The Money Is In The List: Building An E-Mail List

If you've been involved in this internet marketing world for a while, you've probably heard the saying, "The money is in the list!" quite a few times already. If you're just getting started with internet marketing, be prepared to hear it a lot! It's being said so much because it's true! The money IS in the list; the e-mail list that is! You've probably heard of big-time internet marketing gurus making hundreds of thousands of dollars in very short periods of time. They can do this because they have huge, targeted, highly responsive, quality e-mail lists. The only work required by them is writing a persuasive e-mail promoting a product that they highly recommend and clicking "Send". That's it! Everything after that is totally automated. Their autoresponder (a system that manages your e-mail list and ensures that your emails get past spam filters) sends that e-mail out to their whole e-mail list. The people on that list receive, open, and read the information contained within the e-mail. These people know and trust the person who sent out the e-mail, so they value his or her recommendation as gold. They know that the product will benefit them and give them what they need. So, they have no problem shelling out some cash in order to obtain that product. In return, the person that sent out that e-mail makes money. The amount of money made depends upon many factors, but the one factor that mainly determines that amount of money made is the size of the list. Generally, larger lists will result in more money made. Let me provide an example to give you a better understanding of what I mean...

I'm going to use two lists to compare, one containing 50,000 prospects and the other containing 5,000 prospects. The list containing 50,000 prospects will be List A and the list containing 5,000 prospects will be List B. An e-mail promoting a random product is sent out to each of the lists. Both of the lists receive only a 3% response rate. 3% of 50,000 is 1,500 and 3% of 5,000 is 150. Now, let's say the product that was being promoted costs $25. List A just made a whopping $37,500 and List B made only $3,750. Now, this was not only to show you that bigger lists generally result in more money being made, but also the money potential that only email lists can give you. You see only 3% of the prospects in List B bought the product that was being promoted, but it still resulted in $3,750 being made. I'd say that's amazing considering the only work involved was sending out an e-mail. Imagine YOU making that much money everytime YOU sent out an e-mail? Think it's impossible? Not with an e-mail list, it isn't!

Now, that you know what an e-mail list is and understand how it works, I'm going to help you start and build one of your own! The process of building a list takes a bit of time, but in the end, it's well worth it! So, let's get started! First, you will need an autoresponder. Again, the purpose of an autoresponder is to manage your e-mail list and ensure that the e-mails you send to your list get past spam filters. There are many autoresponder services out there, but you will want to go with a company that is reliable, has an excellent reputation and a high e-mail delivery rate. A high e-mail delivery rate is EXTREMELY important because if a percentage of people on your list aren't getting your e-mails, you could be losing lots of money! So, email deliverability is an important factor to consider when choosing an autoresponder service. That's why there are only two autoresponder services that I personally highly recommend. Those two services are GetResponse and AWeber. Both services have excellent reputations, have been in service for years, and have 99% e-mail deliverabilty rates. They both offer an unlimited amount of autoresponders and excellent training and support. And best of all, both only cost mere pennies a day! So, if you are interested in starting, building, and maintaining an e-mail list, GetResponse and AWeber autoresponder services are the perfect place to start!

Now that you have a reliable autoresponder service, it's time to start building your list! There are three ways people can opt-in to your list:

1. By filling out a form created by you
2. By sending an e-mail to your autoresponder e-mail address
3. By you adding their e-mail address to your autoresponder

Most of the time, lists are built primarily by people opting in via forms. And in order to allow people to opt-in to your e-mail list via forms, you will need to create lead capture pages. A lead capture page is basically a webpage with a form on it where people can opt-in. The lead capture page can be promoting a product or service or just simply providing information. As long as it has a form on the page, it's a lead capture page. And, in order to create your own lead capture page, you will need your own domain and hosting. GoDaddy is the leading domain registrar and you can register a domain for as low as $8.95 a year! GoDaddy also offers great hosting, but I recommend Hosting Zoom. Hosting Zoom provides very reliable hosting for the low price of only $4.95 a month! Building lead capture pages may be a bit difficult for those who don't have basic knowledge of HTML, so if you need any help at all on creating your own lead capture pages, feel free to contact me via comment at the bottom of this post and I will be more than happy to assist you!

Now that you've created your lead capture page, it's time to advertise it! In recent posts, I've discussed many different ways you can advertise. Below, I will briefly discuss ways you can use these methods of advertising to build your list. For more in-depth information on how to use these methods of advertising, you can refer to my previous posts to the right under "Previous Posts". I've categorized them into three categories, free methods of advertising, cheap methods of advertising, and pay-per-click advertising.

Forums - Are you involved in any forums yet? If so, are you using your signature after all of your posts? If not, then you could be losing out on many potential prospects for your e-mail list. Forums are a great place to get targeted prospects on your e-mail list. Everyone on the forum shares a common interest with you so they will most likely be interested in joining your e-mail list. So, add a link to your lead capture page in your forum signature(s) and watch your list grow!

Blogs - Blogs are also a great place to collect targeted prospects for your e-mail list. Just add an opt-in form somewhere alongside of your posts and let people know that they can receive more valuable information from you through e-mail by filling out your form.

Articles - If you write articles, you should know that with every article you write is a resource box included at the bottom where you can put information about yourself. Resources boxes can also be used to advertise your lead capture page. Place a link to your lead capture page in your resource box and let your readers know that you have more valuable information to offer them if they opt-in to your e-mail list.

Traffic Exchanges - If you read my post on traffic exchanges, which can be found here, then you know what splash pages are. Lead capture pages can be used within traffic exchanges just like splash pages. Traffic exchanges are PERFECT for building your list because most traffic exchange users are looking for freebies. The information you can provide to them if they join your e-mail list is a freebie, so they will be happy opt-in on your lead capture page!

Ezine/Newsletter Ads - When purchasing ad space in newsletters and ezines, include a link to your lead capture page where people can go and opt-in to your e-mail list. Remember to only purchase ad space in newsletters and ezines that are targeted to your niche. That way, you will experience a much better response and receive only highly targeted prospects!

Pay-Per-Click Ads - Pay-per-click ads is a perfect way to send targeted traffic to your lead capture page. And targeted traffic means targeted prospects for your e-mail list!

Now, I've just discussed to you what e-mail lists are, how they work, the money potential of them, where to obtain a reliable autoresponder, what a lead capture page is, and how to promote your lead capture page. There's only one thing missing... ACTION! You will not be able to accomplish a thing without ACTION! Remember, if you need any help or have any questions, feel free to refer back to this blog and leave me a comment. I will be more than happy to assist you with starting, building, and maintaining your list! Good luck!

Pay-Per-Click Advertising: The King Of All Advertising!

Introducing... pay-per-click advertising! Also known as the king of all advertising! With this method of advertising, you only pay for results meaning you don't pay a thing unless someone clicks through to your website. Hence the name pay-per-click advertising! There are major ups and downs that come along with pay-per-click advertising, so I don't recommend it to complete beginners in this internet marketing world. I strongly suggest everyone do their due diligence when it comes to pay-per-click advertising and learn everything you can! When done right, pay-per-click advertising can be VERY profitable for you! When done wrong, you can end up hundreds of dollars in the hole! So, I stress to you again, do your due diligence with pay-per-click advertising so you get it done right the first time around!

Now, let me begin by explaining further what exactly pay-per-click advertising is. As I stated before, it is a method of advertising where you only pay for results. You only pay when people click an ad leading to your website. Pay-per-click advertising is run by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and various other smaller search engines. The two most popular pay-per-click programs are AdWords by Google and Overture by Yahoo. When you obtain pay-per-click advertising through these search engines, you create an ad which is displayed in the search engines. To see an example of a Google pay-per-click ad, go to Google.com and search for anything. When the results come up, you will see some ads along the right side of the search results under "Sponsored Links". These are pay-per-click ads. If you click on one of them, the publisher of that ad pays Google a set amount for that click. The same thing happens with Yahoo, MSN, and every other search engine that offers pay-per-click advertising. The reason pay-per-click advertising is so popular is because hundreds of thousands of people use search engines DAILY! That means hundreds of thousands of potential customers for you every day! And when people search through these search engines, only ads relevant to the searches show up. So, you only receive targeted visitors to your website. That's why pay-per-click advertising is so effective! But, it has to be done right!

As effective as pay-per-click advertising is, if done wrong, you could end up with completely opposite results from which you desired! Pay-per-click advertising will send many visitors to your website, but it is YOUR job to convert them into customers! People won't buy from a sloppy, badly designed website! So, make sure your website is clean and professional. If you are advertising a website in which you are an affiliate of, make sure the website looks professional and not something someone put together in 15 minutes! That just has scam written all over it because it shows that the owner doesn't care about anything else except making a little money and won't take the time to put together a presentable website. Your website is your visitors' first impression of YOU! So make sure your website looks nothing less than professional. Another tip is to write ads that are only relevant to your website. If your website is about cat toys, don't write ads about cat litter. Although your website is about cats, people searching for cat litter are not currently interested in cat toys. People will click through to your website and see that you don't have what they are searching for and will return back to the search engine. But, you will still be responsible for paying for those clicks! So make sure your ads are highly relevant to your website!

Now, I could go on and on giving you tips and techniques on how to effectively use pay-per-click advertsing so that it results in thousands of dollars for you, but unfortunately my knowledge of pay-per-click advertising is limited. So, I'd like to make two recommendations to you if you're really interested in getting started with pay-per-click advertising.

First, I'd like to recommend Beating AdWords by Kyle and Carson, also known as the "Wealthy Affiliates". Kyle and Carson started using pay-per-click advertising through Google AdWords a few years back and now they've mastered every technique of it! They now make thousands of dollars DAILY through Google AdWords alone. So, if you are serious about learning how to make serious money through Google AdWords, then Beating AdWords is the perfect starting point for you! Click Here for more information!

Second, I'd like to recommend Google Money Pro by Steven Holdaway. Steven has SIX (count 'em SIX!) years of experience with pay-per-click advertising through Google AdWords. He now makes $120,000 easily every month through AdWords! It's always been said that one way to become successful yourself is to learn from someone who is already successful! So, I highly recommend Google Money Pro to you if you're interested in learning the same tips, tricks, and techniques Steven uses to make $120K every month with Google AdWords. Click Here for more information.

Advertise For CHEAP Using These Methods

In my last post, I discussed three different methods of advertising you can use to start making money as an affiliate. Have you utilized any of them yet? If not, shame on you! The golden rule of making money online is to TAKE ACTION! Without action, you won't see results!

Now, today I will discussing two more different methods of advertising that you can use to promote your affiliate program. The only difference between these two and the three from my previous post is that these two will require a small amount of money. But, don't worry! I'm here to help and guide you so that your hard earned money is spent ONLY on HIGHLY EFFECTIVE advertising! So, let's get started!

Traffic Exchanges - Here is an advertising method that not too many affiliate marketers know about, but is extremely effective! Don't know what a traffic exchange is? Well, let me explain. Basically, traffic exchanges, also known as hit exchanges, are "systems" where you view other people's website(s) for a set amount of time and in exchange, people will view your website(s) for that same set amount of time. You contribute to the traffic being delivered to other people's website(s) and in return, you receive traffic to your website(s). That's what a "traffic" exchange is. The exchange of traffic. Sounds very simple, but there's a lot more to it. So, for those of you who aren't familar with traffic exchanges, for a more in-depth explanation and description of traffic exchanges, I recommend reading Jon Olson's Hit Exchange Secrets 101. Also, as a side note, "make money" and "advertising" type programs produce the best results when using traffic exchanges. Other types of programs may not produce as good results.

Now, for those of you who are familar with traffic exchanges, you know that they are free to join and free to use? So, why am listing them as a method of advertising that requires a small amount of money? Because, in order to see GOOD results with traffic exchanges, you will need to spend a little bit of money! Promoting a generic replicated affiliate website in a traffic exchange will produce little, if any, positive results for you. You will need to create your own splash page to promote (a great explanation of a splash page can be found here). And, in order to create your own splash page, you will need your own domain and hosting. GoDaddy is the leading domain registrar and you can register a domain for as low as $8.95 a year! GoDaddy also offers great hosting, but I recommend Hosting Zoom. Hosting Zoom provides very reliable hosting for the low price of only $4.95 a month! Building splash pages may be a bit difficult for those who don't have basic knowledge of HTML, so if you need any help at all on creating your own lead capture pages, feel free to contact me via comment at the bottom of this post and I will be more than happy to assist you!

Ezine/Newsletter Ads - Another highly effective form of advertising is ezine/newsletter ads. Have you ever subscribed to a newsletter and noticed that towards the top, the bottom, and sometimes in the middle of the newsletters have ads? These ads are produced by people just like you trying to promote their product or program. They bought ad space from a newsletter that is closely related to their product/program and their ad was shown in the newsletter owner's next newsletter. Many subscribers to the newsletter will click on the ad because it is targeted to the topic of the newsletter. For example, if you are selling camping supplies, you will want to buy ad space in a camping newsletter because the topic of the newsletter is targeted to what you are trying to sell. Many people subscribed to a camping newsletter would be interested in buying camping supplies.

A good starting point for ezine advertising would be 2Bucks-An-Ad.com. You can buy ads for as low as $1 an ad and have your ad included in as many as 74 ezines with over 1 million subscribers!

That concludes two highly effective forms of advertising that you can utilize for CHEAP! So, don't be afraid to spend a little money because in the end, you'll be glad you did! Now, the five free and cheap methods of advertising that I've discussed are not the only forms of advertising. There are many, many more ways to advertise your affiliate program. I would just like to give you some time to test the waters with each method of advertising and not overwhelm you. I will be discussing more ways to advertise in the future, so be sure to check back regularly. In my next post, I will be discussing the king of advertising, Pay-Per-Click Advertising! So, be sure to check back here soon!