Module 3 of Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge is about email list building.
Once you get your blog set up and start to get visitors with the free traffic methods that Dean recommends in Module two ( How to get traffic to your blog) you need a way of capitalizing on that traffic. Dean calls it Push Button Income and Automation. If only!
To build an email list you have to have something of value ( aka a Lead Magnet) to give away to your visitors like an eBook, a short report, a video or audio. You can use PLR material but it’s best to rewrite it or get someone else to do it. You could of course outsource the whole thing.
Dean gives you the opportunity to purchase a “done for you package” when you sign up for the Quick Start Challenge.
You offer your free gift on your blog with the aim of enticing your visitors to part with their email address. Once they do that they will be on your email list.
You can then email them with good content, relevant to the topic of the item they signed up for of course, interspersed with recommendations for an affiliate product. If they buy the product you recommend you will start to generate an income.
You have to have a few thousand on your list for this to happen though and you have to be careful to develop that all important relationship with them so they come to trust you and your recommendations. I know of marketers who “churn & burn” their lists because they just send out promo after promo.
I heard an internet marketer tell listeners to do this not so long ago on a Webinar. He bought solo ads and then bombarded those who subscribed with emails promoting affiliate product after affiliate product. He admitted that you would get some unsubscribes (quite a few I would think) but you were well rid of them as they were only freebie seekers. He just repeated this exercise and made money or so he said. I wonder how long he will last doing that?
Now, let’s get back to email list building. For this to happen you have to have an autoresponder service. Dean suggested Aweber or Get Response. I have only ever used Aweber and never found any good reason to change.
When I first started building a list in the health niche the guy who was helping me set up my site recommended Aweber and I have been using it ever since. They have a good range of video instructions and their support is excellent.
Get Started Today For Only $1! – AWeber Communications
Once you get signed up with a service you can create an optin form to put in the side bar of your blog. This is where you encourage your visitor to give you his/her email address in exchange for your free item. Aweber has a WordPress plugin to help you get your optin form created on your blog.
An alternative to this is to have a popup appear a few seconds after your visitor lands on your blog. I’m sure you have seen them. They can be very annoying but they do increase your optins.
I was using the PopUp Domination plugin on this blog but have disabled it while I get my new squeeze funnel finished. My previous one did not do well in the tests I did using solo ads even though I tried a few different offers and had coaching. The new one was virtually ready last year but I had some reservations about the information in it. The perfectionist in me decided that I had to add some newer and more up to date information for 2013 which I am working on now.
You can also of course have a squeeze page and there are videos showing you how to set this up in the members area with the done for you package. There are numerous videos online that show you this as well.
The challenge for this email list building week is to get signed up for an autoresponder service if you don’t already have one, get your free gift ready and add your optin form to your blog. All I have to do now is to finish my free report and the eBook that I am including in the squeeze/sales funnel. Watch this space!
Hi Sandy
You have written a great post on how to start building a list, and although we hear it all the time that “the money is in the list” I always think the relationship you build with that list is much more important (just something to think about)
It sounds like you are working through the challenge very well, that shows up in your posts, I will be following your progress…
Have a great week
Pauline
Hi Pauline,
You are so right. Another saying I have herd is the money is in the relationship you build with your list. Thanks for your words of encouragement.
Sandy
Thanks Sandy for the article on list building. We often hear that we should offer something of value to get our subscribers email address, so we can market to them in the future. I recently read something from a successful (she claims to be) email marketer that says we shouldn’t offer an opt in incentive. Instead we should just have a sign up form on our sites for them to opt into our newsletter if they want. I’m not far enough along in list building to test this theory out, but I plan to one day. Thanks
Steve, I have seen blogs with just a sign up form but they don’t work as well as giving away a gift in exchange for an email address. Rishi Shah, CEO of Digioh, says “I changed my ‘Sign Up for my Newsletter’ form to ‘Get my eBook for Free by Signing Up for My Newsletter’. All of a sudden I started getting hundreds of sign ups a month (a 10X increase). I went from a couple hundred subscribers to over 3,000 in less than a year!
Need I say more?
Good luck with your list building. Why wait? Do it now!
Sandy
Hello Sandy,
I’m still working hard on building my email list which is one important method if you want to reach our to your readers. I’m currently using Feedburner but will be changing over to maybe Mailchip. I’m still trying to get the feel of how it fuctions.
Having content that is of value is sure to help you succeed building your email list. Thanks so much for a great read it always nice to come across some valuable content.
Have a wonderful day Sandy talk to you soon. Rob
Hello Rob,
The drawback with building a list with Feedburner is that you can only send your subscribers information that you put in a blog post. You cannot send them any other information as you can with other email services.
Unless they have changed their terms of use recently MailChimp does not allow affiliate marketing. I would look carefully into it before you go that route.
I wish you great success with your list building.
Sandy
Hi Sandy,
How time flies. I can’t believe you are already at this stage. I enjoyed reading your post.
It is amazing how many, even experienced, marketers fail to place an optin box on their website. That is interesting because setting it up is a one time deal. Once it is done you never have to worry about it again.
Keep us posted on your progress.
Regards,
Dita
Hi Dita,
I can’t believe how quickly the time goes either. There are never enough hours in the day as far as I am concerned. I could quite happily sit at my computer for hours!
You are right, it’s so easy now to put an optin box on a blog that it’s puzzling why a lot of bloggers don’t. I hope to have my squeeze funnel completed very soon so I can start building my list again and even resurrect the old one.
Have a great day.
Sandy
thanks for the link. I checked it out, it looks very interesting. Keep it up always!!!
Hi Sandy,
Another important factor once you’ve got people signed up to your list is starting to build a relationship with your subscribers.
As you say Sandy, there’s no point in bombarding your list with affiliate offer after affiliate offer. People aren’t stupid and if they get fed up of your marketing techniques it only takes a second for them to unsubscribe and undo all your hard work.
Treat your list with respect and they will thank you for it and see you as a trusted marketer.
Regards,
Dean.
Hi Dean,
Internet marketing has changed so much over the years. People are getting much more savvy and get rich schemes no longer cut it with most. Internet marketers have to get smarter for 2013 if they want to be successful. Sending out useful information and being helpful is the way to go.
Sandy
I think internet marketing sometimes give people the wrong impression because they’re always trying to sell people something and try’s to force people in to buying.
Yes it’s changing in a ways were I think people will feel more at ease and might even consider buying products. Thanks so much for a great topic Sandy
Hi Rob,
I am surprised that you say you think people will feel more at ease now and might consider buying products. I think people are much more wary now about buying stuff because they have already been scammed or the products they bought did not live up to the claims. Last year was a bad year for that.
It’s so important to build that initial rapport with your list by giving them really good information so that they will trust you and hopefully buy from you when you do recommend something.
Sandy
Hello Sue, yes but once you build that trust with your readers and the people that visit your website they will also help you promote your products. People have to get to know you and that sometimes take a little time to earn their trust.
If you have a good product and people stand by it them what’s stopping others from also buying it.
There’re some who create products but will not give the right support and this is were the trouble begins.
Let me tell you a little story, when I was on Webtv a few years ago, Webtv was a small box that you could connect to your television and it would allow you to access the internet.
To make a long story short people got to know me for the person I was and trusted me, well I had a few extra Webtv units I wanted to sell for about 2 hundred dollars each,
I told a few people online I was selling them and in a matter of days I has them all sold, the money was send to first, then I delivered the products, do you see my point? they trusted me and I did not let the down.
My point is this, if you build a trust and relationship, with your readers and the people you do business with there’s no reason for people to feel they’re going to be scammed.
Thank you Sue for a very nice conversation my friend it was a pleasure and I hope you have a great evening..
Hey Rob, I get called Sally a lot for some reason but Sue is a new one! They all begin with S. Maybe that’s it.
Sandy
Hello Rob,
Although I have already commented on you calling me Sue (and I don’t mind at all) I meant also to thank you for the story you shared that illustrates very well the trust that you build with readers etc.
Thanks for taking the time to visit.
Sandy
This is One of The Things That I Am Very Bad AT and Want To Learn..Am Really Reading Stuffs About it and trying to learn…. Hope It Works.. BTW Thanks FOr Your Post….!!
Hi Gautam,
List building is a great skill to have. The majority of marketers value their lists very highly. They are after all usually the source of a lot of income.
Sandy
I want to share some of my experience in the field.Its all about quality and building relationship and trust with people. If people know and trust you, then they are going to listen to your advice.That’s why, you have to give in order to get. When doing email marketing, you have to be creative. I used to send posts that would Fascinate readers, reveal new interesting information. By doing that, my list is just growing day by day, and most of the people who joined, don’t leave.Also, by supplying quality information and tips on hair removal (my expertise) I gain trust and Reputation so when the next email I send recommends a product, people really think of buying it. To sum it up: as always in life, if you want to succeed you have to work hard.
Hi Ron,
You are absolutely right about building relationships and trust with people and sending out quality information that will solve people’s problems. I think this is much easier to do in non IM niches. I find the same with my detox list. People are much more wary in the IM niche because there are so many scams and get rich schemes being peddled. The last few years have been quite bad with software and products that are so hyped up that people are very disappointed when they find that they don’t work.
Sandy