Email List Building Strategies
You need a list. That's a given. It's the number one key to opening the success floodgates. After it's built, it's yours to use any time you want. Just push a button and print money - literally.
Now you know why. Here's how:
There are 3 factors in list building you need to consider:
- Your Opt-in Page
- The Incentive
- Your Confirmation Page
The Squeeze Page - The landing page is the page that has your opt-in form on it. This page is the one that asks them for their email. That's why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. And it needs to be simple to see how to opt in. And your call to action must be clear!
Failure to include a great "call to action" will result in failure. This is a definitive message that tells your visitor what to do. And if you don't include it, they won't opt in. Oddly, if you don't make it clear, people will be confused and end up doing nothing.
One way to really spice up your squeeze page is to make it a video squeeze page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. It also allows you to tell them what to do several times. And you can have the video just tell them to fill in your form after it's done playing.
Now, don't worry if you have no idea how to make videos. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. Or you can get email list tools that give you squeeze page templates.
Your Bribe - Next, you've got to figure out what your bribe is. People need a good reason to part with their email address. Most people are very protective of their email address. So make your "bribe" a good one!
You have to provide value in your bribe for it to be good. Then it becomes something people want to get from you. And can benefit from. A few ideas:
- An eBook
- Some useful software
- A video
- An email series
You've got to create some great content. It's got to be something helpful for your new subscribers. And nothing sells like "free". If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.
Once again, don't worry if you don't know how to create the freebie. You can just pay someone else to make it for you. Just give them a topic and they will write the content. For example, you could have them write a 5-part email course. Each email will cost between $20 and $25. So, you'll get the whole series written for under $150.
There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. Two things to keep in mind when writing (or buying) and email training series. First, it must provide value to your subscribers. And it's nice if it earns you some money, too. 
The easiest way to do this is to market affiliate products in the emails. This allows you to get started with no products of your own. And make money right away from your list.
The Thank You Page - Finally, you need to consider your opt-in confirmation page. After subscribing to your list, your visitor is redirected to this page. A great thing to do here is provide some immediate value. That way, they feel glad that they gave you their email address. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. Then they're more receptive when you email them.
Again, a simple solution to this is to get an email marketing package that includes everything. Or you can do it yourself. And write it all yourself. Or hire ghost writers to write them for you.
Summing it up
It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or if you hire people to do this for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The key is to start building your list. Once you've got it built. You're free to make money at the push of a button.
Affiliate Marketing Secrets
Learn Top Affiliate Secrets
Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. This is when you send visitors to someone else's product sales page, they make the sale and deliver the product, and you keep 50% or more of the sales
The benefits of this are
- You can start instantly with no up-front costs and no need to develop a product, write the sales page, develop the website, come up with support tools, or get a merchant account and CRM.
- You have practically zero time investment because you don't have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
- You have nearly zero risk because you already know the product sells, because the product owner has already made sure the product sells. So you already know that the visitors you send will result in commissions for you.
There's no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!
There is one major drawback...
You work hard to send the traffic to the product owner's website, but once you do that you will never see those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. And of the 10% or less that do buy, the product owner will be able to sell to them again, but you will not.
Is there are way around this?
It's simple: You must get your visitors' email addresses before you send them to the product owner's website. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you want to do it like a pro, you'll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.
Here are the benefits of doing affiliate marketing like this:
- You'll be building your own list of potential customers that you can market to again and again.
- You'll be warming them up by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.
If you want to create an affiliate marketing system like this, you'll need the following:
- A lead capture page, preferably with video
- Several high-quality content pages
- A multi-part email series with at least 5 emails in it
Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you'll send them to your lead capture page first. This page is where you collect your visitors' contact info and add them to your auto responder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. After subscribing them to your email list, it redirects them to your content mini-site.
You content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. And at the same time, the email series begins following up with them to get them back to the sales page, in case they don't buy on the first visit.
All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it's well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it's set up, it runs automatically - you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.
One option, if you're not up to the challenge of setting this all up yourself, is to let someone like Affiliate Silver Bullet do it for you. With a service like that, you don't have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. The benefit is that it's much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it's instantly set up. One negative is that there will be other people using this same affiliate marketing system. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitor are so small, that it doesn't really matter.
Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to "outsource" each of these components. Whichever way you decided to go, it's critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you're at all serious about your business.