List building is an essential part of Internet Marketing, if you want to create a sustainable business and a loyal customer base.  Here are some tips on list building.

Never Buy or Use Mass Email Lists

Such mass email lists are really 100s of lists stuck together, this could result in one being accused of spam, potentially getting you into major trouble, losing any reputation you might have, and end up not making any money.

Once you have a list of your own, and you realize how easy it is to get cash on demand from a single mailing, you will see that it is not the list that counts, itsyour relationship with the list, and their loyalty to you that hold the value.

You could buy a list of a million, but how can you really be sure they are allinterested in what you’re selling?

Never send emails out to lists you don’t know anything about. Never buybulk email lists. For responsible, effective email marketing and list building, this is NOT an option.

Instead, the way to build your lists is to use an autoresponder to gather names and email addresses from an opt-in form on the web. Your autoresponder could be held on a 3rd party server, for which you’ll pay a monthly fee, such as Aweber.com or you could opt for a onceonly purchase of a web-based program which sits on your own server, such as with MailerRespondPro.com. Either way, your aim should be to build a list of thousands of prospects, all hungry for products in your chosen niche. If you market to them well, you should then be able to earn around $1 per list-member every month.

Set up a free E-Course to Gather New Subscribers

This step doesn’t have to be difficult. Your free course is the vehicle to promote whatever it is you want to promote, whether it be an affiliate program, a selection of different affiliate products, or something of your own. It will also be the catalyst that enables you to contact these leads as often as you want.

There are many advantages to using an e-course to initiate prospects on your list. Not least of all, this method gives you time to impress yourself upon them in away that is easy to test their reaction to you. By watching and recording the results of different phrases and link-placements etc. you will gather what works best for your list.

First off though, you need a title for your e-course. No one is even going to subscribe if it doesn’t interest them. This is where a lot of writers really wreck a perfectly good e-course. You have to make your title as exciting and straight to the point as possible.

Here are a few examples of very poor titles.

Make Money Online

Migraine Relief Report

Create Your Own Products Easily

Play Cricket Like A Pro

It might be a little harsh to say that they are poor titles, but they just lack any spark or imagination, don’t you think? Here are a few suggestions I have to spruce those titles up, and these can be used in any other titles as well.

Make Money Online In Just 7 Days Using Residual Income Affiliate Programs

Stop Migraines In 5 Easy Steps

Create Sizzling Digital Products Instantly, That Sell Like Crazy

Bat Like Gilchrist, Bowl Like Lee, Play Cricket Like A Pro!

Do you see the difference? The trick is to not only plant the fuse of imagination in your prospect’s head, but to light it too. So what is the easiest way to create your own free 5 day course? The best way to create your free course is to write 5 or so articles yourself on the subject you’re promoting and then piece them together – in a step-by-step format preferably, since this has been proven to work well before.

The problem most people have when they try and do this is that they try and write thousands of words all at once and they get tired and never complete it.  If you break it down into sections, it’s a lot easier. For example, if I was to write a free course on creating your own fishing lures for profit, I would write something like this.

Article 1: Why fishing lures are so profitable

Article 2: How to create your own fishing lures from your table

Article 3: How to automate the whole lure making process

Article 4: How to market your lures offline

Article 5: How to market your lures on a budget online

And in each of these articles, I would weave in affiliate links appropriately or mention my newsletter. The information has to be of high quality and not just a blatant plug-a-thon. If you do this, you will certainly get a lot of people unsubscribing from your list.

Of course you can’t really just send your prospects a bunch of articles, you have to make a sensible pattern of them. For instance, the first email they get could be a thank you for subscribing email, with a ‘don’t forget to get your free gift’ in theresomewhere. That will get them going back to your site where you might have other things on sale alongside their free gift download. Plan the first email carefully. First impressions count and you can hook a customer in for life, or lose him for ever with this one.

Create a Viral E-book

Its best to pass your viral e-book around as a free product. Alternatively you can charge for it and give people the resell rights to the product so they, in turn, can give your product away, either as a bonus, or by selling it on for 100% of the profit.

Another way is to use it as a gift for building your list. Put it on your opt-in form linked to an adwords campaign or a bunch of articles you’ve distributed. Then you’ll be building your list and earning money at the same time.

Many of today’s most successful list-builders started gathering real momentum in their lists by using this method. The trick is to have subtle, yet frequent, referrals to your sign-up link throughout the book. Then, when you’ve done one, write another, and another. With three or four such books out there, you can start to get hundreds of sign-ups a day as the reprint rights get passed on and on around the Internet.

The goal of such an exercise isn’t to make money from sales of the book, it’s to position yourself as an expert in your field and to get more subscribers. So again, find a group of publishers in your market and let them know you created a new ebook with a sales letter they can use easily that plugs straight into their website. On top of that, give them a pre-written mailing promotion to use and tell them they can have the book for free, and they can sell it, or use it as a bonus and pass the resale rights on to their customers.

This is easy money for them and more subscribers for you. Plus, and this is reallyimportant, you’ll be getting pre-qualified buyers this way. In other words, people who have already bought something online.

The full PDF document on list building by Tim Brocklehurst can be downloaded for free at the following location http://bit.ly/GulFU

Highlight It

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!