First, be truthful with your list when you’re promoting something. Tell them exactly why you think they’d benefit from it, and make sure you can give them an example of how it’s helped you. If you don’t use the product, don’t tell them they should. Why? Because if it’s crap, your list will find out, and you’ll lose their trust. No trust = zero sales. Zero sales = a worthless list.

Another great option is to give them content while you’re giving them promotions. See if you can compare 2 or more similar products, and provide pros and cons of each, that way, they can make their own decision, and they’ll feel a lot better about that. If you tell them what to buy, you’ll make sales, but if you provide them with options and information, and let them make an informed decision, they’ll feel like it’s their decision, and they’ll be more likely to purchase one.

Don’t forget to keep giving them great content in the midst of promoting products to them. If you do, you’ll start to see people unsubscribing, and that is not what you want to do.

Matt Callen said it best in his free, 7-day ecourse (for his Instant Popover product) – “The Golden Rule Goes A Long Way – Even With Internet Marketing.” He also went on to say, “Build a list, build a relationship with that list by providing mind-blowing, over-the-top content, give them a free report or product and show them that you’re a genuine human being that really cares about them, and you’ll have them fighting at your virtual door wanting to buy your products or services.”

Before I go on, I want to address this common question very quickly: “Is it legal to “grab” or “scrape” email addresses for your list?” The answer is no. They didn’t opt-in for your list, so you can’t legally email them bulk email. If you do, you’re sending them unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and that is SPAM. You can be fined thousands of dollars and thrown in jail for it, so I wouldn’t even test the waters.

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!)

If the vendor’s sales letter isn’t converting very high, you can sometimes write your own sales letter. To find out if you can, visit the vendor’s sales page, then click on the buy link. If you aren’t sent directly to Paypal or Stormpay or somewhere similar, you can probably cut and paste that link, and use it in your own sales letter.

I’m not going to go into creating your own sales letter here, though, because it’s quite a bit beyond the scope of this book. I’d recommend that you check out some other tools such as Instant Sales Letters and 22 Secret Hot Buttons. They’ll get you on the right track to writing effective sales letters, and they will help you make sale after sale.

Is there a service you can use to help you get started with affiliate programs?

You bet! I’m a member of a site called Wealthy Affiliate, and I think their service is great. Basically, they give you keyword lists that you can use with PPC ad campaigns (discussed later), but you can use the lists for anything, including AdSense sites, product creation ideas, etc.

They also give you a few choices for affiliate programs to promote, and they research them pretty well to find out if they convert well, offer good commissions, etc. Honestly, if you’re willing to put in some time to dive right into affiliate marketing, this is the place for you. They even offer their own affiliate program exclusively to their members, and I must say that it’s a very good program to promote in and of itself.