List Building

1. Don't buy lists. You can buy solo ads though to help build your list. These are ads that other people send out to their lists. You then send them to a free offer on your own site and build your list that way.

2. A list is not compulsory but will definitely help. But it's all about the quality of the list. If you have a poor quality list then affiliates will catch on quite quickly and won't approve you for any future promotions.

3. I very rarely approve affiliates to promote my products unless I know them. There is too much risk on our part with rogue affiliates who go around causing trouble. So keep that in mind. If you truly want to get into this type of business then you had better start at branding yourself so people get to know you and trust you. If you are just another name from the forum with only a few posts then very few product vendors will likely approve you for promotion.

4. List building is not a quick thing. Most people who have a decent and responsive list (which is what you want) have spent a lot of time and effort building it. There is no shortcut. If you want a good list then be prepared to put in the time and work to build it.

Well the best way to get started with it is to put up an opt-in page. Then you want to drive traffic to that page. It's probably better to start with free methods if you're not an experienced marketer, unless you have access to the fundage for testing. But basically you just send someone to a page and ask them to give you their email address.

Marc

I have been list building successfully for 6 years, you pretty much just want to setup a lead capture page send traffic to it, and follow up with your list everyday with a good autoresponder.

The best and easiest way to build a list is to sell stuff.

1. Create a product

2. Offer that product for sale and give affiliates 100% commission

3. Collect customer names.

I'm going to reiterate what WillR said - don't buy lists. You want to set up and start capturing names so that you know the people that end up on your list are targeted traffic (and that they'll be interested in what you have to offer). It's not hard to set up a list and it's pretty inexpensive and you should do it ASAP so you can start capturing those names.

The best way to build your list is to give something away for free that would help people landing on you squeeze page. So first you would need to build a squeeze page with an opt in. Give something away, like an ebook that you wrote. This should build your list pretty quickly, you can also buy solo ads mentioned above. Once you got that list, you can start selling them affiliate offers and different stuff. But remember to always offer something useful to them from time to time to keep them happy. They are on your list because they want free info from you, not you spamming them with affiliate products.

Best way to get a quality list? Build your name first and get reputation. The options here a to build a quality blog in your niche and churn out quality information all too often and people will follow you and want to be like you so they will buy from you. Participation in forums as this is also quite powerful by helping out guys who will trust you and also follow you. This is slow but is the best and ultimate way to build a relationship with people. Once you do have a good list of your followers who know you then it becomes relatively easy to sell to them and approach other affiliates.

Well reasoned, there: you'd get crappy quality more or less by definition, if you buy, because what gives the list its value is the relationship between the people on it and the list-owner, and the fact that the list-owner is the person from whom those subscribers want to hear.

Nothing devalues a list like selling it (and that's quite apart from any potential legal issues involved).

Here's a link to a thread which should help/interest you: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6123982

As usual the Warrior Forum masses come out and say that the best way to build a list is through squeeze pages and giving away freebies. No it isn't. You just end up with an unresponsive list filled with freebie seekers who don't give a sh*t about anything you have to say.

I wouldn't recommend buying lists. First of all, you don't know if those people are on those lists by choice or if it was a scraped list by a shady vendor.

Next, your subscribers should know who you are. They should trust you and without that trust, your conversion is going to be next to nothing.

So, building your own list is the best way.

You can go about doing this in different ways. If you have the startup funds, then contact some solo ads sellers and buy clicks from them for a reasonable price. You can find a number of them in the JV section too.

Some free methods you can try out is marketing your opt in offer in your forum signatures, article marketing, social media marketing, to mention a few.

Of course, you need an autoresponder to get subscribers and also a landing page with a good call to action about your offer.

If you can make a video where you talk about your free offer, you can get high conversions, as people trust videos more than pictures and words from a stranger.

Also, make sure your free offer is of extremely high quality. I know its a free offer, but if people get real value from your free offer, they are most likely to trust that you paid offers would be of a greater value, and you're conversions will increase.

One more thing. Don't start promoting offers immediately. Send them some valuable emails with free content first. Make them believe in you. Then start with the promotional mails.

Don't spam your subscribers and treat them like your friends, and you'll be fine.

Don`t buy lists. You don`t know if rhe list you are getting is targeted. For all you know it can consist of 2000 chinese people with little or no interest to your niche.

Do it the proper way. Build your own list. Drive traffic from really targeted places like forums and youtube.

If you want to purchase subscribers,the best way to go is soloads. When your list is growing,later on you can do adswaps.

Thor

Build a funnel
collect 1000 emails
start adswaping (safe-swap dot com can help)
promote WSO to your list

It's perfectly fine to build lists with squeeze pages. There are really only two types of squeeze pages. A squeeze page where you say, "Give me your email and I'll send you something for free," or a self-liquidating squeeze page where you ask someone to buy something and you capture their email in the buying process.

If you're getting freebie seekers on your list who won't buy anything, it doesn't have much to do with the fact that you have a squeeze page up that's asking people for email addresses. A squeeze page is a classic marketing tool. The problem is usually the source of the traffic.

Just take solo ads for example. With a solo ad you're essential buying an EMAIL to someone else's list, where they promote your website. That website can be anything you want, but typically the solo ad provider is going to have some restrictions. Those restrictions are up to them. But usually they want you to promote a squeeze page.

So you don't need SEO services to have a squeeze page. You just need to buy a domain name, and a hosting account, and put your website up. Then you put a headline on it that offers something for free that will make your target audience happy. Below the headline you expand on the promise in the form of bullet points or video.

Then you have a call to action and an opt-in box. That's how you build a list. It doesn't have to be any more fancy than that and it's often not. Trying to get fancy is going to shoot your conversions straight in the foot.

But let's go back to solo ads. If you buy an Email from two different people, that's called SOURCE. One source is usually going to be better than the other. If one solo ad provider basically spams his list everyday with new offers, those people are not only going to be jaded and less responsive for the simple fact that they get pitched crap all the time, but they're also probably going to be on a ton of spammy lists that compete with YOUR emails.

On the other hand, if you go to someone who only emails their list offers once a month and spends the rest of the time interacting with them, etc. those people are going to be a lot more responsive, and there will be less competition in the inbox usually. In either case, the second source goes up in value. But...

What if source one proves to be more profitable to your bottom line, because they're more perfectly matched to your offer? There are plenty of things to take into account.

See, if you send people to a "FREE" squeeze page, and immediately sell them something after they opt-in, you're creating both lists at the same time. And your "freebie seekers" list DOES have value. You can email them content and ask for their opinion. Have them comment on things. Etc.

Plus, just because they don't buy right away doesn't mean they're tire kickers. A lot of them WILL be. That's just a fact of life. But on the other hand, just because you ask someone to buy something right away, it might not be the right time for them. You can't hold that against them, maybe they'll be more interested or in a better position to buy later. That's why you follow up.

A lot of it comes down to TRUST issues. Especially in competitive markets. But a good practice to have in place is to always have a "free" squeeze page, and always have a "buy this" page. And put them together.

The order you put them together doesn't really matter and nobody can tell you which is better, you just have to test it. You can have them opt-in to get a free thing, and upsell them. Or you can ask them to buy something, and if they say no, you can ask them to opt-in.

Either way is good, but both are what is going to make you money online long-term so you might as well be doing BOTH.

Marc

PS. Blogs aren't really required. They're just for getting traffic and giving you authority in the marketplace really. They're a good place to start if you don't have money to spend on paid traffic generation. But if you can spend on paid traffic, it's better to start small until you know you can convert that traffic. Once you can convert it, and you know you can convert it, obviously spend whatever you can as much as you can.

Forget squeeze pages, free ebook giveaways and solo ads (and other cold / junk traffic) these aren't going to get you anywhere but broke with lists filled with unresponsive subscribers.

Build your email list around something like a blog / content rich site, service or paid product.

Build lists of warmed up buyers who are on your list because they wanted to be and love what you have to offer rather than because you bribed them to join it by giving away a freebie that they will probably never read.

When you send cold traffic to a squeeze page they land on it not knowing anything about you, who you are, what you can offer or what your experience is.

You haven't warmed them up or given them any value up front so they either hit the back button as soon as they see they have to give you their email before you even reveal anything of use to them or they decide to grab the ebook for the sake of grabbing it but not because they want to join your list.

So the ebook gets downloaded and the small percentage that read it might decide to pay attention to your emails but the vast majority will not read it and even if they do by the time you've sent them the next email they have forgotten who you are and why you're emailing them. You're already fighting a loosing battle.

Instead if you send all traffic to your blog / site filled with great content (or alternatively through a content funnel similar to what Andre Chaperon champions) and THEN ask your customer to opt in / buy not only are they much more likely to do so because you've given them lots of value upfront BUT they'll do so because they wanted to not because there's a crappy free ebook on offer.

This means they are looking forward to receiving your emails, like what you have to offer, have built a relationship with you and know you have information they want which leads to increased open rates, more clicks, more trust and more sales!

Increasing opens, clicks and sales is mostly done before someone even opts in rather than afterwards which is something so many people just do not get. They think it's all just about writing compelling headlines and good email copy (which of course helps) and then still find out it's a struggle to get anyone to read what they send.

Seriously if you want to build a responsive list delete the squeeze page, forced opt ins and bribes and start providing value up front...people will opt in naturally and even though your list will be much smaller it will be MUCH more responsive and profitable.

There are so many ways to build a list. Just google "100 Top Ways To Build an Email List"

I am always looking for new ways to build my list. Thanks for all the great info.

I would start with solo-ads, forum posting and then when you have about 500 on your list start with ad-swaps.

I do think list building is the way to go. I have two blogs that are getting some traffic but just need to get the "opt-in" up and running. However, it appears like there is more automated comments being made rather than actual people. Thanks for this great post on Link Building!

To build your list I would recommend you first build a squeeze page. On this page you then want to either buy or create a free gift to entice people to give you their email address.

On how to get traffic I would first focus on free methods like forum marketing, seo, social media. If you are getting a good opt in rate % then move on to paid methods to grow your list even faster.

I have used a number of list building methods. Solo ads are not the worst; they are quick and easy. They just don't lend themselves to great response rates. It is a numbers game with these kinds of leads. An enormous list built in this way can still be a good source of income.

I prefer lists built from warm leads. My best results have come from guest posting. These are leads that have already been exposed to my content, which they received from a source they already trust. This is where I see the most conversions, and long-term responsiveness.

I have also built lists using adCenter PPC traffic to a squeeze page. This does not produce the quality lists that I get with guest posting, but it beats the hell out of solo ads and ad swaps. The trouble here is that I pay anywhere from $20 to $60 per conversion. This is still profitable as I am promoting recurring billing programs, but much less profit-per-lead than warm leads. Again, a volume game.

There are many ways to go about it, and all of them are better than buying lists.