Need help building list

The "rule of thumb" is to offer something for free to get people to opt in. While it may not build your "buyer's list", it will build a targeted one that you can then use to convert in to sales. Offer something of high quality for free, people will opt in, then you can contact them easily in the future.

You do not need your own product to build a list. You can sell affiliate products.

If you can afford a domain name, a hosting account and an autoresponder, you can start that which is how I recommend you do it.

If you cannot afford that, you can use a free blogger blog or a free wordpress blog or a free facebook fanpage or some combination and get a free autoresponder and do the same thing.

However, I recommend you start off with owning your own account if you can afford it.

As far as the exact steps to do it, I've posted that on other posts on this forum and I give it away to one of my lists.

The key though, is in the beginning before you even start in the market and keyword research so that you pick a profitable and not too competitive market. Then once that is found, you can find some private label rights things to give away.

Make a product on what you know. Make it a valuable one. Give it away as what is known as a money magnet in exchange for an email. Setup an Aweber account and a web form. My product coming out soon steps you through this process an a ton more. But that is start. Feel free to ping me if you have specific questions.

Thanks you for your answers. I just want to make some things clear

1) I have host and I have domains
2) I have aweber account set up
3) I have webform (opt-in)

I just have difficulties finding the right thing to "give-away".

The best way to build a list is to find people who sell a lot of stuff in a niche you are interested in and make a bonus for their course that they have to opt-in to get the bonus. You better make that bonus freaking awesome. Another way, similar to that, is to make an ebook to list owners (FB, LinkedIn, SEO newsletters for your niche) filled with affiliate links that they get paid on and all they need to do is promote your opt-in page to get that free report.

You might have to make different squeezes for each JV, but this works wonderfully, just make sure when you approach the JV partner you tell them how you want to promote what they do and make a personalized video if you can.

Mandos,

Everybody is good at something or has a hobby or passion that enthralls them. What is yours?

Once you have identified that, write some tips about how to get started in that hobby or activity and post it in your blog.

Create a free report, perhaps pointing to some free resources on the internet that they could use. Use that list as an incentive to get people to sign up to your list.

Di

You could set up a light box or other opt in form on your sites, but if you are not already making enough sales with the existing traffic, then I'm not how beneficial it would be to turn these people into email subscribers. They are still the same people. However, I don't have enough information about what you're doing on which to firmly base an opinion.

I agree that you should set up a light box on your blog - a plugin that creates a professional looking popup with your opt-in form in it. But, you should not just have people sign up to be on your newsletter. You should either write up a document about something you know about in the niche of the website the light box is on, or you should give away some PLR product if you don't want to create something yourself. You must give the viewers a good reason to give you their emails. If you just say "sign up for my newsletter", your conversion rate will be really low because there is no real good reason for them to sign up, unless you offer GREAT content in your newsletter (and let them know about this in the light box popup).

Also, in your autoresponder, you should not promote a product in each email. Probably around 50% to 75% of your emails should be pure free content that your readers will want to see. You have to give people a reason to open your emails. If you bombard them with links every email, all of your viewers will unsubscribe. Also, if you provide lots of free content, your readers will respect you and your CTR will be much higher when you actually do provide a link to an affiliate product (or even better, your product if you create one).

And, you can't just throw in the link and say "click here for _________". You have to review the product or build up anticipation for it in the beginning of the email. I see WAY too many emails that are like 50 words long and basically just say "click here, this product is great". I automatically unsubscribe when I see something like this. You need to create rapport.

Good luck!

Make sure that your offer is to die for. That they have to opt in to get your offer.

Hi there,

Another option is to use PLR and change it up to suit your market. It really isn't as hard as you think to create your own product though. You're actually already ahead of the game, you have the traffic now you need to monetize. Just get an opt-in set up on those sites and test it out using whatever you can. Good luck!


Cheers,
Michelle

I like how several people told you to get hosting, when you pointed that out in your original post... lol.

Anyways- one thing I have a lot of luck with as far as a freebie is a 1-page "cheat sheet". I got the idea from Perry Marshall. Take some of the best tips about how to get started DJing, or how to pick up girls, and make it into a 1-page PDF with some good-looking graphics. Then, you can also create an email ecourse, that will deliver tips over the course of a week or two where each email contains a "lesson", as well as links to an affiliate offer.

To come up with ideas for topics on your lessons you'll email them, look at the courses that you're promoting and see what the sections or modules are, and just dumb those down into basic lessons.

I am in the same boat as you. I have 2 sites that do pretty well but I am not sure what to offer to get subscribers. With your dating site you could create a short ebook called something like "10 things you should never do on a first date" give it away for free to people who opt in.

You can offer alot as an incentive for joining your email list. It could be a free report, free audio, free movie, free newsletter, free software, free consultation, and etc. Make the homepage of your website a squeeze page, and just focus on driving a ton of traffic to your homepage.

You've got a good base amount of traffic, others have posted some great answers. Think about some offers you can give people or something that would excite you to subscribe and offer something along those lines.

It is truly one of the best ways to make an income over the long run especially if you continue to grow your list.

I agree with a few of the members here, you already have the basics like domain, hosting, autoresponder so grab some PLR and make it into your own report or short e-course and give that away free. I would not advise trying to sell something at the bottom of every email people will get fed up and unsubscribe (I would!) give them lots of free stuff and build up a relationship with your list first.
Good luck

You'll definitely need to give something away to get people to opt in to your list. For your giveaway, have you thought of finding some good PLR and possibly re-purposing it?

Hi Mandos

OK, so the issue is you don't have anything to give away as a freebie to get people to subscribe and you don't have a product to sell to generate a list of buyers.

As others have suggested, PLR is one way to go about fixing this. You can get PLR to give away and to sell very cheaply. Once place you can get it is here:

PLR and MRR stuff

For literally a few dollars you can pick up a product, and have it uploaded on a site in a couple of hours at most.

The sort of result you can get with some PLR is amazing - stuff that would cost a fortune to put together and take you weeks can be done in minutes.

An example of some PLR I have used is here:

The Google Traffic Pump System (Make Money Online Using FREE Google Tools)

Alternatively you could just set up a squeeze page that doesn't offer something for free necessarily but still gets people to sign up based on curiosity. Something like this:

squeeze page example #1

Once someone signs up for something like this, you can send them on to the offer it relates to.

Alternatively you can offer a small bit of free training before sending people on to the offer.

For example:

squeeze page example #2

Basically the same page, but with some free training.

Or you could even (depending on the traffic source) just send them to the free training without them needing to sign up, and get them to sign up to 'continue their training', like this:

Free information page example #3

If you set up a few pages (like the ones above) you can split test which ones get the most sign ups and then start driving more and more traffic to the best one.

Sometimes you get some surprising results - the offer of free stuff for example on the second page makes almost no difference to conversions compared with the first one.

Whichever option you go for though, you should (in my view) send them on to a related offer after they subscribe. This can be an affiliate offer - doesn't have to be PLR or your own.

The only other thing is where to get traffic from. If you look on the 'Free Information page example #3' page (the one where you get the free info before opt in), you'll find some free info on how to do this.

In all seriousness, if you follow these steps, you'll start seeing a list of hundreds in a week or less.

I hope that helps

Matthew

Sounds to me you are actually ahead of the curve as you have traffic. I'd offer a freebie on each of your sites in relation to your products in return for a sign-up. Even a poor targetted offer should bring 5-10% sign-up rate so that could be 100 a week joining your list!
Once you have 400-500 then offer to swap ads with other list owners in the same niche as you. Before you know it you'll have 1000 people on your list.

Rich

You don't necessarily need to have your own product.

You can take a PLR product and edit it a little bit to make it even better. You can use it to build up your list.

Simple.

Good luck!

If you are already familiar with Clickbank - take a deeper look at the affiliate tools some of them offer. I've seen products that will provide you with not just banners and email swipes - but also freebies to give away (which contains affiliate links which you can tailor to your ID too).

Hello,


I have learnt a lot from You friends.. thanks

Thanks for the info Ghurabaa & Matthew!

1 Question

Let's say that I want to build a list in the IM niche, may a sub niche of it.. and I don't have a whole lot of experience with IM, just know the general concepts etc. But if I would pretend to know something and just scoop info from different places and trow in some PLR products and buy some solo ads to start out, would there be a change for me to be a little successful? Or would I just get lost with all the other people that are trying to do the same thing?

Can I have some honest opinions on this?

Hi Mad Scientist,

I'd say rather than solo ads to start with I'd test whatever you put together with some cheaper traffic source first (ie the method I mentioned on my page). If you buy a solo ad, you want to send the traffic to a squeeze page, and at the very least you want to get subscribers from your efforts even if you don't get sales. But I wouldn't jump straight in with a solo.

So this would be my plan in your situation:

1 - Put up a squeeze page
2 - Put up an offer page with something to sell that people are sent to after entering their email OR send them to an affiliate offer you know converts well
3 - Test them using my suggested traffic source and hopefully make a bit of money
4 - Use email marketing to follow up with the people now on your list and make some more money
5 - then use solo ads to ramp things up gradually (and a load of other traffic getting methods - doesn't just have to be solos and other paid traffic for ever)

From the testing in part 3 you will get an idea of how well the back end offer converts (ie if people buy after signing up). If say you get 100 sign ups and 5 sales of $17 = $85 and you have a decent squeeze page that converts to solo ad type traffic at say 50% then you know if you buy say 200 clicks for $100 then you should get about 100 sign ups and $85 in for the $100 you have spent so cheap / nearly free. Plus you'll be building your list. You can then hopefully build a relationship with the list and make affiliate sales and make the rest of your money back / get into profit.

I hope that makes sense / helps

thanks for the info! really awesome!

1 small plan

setup a squeeze page with a 6 part IM newly course
have a catchy sentence in my sig here on WF
after the course is over provide more good info scraped from blogs etc but rewritten
trow in some affiliate links to good WSO's etc..

plain and simple

BUT if my content is nice, WILL it work and pull in people purely with my sig here in WF... and helping people out and get a good name here on WF?

maybe as well on some other forums...

maybe some solo ads in the future


any thoughts on this or will I just get lost in the ocean of people already doing this?


I would love to hear some honest thoughts on this


thanks again everyone!

you can go to a plr (private label rights) website and
give away articles or an ebook that is targeted to your website.

PLR Store

Easy PLR

IndigitalWorks (the biggest plr site)

products and jv

Wow! Thanks for all the great tips guys!

Go to the forums in your niche and look for hot topics, questions that everyone is asking. Then identify one hot topic in your market, one problem.Then write a short 1500-word report on this to give away. Focus on one problem, one solution. Make the report short, no-fluff, instantly consumable and instantly applicable.