TIPs*5*Day 5&6: Introduction To List Building

TIPs#5#

Create Your First Squeeze Page

By this point you should have already figured out your niche market. If you haven't done so yet, then please go back to Days 2 through 5 and to complete that task first.

Your next task will be to start building a list of prospects who will become potential customers. This is called list building.

Why List Building Is VITAL To Your Affiliate Marketing Business?
It is very important for you to focus on building your list as your list is the life-blood of your business. Without it, you will have to spend more time generating traffic than you could make money.

Think of it this way - do you prefer to work extremely hard to get someone to buy your product and then do that over and over again? Or would you rather work extremely hard to get somebody on your list and then sell them multiple products over time?

The answer is obvious.

I HATE Traffic Generation!
While I am good at generating thousands of visitors to my websites every day, I don't enjoy it at all. I would rather spend time working with clients and marketing my products and services.

You'll notice that I said I would rather market my products than generate traffic. That is because they are NOT the same!

Traffic Generation does NOT equal Affiliate Marketing!

While traffic generation is a vital component of affiliate marketing, it is not in and of itself all there is to do. And yet it is such a big question amongst marketers.

Instead, if you could focus on what you are going to do with your traffic than how to get that traffic, you will increase your profits a hundredfold.

In other words:

Write that down. Memorize it. Let it become your mission statement.

While I will be teaching you how to generate lots of traffic to your website, I do not want that to become your focus. Instead I want to teach you how to work with the people who do visit your website.

Your first goal is to get all visitors to your website on your email list!
Whether you are running affiliate sites, Adsense sites, product sites, or any other type of site, your first goal should be to get visitors to subscribe to your email list.

One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is through squeeze pages.

What is a squeeze page?
A squeeze page is a very simple webpage that focuses on trying to capture the user's name and email address. Depending on your industry, you might want to capture more detail of your visitors like gender, age, location, phone number etc.

You saw an example of a squeeze page when you signed up for this course. I did not try to get you to buy anything on the first page, nor did I try to give you Google Adsense ads to click on.

All I wanted you to do was give me your first name and email address so that I could start to build a relationship with you. And it worked! (You're here, aren't you?)

Now that you know what a squeeze page is, you will now create one for yourself. If you already know how to do web design, then this should be pretty easy. Just find a template of a squeeze page that you like and imitate it. If you don't know how to do web design, you can always hire somebody else to do it for you.
Creating Your First Squeeze Page

Your Very First Autoresponder

Now that you have your squeeze page sorted out, and you are going to need to set up your first autoresponder message.

Most people will make the mistake of sending out an email like this when somebody signs up for their list:

Hello [NAME]

 Thank you for signing up for my newsletter.

I will be sending you more information on [your subject] over the next few weeks.

Talk to you soon! J

John Doe
 
What's wrong with the above email?

It's simple - it does not take advantage of the very first contact with the user.

If you are just starting out in a market, then you need to do some research of what your visitors are looking for. This research can not be done via Google, or by any keyword tools. It can only be done through your own subscribers.

Remember when I was talking about asking your readers of what they want and then selling it to them?

That is what you are going to do in your very first email to them, take the opportunity to understand what your market really wants so that you can tailor your promotional materials and market to your subscribers effectively.

Here is a better example of message that you should send instead:

Hello [NAME],

John doe here.

 I wanted to thank you for requesting more information on [your subject]. It is a very important subject indeed.

Right now I need your help. Could you do me a quick 30 second favor?

I need you to reply to this email and answer this very simple question: "What is your single most important question regarding [your subject]?"

Just hit "reply" and send your answer back to me. It will help me to deliver information and products to you that you will find most useful.

Thanks in advance!

John Doe
 
If you are just starting out then you should reply to each email personally and thank them for their question. Let them know that you will be addressing that issue in your future editions.

If you already have a somewhat larger list and won't have the time to answer each email individually, make sure you add a note like following:

"P.S. Due to the large number of emails that I receive, I won't be able to reply to your question personally. However, rest assured that I read each and every one of them."

Whether you are starting in a new market or you are already established, this is a great way to learn what your readers want and to build a stronger relationship.

The way you would do this is to first put up a "Squeeze Page" and set your ads to arrive there instead of going directly to our site.Here's the Squeeze Page we recommend, but you may also design your own:
http://www.mythreebillionsads.4t.com/about_166.html