To be a successful internet marketer you need to make money, and to make money online you need a list of prospective buyers. If you have a website and no list then your traffic is dependent upon the whims of the search engines or you take up paid advertising. A secure way is to build a database of all the customers who bought from you in the past. This database is pure gold because these people are the ones who are likely to respond to your offers in the future.
The basics of creating a list are quite simple; you need a website, an autoresponder service and something to offer, usually free. An autoresponder will store all your email leads and be able to send out scheduled messages, newsletters or latest offers to all or just some of your subscribers. When you think that a marketing list can contain 10,000 subscribers or more, then you see that an efficient autoresponder service is essential and one called Aweber is probably the best.
You will want a targeted list of subscribers to market your offers to. For example, you will get a poor response offering beauty products to a list of subscribers in the soccer niche! Each niche will need a separate list and some internet marketers may have 20 or so different lists! Don't worry though, you'll only be starting off with 1 or 2 lists as a beginner and the autopresponder service can take care of 1 or 20+ lists just as efficiently.
If you are a total newbie when it comes to internet marketing, then you are going to have to learn how to get a webpage or blog up and running so you can offer something of value to your visitors. Try a free blog at Blogspot.com (owned by Google) which is pretty straightforward to setup and has a user friendly backend where you carry out admin tasks. The other more involved option is to buy a domain name with hosting where you can set up your webpage. GoDaddy.com is quite good at hand-holding the beginner and walking you through the various steps, but beware they will try and sell you different 'bells and whistles' options at each step so do some research first about basic things you'll need for a simple website.
Now you have a hosted webpage or free blog at Blogspot with your offer on a 'squeeze page' [designed to let the visitor access your free offer or product only after they entered their email address first]. Your squeeze page must include a web form with a link back to your autoresponder service to put your subscribers onto a list. There are paid email marketing solutions provided by the likes of Aweber and Getresponse but there are also free solutions like MailChimp.com. If you are serious about internet marketing to develop it into a full time income, which is certainly possible, start off with a good paid service like Aweber.
To be honest, speaking from experience, it can be a bit tricky getting these things set up if you are a complete beginner when it comes to list building, and mistakes are bound to be made. As you progress along the learning curve your skills will increase but in the initial stages it's possible to make a big error that can be difficult to recover from and may try your patience to the point of wanting to give up. That would be a shame because, as I mentioned before, the potential to make good income is there and it's oft been said by internet marketers 'the money is in the list'
There is another way for those without technical skills to begin building a marketing list without the need of a blog, webpage, squeeze page, domain name or hosting. 5iphon.com (I think they refer to themselves as 'Siphon') who will provide you with a totally free hosted webpage that will virally build you a list on autopilot. Another service is Instant Cash Machine that also provide a ready made hosted squeeze page for a one off payment, they also provide you with an in house autoresponder service although you may opt to use Aweber. You will still need a separate autoresponder service for either Aweber or Getresponse if you use 5iphon.com, but Aweber in particular has some very good video tutorials for beginners to help set up your first list. May I wish you every success in your email marketing career!
I wrote this article because I'm seeking for ways to make money online to help me pay some of my monthly bills. I've also started a blog to keep me motivated and hopefully act as a guide to others as well. Everyone says that the 'money is in the list' and to that end I've started to explore email marketing to build a list of subscribers to my newsletters.
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