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5 Points to Effectively Build a Huge List

May 12, 2009

minutes read

List-building

“The Money is in the List” – How many times have you heard this? Innumerable times! Is there frustration in your voice when you answered? You sound like me. It is the same frustration that I saw months ago when I was reading some good blog post on list-building, like you are doing today.

Read any blog authored by the gurus, buy any e-book on affiliate marketing tips or, Internet marketing, there is one common statement that you will find in all of those – THE LIST. That is where you start getting frustrated because you know that a list is important but, how would you build a list? When I first started my affiliate marketing business, I was so frustrated with the results that I almost quit. The reason – My sales were so low that my PPC expenses were also not being recovered. In fact I was spending almost 3 times of what I was earning.

If you are facing a problem with building your list, then don’t panic. You are not the only one. Everybody starting off on the internet marketing arena faces the same problem. So let’s understand the ways in which you can build a huge list.

  1. Squeeze Page – When I started affiliate marketing, I had no method of capturing email addresses on my landing page. In the beginning there was no landing page at all and all the traffic from my PPC ads were being re-directed directly to the seller’s website. So I got a lot of clicks on my PPC ads but they would all got directly to the seller’s website who would then capture these emails. So it is important that you have a good squeeze page in place where you can capture the details of visitors to your website.
  2. Optin on Blog – A blog is one the best ways to capture subscribers. Yaro, quite authoritatively emphasizes the need for a subscriber optin form above the fold in his Blog Profit Blueprint e-book. This works wonders if done right. I saw a jump in susbcriber optins by almost 35% after I put my optin form above the fold.
  3. Autoresponder – I used to get at least 10 emails on a daily basis recommending one or, the other autoresponder. Cost-effectiveness was something that I was bothered about. Consequently, I joined at autoresponder that would only charge me about a $10.00 a month. I built a list of about 700 subscribers with the help of this autoresponder and one find day, when I try to login to my account, I find that the company is gone. No autoresponder and no website. I had a backup of the list, so I thought I would use it with a new autoresponder. I joined AWEBER and imported this list into it. But I could only get about 10% of the subscribers to confirm their subscription. I lost the rest 90%. So it is important that you choose the best autoresponder around. Go for Aweber, who has a known presence in the market. Their reputation itself speaks for them.
  4. Valuable Content – Provide value to your visitors and they will become subscribers. Buy a good and valuable MRR product, which you can giveaway to your visitors in return for them subscribing to your list. Spending $39 – $40 will not hurt you when you see your list growing by thousands. So don’t compromise on the quality for the price of the product.
  5. Treat with respect – Treat your subscribers with respect. I was so annoyyed with the mails that I used to get that I stopped opening the emails after some time and I would delete them, unread. Treat your subscribers with the same respect that you expect from anybody. They would then stay as subscribers and would look upto your advices and would buy from you.

I still remember the days when I read posts full of ideas and suggestions like the one above. After reading through the post I would wonder – All said and done, where would I get the traffic from?

The difficult part in all of these is actually getting a few people to visit your website. How will your build your list, if there are not enough visitors to your website?

You can still build a huge list. Wondering how? The following are a few of them, which if followed judisciously can help you build your list.

  1. Giveaways – Giveaways are an effective method to build your list. Sign up for as many giveaways as possible and upgrade your subscriptions whereever possible so that you can about 3-4 gifts. You will get quite a few subscriptions. I built almost 75% of my list from giveaways. There are a lot of people who feel that the list built through giveaways are not worthy of it because it is made of peopel expecting things for free. I  disagree with this, because people who look for something for free are actually people who are on the lookout for something. If you can sell well to such people, you would be able to sell a few products. You can sign up in the form in the top-right corner to keep up on the latest giveaways.
  2. Traffic Exchanges – This is again another controversial method of traffic generation. The debate here is that people using traffic exchanges normally surf websites for getting credits and hence their stay is for only a few seconds. But I still prefer this form of traffic generation. Even if a visitor spends about 10-12 seconds on your website and if you website or, squeeze page is catchy enough to hold attention, there would be some action that the visitor would take when he visits your page. Also when there is some traffic flowing to your website, it helps your website in generating more traffic because of the reputation it builds.

Two very good traffic exchanges are Clickthru and Hitsafari. You can join one or, both of them and upgrade as per your plans, in order to get a good amount of traffic.

A little bit of effort is all that is required and these simple techniques can help you generate a good amount of traffic and can help you build a huge list.

Photograph courtesy morgantepsic used under Creatives Common License

About the author 

Dilip Kumar  -  

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members.
Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

My name is Dilip. I am a fan of the internet and love the many opportunities that the world wide web provides. If used constructively , the internet can give you an opportunity to lead a life free of the 9-5 treadmill and will be able to give more time to your family members. Read about internet entrepreneurship at my blog.

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