Opt-in List Basics – Part 3

Building an opt-in list is more that just watching your total number of subscribers climb. Obviously you want to see a steady stream of new subscribers, but in order to accomplish that, you have to actually work at it because it doesn’t happen by itself.

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.

10 Quick Ways to Build a List

Growing a list of 1000s of responsive subscribers
by Fabian Tan

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.