List Building Tips - Referrals

In this third installment of my series on list building, I want to discuss referrals. Admittedly, this is not something I do a lot of and shame on me for it because when I actually DO it, it works. Why does it work and why should YOU consider it for your list building efforts? Keep reading and you'll find out.

Let's start with the premise of our list in the first place. Why are we building it? Well, there could be several reasons actually. But one of the most common is to get a whole bunch of people in one virtual place so that you can send them your message all at once in the hope that MAYBE they'll take some kind of action on that message itself, whether it be checking out an article, watching a video or buying a product. Unless you just like sending out emails for no reason, I'm going to assume that your list has a purpose similar to that in mind.

Now, given the purpose of your list, the one thing you'd like to have above all else is a subscriber who DOES take action. In other words, they read your message and do what you want them to do. And the reason they do it (and this is the key) is because they trust you and trust what you have to say. Somewhere along the line, you've earned that trust through the content that you've sent to them. The bottom line, however, is that you HAVE that trust.

So, let me ask you a question. If you were write to somebody you know who ALREADY trusts you and gets value out of being on your list, and asked them to refer your newsletter to others with similar interests, don't you think that they would gladly tell those in their immediate circle that your newsletter is probably something that they would want to read?

If your skeptical about this, let's take an example from real life that maybe you can relate to a little better.

Your at a bar with your best friend. He's just seen the latest, oh let's say, Batman movie and he says to you, "Man, I just saw that new Batman movie. It was FANTASTIC. You have GOT to see it."

Now think about this. He's your best friend. You value his opinion probably more than anybody else on the subject of movies because throughout your lives together you've always seemed to have the same taste. Don't you think you're going to go see that movie the first chance you get? Conversely, if he said it was horrible, you'd probably skip it.

Referrals are powerful coming from a third party with no divested interest. Of course we could throw a monkey wrench into the works to completely change this (offer a free e-course in exchange for that referral) but let's keep this simple for now. Just ask people who already trust you to recommend your newsletter to others.

If each person on your list who already trusts you and responds to your offer (let's say it's 100 people) gets just ONE person to sign up, that's 100 more people who are likely to end up trusting you as well if for no other reason than the referral that came from somebody who they ALREADY trust.

It's such an underused tactic. I myself don't use it as much as I should. But trust me, when you do use it and use it correctly (and adding incentives just makes it explode) it can really turn your list into a monster.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want more great list building tips? Check out my review of Paul Myers' Profit Plan VI at Profit Plan VI and pick up 162 ways to build a large and responsive list.

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List Building Tips - Using Your Affiliates To The Fullest

In this first in a series of list building tips, I want to start off with one of the sneakiest ways to not only build your list but possibly make affiliate sales in the process.

List building, while not the only way, is one of the best ways of generating a full time income. The reason is simple. By building a responsive list (and responsive is the key) you give yourself the chance to have a number of prospects and/or potential customers that will buy products from you on a regular basis.

Granted, if you only have one product to sell, then building a list for this purpose is probably sub optimal. Still, you're going to want to build it for no other reason than to be able to follow up with those who haven't yet purchased that one product.

Not everybody purchases on first sight of a sales page. Some people need to think it over. By getting them onto your list, you give them something to think about with each follow up. A very simple way is by making each follow up an issue that outlines or details certain features and benefits of the product. The more benefits you give them, the more likely they are to purchase.

Okay, but what does any of this have to do with your affiliates? Well, if you have affiliates, you certainly want them to promote your product, right? What's one way of getting them to do this? Well, what if you were to run some sort of random script that sent a prospect to a particular affiliate's page rather than directly to your sales page?

This gives them more of an opportunity to make a sale without them having to do any additional work on their own. What affiliate wouldn't like that?

Great, but how does this build your list? What you do is you offer the person going to the affiliate site a special bonus IF they sign up for your newsletter.

Here is where this gets interesting.

Let's say you had an affiliate who was promoting one product of yours but you wanted to build a list for another product that was related. By offering this incentive, you have the possibility of making the sale from the one product that you're directly sending the prospect to (the affiliate page) while giving yourself the opportunity to make a sale off of the related product.

And even if you only have the one product, by getting them to sign up to your list through your ethical bribe, you give yourself the chance to follow up with the prospect in case they haven't purchased yet. This gives you more opportunity to close the sale AND the affiliate still gets credit.

Think your affiliates won't love you for that?

This is just one of many ways to drive traffic to your opt in page, build your list and make more sales.

Want more great list building tips? Check my signature.

See you soon with more.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want more great list building tips? Check out my review of Paul Myers' Profit Plan VI at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/review-of-paul-myers-profit-plan-vi.html and pick up 162 ways to build a large and responsive list.

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List Building Tips - 404 Pages

In this next installment of list building tips, I'm going to cover an area that almost nobody takes advantage of - 404 pages. For those of you who don't know what they are, I'll explain them. For those of you who do and might be wondering how you could ever build a list off of a 404 page, you might just want to keep reading. I promise you that it WILL be a real eye opener.

Let's start off with exactly what a 404 page is for those of you who don't know. A 404 page is one that a visitor will see when they don't get the page of your domain that they're looking for. Now, there can be a number of reasons why this could happen, such as you deleting it without realizing it. Maybe you changed the permalink structure of a site. I could go on for days about what causes 404 errors but the bottom line is this. A visitor tried to access a page on your site, couldn't, and was greeted by an ugly "page could not be found" error which causes them to just move on to something else.

That's a GREAT way to lose prospects.

Okay, so what CAN we do about 404 pages? Well, we can't completely avoid them popping up. Even if we've done nothing wrong and the visitor simply typed in the wrong URL of the page they were looking for (yes, it happens) they're still going to get those errors. However, what we CAN do is customize our 404 pages so that when a visitor DOES get one to pop up, they have the chance to do more than just go away.

How do we do this?

A simple message that says, "Sorry, the page you're looking for doesn't seem to be here. Maybe you'd like to sign up for my free newsletter below... " just might get somebody who would have normally just moved on to do something else, to sign up for your newsletter. It certainly can't hurt to try and what does it cost you? A few minutes of your time to design a page?

Yes, you SHOULD try to make the 404 page as eye catching as possible. Make it humorous even. After all, the visitor isn't finding what he's looking for and is therefore probably at least a little annoyed. A cute little graphic of maybe some guy scratching his head wondering where the page went to just might get a chuckle or two.

For those of you who don't know how to create and setup your hosting to handle a 404 page, it's really very simple.

Step One - Create the page and save it with an obvious name. Something like 404.html will do fine.

Step Two - Edit your,htaccess file by adding the following line:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.html

And that's it. That's all there is to it.

This way, if a visitor to your site doesn't get the page they're looking for, they at least get a page that might have some meaning to them and JUST might get you another list member.

Try it. You might JUST be surprised by the results.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want more great list building tips? Check out my review of Paul Myers' Profit Plan VI at Profit Plan VI and pick up 162 ways to build a large and responsive list.

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Call to Action - 5 Creations to Get Your Visitors to Subscribe

Now, your visitors have arrived at your squeeze page. What you want them to do next? Subscribe, duh! Sounds simple, huh? However, getting your visitors' names and emails does not sound as easy as you think. That is why we need to tell them what to do using a strong call to action which we will be discussing in a short while. I've dissected a call to action into 5 parts - the 5 C's so that we can discuss each part in details.

Part 1: Create curiosity

Arouse their curiosity by telling them that you just discovered something recently or by asking them questions which make them want to know more. Try something like "Do you know why 95% of internet marketers fail to make a living online?" This rhetorical question stimulates their brain to start thinking and will be eager to find the answer.

Part 2: Create values

Next, instill values from the product you are about to offer them, regardless of whether your product is free or paid. The best value that you can provide them is the testimonials from your previous customers or subscribers that your product actually works! For example, "My friend has recently shared with me the system he used to generate a consistent 5-figure income, monthly"

Part 3: Create exclusiveness

This will be the answer to a multi dollar question that visitors always ask, "What's so special about your product?" Stress that this product isn't their buy 2 free 1 groceries they can get from every mini market. So, write something like "He told me that he spent a total of 4 years to perfect this system and I'm the first to know this"

Part 4: Create branding

When you heard somebody says "Just do it!" what do you think of? This is exactly what you want to do with your product. Give your product a brand by telling them "This Niagara Cash Flow exactly describes the perfected system which suddenly makes the money flows into his pocket like a Niagara Waterfall and it is unstoppable!"

Part 5: Create a sense of urgency

This is where you "force" your visitors to take action, by creating a sense of urgency. Give them a limited amount of time to think and they will act much faster. Tell them that "My friend wanted to start selling this system to help more people achieving success in online business. Now, he's asking me a favor to help him obtain feedback from 25 people who seriously want to implement his system, if you are interested... "

Each of these 5 parts is crucial to establish a strong call to action. Leaving any out will adversely affect the conversion rate of your visitors.

Felix Ung is an email marketing entrepreneur who can help you increase your income exponentially and achieve more traffics to your website, higher conversion of subscribers and tremendous sales. To discover more about Felix and learn some of his free Email Marketing strategies, visit his website http://www.cashflow2dream.com/

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The Benefits of Building and Using a List

Big enterprises and companies hire people to create email lists of their own in order to keep track of their clients. These firms do this so as to alert the said clients when they launch new products/services and even keep these clients updated with news from the firm.

Why Build and Use a List?

Now if you had taken down their email and that of another, then you will increase a likelihood of profiting from the same customer once again by emailing them an advert carrying your new product or even a discount offer that you are having.

In doing so (Building a list) you shall be benefiting your business from the following

: Reaching a wider audience on social networking sites such as: Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Increased Sales: Getting an expert to help you build your list of potential clients will help you generate more sales. This simply means that when someone joins your mailing list, you now have the opportunity to market your products to them for quite sometime (week, month, years).

Repeat Customers: With a mailing list, you will have the advantage and privilege of getting repeat buyers and this will only happen if you are respectable and extend the said clients some courtesy. Any great list builder knows that repeat customers form the backbone of a business for they will generate sales time and again.

Additional Traffic: When you publish your online store, most visitors only peruse for a few minutes and they move on to the next. By getting these people to enroll in your list, you'll be in the best position to do some follow-up marketing as you will be getting these people to visit your site more often thus increasing traffic to your site.

Wider Niche: It's a known fact that when someone joins your mailing list, is a person that is more than interested in your products or services. This translates into a target niche to a wider and more appropriate clientele.

Support and Team Work: In the days that we are living in, you need to think outside the box and treat your list more as a community not just mere prospects or numbers. Ensure that you build a great relationship with your subscribers; this will help create a sense of team work where both the customer and you can benefit for the long haul.

Gathering Info: List building helps you accrue valuable information from your list in the form of feedback and surveys. Get this you can use your list to try new products allowing you the platform to test your web content.

NB: If you have a website or are thinking of owning one, you should consider building a list. This is an awesome marketing strategy that will see you overtime automatically growing your contacts as well as increasing clients that will help you reap great benefits. Try it and you will never have a reason to regret!

For a proven way to build a targeted and responsive list, go here Cosmus Lewis is an internet marketer who is very passionate about helping those who are new to online marketing, helping them to achieve the earliest possible long term success.

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List Building Tips - Forum Blogs

This is the second in a series of list building tips that I hope you'll find informative. In this installment, I'm going to be discussing list building and forum blogs. I'll go over why they're good to post to, what benefits you'll get from doing so, how to go about doing it and when you should. Put all of that together and you should end up with a relatively effective method for driving traffic to your squeeze page and increasing the number of subscribers on your list. Ready? Let's begin.

Let's start with why forum blogs are good to post to. Let me preface this by saying that not ALL forum blogs are good. Some won't help you at all. Some, may even be more helpful than posting to your own blog. But why? The answer is authority.

If you take the Warrior Forum as an example, if you do a search through Google for just about any topic related to Internet marketing, more often than not, you'll find the Warrior Forum pages at or near the top of the search results. The reason is because of their authority as recognized by Google in this area.

Having said that, the problem with forums, as far as using their authority to your advantage, is that most of them, if not all, do not allow you to use the forum for advertising purposes. Certainly the main sections of most forum have a no advertising policy, as does the Warrior Forum.

But - and this is where you can take advantage of their authority - the Warrior Forum DOES have a blog that each member can use to post content that can be a little more promotional as long as the bulk of the content is informational in nature. No, you can't post a sales letter on your blog, but you can talk about a subject at length and then make a pitch for a product at the end. If the content is good, the small promotion at the end will be acceptable. In the case of building a list, this is a perfect vehicle. At the end of your content, you simply put "For more info, sign up to my newsletter."

You will find that you may actually get more subscribers from doing this than from posting articles to your own blog simply because the forum in question has more authority than you do. In other words, you're piggy backing off of somebody else's success. Hey, if they allow you to do it, take advantage of it. Just make sure you post relevant information that isn't a blatant sales pitch.

The benefits from doing this are clear as day. You reach more people because your blog entry has a better chance of being seen than if you made it on your own blog, unless of course your blog has equal authority with Google and other search engines. Good luck with that.

Since I've already covered basically how to do this, the last item on the list is the "when" or "how often." That is going to greatly depend on the forum and what you're trying to accomplish. Personally, I wouldn't make more than one blog post per day. You really don't want to make it look like you're just there for the free lunch. Contribute to the regular discussions as well. Be a regular forum member as far as participation and you'll find that even making one blog post a day won't be seen as excessive.

Bottom line is simple. If you're posting at a forum that has good authority, you'll reach more people with your blog posts and in the process drive more traffic to your opt in page.

It's a simple tactic but one very few people really take advantage of because they think it's not worth the effort.

Trust me - it is.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want more great list building tips? Check out my review of Paul Myers' Profit Plan VI at http://stevewagenheim.com/blog/internet-marketing/review-of-paul-myers-profit-plan-vi.html and pick up 162 ways to build a large and responsive list.

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Why Should I Focus On Quality Before Quantity In List Building?

In any type of internet marketing, your list is the key factor that determines your success. A lot of people have a wrong perception that huge email lists equal success. Unless your lists are highly targeted and willing to buy from you, you are wasting your time, effort and most importantly money. Let's discuss the three main reasons why list quality is more important than list quantity.

1. Protect your investment

Part of your investment in internet marketing includes buying domain, hosting services, autoresponder, PLRs, sales page, ghostwriters and designer to name a few. Among all these, autoresponder will be your most expensive investment if you have huge lists. All the freebie seeker emails sitting on your lists doing nothing can easily deplete your investment in autoresponder alone by more than 50%!

And you, hoping to earn a couple of bucks from them, continue to send emails that they hardly open. So, do not waste time and money sending emails to people who will not buy products from you.

2. Generate higher returns

Which one would you prefer; a list of 100,000 emails generating $100,000 or a list of 50,000 emails generating $100,000? The former generates a return of $1 per subscriber, which is pretty decent but the latter is generating $2 per subscriber. This can only be achieved if your lists contain quality leads and well-built relationship. A quality list needs time to build and nurture to become loyal customers.

Although it takes time to build a high quality and targeted list, it is easier to sell to these people again and again rather than focusing on building a huge list and selling to new prospects.

3. Leverage your credibility

There may be times where people would want to joint venture with you to sell some new products. If you send emails to high quality lists promoting the products and you performed beyond the expectation of your partners, you will have more leverage. They will look at you as a person who can be trusted to do a joint venture. Nothing spreads faster than word of mouth. Your name will be well known as a person who is dependable to start a joint venture with.

With the leverage and your quality list combined, you can generate a higher amount of sales and eventually generating more income online. In a nutshell, your main focus in list building should always be quantity of quality leads.

Knowing that J.O.B. is NOT going to fulfill my dreams, I started attending workshops and have finally COMPLETED a cash flow system that automatically RESTORES my bank account regardless of the number of withdrawals.

This idiot-proof Inbox Auto-Restoring ATM system is written such that you have NO CHANCE to miss any step and it WILL deliver its promise as long as you have faith in it.

Warning: I do not intend to reveal the system to too many people for free. Hopefully the system will still be up for grab by the time you visit http://www.cashflow2dream.com/

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