10 ways to build an opt-in list - by Eddie Wolfe
Why is it that so many people fail to make a living on the internet? If you were to ask most of them, they would say something along the lines of "I just couldn't sell anything - no matter what I tried!". Well, I would bet a large amount of money that they didn't do the one thing that would have guaranteed them a small measure of success. Then from that success, they would have been following it up and creating more revenue. The simple fact is that 95% of people who try to take on the internet fail. So let's get to the real reason.
You must build an email list. A list of subscribers who have opted in to receive emails from you, that you can then contact about all sorts of offers and promotions. To sustain an internet marketing business, this is vital! Without it, how do you promote products, sell your own ebooks or get feedback and comments to a blog. There are so many benefits to owning a list, that to not have one means you will eventually fail.
Sure, you can buy traffic from Google adwords, use traffic surfing sites, free-ads, overture ads, but ultimately they will be unlikely to make you much of a profit in the long run.
There are numerous ways to build a list, most of them will take time. Used together as a strategy however, and the list will grow very quickly. You must have a quality auto-responder system. Here are some ways to get moving...
- Give away something for free on a single opt-in page with your auto responder form.
- Using traffic exchanges, send them to your opt-in page. (tip: please don't try and give away any old rubbish - try and make it something really useful)
- Use pop-ups on your opt-in page. When the page unloads for example, show them something else that will help their business. Again make it useful.
- Look out for private label rights products on ebay. These are usually very cheap, and completely rebrandable. Place the link to your opt-in page within your brandable ebooks. (tip: don't buy an ebook about elephants for example then have an opt-in page about marketing! It must be topical).
- Now practically give away these books on ebay with full resale rights to any buyers. Also, add this ebook to the download page you have for your original opt-in page.
- Get a blog! Start writing small articles about stuff relating to your opt-in page. Place links in the blog to the signup page. Now this will be a slow but sure tactic, but you must make sure you place good content on the blog. Under no circumstances lift and copy someone else's work, as the search engines don't really like duplicate content.
- Write general interest articles about your topic on article directories such as this one. Again, make it your own work! It's not that hard to write a short article and the benefits can be huge. It's not just visitors who could click the links in the article, but webmasters use the article itself on their webpages.
- Sign up to some free email lists, then promote them through traffic exchanges. Over time, you will start to grow your downlines and you can then email them with your free opt-in page. Admittedly the take up from these emails is fairly small, but every little helps when you are building a list. CLICK HERE for some good examples of useful lists.
- Post in forums to do with your subject opt-in page. Do not go blazing in and say how wonderful your download is and how everyone should go there. That's the best way to get banned or ignored. Make useful comments and after a suitable period of posting, add your links to your signature. Think about it, how often out of curiosity have you clicked someone's signature link? I know I have.
- General networking and promotion. This is a catch all for a variety of tactics. If your opt-in page is a primary page (index.html for example) to your web site, then submit the site to the search engines. Submit your site to newsgroups, a good example being Netscape. Use Myspace, Squidoo, Yahoo 360 and many more social sites to create small pages with links to your opt in page.
The effort put in will reap enormous benefits to you once your list grows. I would say a useful list is anything above a thousand, but really the more the better! Making affiliate sales is hundreds of times more effective when you can offer the product direct to your list.
Note of caution: keep your list happy. Try to stay human, try to give things out, free advice, downloads etc. They are just like you, trying to make money online, so help them do it. A happy list is a loyal list.
About The Author
Eddie Wolfe is an internet marketing business man. He has spent several years building multiple streams of sustained income.
