List building: Promoting the squeeze page- only

Well good to hear that you're focusing on promoting your squeeze page and the reports!

The only thing I am confused about is what were you promoting before? Affiliate links?

I guess I was fortunate to learn this formula early on:

All traffic > Squeeze Page > Thankyou page and/or OTO> Follow ups > Buyers list

Sure I attract traffic to my blog, but everything there leads to my squeeze page or web forms to build my email list.

You're definitely thinking correctly there!

Thanks,
-Gabe

Maybe.

The big question (if you'll excuse my asking it so "outright" and suddenly) is what on Earth you're doing in the IM market, trying to provide affiliate marketing advice to other people? This is the single biggest mistake that beginning marketers make, and the single commonest reason for failures.

Yes - agreed that this isn't optimal, but you know this already.

Well, ok. It's certainly far from perfect. Sorry!!

You'll be lucky if you can get articles accepted by Ezine Articles with a link to a squeeze page. It is possible. Some people manage it. Having outstandingly good articles helps, I think. They often decline articles because "the page linked to in the resource box isn't informative enough for our readers".

It's true that you want all the traffic hitting the page with the opt-in. This is well worked out. Apart from this, I'm not so sure.

It makes no sense to submit articles to EZA without having published them and had them indexed on your own site first.

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...eza-first.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...marketing.html

It's often not easy to rank squeeze pages, because they have very little content. I didn't say it was impossible, but it's not so easy.

I think you've chosen a niche which (to put it very mildly indeed) doesn't suit you, and stacks the deck pretty firmly against you.

Squidoo lenses are a "second-best choice", to put it tactfully ...

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...en-locked.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...e-seconds.html

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...aste-time.html

Street Articles isn't an article directory: it just looks like one. I don't really understand how using that will help you.

I promise I'm not trying to offend you, and please excuse my asking so bluntly, but why do you want to be involved in the Affiliate Marketing advice niche when, (I think by your own admission?) you're pretty much unfamiliar with the basic fundamentals of internet marketing? I'm not trying to criticize you, but it's not immediately obvious why you'd want to stack the deck against yourself to such a huge extent, in a horribly competitive, professionals' niche like this? :confused:

Yes your first thing should always be to getting that lead. Also your convertion rate will be higher if you don't ask for peoples name. Insted of having two optinforums in your sidebar I recomend to have one at the header on your blog.
To your success.

Thanks everyone,

Alexa, No offense at all, I own the website now, so I am running with it. i.e as I grow and learn my readers will benefit too. My website is my training ground right now. Once I have IM 100% down pat I will apply the process to many niche's.

I think my content provides real value to someone who knows NOTHING about IM.

ByEDvin... thanks for the tip.. I will do that ASAP.

Jeremiah

This was something I luckily got right in the beginning and it helped cut down my "learning curve"...

In fact, even to this day I will promote a squeeze page 75% of the time in my blog posts and about 90% of the time in articles...

For the first 6 months of my "list building career" I produced tons of content and "recycled" it as much as I could. But the key was I made sure to ALWAYS include a link to a squeeze page...

Cheers,
Coby

Been thinking about Alexa's post...

My site is in a "professionals arena" with IM..

I did a quick inventory of my skills, likes, interests, and passions..

Looks like I may be registering another domain not related to IM but related to something that I know a lot about...but IM hasn't really targeted yet.

Hmmmm...

Thoughts?

yeah that's more or less what you want to do, focus on building your list first and focus on selling though your give away and your follow up.

All of my efforts are 100% based on building generating leads first then making the sale.

I think that is a model which has proven to work for many people and I am following this model too by focusing all my effort into building my list. I do get decent results and I think it will still work well for a long time to come.

I have sub'd to a few list's over the past few years and I have started to look at them really critically. Some of them I forgot I sub'd to because the spam filter caught their emails and I didn't see them till I was cleaning out my spam folder.

The very first list I seriously sub'd to was Travis Sago and for years I have enjoyed his emails, even bought a few things from him.

NONE of his emails have ever hit a spam filter. I actually sub'd through two different email accounts, one AOL, the other Gmail. Whenever he sends an email blast I get two copies.

His emails get past the spam filters because he brings good content in his emails and they don't appear "spammy".

Thats how I want to treat my list... Treat them like kings and queens.. encourage, uplift, coach, share.. etc...... then Sell!!!!

Travis tends to have 1 small offer at the bottom of his emails.

This must convert well for him, because he is still out there doing his thing.

Getting late, sorry for the long response! I appreciate everyone's reply here.

Jeremiah

Yes Jimvol, you should be promoting the crap out of the squeeze page. Definitely.

You can still promote your affiliate products to the list.

I think the big benefit is that if you did it with a web site, even an established one, when you promote a new product, you'd have to start the promotion and link building process again from scratch, whereas with your squeeze page and list, you can still promote to them (so long as its related)

That squeeze page is waaaay too busy. the right hand column and a nice headline should be enough. This is where your testing comes in

Thanks Martin,

That squeeze page is my very first scratch built squeeze page. I appreciate the feedback.

I am actually working on a one column squeeze page to replace it.

Thanks!

Jeremiah

You should definitely send all your traffic to the squeeze page. That way you will build your list and you can split-test your squeeze page to increase the conversions.

Well you can have a big squeeze page as the homepage of your site, but then on each article you should have a mini squeeze page (with opt in form) at the top of each page between the article of the blog post and the content. Then once more at the end of the article before the comment box.

It's true that the main goal of the blog should be to convert visitors into list subscribers. In fact the blog is made to attract free traffic from search engine, but once they get here to read your page, then the goal should be to convert as many of them as possible into list subscribers.

Then the fun can begin :-)

Yes I agree focus on list building and focus on writing good follow up emails! You can't go wrong building a list. For all those web properties you have "out there" If any of them let you post javascript (like blogspot, wordpress.com etc) add your optin form code directly to those blogs/pages ... don't abandon them. And if you used a redirect link in your EZA articles resource box, try changing the links to redirect to a squeeze page after the article has been accepted.

Alexa is right that newbies make the mistake of believing they need to give advice, when actually they do not know what they are doing. The problem with the anonymity of the Internet is people think that you can hide behind it and claim you are making money, or are a pro, when actually you are not.

What people really need to do is build up slowly, learning and following a proven system. List building is certainly the way to go, as all successful marketers will have a list in their business model, whatever the niche. Build a relationship with the list and remember that they are real people. In the long run, they will thank you for it - and your bank balance will thank you for doing it the right way from the start!

Yes, this is correct, I have also been doing this for quite some time. But all I gotta say to you is, you may not see results in terms of $$ immediately or directly, until after some time when you have achieved a decent list size, and you will then be able to make money through sending offers to your list and selling solo ads.

Agreed. Sending people to a soulless looking squeeze page isn't always the best way to go. Send them to your blog where they can read your articles, warm up to you, get to like your content then opt in works much better IME. Of course there will be multiple options for them to opt in when reading your content. You can have a big header opt in bar across the top, one on the side bar and an opt in box below each post maybe even a pop up.

Many people landing on your squeeze page will click away because it looks spammy. Many will sign up for your freebie but knowing nothing about you won't bother to read it, many will look at it because it was free but then not bother to open your emails.

However if they've opted in because they really liked you and your content they'll look forward to your emails.

Getting more people on your list isn't always better. It usually means more unopened emails and a high unsubscribe rate.

Hey,

Glad that you are focusing on one task..
That is very important..
If you can't handle one, forget about handling multi-ones..

My only concern is that your traffic generation is
mainly from Social Media..

From my personal experience, social media traffics are
often non-targeted.

It will be good that you have a good mix of traffic sources.

All the best.