Completely New To List Building.. Any Advice?

14 replies
I have been promoting things for about a year now and have always wanted to start making a list but never really knew much about it.

I just recently set up a kinda fitness niche squeeze page with opt-in form and everything. I got 20 subs already but its been slow.

Do you guys have any advice for how to get good valuable subscribers.

Also what is all this JV swaps and stuff about. Never got into the whole joint venture thing. Do any of you have any tips about that?

Thanks in advance you guys
#advice #building #completely #list
  • Profile picture of the author Reese Richards
    If I were you, I'd focus on building a high quality list before looking to do ad swaps or to JV with someone.

    To build your list, you need to come up with a money magnet - something that entices people to opt into your list. This can be a free report, an autoresponder training series, an ebook, a video etc - anything that provides value to the people in your niche.

    Once you have people on your list, you have to start building a relationship with them by continuing to provide valuable information and content. Let them get to know, like and trust you and then they will be more willing to purchase your products or products you're recommending by way of affiliate links.

    If you're selling something, you could create a great sales page (or pay to have someone make one for you) and then drive traffic to your page through Adwords, FB ads, banners etc to get a list of buyers.

    Hope this helps.
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    In my experience, leads generated from free marketing channels convert better (sales wise) than leads generated from advertising. So when you say you have 20 subscribers already... did you get them from free advertising or paid marketing?

    If you really need leads fast... set up a PPC campaign, and drive people to your squeeze page. A great way to get more people to sign up is to offer email address only.... instead of name plus email address. Test conversions when you do this.
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  • Profile picture of the author goldenbold
    You need a complete list building training. List building seems like very easy. But everyone who work with email marketing need very advanced technique of list building.
    Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author packerfan
      Best way to build a high quality list IMO...

      "let's not get into the building a buyers list vs. a freebie list for now"

      Offer an insanely great freebie. I'm not talking about a crappy PLR ebook. I mean something that truly helps people. Your BEST stuff....

      Continue to provide them content of that level via your autoresponder.

      Regularly communicate with them via surveys, asking questions, etc. And ACTUALLY reply to them...

      Only promote stuff that you really believe in.

      But some books on marketing (not crappy "IM" WSOs") Real marketing books about relationship marketing.

      Your relationship with your list is way more important than anything else. And it doesn't matter how you get people onto the list. If you give them good enough stuff, you'll be fine.

      I'd be very careful with adswaps, and random JVs. You never want to jeopardize your credibility in exchange for a few more subscribers.
      Signature

      Nothing to see here

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  • Profile picture of the author swingin4dafence
    Hey SnowCloud,

    There is no easy way or single solution. The fitness niche is very competitive, but huge. The good news for you is that there are tens of thousands of NEW people every week just getting on line to pursue fitness. The tried and true recipe is give away an E-Book of some kind that is QUALITY info and gets your opt-in subscriber to appreciate and trust you. Spend some time developing the relationship before you sell anything. You can put together an ad and split test it at least 5 times before paying for some ad campaigns to run. Don't spend money buying ads before you know you have a campaign with a good open and CTR.

    One option I might recommend you explore for training and access to lots of ad opportunities with some personalized support is DOE (Directory of Ezines). Charlie Page is the owner and is very dedicated to giving support.

    For fitness I would very seriously pursue Twitter and Facebook. If you are really into the fitness field you can post a lot of the same content on your site as on your facebook pages, etc.

    Quality content on your Adsense site and FB/Twitter account can take you a long ways in generating traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jay Wessman
    Fitness is a pretty competitive niche making a lot of people completely blind to and uninterested in opt-ins anymore unless you've got something really creative and useful to offer. Make sure that your squeeze page is converting well for a start, tweak it if need be til you have something that's really working.

    Then drive visitors to your opt in wherever you can. Here's a few free ways:

    Niche Social Networks can be good. Look for health and fitness social networks and figure out how (and if) each one can be used to promote your squeeze page. Some will allow you to make posts with a signature link (to your squeeze), others will let you start up groups that you can funnel people to your page from. Try making useful/interesting groups and grow them til they go viral, from there you can usually make a sticky post or something with your link in it.

    Facebook and G+ are good if you can get a handle on them. Build up health and fitness Facebook pages with a custom welcome tab with your opt-in form embedded. Again grow these pages til they go semi-viral. You can also join "health" related groups in Facebook and post your opt-in page there too. On Google Plus you can create an account and circle heaps of people interested in "health" or "fitness" and then wait for them to circle you back from which you can post a link to your opt in page on. Again you can create a health related page on Google Plus, funnel your friends to that page until it starts to grow naturally from where you can post your opt-in to all of the people that have circled your page!

    Forums can work well too. Join health related forums and add an eye catching link to your squeeze page in your signature. Then post in popular threads (try to get in early on threads so that more people will see your post) with interesting/useful posts. Hit up big boards to find the biggest forums on the web in your niche. If you can build up a good reputations on the various health forums out there and you'll see a steady flow of visitors to your squeeze page.

    Hope these give you some inspiration!
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    • Profile picture of the author DennisM
      All of the methods mentioned here work but it takes time. I would still follow these tried and true marketing methods but here's another option...

      What you do is create a mini product launch. What I mean is put together a product with three components. A PDF report, a series of short videos, and then get those videos transcribed.

      The product could be some PLR in your niche. Put some real effort in cleaning up the PLR (your now newly created PDF) but the real value is in the video creation. Your video could simply be a recorded PowerPoint slide. Again, get it all transcribed for more perceived value.

      Next, put up a REAL sales letter on it's OWM DOMAIN. If I'm pulling together say an exercise, lose weight product an example domain could be ExceriseAndDiet.com. My price point for this mini launch would be $17. This is real important. Don't shortcut this. Don't half ass it. In sales, it's all about the presentation. You're selling this to potential JV's to mail for you.

      Here's the secret sauce...

      What you do next is contact forum owners, other product owners, etc and ask if they'd be willing to offer your product. It could either be FREE to their members or e-mail list OR just offer 100% commission. The key here is either way it costs them nothing.

      You could also ask other product sellers in simliar niches to put your product on their THANK YOU page(s) which could then either be their OTO or a freebie for their subscribers. What happens is you get a high quality list of mostly buyers at almost zero cost but your time.

      Don't have time to implement this? Heck, outsource it. There are folks out there that will do the heavy lifting and search the web for these mini JV opportunities. You could get some dude from eLance or oDesk search the web, get the contact info and dump it all in an Excel spreadsheet for less than $100.

      Why bother with this? You see, buying traffic, testing, tweaking costs money (and lots of it if you're not careful). By JVing and offering your stuff for FREE you can build a list for much less then buying the traffic and hoping you have the conversions.

      I do this in the Education niche and you'd be surprised the guru's (whales) I've landed. Here's the thing, the bigger the guru in your niche, the LAZIER they are. You see, they have big mailing lists and if you have a decent product they will hit the send button and mail for you! It's literally push button money for them.

      You can get this whole thing up and running for less than $500 and you will get subscribers! This method blows away buying traffic outright in my opinion.

      Good luck!

      Dennis
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  • Profile picture of the author Trevor
    You can be building your list for free - you can promote your squeeze page by article marketing, video marketing, forum posting, content contributions, blog commenting - these are just a few approaches to take.

    As per your question about JV swaps - it's when you share someone else's squeeze page to your list in exchange for the other person sharing yours with his/her list for the benefit of the both of you. You both build your lists this way, but it's often necessary to have a list of the same quantity and quality as your JV partner. Or if you have a smaller list, you can offer your JV partner you'll promote his squeeze page to your list more times than just once.
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    • Profile picture of the author DennisM
      Originally Posted by Trevor View Post

      You can be building your list for free - you can promote your squeeze page by article marketing, video marketing, forum posting, content contributions, blog commenting - these are just a few approaches to take.

      As per your question about JV swaps - it's when you share someone else's squeeze page to your list in exchange for the other person sharing yours with his/her list for the benefit of the both of you. You both build your lists this way, but it's often necessary to have a list of the same quantity and quality as your JV partner. Or if you have a smaller list, you can offer your JV partner you'll promote his squeeze page to your list more times than just once.
      Trevor,

      Not necessarily true that you must have a list. My method is not a list swap. It's simply offering a product I'm already selling at NO COST to the list owner. Now that list owner could ever give it away or sell it for a full 100% commission. The link you provide is the download page with the opt-in on the front end.

      The expectations here in the IM niche are so high so I somewhat agree with your statement but I'm telling you, in other niches this is new and innovative they will jump on it to JV with you. Now it takes some work contacting them, e-mail follow up, etc. but you will close deals. I know this first hand as I do this now.

      Dennis
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  • Profile picture of the author snowcloud
    thanks for all the help you guys.. some excellent info in here
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  • Profile picture of the author danlew
    If you are new to list building, you should go for a high quality list of subscribers or "buyers". But for me, I think you should go for a buyers list, because that's where you can make some bucks. Just give your list some value on your follow-up messages.

    Once you keep giving them value, for sure they will stay subscribed. Lastly, if you have a good amount of responsive subscribers or buyers in your list, you can start doing ad swaps to other list builders in town.
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  • Profile picture of the author runningonjuice
    Great thread.

    My blog was initially a journal then when traffic levels reached 1000+ a day through organic search I realised I was onto something.

    I then spent serious money to have my site designed, a video produced and a FREE starter guide.

    Currently the list is around 1500+ and I believe I have the trust of most of my subscribers. I don't always want to be on at them to buy anything, I do though want to produce good newsletter content each month to keep them interested in my blog until a) I produce a product for them or b) I recommend another persons product that I really like.

    Where is the best place to get listbuilding and newsletter training? Are there any good e-courses I can purchase?
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  • Profile picture of the author jt808
    Focus on providing as much value as you can to your customers.

    If you want to drive more traffic to your site you will need to network.

    Here is a list I found on Google of 100 ways to get people to your website:

    100 Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

    This should give you some good ideas.

    Cheers,
    Joshua
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  • Profile picture of the author john b
    thats some good solid advice to follow and implement for myself too

    thanks,
    john b
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