This is where the power is. As you’ve probably heard before, “The money is in the list.” And that’s true, if you do it right.

Getting Subscribers

This is the first problem with the above quote. Sure, the money is in the list, but where is the list? Well, it’s out there, waiting for you to start building it.

The first thing you’ll need is an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a program that allows you to send out scheduled messages to people who join your email list. You can usually set up as many messages as you want, and determine how many days after the signup that you want the messages sent. This allows you to create email courses about your product/service, and gives you the power to keep sending automated emails to a person so they buy your product. Studies show that most people need to hear about something at least 7 times before they buy.

Most autoresponder companies also allow you to save the emails from your list so you can send out newsletters and “blast” emails to your list. This option is key, as you’ll want to send information and products to them again and again.

You can get a free autoresponder at GetResponse.com, and then upgrade if you don’t want to have ads displayed on your emails, or try out the 30-day free trial at AWeber.com. Both are very good

autoresponders – Get Response is a little cheaper, while AWeber doesn’t put a limit on the number of blast emails you send per day (Get Response limits you to 10,000/day)

There are a large number of other, non-hosted autoresponder scripts and programs, but I don’t recommend these, because you can get into big SPAM troubles, and if the address of your site gets banned, your newsletters and offers won’t get into anyone’s inbox.

Name Squeeze Pages

These pages, when done right, are about as powerful as you can get. You can use them in any traffic generation technique, and they will build your list faster than anything else.

Here’s how they work – You drive traffic to your name squeeze page, and you offer something in exchange for them giving you their email address. A free ebook (that you have the rights to give away), an ecourse through an autoresponder, access to a members-only area of a website, etc. This will get you their name and address, and you have them right where you want them – on your email list.

That’s all that this page is for – to get the visitor’s name and email. Not to sell anything, not to get them to go anywhere, just to get their email by telling them about what they’ll get in exchange. For a great example, check out one of my name squeeze pages at Search Engine Optimization Made Easy (Actually, you will want to get a copy of that eBook – it contains priceless information about SEO, and it has free resale rights – so you can sell it or give it away, too)

Unblockable Popups

Unblockable popups are another great way to capture email addresses, and test show that a fly-in popup can raise subscription rates by up to 400%! That’s a powerful little tool, eh? You should check out Matt Callen’s Instant Popover if you are going to develop an opt-in email list. The results that I have seen and heard have been phenomenal, and I know first-hand how much it can help. You can see a great example of a fly-in unblockable popup on the front page of JasonDeVelvis.com.

Joint Ventures

Joint Ventures (JVs) are very powerful, no matter what they’re formed for. Sometimes, it’s to create a product. Sometimes, it’s to offer a “super affiliate” higher commissions. But we’re going to talk about how to build your list with JVs right now. The premise here is easy. If a name squeeze page works so well, why not multiply it by 5, 10, 20? You can find out about these JVs by registering at the Warrior Forum and keeping an eye on the JV forum there. There are always people looking to do JV’s with other Warriors!

Actually, as a side note, the Warrior Forum taught me everything I know about Internet Marketing. The main forum is an incredible resource of information, and I recommend you spend quite a bit of time just reading what’s there. Then, if you have questions that haven’t been answered, feel free to ask away!

Ad Swaps

This is a very good way to keep building your list. Once you have a good base of subscribers, you’ll be able to do ad swaps with other newsletters/lists. Find other newsletters and email lists with similar themes, and contact their owners to see if they’d be interested in doing an ad swap. You can either swap in-newsletter ads, or solo ads. Test which works better to get you new subscribers, and keep doing it until you have a great list.

Viral Products

Another great way to get subscribers is to create info products with great information, based on your newsletter subject, and allow people to give/sell them to anyone and everyone they want to. Free is a great way to get people to read it, giving the resale rights is an easy way to get people to push it. A purchased product will generate more loyal subscribers, though, because they’ve already purchased one of your products.

If it’s a well-written report or ebook, it will be passed around quite a bit, and more and more people will read about your site, and you will see an increase in subscribers. You should even see an increase in sales for any products you mention in the product, as well.

Your Own Products

Selling your own products is possibly the single best way to build your list with quality subscribers. They’ve already purchased your product, and they should remain loyal as long as you keep giving them great content and producing great products.

Keeping subscribers

Once you have a list started, you need to give them great content in order to keep them. If you don’t send them anything, they’ll forget they’re on your list and un-subscribe when you send them an offer. Or, worse yet, they’ll report you as a spammer.

Sending high quality content to your subscribers builds a relationship, and through that relationship, they’ll listen to your recommendations. And when they listen to your recommendations, they will make you money, whether you’re selling your own products or promoting affiliate programs. And yet again, as I’m sure you’ve heard, content is king. Send them fresh, high quality content, and they’ll repay you time and time again.

Quality vs. Quantity

Ah, the old battle. Some say quantity will get you more sales, others say quality will. Although I lean more toward quality, I think both will do the trick quite nicely. Think about it this way. Would you rather have a list of 250 where you know you’ll get 80% conversion on a product where you’ll make $250/sale? Or 10,000 where you’ll see maybe a 2% click through rate and only 50% of them buy a $50 product, where you only make $25/sale? Lets see $50,000 or $2,500? I think you get the picture. So how do you get that quality? I just talked about it – build that relationship with your list, and they’ll come through. Now, if you can build such a great relationship with your list that you see 80% conversion on the 10,000 member list, more power to you! (I’d rather have $200,000 than $50,000 any day!)

Product creation is one of the best ways to make money online, but it’s also one of the hardest. You have to have the time, money, and/or knowledge to invest in a product, and you have to be able to use your contacts very wisely.

The initial idea creation for a new product is the easy part. You can think up ideas all day. What you have to do next is assess these ideas. First, ask yourself if you would buy it. If the answer is “Yes,” then you’re on the right track.

Allen Says’ Private Posts

If you ask me to tell you what product has given me the most profitable ideas and gotten me into the “marketing mindset,” I’d answer Allen Says’ Private Posts Volume I. Allen’s sheer insight into the world of marketing is unbelievable. I have read volume I dozens of times, and I get new ideas every time I read it. As the next volumes come out, I’ll pay whatever I have to pay in order to get my copies.

Allen is also one of the few other “gurus” that I look up to with the utmost respect, because he is more concerned with helping others than he is with making money. That shows some definite character, and it’s hard to come by in this world anymore.

Research It Further

If you have an idea that you think is a good, profitable idea, move forward and research it further. Lay out exactly what you want it to be/do, and put it all on paper (or in MS Word, Notepad, somewhere). Figure out exactly what is necessary for it to work. Outline the process, the content, your ideas, then go back through your outline and expand on those ideas.

When you think you’ve covered all the bases, you’re at the fun part creating it. If you can create it yourself, and you have the time to do it, go for it. Doing it yourself will be the most cost effective way to get it completed, and you know it will be exactly what you want. If you don’t have the time, or you don’t have the abilities necessary (programming, writing, etc.) you can have it outsourced.

Outsourcing

Now, I don’t want you to think that you have to be a software engineer or a writer with a college degree to create your own product. There are many ways to get around your lack of expertise if you have a great idea. The best way is to outsource the product’s creation. And because of the great push to drive down costs, freelance programmers and writers have popped up all over the globe, offering VERY cheap labor for you. Where can you find these freelancers? You can find them on sites like RentACoder.com, Scriptlance.com, Elance.com, and more.

I do want to point out, however, that the lowest bid price is not always the best. There are writers and coders who bid low because they’re not as good as the others, and there are writers and coders who bid low because they can – because many freelancers on these sites live in a country where the US Dollar is worth quite a bit more than their own currency, so they can bid very low and still turn a nice profit.

This is where project feedback comes in handy. Before you accept a bid, make sure you check out their feedback ratings, and check for what types of projects they’ve done in the past. A buyer with a 10/10 for 20 projects is pretty good, but if your project is for ghostwriting an ebook, and those 20.

There is an ebook called Learn How To Speak Geek that you can buy if you want to learn more about how this whole freelancing process works, and how you can make the most of it. I have read this book and think every person who is about to put a project up for bids should read it, and I’m saying that both as a marketer and a programmer.

That book will more than make up for its own price by providing you with the communication skills you need to choose the best freelancer for your project, so you don’t have to re-post it again after your original choice screws things up. The small investment for that ebook is worth much more than the hundreds or thousands of dollars you could lose if you don’t choose the right freelancer.

What To Do With Your Product

When it’s finished, you’ll be able to reap the rewards of your labor. If you haven’t already, set a “launch” date so there is a definite start date for the sale of your product. Now, figure out how you’re going to promote it. You have options to get affiliates, do joint ventures (JVs), sell resale rights/master resale rights/private label rights, and more. Most are already discussed in this book already, so I won’t double-dip and waste your time by making you read it all over again. You can choose to do any/all of the ideas in this book, or create your own ideas for marketing your products! (If you have a truly unique idea, or a great spin on an existing idea, you could even turn that into an ebook and sell it as it’s own product!)

Your Own Affiliate Program

I want to talk very quickly about setting up an affiliate program for your product, as well. It’s very hard to get your product out to the masses by yourself, because the Internet is so huge. So you should always create an affiliate program for your products. You can do this with both PayDotCom and Clickbank, as I mentioned in the affiliate article. PayDotCom has great affiliate management tools, while Clickbank has many, many more registered affiliates, so it’s really a toss-up.

And when you’re considering which site to list your product on, you will also want to decide what commission percentage you want to give to your affiliates. Obviously, the higher, the better, because you’ll get more affiliates with a higher percentage, but your revenue will go down at the same time. Whatever direction you choose to go, if you promote your affiliate campaign and your product is good quality, you’ll have affiliates sign up for your affiliate program.

Letting Others Know About Your Product

Launching your own affiliate program is great, but how will people know about it? Obviously, you can use all of the traffic generation ideas in this book to get people to the site, but there is also another great way to get affiliates (and JV partners), and to let people know about your product. I use the JV Network for free to get notices about when others are launching products, and for a small fee, I can notify thousands of potential partners and affiliates that my product launch is coming up. Other big time marketers like Cody Moya and Mike Filsaime are registered for that site, as well. In my opinion, that kind of publicity is hard to match.

HTML

The first thing I recommend to anyone who is getting into IM is that they learn HTML. HTML is how your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) knows what to show you when you visit a site. If you’re going to be creating your own websites, you HAVE to know HTML. If you’re going to outsource your web design (discussed later) you will still want to know basic HTML so you can look over the outsourced work before paying for it.

If you’re interested in learning HTML, I very highly recommend W3Schools. They have a tutorial, examples, quizzes, everything you’ll need – all for free.

Domain Name

As I mentioned before, this is your Internet address. You can get a domain name at any domain registrar, but you’ll want to shop around for them, because each registrar offers different packages. My favorite registrar is GoDaddy.com, but there are other big name registrars like Yahoo! Small Business.

Hosting Account

There are thousands of hosting providers online, and the number grows each day. They vary in price and service, and it’s tough to know which one to use unless someone gives you a recommendation. Well, to save you the time and effort of having to look for a recommendation, I’ll give you one: Host4Profit (H4P) has one of the best programs that I’ve ever seen.

Their service and support is fast and good, and they also have a referral program, where once you are a customer, you can refer others to become customers to them for commissions of $10/month! H4P also does domain registration, so this can save you tons of time.

Honestly, I have yet to find another hosting company that offers the same service and support, let alone pays you such a large monthly commission for referrals. With their program, you can basically get free hosting for your websites by referring others to them. In fact, some of their customers receive checks for thousands of dollars each month because of this program!

When you have your website, domain name, and hosting account, it’s time to put them all together. If you go with H4P, and buy your domain name through them, they will take care of the hosting and domain name for you. All you’ll have to do is upload your files to the hosting account. If you don’t go with H4P, you’ll have to contact your hosting provider to find out how you can go about pointing your domain name to your account.

FTP

You can upload files to your hosting account through the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Rather than take up 20 pages explaining FTP and what it is/does here, here’s a link to a site that explains it very well in a matter of a page, and also includes links to a few FTP programs:

http://www.wowbrand.com/articles/whatisftp.htm

You can also go to Tucows.com to find freeware and shareware FTP programs, simply type “FTP” into the search box and you’ll find tons of them. Tucows is actually very good for finding quite a bit of freeware and shareware programs. Freeware means that you can use the full version as long as you want for free, and shareware means you either get a limited-functionality or time-limited version, and then must purchase a license to enable the full version.

Site Build It!

Site Build It! provides all of the above things in one package. They allow you to easily create a website, host it, and quickly generate pages that sell. In fact, they offer ways to take care of pretty much everything I’m going to discuss in this book, which makes them a great value for new IMers.

Because I’ll never promote a service that I haven’t used without letting you know, I have to tell you that I haven’t personally used SBI yet. But I have received rave reviews from trusted friends, and the testimonials on their web site speak for themselves. These, bundled together with what I’ve read about them in the past and the fact that they have been around for years (and they have a toll free number where you can call and talk with a customer service rep), make me believe that it’s a great service. So research it yourself, and if it’s for you, go for it!