This week I have another Guest Post for you, and what a post it is, from Craig Sowerby.

Craig does an excellent job of explaining how we know each other so I’ll pass you straight over to him:

I am writing this post for Barry as we have met through a challenge that Jacinta Dean started last year, 100 Blog Comments Challenge. And what a challenge it was. It has brought so many marketers together and friendships have been made via the net even if we have not met each other you seem to learn a lot about people from visiting their blogs.

So as Barry is inviting people to guest post on his blog I have created this post for his readers. All about List Building. So please enjoy!

Now we all come onto the Internet for various reason’s. Put your stamp on the world. Get exposure for your offline business. Make money selling products. Or even just blog for a hobby. But whether your incentives are financial or not. You want an audience and to keep them coming back. So the easiest way to do so is to start to build a list of subscribers.

If you ask any marketer what is the most important part of Internet Marketing or any business. They will tell you it is their list or customers. “The Money Is In The List” This is true but the real money is the relationship you have with your list.

You can take anything away, websites, tools, programmes etc….. just about anything that you need to run a business but just leave me my list. If you have a well established responsive list, then this is golden and you can make a good living from it. When I mean responsive, I am talking about your subscribers actually opening your emails and clicking the links.

It is not just to do with Internet Marketing. It has been around since business began. You will get it all the time. Next time you visit your local department store just take note. Do they ask you if you would like to sign up to their store card and revive a 10% – 20% discount off your next order or even this order. This is a very tactile way so you hand them your details and then they can follow up with related products and special offers.

“THIS IS MARKETING”

Once you have people on your list it is far easier to market to them than go out and find more subscribers. It will virtually cost you nothing to send an email to your subscribers list. Well just the cost of your auto responder account.

Consider just how quickly you could effectively send out a promotional broadcast introducing your latest product launch. With your new built-in customer base of prospects you can do this instantly. You can not only make money with your own product releases, but with affiliate marketing offers, being one of the first to solidify your place in your niche by being able to quickly notify your subscribers of each upcoming launch, tagging them with your unique affiliate ID.

There is sheer power in having a responsive mailing list in your online arsenal, and failing to recognize the value could cost you tremendously.

So this is all well that having a list and making money from your list but what if you do not have a list. How do you start building your own list of subscribers.

First Things First

You are going to need a hungry market. A group of people that have a problem and that you can provide a solution too. It has to be very niche related and they must have a passion and desire for what you can give them. There are many niches you can go into, as long it is evergreen and they are willing to pay to find that solution you will be onto a winner.

The top 3 niches to have a look at are:

1. Wealth

2. Health

3. Love

You can really dig deep into each niche to give you sub niches to get really targeted.

Wealth: How to make money selling on Ebay

How to start your own icecream business

Making money desiging websites

Health: How to loose 5ibs in 5 days

Loosing weight after being pregnant

How to gain strength in your knee after an ACL repair

The perfect Abs

Love: How to get your woman/man back

What to do when your marriage breaks down

How to attract the younger lady

These are just a few examples I have plucked out of my head. I do not know if they are profitable but with a little re-search you can find a few golden nuggets.

The niche part of the process is very important. Get this wrong and you could spend months or even years trying to flog a dead horse. If youre audience does not have a burning desire about the niche and are not willing to spend money to find the solution do not expect to make any money.

The Offer

So now you have chosen your niche you will need an offer, a little bribe or incentive to give away to get your sign ups. This can be given as an ebook or report, video, audio or access to a membership site. This can be created by your self, outsourced or purchase PLR (Private Lable Rights). If you go down the route of PLR at least re-write the content or you could end up with the same product as all the other people who purchased. Also you will want to brand it as your own so adding new graphics will help. I use PLR as a guide or to give you a kick start.

You will now need some essential tools that most of you will be familiar with.

Hosting, Autoresponder and squeeze page

For my hosting I use D9 Hosting. Autoresponder comes from Aweber and I created my own squeeze page. There are many templates available that you could use for your squeeze page but here is just a few things you will need. A squeeze page is like a mini sales page but with out the sell. The main thing is that all you are wanting is the optin and nothing else. Do not try and sell anything or try and distract the visitor. All you are after is the optin, the email and nothing else.

A good “Title” explaining your offer. Also be very specific.

“How To Make Money And Fire Your Boss”

Yes we all want to make money and fire our boss. It is not specific and does not reach out and hit our emotions or burning desires.

“Who Else Want’s To Earn $75 By 3pm Today Selling ………… On Ebay”

This title is far better as you have been more specific and just about given the method away in your title. So the person reading it will think yes I would like to earn $75 and by 3pm today it is a no-brainer.

You will then elaborate using bullet points telling the visitor what benefits they will receive when they sign up. And a call to action. Where do I sign up? Your optin form wants to be above the fold. Which means it will appear on the page as soon as the visitor lands on your squeeze page. They do not have to scroll down to see the optin form

Confirm And Thank You Pages

Once your new subscriber has signed up to get your offer you really want to make sure that they confirm their email address. If you use Aweber then it is called double optin. Even though they have signed up they will need to confirm the email that has just been sent to their inbox. You can use the standard page provided by Aweber or you can create your own.

I personally create my own to tell them exactly what to do next to make sure that you get your new lead onto your list. I also provide another incentive for the new lead to make sure they click on the confirmation link. Another free product.

Your thank you or download page can be a very powerful piece of kit too. Here you can offer even more products, upsells downsells, crosssells the list could go on and on. Just be careful not to annoy your new subscriber with too many offers right off the bat. They may unsubscribe before getting any more content from you.

Content

Which leads us into the follow up sequence or broadcast. You want to be adding value to your new list. Give them what they want. More information about your chosen subject. You want to give good quality content but also you need to be making offers to your list too. This is where you will make your money. It can be your own products or affiliate products. There is no set rule to how much quality content you give and make offers.

Test it and see how your list responds

Traffic

So now you have chosen your niche and got your squeeze page set up and your autoresponder, you are ready to send traffic to your squeeze page. But how do you do it.

Well there are literally thousands of way’s to send traffic. But these are the methods that I use. They are in no particular order as some out perform other’s. But the more methods you have set up the bigger chance you get your squeeze page seen!

JV Giveaways

Now this method is only really for the IM niche. Sometimes you do get events in the self help niche but mainly it has anything to do with IM. A group of marketers come together and offer their products for FREE. You each then promote the event to get visitors to the event and get more exposure.

Members can then scan through all the products that are available and download them and come onto your list. As this is in the IM niche your audience is already targeted.

Also there are free methods to join and also paid upgrades which vary in price depending on who is hosting the event they can be from $5 up to $97

Article Marketing

You may think this a little old school. Well it is and has been around for years and is still going strong. If you have good content already on your blog then just use that. Don’t just copy and paste as the big directories won’t like it. Make a summary of a good blog post.

Title, Body and resource box

They are the 3 main elements you will need. Oh and also a keyword you want to rank for. Have your keyword in the title first sentence in the body and last sentence. Don’t worry too much about your keyword as some marketers say it is not vital and I know one marketer that does not bother with keywords and just produces good content. I like to use keywords so you have the chance to get picked up in the SERPS

Forum Marketing

Find forums with in your niche and start contributing. Giving away some of your methods and tips. Add value to posts already started or start one of your own. You can then add links into your signature box, going back to your squeeze page or site.

Just make sure you read the TOS and Rules as each forum may be different. Also forums are considered as a family or group of people that spend a lot of time there. So don’t go in all guns blazing and pimp your site.

“Hey check out my FREE report it’s the best thing since sliced bread”

Never try and sell something or blantly advertise on forums you will be kicked out of town immediately. No body like’s the pushy sales person.

Adswaps

Now this can be a very touchy subject amongst marketers. Some only use this to build there list and some never touch them at all. I always like to use as many methods as possible so you have a little bit of exposure all over the net.

So really what exactly is an Ad-swap. It is when two list owners come together and agree to mail their list an offer from the other list owner. This will usually be a free offer featured on a squeeze page or landing page in exchange for someone’s name and email address. This can add hundreds of new subscribers to your list very easily. It is a little know secret that all the big Internet Marketers are doing this to add a few hundred subscribers to their list per day.

I also like to sign up to other marketers lists to see how they are marketing. I have been on one person’s list for about a month just to see what methods they use and every single email usually 2 to 3 every week are all adswaps. Now personally I think this is way too much and I am really not getting any value apart from being added to thousands of other lists. And all the marketer is doing is creating a list of freebie seekers.

Blog Subscibers

If you have your own blog running, which I highly recommend as you have total control over and can basically do what you want with it. If you do not have your own blog set up then get one started. It is a great place to warm up traffic, connect with your subscribers and readers.

And of course gain more subscribers. There are many place’s on your blog to gain subscribers

? Sidebar

? Header

? Footer

? Pop Up

? With In The Post

? Exit Pop Up etc……

Just recently Aweber brought out there own plug-in for word press to help add your form a lot easier. This is of course free if you are an Aweber customer.

FREE WSO

If you have been on the Internet for some time you should have come across the Warrior Forum. It is a place where many top Internet Marketers hang out. It is also a good place for new marketers to get some great content and knowledge.

Now this is not FREE to you but the warriors. This method will cost you $40 to set up but your audience is highly targeted and ready for what you have to offer. Basically all you want to do is copy your squeeze page into a new post and then link back you your squeeze page with on the post.

I gained subscriber immediately after it going live.

Guest Blogging

Just like this post that I have created for Barry and his readers here. Not only can you get links back to your squeeze page or site. Well that’s if the owner of the site lets you.

It also gives you more exposure and gets your brand/product out there to the masses. So it is a win win situation. As you get more exposure and the blog owner gets some new free content.

So I hope you have enjoyed my post and you get some value from it. Always take action on anything you find useful. And list building is an essential part of Internet Marketing so if you have not yet started your list then get started today using some of the methods I have mentioned above.

Please come say “Hi” to me on CraigSowerby.com and check out my FREE Report List Building Made Easy where I go into a little more depth of building a list.

So tell me, new friends: what do you think?

Please share in the comments below your email list building struggles or secrets, and of course, please share this on social media so we can help build Barry’s list, as a thank you for all the incredible value he shares with us!

Thanks very much for such a detailed post Craig, I will of course respond more in my comment below.

If you would like submit a guest post please Contact Me via my Guest Post Page

Until next time, be pro-active…

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