List Building - comparing 2 methods

Alexa, I definitely agree with you. If you are going to be sending people through a sales funnel, I would make it all self-branded. Definitely wouldn't let someone opt-in to receive something free then send them immediately to an affiliate offer sales page.

Your thoughts are always welcome!

~Anthony

@Alexa, I have to respectfully disagree with you just a wee bit! There will always be some subscribers that will take the freebie and then unsubscribe. An offer upon opt in gives you the only chance to market to these people. The others can choose to buy the offer or not. Either way, you will definitely have the opportunity to build a relationship with those that remain as subscribers thru your auto responder.

I've experienced results similar to Alexa, by no means as many I'm sure-- but here goes....

I think way too many people trying to get into marketing, copywriting, etc. are looking way too short term, busy "straining the gnat and gobbling the camel". They don't get that, ultimately, relationships which you build (and the way you go about relating to others every day) can dictate your whole future - if you let them.

Not trying to allude to a whole spiritual consciousness thing here. I've had a lot of success in business by making great friends out of business contacts-- not all of them to be sure, but: how many times do you need to win a million dollars to be well off?

The Bambi Secret --

If you are thoroughly immersed in a profitable line of work - treating your customers very well; it is inevitable that you will run into a really great person every year or so that could easily be worth a million dollars in future opportunities to you.

Of course this isn't just my secret. Alex has it, shawnlebrun, and dozens more on this forum have the same secret figured out too.

We still have to test everything we do lots of times building those contacts lists though.

Bambi

That is why it's best to have two separate lists, one for your general swaps and another one where only the buyers end up on.

[QUOTE=greenowl123;8617421]I would limit amount of swaps you do, especially with other people who swap a lot. Your list quality will be very poor as someone already mentioned above.

I totally agree.

No matter how many low quality leads you get when it comes to doing
swaps, buying traffic etc.

There are always, always, always some perfect leads out there that
connect with you and end up buying most if not all of your products.

If you can find where the quality leads are; you're onto a winner.

Thanks
Gavin

The first method, in my opinion, is more suited to the current landscape, which is that almost half of people open their email on mobile smartphones. MailerMailer and other companies have reported such stats (the number was about 30% in 2011 looking at some of my old bookmarks, now it's close to 50%). And this number is only going to keep rising. People click on links in email almost HALF as often on mobile than on a desktop/laptop, so you can imagine that the sales will be HALF as often on a mobile device. It's no secret that it is harder to get sales on a mobile device, and Facebook have been trying for a while to get their mobile business to be as profitable as their web business, and they now have. Their solution is to adapt to the environment.

Unless you are building a list of exclusively buyers, there will be freebie seekers, and in today's landscape, there are even more freebie seekers. Almost half of people open their email on mobile devices, and remember the numbers show that people when they are on mobile click half as often and likely buy half as often. From what I know, very few payment platforms let you track whether the buyers come from a mobile device or a desktop, but I think we all know half of the buyers will not come from mobile, unlike the click stats. So to make money from the freebie seekers, you can sell solo ads and at least earn on the click. Or do ad swaps to get subscribers, so at least the clicks are not being wasted. Of course, some of the freebie seekers will buy down the road, but if you want to profit from almost EVERY freebie seeker that clicks, solo ads is the way. The freebie seekers may not buy from you (at least in that period of time), but they are certainly buying from others.

I wouldn't sell more than 2-3 solos per week (of course, some marketers do very well selling solos almost daily), the other times you want to be promoting products and providing value. People want to receive the hottest promotions. Believe it or not, if the freebie seekers aren't buying from you, they will buy from the solo buyer that you sold the solo to. I know, because my solo buyers are happy with their solos and have reported a good number of sales. So if they don't buy from you, they get their value somewhere else, you make money on the clicks, and the solo buyer is happy. Everyone wins. Hey, I'm a freebie seeker on a lot on a lists I am on but I am a buyer on some as well. I can't be a buyer on all lists or I will be stark crazy. And even if I am a buyer, I won't buy a product from that list or marketer every day or every week of the year.

The email marketer's solution can be to profit per click and not waste those mobile clicks. When they get to a desktop/laptop, that's when your promotional email for the affiliate product or your own product does the work. How do you blend all this? You can send two emails per day, one in the morning and one in the night, to make sure you cover mobile clicks and desktop/laptop clicks. You can send one information email/ad swap/solo ad in the morning and do a promotional email at night. Or you can do one email a day, and alternate between swaps/solos and promotions.

As for ad swaps, the secret is to build up a large seed list first and actually be able to do without ad swaps. Then start doing ad swaps. What do I mean? Your list has to be very strong first and be sending a lot of clicks before you do swaps. If it is only doing 25-50 clicks per mailing, it is not worth it to do swaps, because you will only get back 25-50 clicks per swap (which means around 10-25 subscribers per mailing), and you will take forever to grow. Once you are getting 100 clicks per mailing on your own, then start doing ad swaps, because that's when you are really gaining traction. Otherwise, the time will be better spent on your own traffic generation, building up a strong list first. There is also the concept of click banking (where one marketer sends another marketer a certain amount of clicks and gets that back in future), but I am not a fan of that as it just complicates things, and there is a lot of tracking and chasing involved over a long period; you want it to be as simple as possible.

It's possible to do about 3 swaps per week, each getting 100-1000 clicks, depending on your list. It is much better than doing one swap per day, each getting only 25-50 clicks. If you calculate the 3 swaps per week method will more often than not get more traffic and more subscribers, while not burning out your list. Doing 12 swaps per month is not going to kill your list, only a percentage will open and click on each email anyway. The rest either miss the email or were not interested in a particular offer. They are not going to sign up for every offer. Anyway, people will sign up to other lists on their own accord if they are interested in a topic.

A few years ago, the second method would be more suitable as mobile clicks were not really in the equation. These days, the old concept of queuing up 365 emails, one for every day of the year, or even for a month is outdated as you want to be sending current emails. I wouldn't do an autoresponder sequence of more than 7 days. People want current and updated information, as it is the era of Twitter/Facebook feeds, instant information.

Fabian