List Building Tricks

They buy something from me.

They get a sweet product for a great price.

As for freebies, I do all the above that you mentioned - minus the business card in a fish bowl...

I find that software is great for getting opt-ins. Most folks don't get too excited over an e-book these days. But software still has a high perceived value. Plus it's easy to convert them to a buyer for a more powerful version of the software or maybe a complementing software.

Cheers,
Coby

Coby, thanks for your input! Is that "something" a digital or tangible product?

They get "more of the same", because that's what they've been offered, in exchange for their email address. Sometimes in exactly those words.

"The same" is my continuity process. List-building, for me, is about continuity. (And I gather that it tends to be for other marketers who maintain high open-rates, too).

Something (an article, a guest post, whatever) attracts them to my site because they've already read 1,200-1,500 words of my writing and wanted more, and they clicked on a link that offered them more. When they arrive they find some more, and the offer of plenty more by email. It's a "screening process" as much as an "attracting process". The ones I want to sign up are the ones who like reading 1,200-1,500 words of my writing about the niche, because long experience in a wide range of unrelated niches has taught me that those are the ones who'll regularly buy products on the strength of my recommendations. As long as I keep sending them 1,200-1,500 words of my writing. But that's easy: I'm an article marketer so I'm writing the articles anyway - it doesn't cost me anything much extra to send them out by automated emails as well.

It's true that I offer some sort of "free report" for their opt-in as well ... but most of the "niche content" in that is just a couple of 1,200-1,500-word articles, really. Because I already know when they arrive at my site that that's what they want. Because that desire/offer was what brought them there in the first place. "Continuity".

Indeed. Exactly. My visitors would hate that, too.

Some people do sign on to lists built like that, but they're often not very good customers.

The mistake, from the marketing perspective, is to confuse "the biggest list" with "the biggest income". They're usually two very different things, and there are reasons for that. The people who imagine they're split-testing but actually make their decisions on the basis of "numbers of people opting in" have typically missed the point, on this question, and because of that, their open-rates (and, I suspect, incomes) are far lower.

I normally supply some kind of guide or free give away!

They're subscribing to me because they're interested in learning something related the free product that I am giving away. The immediate payoff would be determined by the subscriber. They determine what the immediate payoff is not me. I'd like to think the immediate payoff is, they learn something new or they confirm something they already know.