List Building from scratch

Hey Osman,

If I were to start all over again from scratch to build my list I would start with Free SIMPLE traffic methods, such as:

1. Forum marketing - if your niche is "internet marketing" then here at the Warrior Forum is where you should be 24/7, 365 days a year! Just be active, positive, and provide value in all your responses and questions. Oddly enough this will get people clicking your signature link, singing up to your opt-in page, and eventually purchasing your product or an affiliate product you promote.

2. Article marketing - Just focus on submitting ONE article a day to Ezinearticles.com FIRST, wait for it to be approved, and then submit that same article (with a little rephrasing to avoid having Google think it's duplicate content, which will bring your search engine rankings lower) to goarticles and articlesbase.

3. Blog commenting - Go on the TOP blogs in your niche and be the FIRST to comment on a blog post, making sure your comment is valuable and contributes to the post.

So I would just focus on these three for now and master them.

And I would NOT underestimate the simplicity of these methods, because from my experience and from many of the most successful marketers today, simple techniques like these when executed bring amazing results.

So, be consistent and persistent in your actions. And DON'T GIVE UP!

Within a couple weeks you should have a decent number of subscribers on your list to market to or sales if you choose to drive your traffic straight to a sales page.

Hope this helps.

Sonam

P.S. If I were a newbie to Internet Marketing I would STAY AWAY from PPC in the begining and especially...Google Adwords!

You could also use Facebook Fan page to build list. The best thing about FB Fan page is that it works viral (people tend to "like" what their friends "like").

Forum Marketing
Article Marketing
Blog Commenting

With each of these methods you must always remember to add value to your content, especially with blog commenting, just having your link there will not be enough to encourage people to click.

Im actually writing 10 articles a day right now and submitting to Ezine. I have gotten about 8 subsricbers so far as I just started 2 days ago. About 12 articles are live.

If I was going to go to a squeeze page, videos and guest blog posts are both great options. Both show your personality and make it easy for potential subscribers to bond with you.

If you decide to use other traffic sources, it's best to have a good follow up sequence that does the bonding and demonstrates trust before throwing out affiliate offers.

Osman,

I would focus my efforts on facebook without question. THe other traffic generating strategies you listed work and I still use them. However, today their are over 600 million users on facebook. That is more people than use google. Facebook is a very powerful medium, it is massive and the growth rate is incredible. Facebook has the ability to be the most important targeted traffic generater. The potential is mamoth and I believe if you want to be positioned for the future in internet marketing you need to learn how to use facebook and the whole social media enviroment.

I am currently doing as swaps and solo ads...PPC hadn't been giving the kind of ROI I am looking for...will be trying out FB ads soon. As for free traffic, I bang on SEO and article marketing.

So far, solo ads and ad swaps face me the fastest results in the shortest time....

Well first thing is first, you must FIRST want to build a high quailty list, second you the niche you are in will dedicate what traffic source you will want to use. The bigger the market, the more different traffic sources you need to take action on.

So, Big Markets I would focus on...

1. Joint Ventures
2. Ad Swaps and/or Solo Ads
3. Interviews and Webinars

***BONUS Source***

I am testing right self-liquidating leads, this is when they have to purchase something or pay for shipping to receive the lead magnet. This works GREAT for physically lead magnets. I recommend trying it.

For smaller niches

1. Article Marketing (In a very unique way)
2. Forum Marketing (Not Posting but things like WSOs)
3. Pay Per Click (PPC Works Great, But You MUST Know Your Numbers)

Like I said, you don't want to build a crappy list from just any traffic source. You want to build a high quailty list of BUYERS. So I would have some type of filter in place to make sure my list building efforts don't go to waste.

Hope that helps

Mark

Wow, these are come great suggestions guys. I'll try to put the FB into effect. Right now, I'm just trying to stay consistent with my article writing, that is producing 10 articles a day. I just want to achieve that with consistency and gauge the results.

I have setup my responder series by giving a 6 part email course. I plan to build a very strong relationship with this list so we'll see how it goes.