Even if you’re new to Internet marketing, you’ve heard the same old saying a thousand times. Lists make money. List building is one of the most effective ways to generate online home based business success. You must learn how to build a list in order to reach your potential.

Why it works

Marketing research reveals that most people don’t make a purchase after one exposure to a marketing message. Putting a message in front of an individual on multiple occasions is more likely to result in a sale. You can create opportunities for multiple exposure by adding an individual to your list.

Plus, most people are more likely to make purchases from people they feel they know and can trust. You can use emails to your list to forge a personal connection. That increases your credibility, producing more sales.

How to do it

Building a list is a rock-solid way to take advantage of a good home based business opportunities online, and it beings with a single simple page – the squeeze page. A squeeze page exists to do one thing and one thing only. It should encourage readers to become subscribers to your list. Anything else is completely extraneous.

In most cases, marketers encourage list opt-ins by offering something of value to the prospective customer in exchange for their contact information. This is a proven strategy that you can use to spur the success of your business.

Having a quality inducement won’t automatically make your squeeze page a success, though. Building a squeeze page the right way is just as important. There are certain squeeze page strategies that produce the best results. You should emulate those proven techniques. That means you’ll want to follow these three guidelines.

Squeeze page basics

First, your squeeze page should be free of all outgoing links with the exception of the “submit” button on your sign up form. You want people to sign up for your list, not to have them click away to something else.

Second, you’ll need to write a short, powerful message. You want your squeeze page to generate those sign ups – everything else is extraneous and will decrease effectiveness. Remember that your squeeze page is there for a single reason – to build your list. Every line of that squeeze page should exist to serve that objective.

Finally, you should handle the sign up procedure as if it’s a sale – you should work to close the transaction. That means that you will need to make a strong, persuasive call to action as part of your sign up form. Make it clear to readers that they’ll benefit from the simple, free act of filling out your subscriber form.

Summary

If you’re following those three pieces of advice and are offering a smart “bribe”, you’ll have a successful squeeze page! You’ll have the chance to build good relationships with your potential customers. You’ll also have the chance to expose your subscribers to key marketing messages more than once.

You will dramatically improve your business by using these email list building secrets. The fact that so many successful marketers embrace list building isn’t an accident. The real money is in list building.

Honestly, everyone making money online has an email list. It’s the number one key to opening the success floodgates. After it’s built, it’s yours to use any time you want. It’s like a renewable resource that allows you to make money on demand.

Now you now why. Here’s how:

Here are the three components of list building:

The Squeeze Page

• The Incentive
• Your Confirmation Page

Your Opt-in Page – The squeeze page is the first thing your visitor is going to see. It’s the page where you ask them for their email address. So, obviously it has to be well designed. And it needs to be simple to see how to opt in. And have a clear call to action.

The biggest mistake you can make is not having a clear call to action. Your call to action tells the visitor what to do. And if you don’t include it, they won’t opt in. Oddly, if you don’t make it clear, people will be confused and end up doing nothing.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page add a compelling video to the page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. And you can repeat the call to action several times int he video. And after the video, you can make it just say “fill in the form now”.

list building tools that give you squeeze page templates.

Your Bribe – The second component is the reason they are opting into your list. You have to give people a compelling reason to give your their email. Nobody likes spam, so most people guard their email closely. This means your bribe needs to be very attractive.

The only way to make this work is to provide real value. That means you make it something people would actually want to receive. And can benefit from. For example:

• An eBook
• Software
• A video
• An email series

Basically, you just need some content. And make it both helpful and informative. And of course it has to be free. If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.

Now, if you don’t know how to create the bribe don’t worry. Here again, you can hire freelancers to create this for you. Just give them a topic and they will write the content. For example, you could have them write a 5-part email course. And you can get emails ghost written for about $20 – $25 each. So, a great premium will cost you around $100 – $150.

There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. Two things to keep in mind when writing (or buying) and email training series. The first thing is that it delivers value to your subscribers. And second, it needs to make you money. The easiest way to do this is to market affiliate products in the emails. Affiliate products are easy because you don’t have to do anything at all. And make money right away from your list.

The Thank You Page – The “thank you” page is the final piece of the puzzle. This is where your visitor goes after opting into your list. It’s a great idea to give them some valuable information right on the thank you page. Then they feel good about giving you their email address. It also helps to build the relationship. Then they’re more receptive when you email them.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. And do your own writing for this content. Or have someone ghost write for you.

Final thoughts

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. It’s just important that you start today building your opt-in list. Because as soon as you’ve got your own list . . . You’ve got a license to print money!

There are two tools I use everyday to help me mange my traffic credits, the first is covered in this TE Command Post Video

The second is Viral Mail Profits. THis is not just a viral mailer, it is also an excellent management and organizational tool, which if you know me , you know I can use all the help I can get to stay organized.

If you are a member of more than one safelist or viral mailer then you probably know how its easy to forget which ones you can mail when you can mail them , or even keep track of what you have mailed before.

Well thats where Viral Mail Profits comes in and.. well here’s a video that explains what it does

Managing Mailers With Viral Mail Profits

If you are looking to get a better handle on your safelists and viral mailers then Viral Mail Profits can help you out.

OK  Stop me if you have heard this one already.

The money is in the …. oh so you have heard it.

Yeah I know its old news, it’s not sexy, it’s not shiny and it certainly isn’t new.

But let me ask you a question.

How are products launched?

I mean every day there is a new super traffic generating push button system, or a new undiscovered secret, that some homeless dude stumbled upon and is now a millionaire.

So you must hear about them all because they magically generate a force that sucked you in and made your browser go there right?

You probably heard all about how powerfull facebook and twitter are for building your business while you were on facebook or twitter then.

What blog were you at that told you how much money you can make by blogging?

Chances are you first heard about all these different methods, were told about all these secrets, and probably even bought one or two of them in your inbox.

I’m not saying none of these methods work as most (not all as advertised ) do.

But when someone launches a new SEO product they don’t rely on SEO to get the word out.

They mail their list, they have their JV partners mail their lists.

Now they may use that SEO, or social media or traffic software to build their lists in the first place, but when it comes time to get the word out on their new product or service they mail their lists.

I have done many different things online, some successfull some not, I have been doing a lot of SEO lately and gotten good results, but no one has knocked on my door saying I’m about to launch a program will you SEO your affiliate link for me?

No ones ever said “hey you surf can you put my launch in your rotator?”

But I have a full Skype list and inbox full of invites saying “hey, I’m going to launch this soon can you mail for it?”

Now again don’t get me wrong I love surfing and its great traffic, same with SEO it is effective. But for fast proven success that everyone with a list recognizes, the power really is in “the list”

What ever you do to get traffic to your sites you can leverage that so much by adding an opt-in form on your page.

And if you don’t believe it works the next time you are reading a sales page or watching a video about the latest greatest product out there take a second to think how you ended up there.

Build a list of thousands

I am really starting to love these things,

I’ve just signed up for the Social Marketing JV 2010.

It’s one of the largest Giveaway Events of the year and if you want
to add new subscribers to your list, then this is the place to go to.

For those of you who don’t know what a Giveaway Event is, let me try
to explain it in a few words.

A giveaway event is basically a place where several internet marketers
create a Team to add new subscribers to their lists.

Every marketer enters a Free Gift into the giveaway event that people
can access once the giveaway event opens.

Also, every marketer promotes the giveaway event, that’s how people
find their way to the event.

The Social Marketing giveaway event is currently in Pre-Launch, that’s
the phase when all the internet marketers signup and add their gifts.

If you read this, you are invited to join us in this Pre-Launch phase.

Be aware that this is not a free-ride… you’ll either have to promote
the event or you can upgrade your account to add gifts (and other stuff
like banners, special offers and your profile with links to your blog,
website, twitter and facebook).

Are you ready to join the Team?

Then signup now, Click Here

I’ll see you inside!

Wow lots of buzz over Affiliate Silver Bullet the last couple of days. There is good reason for that too.
What the site basicly is, is a simple point and click affiliate marketing system, on steroids.

What makes it so powerfull and so simple to use is what they call the “Silver Bullets“.

These Silver Bullets are full marketing campains for some the best converting, best paying clickbank products that are going to be hard coded to you so you can profit from them for a long, long time.

When you log in you will have two options for each bullet. You can either let them host it for you, or you can host it yourself.

I’ll go over both ways but if you are newer and don’t have your own domain, hosting, or aweber account then letting them host  it for you is the easiest and fastest way to get going.

Once you have a little bit of experience, and have some income comming in you should get the above mentioned things and start hosting them yourself, since it gives you more control and puts
people on to your own personal list.

For now though lets take a look at the first option.  If you let them host for you all you have to do is grab one of the two links they provide you. They are both for basically the same page, which is a professionally designed video squeeze page like this one.

The big difference is one has an auto playing video on it and the other has the video on it that doesn’t play unless some one clicks the play button. This is useful if you are promoting using Adwords or any other source that does not allow auto playing video. There’s also a bit of keyword relevant text on these pages too if you do want to use Adwords.

Now all you have to do is grab the provided promo tools and send traffic to your squeeze pages. Don’t worry, even if you have never gotten one vistior to any site before they have you covered. THere is an extensive amount of traffic training inside the members area as well.

This is where the magic happens, once some one fills out the opt in form on your squeeze page they will be taken directly to the sales page of a high converting clickbank product. They will then start receiving an e-zine that tells them more about the product. That sales page and all the follow up emails have your clickbank id hard coded in them, so no matter when they buy it , you will get the commissions.

Like I said simple and easy.

Now if you are ready to build your own list they have made it easy for you too. They give you a campain sharing code so you can import that same e-zine to your own aweber account. You then plug in your list name and download your silver bullet file. It will have a folder to upload to your server and a set of insructions that covers any questions you may have.

Its that easy to have your own hosted professional video squeeze pages up and running and building your list while earning you a handsome clickbank income. If you want you can view a private webinar that Soren from Affiliate Silver Bullet did that shows you exactly how it works by going here!

One of the easiest and fastest way to make money online in through affiliate marketing. This is when you send visitors to someone else’s product sales page, they make the sale and deliver the product, and you get a percentage of the sale price as you commission (usually 50% or more for digital products).

The benefits of this are

1. You can get started almost immediately because you don’t have to create a product, write the sales page, design the website, develop marketing materials, or set up the ordering, billing & delivery system.
2. You have almost no investment of time because you don’t have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
3. You have nearly zero risk because you already know the product sells. So if you send visitors you will get paid.

Looking at these benefits, it’s clear that affiliate marketing is the way to go!

The downside is…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Most of them will not buy on their first visit, which means you’re losing over 90% of the traffic right off the top. And of the 10% or less that do buy, the product owner will be able to sell to them again, but you will not.

What’s the solution?

Simply put, you need to capture the name and email of your visitors *before* sending them to the product sales page. This way you can follow up with them and keep sending them back to the sales page to increase your chances of making the sale. And if you’re really on top of your game, you’ll then send to a pre-sales page in between.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

1. You’ll be building your own list of potential customers that you can market to again and again.
2. You’ll be pre-selling them by providing valuable information and then casually linking to the product sales page in the context of this information.

In order to set a system like this up, you will need the following affiliate marketing tools:

1. A Video Squeeze Page (with video)
2. One or more content-rich Pre-Selling Pages
3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

The video squeeze page is where you’ll direct your traffic instead of directly to the product sales page. It captures the name and email of your visitors and puts them into your autoresponder, which then begins sending out the 5-part email series. Then it redirects them to your pre-selling pages after they subscribe to your email series.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it’s well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it’s set up, it runs automatically – you just keep sending visitors to the squeeze page.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to set it all up yourself, you can use something like Affiliate Silver Bullet. Services like this design the enter system (the video, the video squeeze page, the email series, the content pages, etc). The benefit is that it’s much less expensive then you could do it yourself, and it’s instantly set up. The downside is that other people will be using the same affiliate tools as you. But the internet is pretty big, so this isn’t much of a concern.

The other route you can take is to hire people on Elance to create and implement the various aspects for you. Either way, it’s an important step that you need to take if you’re going to be serious about your business.

Wow it’s been a while since posting here. what a poor and neglected site:(

Let’s see if I can do better keeping things a little fresher in here this year. A bit more content, a lot more video, maybe even some controversy? You can help if you want. Have something you want to get off your chest? feel free to drop off an article and I’ll get it published for you.

Have any questions? Don’t forget you can always Ask William

So whats new so far in 2010?

Well yesterday marked the first big TE launch of the year, with ThumbVu hitting the streets with full force and over 1,000 new members in the first 24 hours. They are shooting for 5,000 members in the first week and if the first 24 are any indication they should be able to pull it off.

Also today marks the closing of Paul Kinder and my  TE Christmas. 15 exchanges are giving away a ton of prizes today and there are some killer credit deals available too. But hurry since today is the last day for it.

Other than that there is a lot in the works trying to keep MTP growing and flowing, adding new updates to the 13 deadly books, a few new projects in the works and even more in the planing stages.

2010 is looking to be a great year for a lot of people as a lot of 2009′s hard work surfaces in the form of new products and ideas in the new year. Looking forward to continuing some of the great friendships and partnerships that were formed last year and getting out and making new connections with people this year.

I was in the affiliate funnel seminar earlier today where we were discussing list building.

The first question was “ How do I go about building a list?”

It was a great question and got everyone telling how they go about building their own lists.

Some great tips and tricks were exposed and everyone seemed happy.

I then asked what most thought was a silly question. “ Why should I be building a list?”

If you have read 13deadly where I explain my whys, you would see where that would seem like a silly question coming from me.

But I wasn’t asking for me, I was asking for the benefit of those in the room that may not have known.

Like I said there was some great information put out about how to build a list, but for someone that doesn’t know why, it is kind of pointless.

I could talk to you all day about how to fix helicopters, but unless you had a reason to know how to fix them, there would be no reason for you to sit and listen to me.

The IM niche is full of how to guides, how to build a list, how to promote an affiliate product, how to do pretty much anything you can imagine.

The next time you are presented with an offer ask your self, “why do I need to know that?”

If you can find a reason that fits into your current business plan then grab the opportunity to learn as much as you can, but don’t go out learning how to do everything with out first asking why.

My earlier post may have caught you a bit off guard. I mean here I am a program owner, but I am telling you not to promote programs directly.

At first glance that may seem strange. Of course as a program owner I love it when people promote my sites. I enjoy sending out commission payments, and I get great joy when I get an email that is talking about me or one of my products or services.

So why would I say not to promote your referral link to my business?

It’s simple, the more successful you are the more business you can send me. Instead of promoting my business you should be promoting yourself. Build your own list and start building a relationship with that list.

Then if you like my products or services tell your list about it. You will get better results and I will end up sending you a bigger commission check.

With the same amount of traffic exchange credits that it would take you to get one sign up in a site that has been around for three years you could get two, three or maybe even more opt-ins to your list.

You could then sell things to that list several more times.

For arguments sake lets say it takes 1,000 credits. The average price for 1,000 hits is $10, so we will say it takes $10 to get one person into what ever program it is your promoting. Now if that that program is paying you $10 per sign up you just broke even.

But if you were to use those 1,000 credits and get just three opt-ins to your list. You could promote your program a little more, give more detail about it and maybe convert two of those members into paying customers. So now you have already doubled what you could have earned, and have gotten 100% increase in profits.

Now you also have these members on your list and you can recommend other products and services to them. How much more can you make?

Think about this for a second before you copy and paste your next affiliate link into your favorite TE, Safelist or any other promotion method you may use.