There is no excuse not to have an email list. In fact, you don't even need your own product or service before starting a targeted list. All you need is an autoresponder and an opt-in box on your website.

Once you do create your own product or service, you’ll be happy that you already have your list in place. By then, you’ll already have readers who are interested in what you have to say. In fact, it will make it easier to sell those things when the time comes because a relationship will already be developed.

The Key = If you can get a targeted list of people who trust you, love your products and see you as an expert in your field your chances of reaching success have just skyrocketed above everyone else.

Quick Tip #1: Get Them to Opt-In

You should always offer quality content for free on your site so that when you do create an offer your readers are already confident that what you’re offering is worth their time & money.

Here are some ideas to entice your visitors to sign up for your list:

• A Special Report – 7-10 pages in length
• A Short eCourse – 5 to 7 days that will give you a chance to provide great information along with the ability to follow up in the future.
• Informative Audio or Video – Make it one that can’t be found already on your site. Be sure to include transcripts for those who want them.

Make sure your free item of such great quality that your visitor could picture themselves paying for it instead of receiving it free.

Remember, not everyone on your list will be interested in buying your stuff immediately. Some just want to get your free information. That’s ok – the day may come when they need something you’ve got and they’ll know where to go. Plus, if you’ve built a relationship with them, they’re more likely to recommend you to others – growing your list even more.

Bonus Tip: Here’s a trick to help you separate the buyers from the freebie seekers.

Create a short report for your list. Offer your readers the report at a low price (no more than $5 or 10 dollars). Those who see the value in what you’re offering will gladly spend a few dollars. Have the customers opt-in for lifetime updates.

If you can, purge the new customers from your leads list. If not, don't worry about it. However, the great value in this method is that you’ll end up with a list of people who aren’t afraid to spend money — and that's where the real money is.

Quick Tip #2: Make it Easy

Your opt-in box gives you the opportunity to convert one time visitors into long term relationships through follow-up emails. Make sure you place your opt-in form on every page of your website so your readers have the opportunity to sign up without having to search for it.

Where can you put your opt-in form?

• Pop-up or Pop-over forms hovering over your site
• In-line forms near the top. These allow for easy access and are seen “above the fold” so visitors can sign up once they’ve read a bit of your content and find out they love you
• Links. Place a link in the footer of every page of your site that directs visitors to an opt-in page

They all have their own benefits so you should test them to see which one converts best for you.

Don’t forget to create a strong call to action in the opt-in box text – tell them what to expect, and what to do next. Detailed instructions on how to check their email and click on the enclosed link to make sure they receive their freebie is always a good idea.

Quick Tip #3: Drive Targeted Traffic

You have an opt-in form, you have an offer and now you need traffic. The best offer means nothing if no one is visiting your site to see it.

There are many different ways to drive people to your site and using a variety of them will help you achieve the best results. A few to get you started:

• Article Marketing – Share your articles on article directories. Make sure your author bio includes a strong call to action and a link to your site. Use keywords in your articles to make them easier to find by the search engines.
• Leveraging Social Networks – Did you know there are over 600 bookmarking and social networking sites on the Internet right now? Twitter and Facebook might be the most popular, but don’t count out sites like StumbleUpon or Digg.

The point is you should be creating relationships through these sites so don’t go in with your sales spiel guns shooting your links all over the place. Build relationships, create your bio and occasionally share a link or special offer to your site.

• Blog Posts – If your website doesn’t have a blog create one and share quality information or recommendations in your posts.
• Blog Comments – Make meaningful, relevant comments that provide good information (not just links to your site) on other blogs. Don’t comment just for the sake of commenting and don’t be afraid to comment on the blogs of your competitors. Competition is good and most realize the power of working together so while you’re helping with comments, you’ll build a relationship with them too.
• Giveaways & Contests –Create traffic by hosting a giveaway or contest. Each has its own merits and you can work with other website owners to create traffic for everyone. For example, get 3 or 4 site owners with services or products they’re willing to donate. Those site owners each get to give away the “package” of 3 – 4 items. You can have your readers participate (which is always good) by visiting all of the sites and leaving comments or whatever you’d like them to do. Be creative but make it fun and easy.
• Link Love Posts – Write a “round-up” post where you travel the Internet looking for great articles on your topic. Provide links to the articles on your site. Don’t forget to add your commentary and make it more valuable for your readers. Share the link to your post with the people you’ve linked to as a courtesy.
• Guest Posts – Offer to write guest posts on complementary sites. Everyone is looking for fresh content. Especially, if it’s good quality and they don’t have to write it. You can find places that accept guest posts by doing a search or you can simply email your friends and competing site owners and make the offer to write a post. What do you get in return for your hard work?  A short bio/author resource box at the end of your post with your keywords and links back to your site.
• Interviews – Find places to share your information via teleseminars, podcasts or email interviews. Often, these will provide you with the ability to get your name and URL out to many people, not already on your list, at one time.
• Contributors – Look for people to contribute guest posts on your blog for fresh content with an eye to providing quality information to your readers. People are often willing to write a guest post for you as long as they can link back to their own site or product.
• Brandable Reports – Look for products you can recommend (or create your own) that have brandable reports as a marketing tool. You can give away these special reports that include your own affiliate links making the benefits two-fold. You have content for your readers and the possibility of making money through affiliate sales. (Look at BrandableStuff.com for ideas.)

The Key = Find out what your target market’s intent is when searching for information in your niche. What, exactly, are they searching for? Give it to them.

Quick Tip #4: Test

No matter what you use to drive traffic to your site, you must test to see which offers convert and which are wasting your time. You want to turn visitors into list members AND you want to convert members of your list into buyers. But, the only way you’ll know what action is working best for you is to test them all.

You just need to start at the beginning and just get it done! Get your stuff out there and then test the heck out of it! Tweak & test again.

Now that you have the steps necessary to get your list started, growing your list should be a little bit easier for you. Just focus your efforts on designing a great offer, making your opt-in form easy to find and getting targeted traffic to your site so that your reader’s eyeballs see that opt-in box. Then, choose a few of the strategies to get traffic and see which ones work best for you. Remember to test and tweak your efforts until you get the best possible results.

If you want to learn more about building a profitable email list, look no further than List Profit System.

1. A prospect list. These are the folks who voluntarily subscribe to your free newsletter list.
2. A customer list. This is your proven list of buyers, which tends to convert considerably better than your prospect list.

When you use affiliates to get new subscribers, you get to build both types of lists.

Now, there are multiple ways to use affiliates to build your lists, including:

• Pay per lead.This is where you offer your affiliates 25 cents, 50 cents, a dollar or more for each person they send to your page who joins your list.

• Viral report with backend sales. This is where you create a viral report (perhaps something controversial) where you sell something on the backend. Affiliates use their affiliate links to send visitors to download your report, and they make commissions whenever someone takes advantage of your backend offer.

• Sell a product. This is where your affiliates use their affiliates links to direct visitors to a sales page. When someone buys the product, the affiliate gets a commission and you get to add someone to your customer list.

You may also build a prospect list by including your newsletter subscription form on the sales page or via an exit pop up that appears to those who don’t buy the product.

This last method is one of the most popular ways to build a list, so let’s look at the steps in detail…

Step #1: Create an attractive affiliate offer

If you’re selling a digital product (such as a downloadable ebook, video or even access to a membership site), then you should offer at least 50% commissions. However, if you’re primarily interested in list building, then you may consider offering up to 100% commissions (especially if your product is priced low). That way, you get the list and your affiliates get the front-end profits.

Step #2: Recruit Affiliates

The passive way to get affiliates is by joining Clickbank.com and adding your product to the marketplace. While you should take that step, that’s not the only step you should take to get affiliates. You should also:

• Tell your list and your other visitors about your affiliate program
• Encourage your customers to join your affiliate program
• Look for partners by listing your opportunity in the JV forum at www.warriorforum.com
• List your affiliate program in affiliate directories
• Ask your existing JV partners to promote
• Contact your social media network to look for affiliates
• Join a JV list in your niche (such as www.jvnotifypro.com)
• Seek out new partners, give them access to your product and ask them to promote
  • Tip: You can find potential affiliates by going to Clickbank.com and seeing who’s selling products in your niche. Each of these sellers is a potential affiliate. You can also run a search in Google for the names of the top products in your niche, which will help you uncover some of the top affiliates. Contact these affiliates and ask them to promote your product.
    

• You may also hire a JV broker or affiliate manager, which is someone who finds and recruits affiliates for you. Ask on niche forums for recommendations. Choose people who are well-connected (i.e., they know all the other marketers in the niche) and have a history with successful brokering/managing.

Summary

Building your list with the help of affiliates is a fast and powerful way to get new subscribers. Even a marketer with a small audience in your niche can send you a few dozen prospects.

The largest marketers – your super affiliates – may send you hundreds or even thousands of prospects and customers.

All you need is a good product, a good affiliate offer (commission rate) and the ability to contact and recruit your niche superstars. Today is the day to start!

That concludes our 5-part series. In case you missed any of the other parts, sign up below. All I need to get you started is your first name and email address.

If you do a search online, you’ll run into numerous PPC search engines. However, the top service is Google AdWords. You may also consider using Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN adCenter.

Here’s how to use PPC marketing to build your list…

Step #1: Create a Landing Page

Your landing page is your sales page for your newsletter. This is where you tell visitors why they should join your newsletter list. Since it’s a sales letter, it should include the regular parts of a sales letter such as:

• Headline

  • Example: “Free Reports Shows You How to Improve Your Golf Swing in Three Easy Steps!”

• Bulleted list of benefit statements

  • Example: “Use this surprisingly simple tweak to add 25 yards to your drive – it’s easy!”

• Proof, such as screenshots, pictures, videos and/or testimonials

• A call to action

  • Example: “Enter your first name and email address in the form below now and click to submit to discover how to improve your game!”

Typically, you encourage subscriptions by offering a bonus, such as a free:

• Niche ebook or report
• Video
• Audio product
• Access to a teleseminar or webinar
• Tools, software or other valuable resources

Step #2: Choose Your Campaign Keywords

Next, you need to choose your keywords and how much you’ll “bid” on these keywords.

Tip: Generally, the higher you bid (and the better your ad performs), the higher your ad appears in the search engine results. When someone clicks on your ad, you pay an amount that’s equal to or less than your bid amount.

The key in choosing keywords is to choose specific, targeted keywords that give you an idea of what the searcher wants.

Example: The keyword “golf” is too general. Instead, you might choose more specific search phrases like “step by step golf swing,” “proper way to swing a golf club” and “improve golf swing”

Step #3: Craft a PPC Ad

Next, you need to craft your PPC ad, which consists of a short headline and two short lines of copy. The goal of your ad is to get people to click on the ad, so you should put forth a benefit and, where applicable, arouse curiosity.

Here’s an example:

Golf Swing Secrets
Free report shows you how
to swing like the pros!
www.domainname.com

Tip: Create at least three or four different ads that you can rotate and test.

Once you’ve finished this first three steps, then you can create an account at the PPC service of your choice and start your first campaign. Finally…

Step #4: Check Your Results

To get the best results, you need to track and test your campaigns. That means you track your keywords, track your different PPC ads as well as tracking variations of your landing page. In other words, you want to find out how to boost your visitor to subscriber conversion rate so that you can build your list more quickly.

Tip: If you’re using AdWords, look for a link in your account to Google’s free tracking and testing tools.

Summary

Your next step is to act. Indeed, I suggest you get started right now. You could have your campaign up and pulling in new subscribers to your list by later today!

Next up: Building an Affiliate Army.

Just in case you stumbled on this post (and you haven’t signed up for the full, free course), sign up below. All I need to get you started is your first name and email address.

That’s what you’re about to discover…

Generally, a viral report is one that sweeps across your niche because readers share it with one another.

In order to be “share worthy,” your report needs to have most of the following characteristics:

Unique content

Your report may include:

• Unusual or even controversial ideas or information. If your report includes something that no one else is talking about, people will share it.
• Entertaining/engaging content. If your writing style is as exciting as burnt toast, then get a ghostwriter to write it for you. Even if you share unusual content, it won’t be share-worthy if it’s boring to read.

Tip: You can liven up your writing by including humor (where applicable), stories, analogies, metaphors and colorful language.

For example, instead of saying, “he left the party quickly,” you might say, “he left quicker than a cat exiting a hot oven.”

See the difference? The second line is simply more colorful and fun to read because it creates a strong visual impression.

• Extraordinarily useful content. Tip: Give away what others are charging big bucks for. Go to Clickbank.com to find out the top sellers in your niche.
• Funny content. This doesn’t work in every niche, but it’s effective if you can pull it off. Think of your email – I bet most of your email forwards are jokes. Or check out this site – www.marketingcomics.com.

In other words, ordinary content doesn’t cut it.

Tip: If you want an idea of what kind of content to create, just look at the types of content that arrives in your email every day, forwarded from friends. Think about the content you share with others.

For example, if someone is giving away a report that most others charge for, you’re going to tell your friends.

Or if someone has a report that’s highly controversial – such as one that seems truthful but goes against what the niche experts are saying – you can bet people are going to pass it around.

Or if someone creates a report that crosses over from controversial to even a tiny bit offensive, people on BOTH sides of the issue will share it. Just look to politics as an example of taking a hot button issue and creating content that offends certain parties.

Easy to access

If you want a report to go viral, don’t put a lot of hoops and obstacles between you and your audience. Ideally, it should be freely available (no subscription required), with the goal of the report being to get people on your list.

Alternatively, you can offer your report to anyone who gives you a valid email address. This works best if you’re paying affiliates per lead (or if you’re paying commissions on a backend offer).

Which brings us to our next point…

There’s an incentive to share it.

Content that has the above characteristics (e.g., it’s funny or controversial) naturally get passed around the niche. However, you can give people an incentive to share it by allowing readers to change the links in the report to their affiliate links before sharing it.

Tip: Use ViralPDF.com to create rebrandable reports. That way anyone who shares your report has an opportunity to make money on the backend via affiliate commissions.

Summary: What’s Next?

You just discovered what kind of content you need to create in order to turn regular content into viral content. But now that you have your viral report, what do you do with it? Answer: distribute it as widely as possible. This includes:

• Blogging about it
• Giving it to your affiliates and JV partners to share
• Telling your list about it
• Creating and posting a YouTube video about it
• Telling your social media networks about it
• Including it in your forum signature files

The more people who see your report initially, the more likely it is your report will “go viral” in a big way!

Next in the series: Pay Per Click

Just in case you stumbled on this post (and you haven’t signed up for the full, free course), sign up below. All I need to get you started is your first name and email address.

Endorse each other

Here’s the most straightforward way to use JVs to build your list. Simply endorse your partner’s newsletter in your newsletter or on your blog, and your partner does the same for you.

You may post each other’s squeeze page links:

• In your newsletters
• On your blogs
• On your product thank you pages
• On your subscription confirmation pages
• In your autoresponder series
• On postcards that you send out with physical shipments

Trade bonus products or subscriber freebies

Another way to use JVs to build your list is to create a unique and exclusive product for your partner that he or she can use as a bonus product or as a free gift for subscribers. Naturally, your free product should include links to your newsletter squeeze page.

Tip: To encourage your partner to distribute the report or other product, change the links in the report to your partner’s affiliate links. That way he or she gets a chance to earn a backend income while you get to build your list!

Swap blog posts or newsletter articles

You can build your list simply by trading content. Just agree to be a guest author on each other’s respective blogs or in your newsletters. At the end of your article, create a call to action to drive readers to your newsletter sign-up page.

Example: “To discover ten more ways to get ready for bikini season, visit [your link] – be sure to pick up your free weight loss guide!”

Do a newsletter co-op

You can do this one with one or more JV partners. On your newsletter sign up page, give your new subscribers a chance to join your partner’s newsletter as well. Likewise, your partners give their subscribers the option to co-register for your newsletter with just one click.

Tip: You’ll get more subscriptions if people can subscribe simply by checking a checkbox at the same time that they’re subscribing for the main newsletter. Alternatively, you can swap newsletter endorsements on your confirmation pages or even in your welcoming emails.

Create a product together

Finally, you can create a product with one or more of your JV partners. This can be a free or paid product, it doesn’t matter – your goal is to include your links in the product as a means of driving traffic to your squeeze page.

Examples:

• You can write an ebook or report together
• You can do a teleseminar together – not only will you be able to sell or give away access to the live call, you’ll also have the recordings to sell or give away
• You can create a video together (works best if you live near each other or if you can meet in a hotel room at a niche event)
• You can put on a niche event together, such as a weekend workshop. Here again you’ll have the recordings to sell or give away

In summary: Joint ventures are some of the best ways to build your list. And that’s because having an influential third party endorse you and your newsletter is a powerful form of social proof.

You can get started using JVs to build your list using the five strategies you just discovered!

Next up: Viral reports!

Just in case you stumbled on this post (and you haven’t signed up for the full, free course), sign up below. All I need to get you started is your first name and email address.

Here’s the 3S Strategy for creating and distributing optimized articles:

• Search
• Sprinkle
• Share

Read on for the details…

Step #1: Search

Your first step is to search for the keywords your market is already using to find information in your niche. You do this by using a keyword tool (such as Google’s free keyword tool, WordTracker.com or even Market Samurai).

All you have to do is enter in a broad niche-relevant search term like "homeschooling," "organic gardening" or "golf." The tool will then offer you suggestions for related search terms which you can use to expand your list of keywords. In most cases, you’ll generate a list of hundreds if not thousands of possible keywords.

What you’re searching for are longtail keywords – these are phrases that are typically four or more words long. The key is that they have very little competition in the search engines, which means you can rank well for them.

Tip: Many keyword tools check the competition for you. For example, WordTracker offers a KEI (keyword effectiveness index) value, which looks at the number of searches against how many other websites are indexed for that keyword. The higher the KEI value, the better chance you have of ranking well. Look for words that have a KEI value of at least 100 – but the higher the better.

Step #2: Sprinkle

Once you’ve compiled a list of longtail keywords, your next step is to create content around these keywords. You can optimize each article for two keyword phrases if you like, but generally it’s easier to optimize for just one.

The key is to not stuff your article with your keywords, otherwise the search engines may rank it lower (rather than higher). As such, include your keyword in the title of your article as well as about two to three times for every 100 words of content.

Example: Let’s say your keyword is "hydroponic vegetable gardening indoors." Your article might look like this:

Title: "Tips and Tricks for Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors"
Intro: include keyword at least once.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #1: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #2: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Hydroponic Vegetable Gardening Indoors Tip #3: explain tip and include keyword once more.
Closing: Summarize the article and include keyword once more.

Step #3: Share

Once your article is complete, it’s time to share it by distributing it as widely as possible. Don’t worry about so-called "duplicate content." The search engines won’t punish you if they find your articles in more than one place. They only knock you down a bit if they find your content in more than one place within your own domain (i.e., not on other sites).

You do this by:

• Posting the article on your blog
• Offering it as a guest post on your JV partner’s blog (or newsletter)
• Create a Squidoo.com or HubPages.com page around it
• Post it on social networking sites like your MySpace.com blog or Facebook.com page
• Submit it to article directories such as EzineArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleValley.com, GoArticles.com and Buzzle.com

That’s it. You too can get your articles to pull in search engine traffic for you when you use the Search, Sprinkle and Share system.

Your next step is easy — take action by searching for your keywords to find joint venture partners.

Just in case you stumbled on this post (and you haven’t signed up for the full, free course), sign up below. All I need to get you started is your first name and email address.

You’ve probably noticed that it can be difficult to get new customers to buy from you. Some people simply will not buy from those they’ve never heard of and don’t have a relationship with. You will usually have to “presell” to them before they will make a purchase. This is especially true since identity theft and fraud have become more prevalent.

The good news is that people will join your list because they view it as a lower risk than making a purchase. All they need to do is hand over their e-mail address and they are “in.” This gives you the opportunity to gain their trust and build a
relationship that can lead to repeat sales down the road.

Want to learn more about list building? Check out List and Traffic.

How does that sound?

If you’re the impatient type, fill out the form below and I’ll send you the whole list in one big file.

Otherwise, just sit back and relax. Take these in as they come along, at the frequency of one or two a week.

*** Here’s your first one ***

Tip #1 — Build Your Own Business
While there is a lot to be said for getting to the top of the search engines and advertising to promote your business, there’s nothing like having your own list. A list is something that you control at all times. You control its size, your relationship
with members, and even how much money you make.

By having a list, you are building your business on solid ground.

That’s not to say that search engine traffic isn’t wonderful and you should quit advertising. However, developing a list of leads or customers can be worth much more to you in the long run when combined with both of those methods of traffic.

If you need a killer email list manager, look no further than Aweber. It’s economical, reliable, and easy to use!

A hosted solution, like from AWeber, has all of the functionality built-in on their own systems. They install, configure, upgrade, and maintain the software and databases that you use when you create an account.

An “install yourself” solution is just what it sounds like: YOU install, configure, upgrade, and maintain software and databases on your own system. It’s cheaper in the short-run because you can do all this, but in the long-run, it can become an onerous burden.

I wholeheartedly endorse AWeber, but there are a ton of other services out there that are similar (just break open a google search and find dozens).

For a really quick primer on how to set up an autoresponder that is serviced by somebody else (a hosted solution), pick up a copy of this report, called How to Set Up Your Autoresponder.

In future posts, I’ll show you how it’s done. You’ll just get the information a little at a time, not all at once. The choice is yours.

Of course, the main purpose of having a list is to interact and build a relationship with each of your list subscribers. Here are a few rules to live by when corresponding with your subscribers:

• Always use a double-optin method, like AWeber uses.
• Build a relationship with your subscribers first; sales and profits come later. You have to get their trust first. How do you do this? Offer value.
• Make constant contact with your subscribers. Don’t leave them hanging. Offer free reports, refer them to valuable information on the web (it can be links to your web properties or others’ — it doesn’t matter as long as you’re offering value (there’s that word again).
• Requests to unsubscribe must be fulfilled right away. Don’t email the requester with the question, “Why?” You can put a text box on the unsubscribe page asking why, but don’t EVER ask Why? after somebody has unsubscribed.
• In terms of offering value, try attaching PDFs to your emails. I have found higher open rates on emails I send that have attachments. I send out free reports all the time.
• Send people to your sites and blogs through your emails. There, you can put up offers that people may want to read about.
• DON’T pepper your subscribers with offers. I will unsubscribe right away if I get 2 or 3 offers in a row from a single online marketer.

I personally use AWeber. I love the services, reliability, and support they offer at a very good price ($19 a month, which is a deal, especially if you consider how much time would be stolen from your day if you had to do all of this manually).

However, there are many solutions out there that offer similar functionality; some are in the form of software you have to install on your own domain to solutions similar to AWeber.

Either way, you need an autoresponder. It makes life so much easier, plus it gives you yet another avenue to connect with your readers. Plus, if you build a quality list, you can market to them in subtle ways while providing value that they expect.

Related Post: Six Steps to Six Figures with List Marketing