Some useful Tips when building Your List

I started building a list in 2009 (a year after i joined this forum) and made many mistakes which cost me a lot of time and money and ive picked up some great tips from the warrior forum too over the last 4 years so now i thought i would give something back and tell you what has worked for me

For starters i paid $297 for a list building course 3 half years ago and un-surprisingly we were constantly being told that the money is in the list

Well low and behold he was right. I kinda knew that but didnt take list building very seriously untill about a year after doing the course

(some courses you dont realize the value of the information being taught until further down the road)

Ive worked out things for myself and got some (mental battle scars) :-) but its how we learn

Before you even think about building a list you have to go back even further and address the most important part of your business

"The foundation"

without a good solid foundation your business with simply crumble over time as appose to grow which would provide you with a stable (google proof) online income

you need to have your sales funel in place and have a plan on how you build your list (and i dont mean just sending every man and his dog to your squeeze/landing page)

squeeze pages do have there place but you should NOT ONLY JUST be sending traffic just to this page, will explain in more detail shortly

so for your foundation you need...

• an effective sales funnel to handle prospects and customers

• a platform to brand yourself and attract free traffic which will be used to presell your visitors so they are way more responsive when joining your list (A PERSONAL BLOG) this will help you build your list faster too

• and of course your autoresponder which will be your "work horse" which will handle all of your prospects and customers for you

these are elements that most people completely dissmiss and go straight to the "what free gift can i give away"


next up is


"A high quality gift to give away to build your list"


(the important thing to note here is (quality) not the same old drivel that most other people give away for free. the day of putting a nice pretty picture of an ebook up on a wesbite with an opt in form just to get someones name and email are over

you have to be different and stand out from the crowd


yes you can still build a list with a low quality gift but you have to think about how much you value each subscriber. giving them the same old drivel and the same as what the next guy or the previous guy is probably offering wont get you noticed

if you go one stage further than most people then when you send an email out to your subscribers, YOUR going to be the person that person would rather listen to the most because you give the most value

just for an example in one of my lists that i build i give away a free 14 day video course around a very popular money making method (around 90 mins of video). people love it and i could quite easily use that free 14 day video course as a product to sell

but... i value my subscribers and like to offer great information and value and not just pedal the same garbage as most people

so the free gift that you build your list with could be:

a mini video course
a bigger video course (much more value)
ebooks
plug ins
webinar
templates
software

and the list goes on

but... what ever you do make sure you go one stage further than most people and offer awesome value (you will be pleased you did)

next up is

"using paid traffic methods to build your lists"

as i said earlier "using a seperate squeeze page does have its place"

when you use paid traffic methods to build your list you need to be sending all the traffic to your seperate squeeze page, if you dont then your leaving a lot of money and profits on the table

some of my favourite paid traffic methods are

solo ads
ppc
facebook ads

what ever paid traffic method you use this next piece of advice is probably the most important part of advice in this entire article

"YOU NEED TO BE USING A SALES FUNNEL"

if your not using a sales funnel with paid traffic then your business is not going to run efficiently and you will face all kinds of problems and more importantly you will be losing a lot of profits by not having an effective sales funnel set up to increase your ROI

also, dont forget its still important to use a sales funnel when getting free traffic, but because paid traffic is obviously costing you its even more vital to make sure you have an effective sales funnel set up

next up is:

"Tracking and Testing"

Weather you are using your blog to funnel traffic to your seperate squeeze page or using paid traffic, you should always split test to make sure you are getting good opt in rates and your offers are converting well

• as a guide i always try to make sure my squeeze pages convert at at least 40%

this is a general rule that i always stick to and it has served me very well

remember the higher your squeeze page conversions the more profitable your business will be because, using a high converting squeeze page means more people will see your offer and that means more sales and more money back in your pocket

a low converting squeeze page will have drastic effects on how profitable your busines is and what your ROI (return on investment will be)

Well these are my 14 tips to help you to start building your list a lot more effectively

I hope you can use these tips in own business and increase your profits

Paul