A mailing list allows you to:

1)“Recycle” your traffic by allowing you to email your list with updates and bring them back to your blog over and over again.

2)Earn money by selling ad space within your newsletter.

3)Start making sales overnight by sending out a special offer exclusive to you list .

4)Do joint ventures with other online entrepreneurs who are looking to promote their new product.

5)Build an asset with real cash value.

They key to building a list quickly is giving your visitors or prospects an incentive to join your list.

After all, few people will willingly give up their contact information unless you give them a good reason to do so.

Capturing your blog visitors contact information is actually fairly simple, if you know what you’re doing. All you need to do is offer your visitors something they would want that can be digitally delivered, like an ebook, or an audio or video product.

You should have an idea of what your blog visitors are interested in because they are looking at your blog and are therefore interested in the kind of information you have to offer. But going the extra step and setting up a survey with survey monkey or setting up an ASK campaign to see what they want would be even better.

All You then need to do is find or create an information product that one of your visitors would also be interested in.

For example, suppose you have a blog that chronicles your travels across the world and divulges all kinds of travel secrets like how to save money in different places or how to avoid scams overseas, etc.

You would then need to find a travel related information product to use as a list building incentive.

To find such a product you could either search the Internet for a travel related information product with resell rights or compile one yourself.

….Or you could just go to ebay.com.

On Ebay you can find an information product with resell rights on just about any topic you can imagine in less than 2 minutes and without spending more than $2!

Offering such an information product to you visitors in exchange for their contact information will give you the incentive offer often necessary to get visitors to sign up to your list.

Remember that the faster you build your email list and the bigger it becomes, the more money you will ultimately make.

When writing blog posts, make sure the title to each post has your main keyword in it. Put it as close to the front of the title as possible without making it look too silly. In addition, include your keyword a couple of times in the article, but don’t make it unnatural sounding. Also use synonyms and other related words as well so as not to appear to be keyword stuffing, which is heavily frowned upon by Google.

Google has something called “page rank”, which is Google’s way of determining the authority of a particular page. A high page rank often means a higher ranking in the search engines, which leads to more traffic. Things considered are whether your keywords are appropriate for your content, number of backlinks, how often you update your site, and many other things. High page rank will also attract more blog comments, which will lead to more content, more authority, and more traffic. Just be sure to watch out for spam comments. That is one of the bad things about having a high ranking blog. But I’m sure we will all happily deal with the nuisance of spam blog comments if it means that we have a popular blog with tons of traffic. I know I will.

Also, something to keep in mind when writing blog content is that search engines don’t like duplicate content. So if you have a blog article and you submit the same article to tons of article directories, you have a potential problem. Why? Because the search engines don’t want the same content showing up over and over again in the first page, so the highest ranking site typically gets credit for that article on the first page, and that site might not be yours. So it helps to change your blog articles enough when you submit them to directories so that they don’t show up as duplicate content.

One of the best things about blogs is that the search engine spiders love them. They’re easy for spiders to navigate because they’re primarily text in most cases. There’s not a lot of code to stop the spiders and send them to another site. So, blog pages are indexed quickly, and each post is considered to be one page. Therefore, the more you post to your blog, the greater the number of pages. The more pages you have, the higher your page rank will be, and the higher your blog will rise in the search engine results. That means traffic.

Try to make sure your posts have a call to action to entice people to click and visit your squeeze page. Also, make the anchor text a keyword you want to rank for.

These are just a few tips to get you in the right direction in blogging for traffic. Follow these tips, and be sure to post as often as possible, and you’ll see your traffic grow and your list building efforts will be benefited greatly.

For a complete overview of list building, visit List Money Blueprint.

One thing that makes people uneasy about blogging is that it requires a lot of writing, and many people don’t think they can write. Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to be a great writer to start a blog. If you can speak in coherent sentences, you’re fine. Just write the way you speak. Don’t worry about using elegant language or big vocabulary words. Just be yourself in your writing and you’ll be fine, even if you writing skills aren’t high level. People will appreciate the authenticity and it makes you appear more down to earth and approachable.

Also, if you are blogging about a topic that people are passionate about, they will read your blog based on your passion and knowledge of the topic. So if you know what you are talking about, then readers will read what you have to say and they will subscribe to your list. So put that limiting belief that you need to be an excellent writer aside. There are bloggers who speak English as a second or third language who make thousands of dollars a month and even more than that blogging.

First, be sure that the keywords for your blog get enough traffic each month to justify your time. So do extensive keyword research before you set up your blog and squeeze page to make sure the market is healthy.

Another issue people have is finding content for your blog. The more content you write, the more traffic you will get over time, because the search engines love regularly updated content. So this is a crucial issue. What did we do when we wanted to find information about a topic before the Internet was around? We went to bookstores and libraries. Lucky for us (at least for the time being), bookstores and libraries are still around. So if you want to find content for your blog, become knowledgeable about the topic of your blog. Get books, magazines, visit museums, etc. Do anything and go anywhere where you can learn more about the topic of your blog. If you are going to blog regularly about a topic, you need to become knowledgeable, and eventually an expert. So get started and you will have all of the content that you need.

In addition to using your own head, there are other options for content such as private label rights products and article directories. Also, you can feature a post from a guest blogger.

If you really don’t want to write, you can just hire the job out to someone else. You can get articles written for about $10, more or less depending on the level of quality that you want. Be careful about paying too little for articles, because you get what you pay for. If at all possible, get a writer who is already familiar with your niche.

These are some of the key techniques to get more traffic to your blog, which will result in more squeeze page traffic as well for your list building efforts. Check out the next post for a continuation of this topic.

Are they using a popup window to capture leads?

Do they offer incentives to anyone joining their lists?

Are they participating in any ezine ad swaps to build their lists?

How many different places at their website can you find references to joining their lists? What are they — how are they used?

Do they use a javascript alert window to capture email addresses?

Do they have a form for subscribing? If so, where?

Are they buying subscribers from a co-registration service?

Basically, you want to look at your competition and see how they are building their lists. If you find someone who has a large list, then follow their model. Do what they do (as long as it is legal and moral, needless to say) and you should see similar results. And don’t be afraid to contact them and ask. Say something like this:

“Hey Mr. Big Time Guru so and so, I’ve noticed that you have a super successful ezine with over 25,000 subscribers. I’m just getting started. Can you let me know what you’ve done to build your list so successfully?”

Use the knowledge of others to your benefit. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Building a list is the most important job any Internet marketing person has. Without a list, you’re just another random person out there trying to sell something. People are sure you’re out to cheat them, and it’s hard to sell anything at all. People don’t know you, and if they can’t trust you, you won’t make much money.

You can’t ignore list building, and it should have been your first priority when you moved into the Internet marketing world. But many of us put it off and don’t give it the attention we should. We are short sighted and want immediate profits by selling, when all along an email address is a commodity more valuable than one sale, because with it you can make multiple sales to the same person.

Now that you realize the importance of having a list, the first step after deciding your niche is to buy a domain name. It should be a name that’s easy to remember and that fits your niche. For example, if you’re selling natural perfumes, your domain should have “natural perfumes” in the domain title if possible.

Then, you need a web hosting account. If you’re serious about your Internet marketing business, it’s going to grow and you’re going to need to add more than one domain to your account. So, get an account that has mySQL database availability. That will be important when it’s time to start a blog or add an affiliate program. Look into the future when choosing your hosting account, and also look for reliability. You need your website to be up 99.9% of the time.

Your next step is to get an autoresponder service. The main concern here is deliverability. Will your email arrive at its destination? With spam filters in effect today, if you don’t have a great autoresponder, your email marketing efforts won’t be very effective.

After all of this is in place, you’ll need to build your first squeeze page. But don’t worry. It’s nothing more than a few bullet points, which provide the benefits of your offer, and and opt-in form, which you get from your autoresponder service. Images of yourself or of something you’re giving away in exchange for getting people’s names and email addresses work well, too. When you’re done with this step, you upload the squeeze page, and you’re ready to build your list.

Significant Internet marketing success rests on the size and responsiveness of your list. You need to gather a group of people who know and trust you, and who are grateful for the knowledge you can give them about your niche. When they get a recommendation from you, they’re more likely to follow it. If you follow through with the steps above, you’ll have your list growing in no time. All you have to do is concentrate on sending some traffic to your page. Then, get ready for your Internet marketing to start growing by leaps and bounds.

If you do this, you will be way ahead of the game and in a far better position than most marketers because you will know exactly what your market wants. When you are in that position, it makes it easy to write emails, write copy, and provide content for your list, because you know exactly what it wants.

It might seem odd, but it might be a good idea to hold off on collecting people’s names and email address in order to focus on getting as many answers to as many questions as you can within a shorter period of time. In the long run, the amount of insight that you gain into the mind of your market will more than make up for the few names that you didn’t get on your list while getting your 100 answers.

Use the answers you get from your questions to write bullet points on sales copy, headlines, and other things on your squeeze page. You now have a true window into the mind of your prospect, because with an ASK campaign, you don’t have to rely on guess work and assumptions.

If you want to use paid advertising for your ASK campaign, start by asking what they want. Then on your thank-you page you can then offer the opportunity to join your list.

Another technique is to offer a free e-course or free report on the squeeze page to get the prospect to opt-in. Then, the Thank you page say something along the lines of: “Thanks for subscribing. You’ll be getting your first lesson soon. In the meantime, what is you single biggest question about ____ topic.”

This process will help you to begin building a relationship with your niche. Then, while you are developing content based on the answers to the questions in the ASK campaign, you can also recommend products that are worthwhile to your list.

If you want to skyrocket your Internet success and income, you should take seriously the job of building a bond and rapport with your list. That is done by having personality, offering valuable content, and being trustworthy in your product recommendation. If you do those things, you will be able to make much more money in the long run, and your list will benefit much more from your email marketing as well.

At the end of the day, the ASK campaign all about selling your list what they want, as opposed to selling them what you want to sell them – which is what most people do. Don’t be like most people. Set yourself apart from the crowd.

One key tactic is to increase the perceived value of your freebie, or “ethical bribe”, by assigning a value to it. Take a hard look at what you are offering to entice prospects to subscribe to your list, and determine a value, whether it’s $10 or $300. Think to yourself, if you were to actually sell this as home study course or an e-book, how much would you sell it for? Once you have that figured out, be sure to add it to the copy on your sign up page.

Your e-mail list sign up page should sell the benefits of your list, just as a sales letter would sell the benefits of your product. So set it up the same way; use a headline, a subhead, and supporting text.

An essential point that shouldn’t be overlooked is having a way to take orders, because when you offer your products to your list, you need a way to collect the cash. There are many online companies that offer shopping carts to take orders, but to start out, PayPal is the easiest way to go.

Another key is to have reliable sources of traffic to build your opt-in list. Article marketing is the best way to start out, because it is easy to learn and it is free. There are tons of free sources online to learn about it. Once you have article marketing down, it’s time for another stream of traffic. One way is to use podcasting. The great thing about podcasting is that you don’t need to develop new content at all. All you need to do is read your articles into an audio program and you have a podcast. You can repeat this process for every article and have another stream of traffic with the same content. You can’t beat that for efficiency. YouTube can also be used in similar way by adding Power Point Slides or making a video of yourself reading the article.

In addition to knowing where your traffic comes from, you need to know what traffic source is converting into subscriptions the most. Once you determine which traffic source is giving you the best results, you need to focus more effort on that traffic source.

Growing a list also means you need a steady stream of permanent traffic. As you develop your traffic building skills watch your sign-ups and your business grow. Be sure the opt-in list you grow is targeted to the products and services that you’re selling and you’ll be well on your way to success.

On average, across most niches or market segments, people say that a subscriber is worth about $1 in revenue each month. But in order for the revenue to be generated, there are some steps that you first have to take. But the good news here, with just with a basic level of math, you’ll see that it will only take about 20 active subscribers on your list for it to break-even. And it will take VERY LITTLE work on your part, to build your list to 20 in the first month.

Building a list from zero, means first having a free e-course, a free newsletter, or a free e-zine. In each of these three types of lists, your subscribers will get to know and trust you because you are emailing them on a regular basis.

How frequently you mail them will depend on your market, your base of subscribers, and even how much time you are able to commit to the development of your list. Ideally, your first set of messages should be at least three in the first week. If you wait too long, your subscribers may forget entirely who you are and why you are emailing them.

To be sure that doesn’t happen to you, simply remind them at the opening of your first few messages.

E-courses are typically seven to ten messages in length. Each message should be brief, but sould also teach something of value.

Remember that your subscribers are PEOPLE (just like you). So in order for them to see value in your emails, be sure to provide great content that they can use.

Growing a list also means you need traffic. So developing targeted traffic is also a skill that you need to build too.

There are hundreds of sources of free traffic available to you. But one of the best that can produce immediate traffic is article directories.

Ezine Articles for example, will place your article on their first page once it is approved. So you’ll be able to gain some instant exposure. The resource box is the block of text which follows the article, where you are able to state your expertise as well as present an offer for your free e-course, newsletter, or other online publication. Link back to a page on your site with minimal information … just enough to invite your visitors to sign up and start receiving your content.

Although having a opt-list of 10,000 or even 50,000 is a sustainable goal, the truth of the matter is that most marketers have a list that only ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 subscribers. So be encouraged with every new subscriber that you gain and set your subscription goals in small but achievable milestones.

First, you need a topic. To be successful, your topic has to have two crucial characteristics: (1) demand, and (2) quality content.

Demand

Determining interest and demand are essential. One of the most common mistake new marketers make is that they launch a product or business they are interested in without taking into account what the customer wants. In a nutshell, there is no demand for the topic. To avoid this fatal mistake, use keyword research tools such as the Google Adwords tool or WordTracker to make sure people are actually searching for the information you will be providing. Not having enough demand or a product is one of the primary reasons that over 80% of business failing the first two years. Don’t be statistic; do proper market research.

Quality Content

To develop great content, it really doesn’t matter whether your information is written or in a multi-media format, the process doesn’t change.

There are key questions to help with ideas. What problems is your market grappling with? What can you offer to help solve those problems? What is the pain they are experiencing? Put yourself in the shoes of someone in your market, and start answering these questions with the prospects needs in mind.

The ideal method is to always provide new content to your opt-in list that you either wrote yourself, or that you had ghost writer produce. But realistically speaking, to keep a newsletter jam-packed with content, it is a good idea on occasion to re-use existing content that other writers have written. If another writer has provided a truly useful piece of content, your subscribers will benefit from it if you offer it to them.

Article directions abound with this type of content, and it is encouraged to use it as long as you don’t change the content and give credit to the author. Be sure to proofread the material for grammar and spelling errors though. Your reputation is at stake, so present your information in the best light possible.

Get Subscribers

To gain subscribers, advertise your newsletter on your web site as well as on free eZine directories. Offer an incentive for signing up. Also, if you determine that the demand is there, translate your newsletter into other languages. This will extend your market reach and could even increase sales of your revenue-generating products and services.

Monetization

To monetize your newsletter, advertise your own products relevant to your market. Also, advertise affiliate programs that you belong to when they compliment the topic.

With any type of recurring communication to your opt-in list, you’ll benefit in a number of ways which includes more traffic to your site, as well as reminding your subscribers who you are and the great solutions you have to their problems.

The importance of list building is talked about all the time. But just HOW do you build a list of responsive subscribers on a daily basis?

I’ve created a 10-point cheat sheet that you can use to grow a list of 1000s of subscribers, mostly on autopilot.

Here are the 10 steps:

1. High Leverage Article Marketing

With article marketing, I’m not just talking about the usual step of submitting articles to article directories. That still works very well. What I’m referring to is submitting your articles to popular authority sites in your market. For example, if you’re in the Internet marketing niche, popular sites like Entrepreneur, About, Associate Programs and even popular blogs like Site Fling are possible places to submit articles.

Submitting your articles at these places means you’ll have less competition and receive more traffic without having to compete with thousands of other articles.

2. List Builders

List builders typically work like this: you sign up for the exchange, and you’re allowed to promote to thousands of other members with an email promotion, but in exchange, you agree to receive emails from other members as well. Examples of such networks include List Joe, The List Auction, Viral URL and the new Viral Ads Unleashed system. I have personally used List Joe and The List Auction to add hundreds of new subscribers to my account every month just by sending out an email every 3 days. It is definitely worth a go.

3. Forum Marketing

We’ve got the old workhorse of forum marketing here. The problem with many people when it comes to forums is they don’t have a system. You’ll want to create a list of authority forums in your market, and then submit to them religiously almost every day. If you have a list of 5 forums, and you submit 5 posts to each of them every day, you’ll get a steady flow of new sign-ups each day. And this is just ONE of your traffic streams that you’ll be using to build your list.

4. Giveaways

Giveaways are another proven method of building your list. The idea is that dozens of list builders promote the same giveaway event so everyone grows their lists. The drawback to this is that you may be “giving” away your subscribers to dozens of other lists. Well, these days, you don’t even have to promote the giveaway if you don’t want to. Yes, you don’t have to! Many events provide the option of upgrading so you will receive additional points that will boost the position of your gift.

5. Ad Swaps

One of my biggest list builders is ad swaps. The idea is amazingly simple – find other list builders in your market, and propose to them that you will send an ad for their squeeze page to your list, if they will do the same for your squeeze page. This is a startlingly quick way to grow your list. I have personally added tens of thousands of new subscribers to my list from this method alone. It seems this method is picking up steam with other marketers as well.

In my opinion, this is like giveaway list building on steroids. But, unlike in giveaway events where the person who runs the giveaway is really the big winner, in an ad swap, 2 parties can be the big winners.

6. Blog Marketing

A blog is labor intensive but at the same time it can drive a flood of targeted visitors to your primary business. The great thing about a blog is that there are many ways you can leverage it for traffic – you can use it to tag and ping, it is easy to social bookmark, RSS is easily integrated and it is great for search engine optimization. Through my blog (which I have not been paying as much attention as I should), I have added hundreds of new subscribers.

7. Video Marketing

Video marketing is a highly scalable strategy for getting traffic. The hard part is getting the video created. Once that is done, promotion can be easy using automated tools like Tube Mogul and Hey Spread. These tools (or websites) submit your videos automatically to more than a dozen of the most popular video sharing websites online. Imagine if you create a short 3 to 5 minute video every week and submit it to more than a dozen of video sharing sites weekly. That should be enough to give you fresh inflows of subscribers.

8. Craigslist

The popularity of Craigslist.org has been growing immensely in the past year or so. In fact, in 2008, Craigslist’s popularity grew by 87%. This is probably because more people are going online to either search for bargains or to look for jobs or business opportunities. This means that Craigslist has never been a more fertile ground for marketers to tap into. I have not been taking advantage of it as much as I would like, but it is certainly something to put on your to-do list.

9. Ad Brite

Ad Brite is a banner ad exchange website where publishers and advertisers work out ad deals. I have personally advertised my sites on dozens of sites in the network and have reaped hundreds of fresh leads. The competition is also far less than it is on AdWords.

Here is a tip: Direct response, all-text banner ads seem to get the highest click-through rates.

10. Get Response Power Leads

If you’re looking to buy leads, then look no further than Get Response Power Leads. I have spent hundreds of dollars with them and have gotten a lot back in return. My list grows by the dozen daily and these people are highly responsive. Because the system is backed by one of the top autoresponder companies online, you can be sure of the quality of the leads, because they are real. I highly recommend checking them out.

There you go, my 10-point cheat sheet to growing a list of hot subscribers in ANY market. Apart from the List Builders tactic (which is more suitable for the home business niche), all the other tactics can be used for any niche.

All that’s left is to TAKE ACTION!

Fabian Tan is an Internet Marketing expert and author of the popular 59-page report: “Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!” Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your FREE copy now.