List Size

You have to be clear right from the beginning how you will get traffic and where your subscribers will be coming from. This is very important, otherwise your follow-up message can be just beating around the bush and generally messages your subscribers won't even read.

So you have to have a clear plan of how your squeeze page will look like, how you will be getting traffic and what will be the mindset of the traffic (whether they are coming to your squeeze looking to get something for free, etc.)

Logically, the best thing to do is to have your newsletter sequence prepared in advance before getting the first subscriber. Waiting for hundreds of subscribers is and only then starting to write the follow-up messages is not a good idea, because it may take some time before you grow your list to a considerable size and in the meantime your subscribers may forget about you, so you have to keep them "warm" and even raise their awareness of what you have to offer right from the beginning.

Hope this makes sense.

Excellent answer and advice Trevor,i can't better that

so far, here's what I got:
-quality of the list (means you have to prepare the autoresponder to at least build a relationship with your subscribers)
-boost the quantity of the subscribers

This plan will give you better money, less pain and headache..

You need to be consistent here. Once someone opts-in, they expect to hear from you. It's important that you develop the relationship with the people in your list even if it's just 1 person. You never know if that 1 person really likes you, he can share your content around thus bringing more leads in for you.

What you do is prepare follow up messages good for a week at least meaning once someone opts-in, these messages will automatically send depending on how you scheduled them. Then you can start your newsletters. It's that hard and doesn't take much time as well. Would be good to email your list at least 3-5 times a week.

Yes, certainly.

(Do you think of them as "newsletters"? Just curious ... ).

I think the answer's "with some difficulty, but it gets easier for later niches after you've made money from the first one(s)"!

I always have a minimum of 2 outgoing autoresponder emails (I don't think of mine as "newsletters") ready before I activate the site with the opt-in. Sometimes a little more. And a few more planned, of course, even if not written.

Noooo, this would be very bad. The first person who opts in, on the first day, needs to hear from you that day. Otherwise they may never open your emails and it will all have been a waste of time.

There are several different things you have "to have developed" all at the same time. I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer to the order in which you do them, other than perhaps that there's no point in actually attracting the traffic without having the rest of the system up and running.

For me, the big start-up issue is always "selecting the product". This isn't nearly as easy as it looks, and it can be really time-consuming. But it's one of those things that you simply have to get right, becase if you get it wrong, it doesn't really matter how well you do everything else - you still can't make any money.

So that's where "the whole thing" starts, for me.

I suspect that a significant proportion of people who struggle along without ever really making any money have gone wrong at this stage. Call me a skepchick, but certainly, whenever we get "Where have I gone wrong?" threads discussed in detail here, with people giving a link to their site and inviting opinions as to why they're not making any money, my own first thought, on looking at what they're doing, is usually "You're never going to make a living selling that because almost nobody else does, either". :p

But you're asking all the right questions, here (and in your other thread), which bodes very well: you've realised before starting to do any of it that it all depends on opting people in, building a list, and establishing their trust.

Many people don't know this, and have to learn it the hard way. And some even fail and "drop out" without ever learning it at all.

In my view, it's not about how many people are on your list or how often you mail them.

It's about WHO the people are on the list and WHAT you mail them.

Mailing them just to say that you are "building a relationship" I think is a waste. I've thrown together quick emails with all content/no sell just for a "good will" thing plenty of times and the lists turned out to be horrible.

Now I send about one a week, if that. And when I do send, it's usually a free video that provides as much value as I possibly can.

Even if it's a cool product that you bought that you loved (I recently mailed my list with a 10 minute video RAVING about the Roku), it provides value and builds a relationship.

I've had lists in a very high five figures that provided a decent income. Today my list is relatively small (around 10K) but my open rates are very high and the responses I get are very good.


Just remember - the money is NOT in the list...it's in the RELATIONSHIP.