What to show the prospect after opting in?

Disclaimer: I am not a professional and you shouldn't take my advice for granted.

I think that it depends on your niche. But in general, it would be better if you earned their trust first. Send a few informative emails, not too spammy - 2 times per week is okay. After that you could send an email stating that you have an exclusive offer for that person for being one of the new sign-ups. This is one strategy.

However, I don't believe that it would be the best thing to show the opt-in page instantly. If it was me who you were sending those mails to, I would unsubscribe immediately.

What works best for me is to show a thank you page which gives clear instructions, both in words and in pictures, on what subscribers (two groups: "gmail users" and "others") need to do, themselves, in order to be sure of receiving my emails in their in-boxes.

Without doing this, my open-rates are significantly lower - and I certainly don't want anything else distracting from that, because it's what the bulk of my future income depends on, and long-term future income is the whole point of building the list in the first place?

Almost definitely not, in my opinion

I used to do that, and it cost me a lot of money.

I suspect there's quite a bit of misguided thinking about, on this subject.

It's worth bearing in mind that it's possible to make the occasional quick sale that way and still lose a lot of money overall.

Here's the key concept: the few people who will buy anything, that way, are all people who would have bought it in a week's time anyway, after receiving some email from you, so there's no real gain. But many other people, who would otherwise have bought it a week or two later, will be alienated by it, because of course it makes you look like "just another marketer", so if I did that, I'd expect a much lower open-rate for my emails than I actually get.

Right after the opt-in, I promote nothing. For me, it would be a big mistake to do that.

As people who have split-tested it themselves tend to have discovered (and we tend to be the ones who quickly abandon the idea, once we've thoroughly tested it for ourselves. )

Don't worry too much about "proper practices", with such decisions.

Worry about what works best for you.

You discover that by testing things, not so much from the consensus of opinion.

Be aware that in internet marketing, just as with so many other forms of attempted self-employment, the overall success-rate is very low, and many of the people who will advise you are "on their way to failing" precisely through having copied "the (so-called) proper practice".

Well worth thinking about, that, before imagining that something's necessarily going to work for you, just because "it's what all the Warriors say"!!


.

it also depends on your whole system. while i agree alexa is right for most situations.

if you are getting traffic from solo ads or ad swaps in the MMO niche, then the bulk of those subscribers will burnout before you ever build a relationship so you need to monetize things as quickly as possible.... thus a pitch page NOW...and then another one....lol

You gotta look at things as a whole system, not an individual page.

Put simply, you need to gain the trust of your readers. If you simply show a product to the traffic after they opt in, they'll feel as if you're just trying to make a quick dollar off of them. If you however make a simple Thank you page while offering a free incentive i.e. video, PDF etc, then they'll feel you are just offering them help.

Once you have your list and you send them a few emails, then you can promote a product. The chances of making more sales have sky-rocketed since the list would trust you more.

Also, PRE SELL! You are not going to make a sale from the list on the first email. They are most likely to have seen the product plenty of times meaning you need to pre sell to them. After you send the affiliate link, send another email a few days later telling them to hurry. Offer a free bonus if they do decide to purchase it too.