Building a buyer list without using a free gift?

Haven't tried it but it seems to work. I think Gurus are always doing this because most of the time their sales page asks for email before proceeding to payment. So sure it works. Maybe you could miss potential future customers.

This is basically what every WSO and product seller is doing.

The only problem is.. with an optin list you get higher front end conversions. The only problem with that is you also get a boat load of freebie seekers too. Nothing wrong with having a freebie seeker list though, they're responsive to solo ads and are known to buy, even if they aren't buying from you.

It just kind of depends on how you're sending traffic. If you have boat loads of affiliate ready to promote it's an okay method. But at the same time, if you'd got optins you'd get a higher EPC and more sales, so....

For me, I prefer optins. You can always sort the buyers later and you'll get more buyers, so why not?

You should try testing both. Create an inexpensive product, sell it, try building that list.

Also create a freebie in a tertiary topic, and build that list.

Then, create a low price product that both lists would be interested in, and after a few emails of valuable content, send a promo for that product.

Compare your stats.

I think this is a fairly simple way to test what your niche and your products can do for you. Even doing it on a small scale, you could see a small sampling and pick up on some knowledge of what you prefer.

Then again, if a freebie just isn't your style, go with a low price item and offer the freebie to buyers with purchase.

Yes it is viable to create a list of subscribers without first offering up a freebie. There are a ton of people who do this successfully, myself included.

Personally however, I think you are making the same mistakes a lot of marketers make who don't truly understand list building.

The first mistake most marketers make is to try and compare a list that is full of people who have bought your product with a list of people who haven't and assume that those two lists are the same and comparable.

They are not.

The second mistake (which builds upon the first) is they assume that because someone didn't buy today that means they will not buy in the future.

The truth is that the odds are most people aren't going to buy the first time they see your product. There could be many reasons for this, from your ad copy not being good enough to them just not trusting the internet.

The third mistake and again this builds upon the first two is that if that person didn't buy the first time, and they aren't going to buy in the future but they are still on my list then they must be a freebie seeker.

Then then the next mistake they make is assuming or naming ALL the people on this list of people who haven't bought (yet) are all the same and are ALL freebie seekers.

So they then start teaching in their courses that a list of people who haven't bought from you are freebie seekers and thus bad and to be avoided.

The problem is they get so caught up on the end result that they forget about the process.

They forget about the process people have to go through from someone who hasn't bought to someone who has.

In sales speak this is in comparison to the process of how someone goes from a prospect to a customer.

To really understand this you need to understand a bit of the history of list building. (online list building)

Smart marketers started to realize that most visitors who saw their sales page didn't buy the first time they saw it.

And they realized that out of those who didn't buy only a small percentage returned later on.

Other marketers assumed that those who didn't buy the first time and never returned were no longer interested and thus were lost forever.

However, smart marketers understood that out of that group who didn't buy and who never returned there still might be a few more who still had an interest in their product, yet either couldn't find their site again, or forgot because life got in the way, that if they had a way to stay in touch with those people then those sales were saveable.

Let's say you had 100 visitors to your sales page and 20 bought the first time.

This means 80 people didn't.

Out of those 80 people smart marketers knew that say 10 would return again (on their own).

This would leave us with 70 people who didn't buy the first time, and never returned.

Most people would think that those 70 were lost forever.

But smart marketers realized that if you captured the contact information fo those 70-80 people, that you could increase the amount of those who would return and buy in the future, even though they didn't buy the first time.

So let's say out of those 70 they made another 5-10 sales. Over time that could make a huge difference in revenue.

As more and more people started creating lists and asking people to subscribe, they found that offering something up for free increased the overall amount of your site visitors who signed up.

and more subscribers meant more chances to change those people's minds about you, your company, and your products, and to more chances to get them to buy in the future.

Here is another more simpler way to look at it.

One of my sales coaches (I am sales person in my day job) suggested to us to look at our prospects in 3rds'

1/3 of people who hear your sales pitch will alway buy from you

1/3 will never ever buy from you

1/3 are sitting on the fence and are undecided.

The difference between the top sales people and mediocre sales people is mediocre sales people get caught up in the 1/3 that will never buy from you.

But the top sales people (in this case online marketers) understand that if you can sway the minds of that 1/3 who are sitting on the fence and get them to take action and buy your product, the results can be exponential.

This is what list building combined with a free offer can do for you.

A free offer helps you get more of those 1/3 who are undecided onto your list, (and yes some of the 1/3 who will never buy from you)

and once you have more of that 1/3 of undecided's on your list you have more chances to change their minds.

(ok this ended up as a long post, lol)

I hope you understand what I mean.

I have a squeeze that goes directly to a sales letter.



Then, I give them a free gift via autoresponder anyway.

I think offering a free gift is a pain, so I conveniently skip that step.

It's not a buyers list of you are giving away a free gift. It's not a buyers list if you are not giving away a free gift. A buyers list is when people buy something from you. How well a free gift will work in your niche depends on many things and will need to be tested by you.