Am I Doing It Right?

Yes, that's good advice. If you FOCUS on one thing at a time until it is completed you will have far more success than someone that is adopting a scattergun 'hit and hope' approach. Also, write down a list of things you need to do and then prioritise them in order of importance. Do the most important thing first before moving to the next one.

With regard to the 'freebie' product, write a fluff-free report (can be 5-10 pages) and give it away. Convert the document into a PDF.

Not specific enough, to general, this isnt really a niche at all its more of a category. Niche is very specific. 'Anxiety management for working mothers' is a niche.

Originally Posted by norahthenewbie My freebie for the squeeze page:

Bad idea, the product should match your specific niche (see answer one), it should also be of extreamlly good quality. This product is going to be what people judge you on, if it sucks then you have lost them forever.

Originally Posted by norahthenewbie My autoresponder:

Bad idea, it means your sending out from your own hosting. Which Im willing to bet is not a dedicated server. So your deliverability is going to be lower, more emails will end up in the spam box, and your likely not can spam compliant. Go with a Autoresponder service. Aweber has a $1 first month trial and Mailchimp has a FREE forever plan.

Thanks, guys.

I think that's probably good advice, overall. To the extent that you can, anyway.

Here are five posts which may help you, on the subject of list-building ...

What are the essential things to know about list building?
Lists: How Long to Presell - Averages
Website or squeeze page
Where to get reports to give away on opt in page?
Autoresponders vs. Broadcasts

My memory, concentration and attention-span are appalling at the moment, but I have this slight sense of déjà vu showing you these posts, so please excuse me if I suggested them recently.

You need that to be something you've created yourself, which serves the specific purposes set out here. This is often the difference between making a profit and not making a profit. It's not something to get wrong!

Completely inadequate, and mistaken (yes, even as a way of "starting off"). You need a professional autoresponder such as Aweber or GetResponse (price $0/$1 the first month, $15/$20 per month after that. If you can't earn $15/$20 in two months, it isn't a business at all!). If you really can't afford this, muster up a few dollars by doing some sort of online/offline job for a few hours and wait until you can - again, it's not something to get wrong at the outset, not only because it stacks the deck against you so much, but because of the opportunity-cost involved.

Here's the point, which explains why/how it matters so much: the forum's full of people who start off threads to complain that "list-building doesn't work any more" and "my list is unresponsive". These people nearly all have one or both of these things in common ...

(i) They're not using a proper, professional autoresponder;

(ii) They're giving out something (as the "freebie") that doesn't fulfil the objectives of the post linked to above (sometimes by not being targeted enough, as mentioned above).

These are the mistakes to avoid. (There's more to it than just this, of course. There are other mistakes to avoid, too, but in this context these tend to be the two big, important, income-determining ones).

I think both Brutecky and Volstersfar gave you very good advice, above.