To Squeeze or not to Squeeze

Spreading your ideas around is a good idea. If you are building a list for future marketing attempts, it helps to have their emails.

If your goal is to make money by selling items of value to the people on your email list, you might make more money by having those emails as opposed to having a link in your freely downloadable item.

Kind of hard to say without testing.

But if what you want is to spread your ideas around just becasue that is what you wan to do, I would imagine that having something freely downloadable would definitely be the way to go.

I suppose the real key then is to truly give VALUE and not over send offers. I know for me that I have become desensitized to Opt-ins, and I spent an hour once un-subscribing (as was suggested here) due to the time I was wasting and the info-overload syndrome.

I am MUCH more picky now IF and when I opt-in.

Thanks for the comment.

TLC

Your last point is a good point.

Sometimes I do think they're all in cahoots when I get back-to-back emails from the latest affiliate launch, I do open them to see if they cut and paste the email provided or if they got creative.

Personally, I do appreciate free downloads, and often times it is within it that there is an invite to opt-in - well now I'm a little more warmed up to them.

Cheers!
Terri

Ditto to all who are saying squeeze ONLY if you plan to give value.

otherwise you will just end up in the spam filter.

These days you really have to over-deliver and break thru the clutter with some kick-ass content.

That does seem to be the general consensus.....works for me!

Terri,

Interesting idea. Let me propose another paradigm called "organic list building" which could work with your "no form" approach. Organic list building means that you first provide excellent value through your site's content or free report and then give your visitors/readers the option of signing up for more of the same. The theory is that if you provide sufficient value, people will sign up because they want more of what you have to offer, not because they have been bribed with a free offer.

Organic list building is actually the conventional opt-in model in reverse: first, they get the good stuff, then they opt in. My tests have shown that this model results in a much more responsive list that when offered paid products is more likely to produce buyers.

So, if 50,000 people download your report without having to opt in and you give excellent value, my feeling is that including in your report a link to a page that asks them to opt in will result in more opt ins and a much higher quality list than it would otherwise.

Create a splash page with a great headline and instead of an opt-in form, simply say "No obligation, No opt-in required. Just click the button for instant access" and leave it at that. Take them immediately to a thank you/download page (which you can monetize with affiliate offers if you wish). Just make sure that you have placed links to your squeeze pages in the report. Wouldn't hurt to put links to other affiliate offers in there, too.

Make it clear to your reader that they have giveaway rights to the report and that they should feel free to pass it along, post it, etc. If it goes viral, you win.

Just my opinion, but it could work very well for you.

I love it Ken. And thanks for posting that. It really does make sense doesn't it. I also think visitors will find it refreshing b/c quite frankly, they are being Opted to death.

I am working on my own wordpress site finally and I think that's a great model to start with...."give til it hurts" and then bring them on board with even more value.

Thanks again, I appreciate your opinion.

Cheers,
Terri