if you have Skype
I would love to chat for a few minutes and ‘pick your brain’A sincere thank you in advance,
Mike Davis
Rookie Blogger
The email seemed to come from a real newb, but it wasn’t pushy and I think it was very genuine. So, after a week what did I come up with?
Well, only two out of the 6 bloggers even bothered to respond. I got a response from Yaro about a day and a half later with this:
Hi Mike,
I don’t mind asking questions, but if it relates to blogging - have
you read my Blog Profits Blueprint report yet?It’s free - http://www.blogmastermind.com/blueprint/
Your questions may be answered there already.
Cheers,
Yaro
So, just what I thought would happen if I even did get a response from any of these guys. A “just read my ebook with a bunch of affiliate links so I make more money” response. Not exactly helpful, but at least I got a response. If I was giving out letter grades I would give Yaro a C.
The other response was from Maki @ DoshDosh with this:
Hey Mike,
Sure.. email will be the best to get me since I’m pretty busy. Send me
the questions and I’ll get back to you
‘Cheers
Maki
http://www.doshdosh.com
As far Maki’s response goes it is almost what I was looking for. If you notice I didn’t really ask any questions in the original email because I wanted quick responses, so I just asked “permission” to ask a couple questions and possibly Skype the blogger if they would let me. The Skype call was the only think Maki dogged, but I didn’t expect anyone to agree to that. The Skype call was to see just how helpful the bloggers are. Maki would get an A- for a letter grade.
As far as everyone else on the list - you all get a huge frickin F. This is exactly what I was expecting from most of the bloggers and I just proved the obvious. I didn’t exactly do this just to put these bloggers down. I just had to prove to some readers that most bloggers don’t give a shit about answering any emails which a lot of people think they do.
What do you think of the results? Have you ever had to contact anyone above?
Don't Forget to Get Your BloggerBands Today!
the email you sent them looks like spam to me.
making generic statements like “You seem to have almost unlimited knowledge and seem to be a
sincere, honest person.”
give me a break.
not a fair test.
and I would say point two is why do you expect them to write you back with all the answers to your questions?
What have you done for them lately?
@45n5-I guess maybe you didn’t read the first post, or bother to read the post over at One Man’s Goal and the comments section I referred to because you missed the whole reason for this post. Before you criticize people why don’t you do a little bit of investigating.
My only point was to prove most of these guys aren’t going to help out a newbie blogger. As far as saying the email looks like spam - can you explain how this email even resembles a spam comment? Nice try.
As far as me “expecting” to write me back - I didn’t expect them to write back at all, I specifically wrote this.
@45n5 - Another thing:
What have I done for them?
Well, when I first got started in this niche I signed up for more then a few affiliate programs under their links and was a regular reader of their blogs. I guess that doesn’t count as anything though.
“My only point was to prove most of these guys aren’t going to help out a newbie blogger.”
They will help bloggers out, and almost all have helped me before or answered my emails.
Sending people an email to ask if you can send them them another email with a question is goofy from get go. These are busy people.
And, Copy and pasting an identical email with little to no personal info in it IS spamming them.
@45n5 - http://www.45n5.com/permalink/email-promotions-a-powerful-way-to-network-and-pro.html
Are you fricking kidding me - What the hell is this post you made about? Oh, I am sorry its an “email promotion”. This isn’t spam because you “made each email personal”. And don’t act like you made this “top 100″ list to benefit anyone but yourself and to bring your site traffic.
you should try reading the post:
“ONLY promote your BEST content”
not write them to ask them if you can ask them something.
maybe watch the video where I say “make each email unique”
not copy and paste the same vague thing to everybody just changing the TO, that looks like an automated email.
45@5 - I wasn’t promoting any “content”. I wasn’t promoting anything for that matter. I was asking permission for a few minutes of their time because I thought that would be more polite then firing off an email with stupid newb questions because they would just tell me to read their “aff laced ebook” or their blog. This is what I was trying to avoid. That is the reason I asked their permission. Once again - the email was suppose to be from a newbie who hasn’t really started blogging yet, or doesn’t know that much about anything.
As as to the video covered, I am sorry that is spam. I don’t care if you changed the email template up a little bit. Shredding out 30 emails to the top bloggers because you want to promote your new list is spamming.
Mark has actually covered most of what I would have said already.
Having had unknown readers ask me for SEO help in the past, out of the blue, spending a fair amount of time on a site analysis, and then emailing them back with quite extensive help, but stating I don’t do consulting, half the time I don’t even get a thanks in reply.
Thus 90% of such emails I just ignore, and I get more of them than link exchange requests or spam on MyBlogLog.
They generally go into the “ideas for a post” folder, so I can somehow help people collectively in some way.
Alternatively if someone is an active member of my blog, leaves intelligent comments, etc, they generally find me very receptive by both email and IM.
Yes I should hire a VA, or setup a report system than automatically sends people an F.A.Q.
Some additional notes…
1. You didn’t list a website and my contact form has a field for a URL - that helps me evaluate who you are and what kind of help you might be looking for
2. The formatting - it was obvious that your message was prepared in an editor of some kind with different line spacing, which suggested it was a copy and paste - that is a huge negative as far as quality signals go
What is the use of a “How to Blog” or “How to Make Money” blog if not to answer emails or questions. This is the whole fucking hypocrisy of this bull shit!
Maybe it should be turned into “How to Blog if You Buy My Shit and Subscribe to my Affiliates” blogs.
This is fucking amazing The Rookie makes a legitimate post and test and now he is the bad guy. What a fucking joke.
45n5 maybe you should be as militant about all this fucking A-listers giving it to people up the ass promoting text link affiliates or worthless ebooks that are all about selling there affiliate bullshit buyt yet have no real solutions or ways to make money online.
Rook do not waste your time it is not worth it. Your test proved what it hat to prove period!
“the email was suppose to be from a newbie who hasn’t really started blogging yet, or doesn’t know that much about anything.”
sounds good, but to me the email looked like spam, therefore it wasn’t a fair assessment of people.
Just suggesting next time you might want to try and personalize it more and get to a point before declaring to the world they don’t give a sh!t about people because they didn’t respond to your spam.
@Andy - to be completely honest, I haven’t even read your blog. No offense intended, but I won’t draw any conclusions to you personally. The only reason you were included in this “experiment” was because Bryan over at One Man’s Goal mentioned you as being someone helpful he had contacted. You make a couple valid points, but this just helps prove my point more. If I am a newbie blogger (without a website and the reason I left the URL field blank) hardly any “A-lister” will be willing to walk me through shit like Vic has to many, many people who read his blog. And once again, this was my sole purpose because I wanted to prove to my readers and to Bryan at OMG he was wrong. And he is wrong. I don’t want any excuses about formatting, or not being personable. It was a simple email and only required a very simple answer. No need to try and defend yourself here. I don’t want to hear it and I don’t have 3,000k + subscribers reading this blog like you have, so your rep is safe.
@Vic - I know I proved what I was trying to prove and thanks for the backup. I am just so sick and tired of everyone sucking a-lister’s dicks (45n5 is a perfect example) and I was hoping for this type of response. It will really help me in further posts.
@45&5 - Once again (god do I need to sign language) I am a newb, no idea how to blog, no idea how to talk to bloggers because I have never done it before. I actually thought thoroughly about the email and everything involved with it before I sent it out because I wanted to come off that way. Sorry it wasn’t about some Top 100 list about how awesome their blogs are and how I want to include them on this list.
Rookie,
Nice experiment. It’s too bad you only got 2 out of 6 responses. I’m no A-lister but I always respond to every valid email/comment that I get.
About a year ago, I asked Maki for an interview and he agreed to it but after I sent him my list of questions, he never responded with his answers. I sent him a couple of email reminders but he brushed me off.
When these bloggers get ‘big’ they probably get tons of email asking for help, so I don’t fault them if they don’t respond to every single one.
Just thought I’d share my own experience though.
@therookieblogger - I sent along my skype info if you want to chat or have any questions.
@45n5 - Thanks for sharing the info, but I don’t want to ask you any questions. No offense, I have figured out things about blogging on my own in the past 4 months and just had to get through all the BS out their. I think you misunderstood the last comment though - I wasn’t looking to chat with you, it was suppose to be what my original email to the “A-listers” was suppose to convey. Besides, this post wasn’t even about you to begin with, so I don’t know why you are taking it so personal.
“I don’t know why you are taking it so personal.”
I haven’t taken anything personally, just leaving my thoughts on the post in your comments.
You have my skype now if you wanna chat.
Mark
Maybe I am a little touchy today, someone’s comment got filtered because their links to google triggered a blacklist, and I immediately get accused of not publishing critical comments among lots of other accusations.
Just to give you another example, email answers often end up being republished by people as some kind of “interview” even if that wasn’t the intention or made clear in any way.
That also happened to me recently, as it happens there were no embarrassments in what I wrote, but it was certainly not something intended for widespread publishing. I avoid cut & paste interviews like the plague.
As it happens you have just published 2 emails which were private communication - just something to bare in mind.
@Vic I am in a slightly different niche even though I cover some of the same topics - as an example I tend to cringe when I see a blogger sticking nofollow on editorial links - have a chat with Court about the subtle differences between the various “MMO” blogs - each one has a slightly different culture
At least I passed
I’d like to note there are no affiliate links in my report I sent you to, although it certainly is meant as a lead to my paid membership site, but that’s entirely optional. I think my report stands independently as a valuable, and free, resource.
Rookie, we should start sending you 100 personal emails a day all requesting you respond to interview questions and see how you go getting back to them.
You won’t have any time to write blog posts or do anything else - like eat and sleep - and you will probably have 80 upset people who emailed you questions that you just didn’t have time to get back to within a few days.
I expect all A-List bloggers will have publicity agents handle these sorts of questions soon
Yaro
Hi Rookie,
I think the missing element here is recognition. A-listers, or anyone else for that matter, will shuffle answers to unknown senders in favor of taking care of email from those with names they recognize. The ones that didn’t reply within the specified time frame may very well answer a couple of weeks down the line.
There’s also one other missing piece of the puzzle. Unless you got a response, you can’t be sure they received the original message (i.e., it didn’t end up in the bit bucket or a spam folder that they look at once per week).
Email experiments (and I’ve done a few) don’t always work very well. You made your point, though, and it doesn’t matter if anyone agrees with it.
Andy I was actually writing my comment while you where writing yours so when I submitted I had not seen yours. Your blog is one of only a few that I not only read but recommend.
@Yaro - you mean send my “assistant” 100 emails a day to sort through. I know she is the one who wrote me back and not you - at least she / you responded to the email. But, please don’t act like you personally get 100 emails like this a day you answer, that is the point of an assistant.
@RT - good points worth mentioning, thank you.
great post and even better comments. rook you’re doing a great job. haha. 45n5 offered u help and u turned it down. beautiful! very vic! i’ve heard of andy but never read his blog. i’ve skimmed thru yaro’s blog and i emailed 45n5 to be on the list. too bad he booted me blog from his list tho. but i’ve never read his blog anyway. just his list to see other make money blogs. i think this was an interesting and engaging experiment. at least maki and yaro replaied and yaro commented twice. john, ron jeremy, and pro are just too busy. can’t really blame them. noobs shouldn’t look for guidance from those guys. plenty of small and medium bloggers who are more then willing to help out. the so called a listers will only take notice when you pay the 450. kinda like joing a frat. gotta buy friends in the make money blog world.
No I don’t get 100 emails a day asking questions, but I do get about 150 emails that require some form of response.
Let me tell you how my email system works.
I have a personal address and a support address.
I handle all the personal address stuff, about 75 emails a day comes to this address, of which maybe 50% require a response or at least my attention.
My assistant goes through the support address, which gets probably 25-50 emails a day, and deals with customer queries. Anything personal is flagged as “Attention Yaro” and I check those emails once every day or two and respond personally.
So yep, that email you got really came from me.
However my system is not sustainable. I answer way too many emails personally. I’m going on holiday in April and I’m not liking what will happen to my email inbox when I neglect it for a few days in a row - in fact I don’t think I will be able to, I’ll have to look for net access at the hotels.
I’ve kept out of the arguments going around in the blogosphere (there are quite a few of late) but this is probably the dumbest experiment of all time.
People that receive dozens, if not hundreds of emails a day - heck, I’m a newbie and I get more than twenty - don’t have the time to make follow up posts - if you want to know something, tell them, don’t make them have to ask for it.
If you said you needed help with X and Y in your first email, it is likely they would have a) given you a short response b) pointed you to one of their posts or c) ignore you. If c), your post would be justified, although their lack of response would be understandable (considering time issues).
Nice try, but try again.
[...] ago - this one at One Man’s Goal, the whole whinge-fest at Blog Catalog and more recently, this experiment at Rookie Blogger - the only one I responded to personally. There’s also my buddy Geoff at Can’t Get [...]
@Yaro - I know what you are saying and I don’t think you need to worry about anything - once again, you did reply which shows you are at least a little bit helpful to newbs.
@Noob - thanks for the support, I am not getting it from a lot of people because they don’t want to make the ‘higher up gods’ mad.
@Jason - So, if you don’t want to “squabble” with anyone as you put it in your trackback above don’t get me going with a comment and a post. I am not going to bother getting riled up because all that is is linkbait.
This looks like an interesting experiment, Rookie. But to be honest with you, I didn’t thought you’d get better results than those you already got. This reminds me not to waste my time in emailing to any “A-list blogger” out there on the internet…By the way, you have a quite interesting blog and I wish you success with it:)
Cheers,
Tiberius
Hi Mike,
It’s not my intention to defend the A listers but as one of the people you mentioned (BZ snippet) that does help out beginners I have to admit that I am now having a hard time answering all the email. This is partly due to time but mostly because I get long detailed questions or multiple questions that can’t just be answered in a word or two - most would require a complete post to answer properly. (Often I have already answered the question in a post but most people don’t have the time to read an entire blog to find the answers - of course a more organized layout on my part could help…)
I completely “get” your point but can only imagine the amount of mail the A list has to deal with. True as business people they probably should have a system set up for dealing with this but having said that I am the first to admit that I don’t. My only defense is that I’m a niche marketer who suddenly finds himself with a blog full of readers and I wasn’t prepared for all that this entails. If there is a saving grace it would be Vic - he must not sleep and his sincerity in helping people knows no bounds. Sadly he is an exception rather than the rule.
On a side note I have found your tete-a-tete with Mark from 45n5 interesting as I asked for inclusion in his list and never received a response. I’m pretty sure I qualify but apparently not! Should you skype him I would love to know why. Lol.
Congrats on stirring the pot - lot’s of interest in this topic. Well done.
@Griz - Thanks for stopping by and thanks for the really good point you brought up. You will never have to feel bad about getting back to emails because your site (along with Vic and Courts) helped me out more in a couple days then the whole time I have been reading other blogs in the niche.
What a nice thing to say - I’ll be sure to look for your emails! Thanks for that and you may have to remove the “rookie” thing soon if not already.
“You will never have to feel bad about getting back to emails because your site (along with Vic and Courts) helped me out more in a couple days then the whole time I have been reading other blogs in the niche.”
Isn’t this a bit hypocritical? So these three don’t have to worry about answering their email since they help people with their blogs? That’s a hypocritical response.
Problogger, Dosh Dosh, & Entrepreneurs Journey all have thousands of archived pages that I’m sure you haven’t seen. That’s not to say that you haven’t done your homework by reading their blogs, but I’m sure you haven’t been through all the posts.
With all of these blogs having readerships in the tens of thousands daily, I’m pretty sure that they are helping people with their content too. And they have more readers, which means more email… so if this holds true for what you said to Vic, Court, and Grizz… then it’s okay for them not to answer their email - making your project a moot point.
[...] other day on a site I’d never been to before that was some kind of experiment to see if the A-List bloggers would return an email from a rookie blogger who was asking some really basic questions. I think the drama that ensued was [...]
@Bryan - I am sorry. You are a nice guy and I don’t have anything against you, but your argument doesn’t hold water and I wish you would think a little before posting. I have learned more from these 3 in the past month then I will ever learn from any of the “A-listers”. I have sent emails and already received responses from all 3 and even a Skype session invite. The reason I wouldn’t care if Griz never answered an email is exactly what he said. He is a niche blogger and doesn’t run a how to blog. He didn’t get a lot of emails from his make money blog until recently when he started helping out other more. His blog was just purely for profit and not much how to. So, the reason they don’t have to get back to me is because they have already helped me more then any “A-lister” ever will.
Very interesting article.
However, speaking purely as an outsider, I think you could have worded the e-mails a little better to draw a suitable response. Not saying that you would have been successful even then, but you might have improved the chances of drawing a reply.
In general, I’ve found that drawing any response from unknown persons by e-mail is always tough, no matter how important or unimportant they are. Half the time, I’m not even sure they read all their mail carefully before discarding. What I know for a fact is that even known people sometimes hardly bother to respond to mails.
Speaking personally I always hesitate to answer e-mails from total strangers unless they have a specific query. I would say I respond to 99.5% of genuine e-mails (the 0.5% being e-mails which don’t necessarily demand a reply).
It’s not the topic of discussion that’s the problem, I think you’ve just discovered how e-mail works in general and how people communicate in general.
I agree with your views that one-way communication can be really annoying and that people who fail to respond to genuine e-mails come across as arrogant and uncaring.
I’ve had some experience with several of your 6 test bloggers.
Andy Beard - Good guy, willing to check things out and give an opinion on. I did a blogger ethics series and he took the time to head over and give an opinion. Did he have to, no. I’ve emailed him, off and on, for a few months. Nothing consistent, more along the lines of “i saw this and thought of you” or “what do you think about this?”
John Chow — My only dealing with Mr Chow was offering to do a guest posting. He read my submitted article, suggested some changes (which made sense and I did), resubmitted, and he posted.
Darren Rowse — Same with Mr Chow, I offered to do a guest post but he had just posted on that subject, so he declined. Hey, he responded.
Maki — He’s commented on several of my articles. I’ve asked him a few questions about technical issues; he’s always taken the time to help me out.
Shoemoney — No direct contact. Sent an offer to guest host and no response.
Yaro — I’ve emailed back and forth several times with Yaro about his Blog Mastermind. Nothing much beyond that.
Think what you will based off of one email and the amount of responses you got. The fact that you hadn’t even read some of the blogs makes this article kinda bait to get visitors. Just MMHO though…
@Desty - The only blog I haven’t read is Andy’s blog. I have already been accused of this article being link bait to get visitors and that didn’t take well with me at all. I don’t care if 1 person or 1,000 people read the article. I just was proving a point to myself and hopefully a couple of readers. I don’t monetize this blog and it is more of a rant/idea type blog for me right now so I don’t really care if I get a ton of traffic or not. I appreciate your input on the subject, however because it was a great addition to my experiment.
I think it kind of looked like spam, too. I have to say that Yaro has been really wonderful about responding to my emails in the past. I’d once whipped one off after receiving his email newsletter and didn’t think he’d actually reply. Within 10 minutes he’d not only replied once but twice with helpful information that included more than “Just read my newsletter”.
well, that is a good post, I mean, the research you made is pretty good, at least for me, taking care of the readers is the most important thing in a blog.
It’s funny because I actually did a similar experiment but I had better results. But then again, I think we approached it slightly different.
Jay
You are the brick! Reading stuff like this written in the way like this is a great pleasure for me.