Email List Building Strategies

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If you're going to be successful in internet marketing, you need to build a list. This is the most important factor in your long-term success. After it's built, it's yours to use any time you want. Just push a button and print money - literally.

OK, but how?

Here's what you need to build your list:

  • Your Landing Page
  • The Bribe
  • The Thank You Page

Your Opt-in Page - The landing page is the page that has your opt-in form on it. This page is the one that asks them for their email. So, obviously it has to be well designed. It's also got to be free from distractions. You've also got to make a strong "close".

If you fail to make a strong close, you're wasting your efforts. Your call to action tells the visitor what to do. You opt-in rates will take a dramatic nose dive without it. Oddly, if you don't make it clear, people will be confused and end up doing nothing.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page make it a video squeeze page. You only have a few second to get your visitors attention - video helps! And you can repeat the call to action several times int he video. And after the video, you can make it just say "fill in the form now".

If you don't know how to make video, don't worry. Hiring out-sourced help to do it for you only costs $150 - $250. You can also find ready-made list building tools that give you squeeze page templates.

The Bribe - The second component is the reason they are opting into your list. People won't give you their email for nothing. Most people are very protective of their email address. So you have to give them a good reason to do it.

The only way to make this work is to provide real value. Then it becomes something people want to get from you. And can benefit from. For example:

  • An eBook
  • Software
  • Training videos
  • An email training series

You've got to create some great content. Something that's useful and helpful to your visitors. It goes without saying it must be free. Bottom line is it's got to be worth more to them than their email address.

Once again, don't worry if you don't know how to create the freebie. Here again, you can hire freelancers to create this for you. You just pick the topic and they create the training. A 5-part email series is a good freebie. And you can get emails ghost written for about $20 - $25 each. So, a great premium will cost you around $100 - $150.

Or again, you can find complete list building packages for sale online that include an email series. Two critical aspects of using a follow up series. The first thing is that it delivers value to your subscribers. And second, it needs to make you money. The easiest way to do this is to market affiliate products in the emails. This is such a simple solution because you don't have to create the product. And you can earn some commissions immediately from your emails.

The Opt-in Success Page - The last bit is the thank you page. After subscribing to your list, your visitor is redirected to this page. A great thing to do here is provide some immediate value. Then they feel good about giving you their email address. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. Then they're more receptive when you email them.

You can use a "done for you" email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. And do your own writing for this content. Or pay a freelancer to write the content for you.

Summary

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The key is to start building your list. Because as soon as you've got your own list . . . You're free to make money at the push of a button.

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Traffic Generation Tips

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Everyone knows the number one thing you need to be successful online is traffic to your website. Of course you also need to have a valuable offer for your visitors - a reason for them to transact with you. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. The most crucial aspect of this process is getting the visitors to your site.

Here are some tips for generating website visitors:

Here are a few of the most popular way to get traffic to your site - for free:

  • Web 2.0 Methods
  • Article Marketing
  • Video

Let's talk about each of these.

Web 2.0 Methods

Web 2.0 simply means the new family of websites that have user-generated content. What this means for you is that you can join into the community and add your own content. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. And that's important to you because it means that Google and the other search engines treat links from these sites as more meaningful than links from other sites. And any links in your content that point to your own sites count as a strong "vote" in favor of your sites - lending you credibility in the search engines. The direct traffic from the Web 2.0 sites themselves is only part of the benefit. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don't have time to get into here, but this will get you started.

Articles Sites

Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. This is because article websites are really web 2.0 site. Article directories are sites where users (including you) can upload articles they have written. And because they are also considered authority sites by the search engines you get all the benefits of other web 2.0 sites just by putting your articles on them. But you also get the extra benefit of other users taking your article and putting it on their site. And along with your article, they have to include your author information and a link back to you - so you get more free traffic and SEO benefits. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Write your article for the keywords you've chosen
  • Use anchor text links in the article and the "resource box"

Video

Our discussion would not be complete without talking about video. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. So, just like article marketing, video marketing enables you to add content to authority sites. The extra top secret benefit of video marketing is that it's much easier to rank for competitive keywords than in any other medium.

OK, so how do you do effective video marketing?

  • Sign up for YouTube
  • Make your profile uncluttered by turning off all the modules
  • Use the tags in your profile to enter the keywords you want to rank for
  • Include a link to your main site in your profile
  • Upload at least 1 video
  • In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Summary:

If you take action on the items listed here you'll have free traffic in no time.

Return to the home page of Jack Folsgood for more information on internet marketing.

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Membership Niche Selection Tips

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In order to make sure your membership business is profitable, you have to select the right market. Here's how.

Number 1 - Discover Niches with Fanatics

The number 1 thing you have to do is find fanatics if you want a profitable membership website. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you're looking for because they are so enthusiastic they're willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. Here's how to find fanatics:

  • Look at magazine racks. This is an often overlooked, yet extremely simple way to find niches that people are interested in. In today's economy, running a magazine is tougher than ever - some of the best ones are going out of business. So if it's on the shelves, it's making money, which means there is a big market interested in this topic. That doesn't mean definitely that it will make a good membership business, but it's a good starting point.
  • You've got lots of opportunities every day to see what people are interested in. Just pay attention to what people talk about on the radio, at social gatherings, at the store or restaurants and anywhere in public. People generally talk about things they are interested in. And this means there may be a market for information about it.
  • Conventions, clubs, and organizations. Once again, if there are enough people interested in a topic to create a club or organization, then there are enough people to build a membership business around it. Likewise, if there are enough people to hold a convention, there are definitely enough people to fill your membership website.
  • Think about the things that you are interested in. Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
  • Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. These topics are the hottest topics because lots and lots of people want information about them. Hot topics that people are excited about make great niches for your membership website.

Second - Analyze the "commerciality"

OK, so you've got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

Here's a punch list for figuring out if anyone's making money in your niche:

  • Find out if there are blogs or forums related to it. Just search Google for "YourNiche blog" & "YourNiche forum" and see what comes up. This means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
  • Search Amazon, Google shopping and eBay to see if people are creating and selling products in the niche. What you're trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
  • Watch Google Adwords for a period of time and look for ads the run again and again. Adwords ads are expensive, so people only run them repeatedly if they are profitable. And to be profitable, they have to be selling products and making money.

Finally - Figure out your barrier to entry

After figuring out a good niche and determining that other people are making money in it, the last thing to do is decide if you will be able to enter the market. Here's how to make this determination:

  • Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. The easiest membership website to create and maintain are information membership sites.
  • Competition. How many other people are trying to sell to this market? You want to start in a market that's not completely saturated with competitors.
  • Unless the market is just so big that it doesn't matter how many competitors there are, you want to limit the competition. So evaluate the size vs. the competition.
  • Market readiness. Are people ready to buy? Are the receptive to marketing messages? Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.

Summing it all up

At this point you've figured out what niche you're going into. You found your fanatics, you know they spend money and you're confident there's room in the market for you. If you've done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article...for additional internet marketing tips and ideas start at the home page of JackFolsgood.com

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Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

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The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night.

But, first...

Before you begin trying to get traffic to your site, you need to do your keyword research first. Why? Because you have to target these keywords if you are to have any hope of actually generating traffic for them. So you need to make sure the keywords you're targeting are worth targeting.

Here are some important keyword research tips:

  • Will you be able to rank for these keywords? Take a look at the "strength" of others websites (and how many) are already targeting these keywords.
  • Will the keywords you're targeting bring buyers? Some keywords will bring lots of traffic, but none of them will buy. What you want is buyers!
  • Will these keywords bring affiliates? If you want to build a huge business, you're going to need affiliates to help you. This means that some of your traffic focus should be on getting affiliates to your site.

Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. And hiring an expert is very expensive. Which is why practically none of your competitors will do this! If you're smart you will use website traffic software to help you with this process. This way you get this critical step done fast and done well.

Only then can you start getting traffic

Once you've done your properly keyword research, you're now ready to start targeting these keywords to draw in visitors.

Here's a short list of sneaky traffic techniques:

  • Surveys
  • "Traffic Traps"
  • Video Sharing Sites

Surveys

People love filling in surveys. You can use this fact to provide "sticky" content for other website owners. And when they put your survey on their site, they will include a link back to your website. Think about that - you get website traffic for free just for making a survey! Most people think surveys are just for collecting data, but in this case you don't even care about the answers. Just make the question interesting enough that people will want to share it with their own visitors.

"Help" Websites

Sites like Yahoo! Answers allow users to ask and answer each others' questions. However, you're interest in these sites is not to ask and answer questions. The other thing they can be used for is to get traffic to your site, leads for your business and sales! Now, you can do this all by hand - visit a classified ads or answers site and one by one copy and paste contact info. The good news is that it's easy to find website traffic software that can do this automatically. Then you just get a daily batch of fresh leads delivered to your inbox.

Video Sharing Sites

No doubt you're aware of YouTube and other video websites. YouTube is one of the most highly traffic and search websites on the entire internet! So don't miss out of this incredible source of free website traffic.

Even if you don't think you can make a good video. It's really easy to just start with an article or something you've already written. Then just do a screen capture of yourself going through it. And like anything else, there is software available that will turn articles into videos for you automatically.

In Closing

It's not that hard to get traffic to your websites. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren't doing. You can even use software to automate most of what we've talked about.

Get started right away:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Next, set up a survey or two with viral appeal
  • Make sure to use the "answer" sites
  • And don't forget about video

For the absolute best online (first 30 days free) course regarding keyword research and how to make money online visit the Keyword Academy.

Return to Jack Folsgood home page.

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Affiliate Marketing Secrets

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Secrets of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. This is when you refer traffic to someone else's product sales page, they make the sale and deliver the product, keep 50% or more of the sales

Here's just a few benefits

  1. You're able to start instantly without having to make a product, write a sales letter, develop a website, create marketing materials, get a merchant account, or provide support
  2. It's complete hands-free for you because they handle the billing, support, maintenance, etc.
  3. There's no risk for you. The product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you know that your traffic will result in sales.

Looking at these benefits, it's clear that affiliate marketing is the way to go!

The downside is...

Once you send your visitors to the product sales page, they are gone forever. Less than 10% of the visitors your send will actually buy the product. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

Is there are way around this?

It's simple: You must get your visitors' email addresses before you send them to the product owner's website. By getting their contact info, you can follow up increase your odds of making the sale by sending them back to the product owner's website multiple times. And if you want to do it like a pro, you'll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.

Here's why you want to implement these affiliate marketing strategies:

  1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
  2. You'll be warming them up by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.

If you want to create an affiliate marketing system like this, you'll need the following:

  1. A squeeze page, and even better a Video squeeze page.
  2. Several high-quality content pages
  3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you'll send them to your lead capture page first. Your squeeze page adds your visitors to you autoresponder. This is how you start building your list, and at the same time begin sending them useful information. After subscribing them to your email list, it redirects them to your content mini-site.

You content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. While they're reading the content you've provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it's well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it's set up, it runs automatically - you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.

One option, if you're not up to the challenge of setting this all up yourself, is to let someone like Affiliate Silver Bullet do it for you. These kinds of services will build the whole system for you and then just give you a video squeeze page (with video), pre-written emails, content pages, etc. The benefit is that it's much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it's instantly set up. One negative is that there will be other people using this same affiliate marketing system. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitor are so small, that it doesn't really matter.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to "outsource" each of these components. Whichever way you decided to go, it's critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you're at all serious about your business.

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