"The money is in the list"

I can't tell you how sick I am of hearing this statement. Not because it's untrue, because let's be honest, email marketing is the absolute base of internet marketing. The reason I'm sick of hearing the aforementioned statement is due to the fact that none of the people who preach this actually tell you how to build your own list. Sure, they may give you the tired ol' line about "put an opt-in form on every website and blog you can get your hands on" but they don't give you any real idea on how you are suppose to drive traffic to your websites and blogs. They don't stress how difficult, time consuming and unpredictable building, and maintaining organic traffic can be.

I recently threw out the entire idea of gathering subscribers by throwing up opt-in forms on every single website I can and moved to list building methods that have added thousands of names to my list. These methods aren't new, but I feel like they are not shared often enough. I'm going to share a basic overview of these methods with you this morning. I'm not going to spoon feed you an in depth step by step, but I hope they will inspire you to be a bit more creative.

The first method is definitely not original, and I do not claim that it is. However, I do claim that it works as long as it's done right.

Disclaimer: I would advice having a good grasp on the basics of internet marketing before trying these methods. I'd say they aren't newbie friendly. You don't have to be any kind of expert to have success with these methods, but you do want to have a pretty good understanding of internet marketing before venturing into this territory.

Technique #1: Find a tried a true, basic method to making money online. Just make sure to put your own twist on it and right an e-book (in your own words, don't go pulling a Imran Naseem and completely rip off someone else's work and try to pass it off as your own). This is obviously not as easy as that, it will take some work but it can definitely be done. I built three e-books in the past the months that are all selling well. Study clickbank (or any other digital product marketplace) and get a grasp on what they expect and require out of products that are sold through them. Make sure and spend some time on it and make it legit. It would be wise to include some videos or other tools to add some value and integrity to the product. Submit your product for approval, and if it gets rejected, tweak it and keep submitting until it's accepted! Obviously there is a bit more to it than this, but like I said, I'm not going to spoon feed you. If you search the web you can in depth guides to creating clickbank products.

Now I'm sure you're wondering what the heck any of this has to do with list building... well here is the twist. You are not trying to make a big profit off of this product, you are trying to get opt-ins while making a few bucks at the same time is just a bonus. You want to set the affiliate commissions extremely high while making the product very affordable at the same time (I'd suggest somewhere around $20 bucks). By doing this you are going to get an army of affiliates yearning for the high commissions promoting your product and an army of buyers pawing at the chance to make money online for less than the price of half a tank of gas! Just make sure that the purchasers have to input their email address BEFORE they are taken to the page with the download link for the product.


Technique #2: If you don't have experience with PPC and a good bit of cash for testing, I wouldn't bother with my method... but here it is..

Google Adwords and MSN Adcenter are great platforms for grabbing subscribers. The problem is that neither allow squeeze pages as they have rules against using their programs for "information gathering". Basically what it comes down to is it can't just be a squeeze page. You have to sell them a product like an ebook (you can use the same method for creating an ebook as was described in method one) . However, you offer them this ebook or product for $0.99 cents, or $1.99 cents or whatever. For this I use paypal as the payment processor. After they purchase the product they are redirected to a page explaining that they must input their email address so the product can be sent to them via email. Then I set up my autoresponder to email the opt-ins with a download link on where to receive the product.

I really like this method for two key reasons:

1. You are making back a bit of money on the cost of your list building campaign even if it is just a bit of change.
2. You are getting opt-ins that actually convert! Many people who will spend 0.99 cents on a digital product will likely also spend be willing to spend $20-$50 dollars on one as well.


Now this method isn't all that easy, and you have to build a website that will convert, and offer a product that people actually want. However, if you have experience in copywriting and ppc then you will absolutely kill it with this technique!

Thanks for you time, and I'm sorry for the length of the blog post! I tend to be pretty long winded.

Eugene Smithwick.