Where to start with building a list?

17 replies
Hey guys,

I have started building a list in the Internet Marketing niche and am wondering if anyone has experience with building a list with banner ads? If so, how effective is it?

I am also considering PPC, solo ads and forum posting.

Besides Google, what is the next best place to start an effective PPC campaign?

Not sure what the best way is to start! Please help!

Thank you for your responses in advance.
#building #list #start
  • Profile picture of the author gregdavidson727
    PPC is a complete waste of time and money. Unless of course you're willing to spend 50 cents or a dollar per click. At that rate you would spending about $20 to $50 per subscriber. Ask around but that's been my experience with PPC. Stick with forum marketing and other free techniques. But solo ads can work if you have a great freebie.
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    • Profile picture of the author jamesrich1
      Originally Posted by gregdavidson727 View Post

      PPC is a complete waste of time and money. Unless of course you're willing to spend 50 cents or a dollar per click. At that rate you would spending about $20 to $50 per subscriber. Ask around but that's been my experience with PPC. Stick with forum marketing and other free techniques. But solo ads can work if you have a great freebie.
      My lead capture page converts at 40-60% depending on traffic source and presell process. To say PPC is a complete waste of time and money is CRAZY! You have a bad experience. Its not wise to try to drag others down in this losing cycle you have had with ppc. Paid traffic is where all of the highest paid marketers make a lot of their money. Yes free traffic is great but you can scale easier with much less time using ppc.
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      • Profile picture of the author gregdavidson727
        Originally Posted by jamesrich1 View Post

        My lead capture page converts at 40-60% depending on traffic source and presell process. To say PPC is a complete waste of time and money is CRAZY! You have a bad experience. Its not wise to try to drag others down in this losing cycle you have had with ppc. Paid traffic is where all of the highest paid marketers make a lot of their money. Yes free traffic is great but you can scale easier with much less time using ppc.
        Most big marketers don't use PPC. They spend a lot of money on media buys which allows them to get tons of traffic in a small amount of time for a lower price. I'm sure you're getting a lot of subscribers with your squeeze page but is this through PPC?
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      • Profile picture of the author himanuzo
        Originally Posted by jamesrich1 View Post

        My lead capture page converts at 40-60% depending on traffic source and presell process. To say PPC is a complete waste of time and money is CRAZY! You have a bad experience. Its not wise to try to drag others down in this losing cycle you have had with ppc. Paid traffic is where all of the highest paid marketers make a lot of their money. Yes free traffic is great but you can scale easier with much less time using ppc.
        Yes, PPC is still working for generating traffic and making money. But you need to test test test.... not all PPC services have good convertion, so you must look for PPC services which suitable to your niches and do experiments - trial and errors with the PPC.

        Test... test... test...
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  • Profile picture of the author Confined To Life
    Hi willisk,

    It doesn't really matter how or where you get started with a paid campaign, so long as you're sure of a few things.

    1. Decently priced clicks ($0.60 a click is good)
    2. Quick delivery of clicks (you don't want to be waiting a month for them to come through)
    3. Good, relevant traffic source (you don't want uninterested visitors)

    The rest is up to your sales funnel. How well does your blog/squeeze convert traffic into leads? Here's a little example I like to use. You invest $500 in paid traffic at 60 cents a click. That's 833 pageviews on your highest converting page which may be your blog or squeeze depending on what setup you're running and how well it converts. You want a 35-50% opt-in rate here, but for the sake of modesty, let's say you're getting 33% opt-ins.

    Of those 833 views, you're getting 275 new subscribers. The key here is NOT having a cheap product. Using PPC to sell at $7 product is going to be ineffective unless you have ridiculous conversion rates. I'd recommend a product priced around $47.

    Your goal now is to warm these leads up through an excellent email series. You should be able to get 8% conversions now if you do it right. That is, 8% of your subscribers will buy your product when you send them to the sales page. With our 275 subscribers, we're going to make 22 sales. At $47 a pop, you're looking at a revenue of just over $1,000. Subtract the $500 investment and you've pretty much doubled your investment.

    The key is twofold. You want a good squeeze page (40% is your target conversion rate here). You want an even better email campaign that converts a minimum of 8% of your subscribers into buyers. If you can do this with a $47 product, up-scaling can make you incredibly rich very quickly.

    Once you're hitting those numbers, you can start your paid ad campaigns. Until then, I probably wouldn't worry about it unless you know you're going to be making at least 1.5% profit.

    All the best,
    CTL
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    • Profile picture of the author gregdavidson727
      Originally Posted by Confined To Life View Post

      Hi willisk,

      It doesn't really matter how or where you get started with a paid campaign, so long as you're sure of a few things.

      1. Decently priced clicks ($0.60 a click is good)
      2. Quick delivery of clicks (you don't want to be waiting a month for them to come through)
      3. Good, relevant traffic source (you don't want uninterested visitors)

      The rest is up to your sales funnel. How well does your blog/squeeze convert traffic into leads? Here's a little example I like to use. You invest $500 in paid traffic at 60 cents a click. That's 833 pageviews on your highest converting page which may be your blog or squeeze depending on what setup you're running and how well it converts. You want a 35-50% opt-in rate here, but for the sake of modesty, let's say you're getting 33% opt-ins.

      Of those 833 views, you're getting 275 new subscribers. The key here is NOT having a cheap product. Using PPC to sell at $7 product is going to be ineffective unless you have ridiculous conversion rates. I'd recommend a product priced around $47.

      Your goal now is to warm these leads up through an excellent email series. You should be able to get 8% conversions now if you do it right. That is, 8% of your subscribers will buy your product when you send them to the sales page. With our 275 subscribers, we're going to make 22 sales. At $47 a pop, you're looking at a revenue of just over $1,000. Subtract the $500 investment and you've pretty much doubled your investment.

      The key is twofold. You want a good squeeze page (40% is your target conversion rate here). You want an even better email campaign that converts a minimum of 8% of your subscribers into buyers. If you can do this with a $47 product, up-scaling can make you incredibly rich very quickly.

      Once you're hitting those numbers, you can start your paid ad campaigns. Until then, I probably wouldn't worry about it unless you know you're going to be making at least 1.5% profit.

      All the best,
      CTL
      Yeah but you also need to remember that in many niches 60 cents per clicks is a very low bid. The lower you bid the less traffic you get. And personally I don't think PPC is worth more than 5 cents a click. Unless of course you're a lawyer or car dealership with a high ROI.
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      • Profile picture of the author Confined To Life
        Originally Posted by gregdavidson727 View Post

        Yeah but you also need to remember that in many niches 60 cents per clicks is a very low bid. The lower you bid the less traffic you get. And personally I don't think PPC is worth more than 5 cents a click. Unless of course you're a lawyer or car dealership with a high ROI.
        It doesn't really matter how much you pay. I could pay $0.80 a click. If I'm getting 40% opt-ins from that traffic, I can seek refuge in the fact that my sales funnel is going to turn these leads into buyers. Example below.

        Spend $1,000 on clicks and get 1,250 views on a 40% converting squeeze page. That's 500 leads. Provided I can spit them out the other end at 8% buying my product, I'm still getting 40 sales at $47 a pop, bring in $1,880.
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        • Profile picture of the author gregdavidson727
          Originally Posted by Confined To Life View Post

          It doesn't really matter how much you pay. I could pay $0.80 a click. If I'm getting 40% opt-ins from that traffic, I can seek refuge in the fact that my sales funnel is going to turn these leads into buyers. Example below.

          Spend $1,000 on clicks and get 1,250 views on a 40% converting squeeze page. That's 500 leads. Provided I can spit them out the other end at 8% buying my product, I'm still getting 40 sales at $47 a pop, bring in $1,880.
          I used to pay 50 cents a click for traffic in the wholesale niche which is less competitive than the money making niche. I didn't get that much traffic. Maybe 30 visitors a day. In order to get a lot more traffic I would have had to bid $2.00 a click which is outrageous. My guess is that in the money making and internet marketing niches you have to bid $3 a click in order to get a considerable amount of traffic.
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          • Profile picture of the author Confined To Life
            Originally Posted by gregdavidson727 View Post

            I used to pay 50 cents a click for traffic in the wholesale niche which is less competitive than the money making niche. I didn't get that much traffic. Maybe 30 visitors a day. In order to get a lot more traffic I would have had to bid $2.00 a click which is outrageous. My guess is that in the money making and internet marketing niches you have to bid $3 a click in order to get a considerable amount of traffic.
            Not necessarily. You just need to be in the right ad network.
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            • Profile picture of the author gregdavidson727
              Originally Posted by Confined To Life View Post

              Not necessarily. You just need to be in the right ad network.
              Are there any networks you would recommend? I used to use Adbrite when they had flat pricing for ad placements. But now they have a different model. Like I mentioned, I'm not willing to spend that much on PPC.
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  • Profile picture of the author RogueOne
    solo ads and forum posting.
    These are probably your best bet in the IM niche. PPC for IM keywords is insanely expensive.
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    • I actually held a Webinar that teaches a business model that's working really well right now to build a list.

      The fastest way to build a list is to create a great product, promote it with a webinar and drive traffic through facebook ads.

      You can pay $1 a click as long as you:
      1. Have an expensive enough product
      2. Understand Your Opt-in Rate
      3. Understand Webinar Conversion Rate
      4. Split Test to improve #'s 2 & 3
      PPC is the fastest and safest way to grow your list. A popular misconception about PPC is that you can blow a fortune. It's pretty safe if you understand your metrics. Then you can adjust bid prices, product prices, and improve conversion rates accordingly.


      It's actually not that hard. I completely explain (for free) how to do this to create a product from scratch & promote it with a webinar driven with facebook ads in this 79 minute webinar:

      Solo Ads are great, but you still have to understand your conversion rates. Forum posting is good (especially the WSO forum), the only drawback is that it's extremely time consuming...
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  • Profile picture of the author thetrafficguy2
    The best type of traffic to build a list is paid traffic from, PPC and banners.The reason this is true is because you can target the traffic so that you know what the people are looking for and what they want to buy.

    Youtube traffic is great but it is not very targeted and has a lot of Freebie seekers. It also takes a lot of time and is not a steady source of traffic for most.

    Forum traffic is good because it is alot more targeted. For example lets say you are selling golf swing stuff. There is forums that the only thing they talk about is golf swings. So the traffic that is coming is very targeted.

    But the best is still paid traffic because you put in the exact subject you want your list to be about. It is also very steady and there is a unlimited amount of it. The great thing about paid traffic is that it you can just go get more traffic when you want, unlike SEO, affiliate's, and youtube.

    I would also do lots of solo ads too because it builds your list quickly. While there is many optins thare lower quality optins
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  • Profile picture of the author Corey Geer
    Building a list with banner ad?

    If you're talking about using those as your method of driving traffic in the hopes you'll receive a new subscriber then sure, as long as it's targeted and depending on the site it's placed on, it may be great or bad for subscribers.

    See, what the majority of people fail to realize, is that it's not the size of the list but it's the quality of the list. Everyone is so stuck on the idea of squeeze pages and forced e-mail sign ups but how many of them can you honestly expect to buy anything? Sure, they're semi-targeted but there are people who will sign up to a list they don't care about just to see a price tag or a sales page. You also have people who use throw away or fake e-mail accounts to sign up as well and they'll never receive a single one of your newsletters or promotions.

    The best way to do about building a list is to simply show them or offer them the option of signing up, and if they do happen to sign up, they're truly targeted. Sure, you can offer a free bonus if you like but in my opinion, forcing people to sign up or "paying for subscribers" is one of the worst things you can do to acquire new customers.

    As far as your method of traffic goes. As long as the website you're getting traffic from (since you're using banner ads) has extremely targeted traffic, then you'll be fine. There are occasions where people place banners on spam or garbage websites (usually because they're cheap) just so they can get some hits and they hope for some signups.
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  • Profile picture of the author Harry Nguyen
    Start with forum posting, PPC, Social Media, Youtube, etc. and once you build a list just be ready to give content and once they trust you, they'll buy
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  • Profile picture of the author leegs
    Originally Posted by willisk View Post

    Hey guys,

    I have started building a list in the Internet Marketing niche and am wondering if anyone has experience with building a list with banner ads? If so, how effective is it?

    I am also considering PPC, solo ads and forum posting.

    Besides Google, what is the next best place to start an effective PPC campaign?

    Not sure what the best way is to start! Please help!

    Thank you for your responses in advance.
    Hi Willisk,

    So far, the more effective way to use banner or ads is to place the banner or ad on the thank you page to cash in for sales. It is based on my testing and it works well for me. Hope it works well for you too!

    Pay per click or PPC is one of the fastest ways to build a list or market whatever you want to promote. However, it is also the fastest way to lose lots of money without trying too hard when done wrong.

    All I can say is that you will have to setup a proper campaign and avoids the common pitfalls that many people almost always fall into. Hope that you understand what I am trying to tell you.

    I would use a combination of free traffic and paid traffic to build a list. However, for me, the best conversion is still in paid traffic if you know what you are trying to do. Some of the paid traffic I have used so far is solo ads and also here at this forum for lead generation. Facebook ads also did pretty well for me. As for free traffic, it will be doing adswaps and giveaway events, etc.

    Hope it helps you!

    Let me know if you need further assistance. I would be glad to help.

    Talk soon,
    Ray
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