All About My First List

You probably have heard it a million times before. You have to build a list to really build a business online. And the truth is, this is the truth. Without a list, you are hoping that people are just going to keep coming back to your site for no reason at all. And this is just not how people behave online. Once they leave your website, they will probably never come back again.

That is of course, unless you can drive them back again.

And this is why you need a list so that you can send them emails that they will open and then click through back to your site or wherever it is that you want to send them.

There are many ways that you can build a list. Using articles is a great way to accomplish this.

When someone has already read an article of yours and then clicked through to your opt in page and entered their name and email address, you have already started a relationship with that person. Using relationship marketing is one of the most effective ways to build a profitable online business.

How should you use articles to build a list?

Figure out what the most common interests are of people in YOUR marketplace. Then write articles on those topics. The best way to do this is to identify problems that people have and let your articles know that you can solve their problem. This way you get them to WANT to click through and opt in to your list.

Would you like to learn more about how to use articles to build YOUR list?

By: Bryan Appleton

About the Author:

More about Affiliate Marketing

Building and managing an opt in list is one of the most important aspects of your online business. It can increase your income over time by as much as 30%. But how do you develop a good list?

Most lists are created by using a squeeze page. A squeeze page is a page on your site that is devoted to getting people to subscribe to your list. To maximize subscriptions, you should offer some sort of free give-away to those who sign up. A free ebook or report that is related to subject (or niche) of your site has proven to be a very good incentive.

The use of an autoresponder is ideal for this purpose. Most autoresponder companies will provide you with the code to place on your squeeze page that displays a box where your subscribers can enter their name and email address. After people sign up, you can set it up so that your autoresponder sends out your free offer. The entire process can be set up to operate automatically, with little or no effort on your part.

Once you’ve set up the process to begin building your list, you have to manage it. Send subscribers plenty of free items to keep them interested and eager to open the emails that you send them. On a regular basis, you can send them emails recommending the products and services that you are promoting. You don’t want to do this every day, but most people don’t mind seeing these types of solicitations once a week or so.

Make sure that the products you are recommending are of high quality. There is no quicker way to destroy a list that to promote scams or crappy products. All you have is your reputation. If your subscribers think highly of you they will remain on your list and buy your products on a regular basis.

By taking care of your list, sending them related and relevant free gifts, offering them good high quality products, and taking care of their needs, you will continue to build a large list that will pay you big dividends far into the future.

Do you want to learn how to make money? Get my new ebook and start making money online!

By: Jo Mark

About the Author:

Membership Site Script

People hear about how successful an online business entrepreneur can be through list building and they wonder, “How difficult is it to build a list?” While it is unquestionably an endeavor that takes time and laser-like focus, a fresh-faced internet marketer does not venture into the fray alone. There is a myriad of tools, strategies and advice (of varying degrees of usefulness) available on the internet, and one can easily get confused by just figuring out how difficult success may be. The information about list building alone could fill the Library of Congress!

But fear not, eager young online entrepreneurs. The bulk of internet marketing success actually boils down to only two vital skills – building a list and driving targeted traffic. Just about all the other “tips and tricks” you will see being trumpeted around are refinements of one of these skills.

This concept is applicable to everyone who ventures into an online business, be it an individual who is involved in niche marketing or working strictly as an affiliate marketer by promoting other people’s products and services. In fact, building a list and driving traffic are even more important to an affiliate marketer because the products, sales pages and sometimes even the bulk of the promotional materials are already provided by the original merchant.

There is a strong symbiosis between building a list and driving traffic. Once you have gone through all the hard work of driving traffic to your squeeze page, your list building begins with your opt-in form. Visitors to your squeeze page will key in their names and email addresses into the opt-in form.

Once this information is received, it will be added onto your list which can then be used to drive further traffic to your websites, blogs, sales pages, affiliate links and other marketing tools to sell your products and services. If list building and traffic driving are both done with efficacy and consistency, these will be your success factors for your online business.

By: Craig Donovan

About the Author:

Your niche sites made easy

I’m sure you have heard the old cliche that ‘the money is in the list’, but before you can start any sort of list building you need to have visitors to your website. Waiting for the search engines to index your page might take a while, so why not take advantage of the customers and traffic on the worlds largest shopping site and sell ebooks on eBay to start a mailing list.

Selling ebooks or other informational products can be a fast way to build your list. By sending your customer to a download page on your website you are driving targeted customers directly to your opt-in box. Of course you can’t make them sign up just to get their product, but you can include your opt-in box on the same page that they will download their product.

Have your download link at the top of the page and directly below it ask for their name and email in return for something equally enticing that is related to your business such as a free report or a mini email course.

For even further list building you could write your own info products that are directly related to your niche. For example, if your site was about dog training, you could write a report on how to train your german shepard and sell it on eBay with links inside the ebook back to your website. Then all you need to do is write another similar ebook on training poodles, and another on training beagles etc.

If you allow your product to be resold by others, pretty soon your dog training guides and reports will be all over eBay and the web, all directing customers back to your homepage to become members of your mailing list.

As you can see, the potential for building a list of customers using eBay is extremely profitable and should not be overlooked as a way to bring targetted traffic to your site and help you build a list of customers quickly.

By: Tracey Edwards

About the Author:

Membership Site Script

If you are building, or trying to build an Internet business, I’m sure you heard the phrase, “the money is in the list.” If you are serious about earning money on the Internet, you must learn how to build your own list. After all, your net income starts with your list! And the way to make consistent money on the Internet is to develop a large and growing list. But the problem is, how do you get that list if you are just starting out and can’t afford to spend a lot of money?

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. To begin, decide on the type of people that you are targeting for your list. They should be people who are engaged or interested in the niche in which you are participating. Make sure that your niche is large enough so that can develop a sizable list.

2. Develop a marketing plan! Develop a strategy to find people that may be interested in joining your list. Do some research on forums. Forums are a great way to find large numbers of like-minded people. Find forums that cater to the people in your niche. Join as many forums as you can. Spend some time in each of those forums, read posts and take note of recurring questions. Learn all you can about the needs, wants, and problems of your target audience. The more you know about your target audience, the more successful you will be in marketing to that group.

3. Determine the needs and desires of your target audience. Locate a free gift that satisfies those needs and desires. Offer this free gift for individuals subscribing to your list. People will subscribe to your list if they see your offer as something of value.

4. Develop an action plan! Develop a strategy to approach, and contact the people that may be interested in joining your list.

5. Research and locate article submission sites that specialize in your niche. Your target audience will probably make up a large number of participants, both readers and writers at these sites. Submit articles on a regular basis. Make sure your articles contain an attractive resource box that links your reader to your opt-in (squeeze) page.

6. Post helpful information to your forums on a regular basis. Include a signature file that contains a link to your squeeze page with every post.

Of course, these are just a few of the techniques that you can use to build a large list. There are many other free methods available. Once you begin to make some money, you might want to look into paid methods of list building. Using these paid techniques, you can build a list much quicker.

Do you want to learn more about how I make money? I have just completed my brand new guide on how to make money each and every day.

By: Jo Mark

About the Author:

IM Success Formula

Twitter is simply exploding. Thousands of people join every day. It’s still open. It’s still a new frontier for you to come in and dominate. The really neat thing about it is it levels the playing field. Many, many big name people that you would not be able to reach otherwise you can reach and have conversations with on Twitter.

Connect with big names

Some won’t. Forget them. Do it with the ones that will. You’re able to massively extend your reach to many, many more people. My Twitter list is growing astronomically and it just stuns me how responsive it is.

Multiple marketing messages

Another reason you need to get involved in this today is if you send out good content and good information to your list several times a week, you’re going to do okay. You’ll get one or two unsubscribes, but that’s okay. If you send out multiple messages to your email list every day, people would unsubscribe in droves. Yet on Twitter, you can communicate with your followers and their followers as many times a day as you want with social messages and with marketing messages.

The bottom line

Here’s what I want you to get: the bottom line from Why You Need a Twitter List Community NOW!!! It is a new frontier and there’s still time for you to get in and dominate your part of your niche.

I want to impress upon you how do-able this is and how you can build it. You can dominate your part of your niche on Twitter. It’s still a new frontier that you can dominate.

By: Jeff Herring

About the Author:

Your niche sites made easy

Pay-per-click is something you should know about. Pay-per-click isn’t something you absolutely have to know about immediately, but it’s definitely something you should learn. Starting with co-reg and JV deals are really the quickest, best, and least expensive ways that take the least amount of brain power to get your list growing automatically. You can tell your friends and family to join your list as well, but they’re probably not going to amount to that many people. You’re really looking to build your list to several thousand as quickly as you can.

These two techniques will help you to do that. You can go and pick up Perry Marshall’s book at http://www.MyFirstPPC.com. It will teach you everything you need to know about how to get your first pay-per-click campaign started. He’s the expert and I wouldn’t deviate much from what he tells you.

But I can tell you how to build a list through pay-per-click.

I don’t care what kind of site you have, the front page of that site, where your domain sits, where you want to drive traffic to, should be a squeeze page for list building. We’ve talked about how to make squeeze pages before. You need some kind of image (people are best), some text (bullet points work well), and you need an opt-in box.

Opt-in boxes can be pretty simple. You generally get some code for the autoresponder, and then some code for the actual words and forms on your page where people sign up to join your list. Give customers a lead in to the form. “Just type your first name and email address below:” works fine, or something similar to that. Or, you could get a bit more creative: “Fill in this form to receive your free copy of…” You can do this any way you want. And, you can generally complete this step right in the autoresponder program.

The next thing are the boxes. If you want a bigger list, if you want more people to sign up for your list, ask only for their first names and email addresses. You don’t need to collect the other information, until they buy something from you, right? Then, you can put this information into a special list of buyers. This is your best list–your customers, people who are willing to spend money.

You can collect that other information from list members through your payment processor when they become buyers. People don’t mind giving more information when it comes to finances, usually. Payment processors, like banks, are often what people consider to be “trusted” sources.

But back to the opt-in box… It’s also best to put name first, then email. I know that at AWeber, the form comes out the other way around, unless you change the sequence, so be sure to do that.

Then, and this is a very important part, whether it seems like a big deal or not. Change the wording on the bar that usually says, “Submit.” That won’t get anyone to click. But, if you change the wording to read something like: “Free Instant Access,” just like on MyFirstList, that converts better. Use anything you like.

Then use some bullet points–about five, where I can sell the benefits of the site, which are your list building draws. You notice I wrote “benefits,” not features. Why should people want to learn more about your product? Get your newsletter? Read your ebook? What’s in it for them? Why should they give you their information and sign up for your list? If you tell them why they need to join your list in bullet points, great. If not use a paragraph, but don’t put much more than that on a page. Keep it short and simple.

Be sure to make your sales page the thank you page in your autoresponder so that people go from list building page to sales page. Then, you’ll get a name and email, even if they see your sales pages and don’t buy your product.

So, when your squeeze page is built, you add it to your web host, then you go to Google, Overture, Kanoodle, or another PPC site, and place your ad. I’ll let Perry Marshall do the talking on that, so please go to http://www.MyFirstPPC.com and get his book. It’s a very smart investment, if you’re serious about online business. But use your campaign to advertise your squeeze page and drive traffic to it. It’s a very efficient list building strategy.

By: Tellman Knudson

About the Author:

10 Lazy Tips to Build a List for a Small Business

Lots of small business people make email list building sound both time consuming and difficult but here are 10 easy ways you can build a list to increase traffic to your website, increase revenues and decrease the number of “click-aways” on your site; all with very little effort on your part.

(1) Place a simple sign-up box on every page of your website. Make it easy for people to build a list for you. Let them know you are offering to give them even more great information or keep them in the loop of happenings with your business.

(2) Send out regular emails to your list. I am on lots of email lists. I get one e-newsletter that can run as long as 5-10 printed pages! I love ‘em. I get another newsletter “post card” that is only 200-300 words long. I love ‘em, too. It’s not the length; but the “constancy of purpose”. Keep in contact with your list.

(3) Encourage your readers to forward your emails to their friends and business associates. If you write useful and interesting stuff, this is a free and easy way to build a list. People will naturally want to share your newsletter with their friends. But at least a 2-3 times a year, ask for help from readers when doing a “membership drive”.

(4) Make changing email addresses easy for reader. Place your change of address link in every email. The harder you make people work to change an email address, the more likely they are to just “delete” your message when it comes to the wrong inbox. Plus if someone is changing jobs and addresses and wants to take your newsletter along with them, let them!

(5) When people sign up for any of your services or buy your products, tell them they will receive your emails, too. Most people are more than willing to receive “Upcoming Events”, “Product Updates” or “Customer Service” messages from someone who they have done business with in the past. This is a great way to subtlety build a list without using a hard sell.

(6) Bring a hard copy sign-up sheet to all of your face-to-face events or at your front desk. I attend lots of conferences and other small business events and most everybody has a sign up sheet. But with tiny little lines! So naturally, by the time I crammed in everything, it was mostly illegible. So I started leaving my business cards instead. And you know what? No one ever follows up! Get people’s email addresses and use them!

(7) Collect business cards at face to face presentations or meetings. If you do lots of speaking events or presentations, tell your audience that you have even more information available, if they would be willing to leave their card with you and let you add them to your email list.

(8) Build a List by Asking For an Email Addresses On All of Your Forms. If you use contracts, letter of agreements or service agreements or forms of any kind for your business, change them to add email addresses to them. If people are filling out “name, rank and serial number” already, they will not balk at giving you their email.

(9) Offer a special download on your website. You don’t have to create an ebook or anything big. If lots of people come to your business asking the same kinds of questions, then you can create a mini how-to guide, checklist or FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) with the answers. You can then direct them to the website and get their email address in exchange for the information.

(10) Sponsor a contest or drawing. Place the contest sign up sheet proximately on your website and encourage people to register to win” and get your free newsletter.

Bonus: The most important tip of all: Create great content! If you write useful and relevant articles for newsletters, people will become hard core fans and spread the word about you and your business.

By: Michael S. Murphy

About the Author:

In the internet marketing arena, there are so many experts going around telling people that you must have a list, they will keep on repeating the importance of list building. What is list building and why is it so important? Learn it and you will work from home from your computer with greater ease. It is critical to the success of your legitimate work from home business.

List building is a process of creating a list of subscribers. Subscribers are people who are willing to be in your list by providing you their valid email addresses and their names. And you will be able to send them emails from time to time, to inform them about a new post in your blog, special offer, free gifts or new product launch.

This is a powerful method of reaching out to many people at one time because you will be using an auto responder that allows you to send out to a large number of people without getting delivering problem or being rejected.

What usually will happen is that, when visitors come onto your website, they will be shown with a prominent form to offer them either free gifts, tips or newsletter. In exchange, they will have to give you their email addresses and names. In most cases, just the name and the email address will do.

Over the next few days, there will be messages sent to the subscribers for details to download their free ebooks, software or they will receive useful tips on the topic.

Over time, of course the internet marketer will send out news on new product launch or special offer for certain products. Depending on the response, the internet marketer will make money from the list. That’s why many of them will say, the money is in the list.

However, sending them a lot of messages daily will annoy them, you will not like people to send you messages telling you special offer for his products everyday. It makes it no longer special. So you have to keep a balance.

A lead capture page is a website which is designed solely to get the contact details of the person. The visitor may come to the page after surfing around, if he is truly interested in getting more information from you, he will put down his email address and name.

This is an effective way of getting quality subscribers as well. Firstly, you know that he is interested in the product or service that you are providing. Secondly, he is in your list right now, giving him information or selling to him is much easier now.

Lead capture pages can come in different forms as long as they serve their purpose, they will be effective lead capture pages. You will have to do testing consistently to find out how the visitors respond to your lead capture page. Give them clear instructions and you will see them coming into your list.

Thank you for taking your time reading this article and I hope you will be able to create your own legitimate work from home business and work from home using your computer.

By: John Tan

About the Author:

Ebay auctions made easy

People are often talking about leads. I got 500 leads from XYZ or I got a new lead here, there, who knows? But let me tell you, there’s a HUGE difference between a lead and a subscriber.

First, when you buy leads, you’re buying a bunch of junk. Those people are nothing more than names and email addresses. They don’t know you. They don’t care about you, and you’ve just wasted a pile of money.

Why?

Because even if the list of people double opted-in somewhere, as some lead generation services tell you, they didn’t opt-in for you. So why’s that different from co-registration?

With co-registration, you can describe your newsletter, ebook, offer, etc. That description is placed on a page—maybe a pop-up, pop-under, or it can be stationary on your own website—that lists your offer along with several others. Some co-registration forms have only a few sites listed together, while others have more than 10, but what they all have in common is that you get to describe what the people are signing up for.

List building the right way allows for personal choice. Why does someone subscribe to your list? Because they like you or they like your message. They want to learn from you because they trust you to lead them in the right direction.

That’s the difference between a lead and a subscriber. A subscriber has seen a description for your offer, whatever it is, and have signed up because of you. A lead has no connection to you other than you’ll start to send them mail and guess what? You may be breaking the law. What you’re sending is spam. Don’t buy leads, they’re a waste of money.

Remember, list building isn’t something you can do blind. You want people to sign up because they know who you are and want to learn from you or do business with you. A bunch of strangers that someone else collected won’t get you where you want to go.

If you’ve bought a bunch of leads, I’m sorry. Forget them, move on and start list building the right way. It’s just ethical that people who sign up know what you’re all about, too. If you’re new to Internet Marketing, you may not even realize that it’s not completely ethical to use leads, FFA leads (free for all) that you buy from someone else. Or, you may have been doing business a while and just started thinking about list building, too. Buying a list of customers seems like an easy way to go, but it’s not list building, as least not the right way to go about list building.

Don’t base your business on sand. You need a solid foundation. Collect leads by putting up a squeeze page, by having opt-in boxes on your site, through joint ventures, etc. When you’re giving people what they truly want, you’ll achieve much greater success.

By: Tellman Knudson

About the Author: