Email List Building Strategies

February 23, 2012 8:16 amLeave a Comment

If you’re going to be successful in internet marketing, you need to build a list. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. Because you can market to your list whenever you want. Just push a button and print money – literally.

Now you now why. Here’s how:

Here’s what you need to build your list:

  • Your Opt-in Page
  • Your Bribe
  • The Opt-in Success Page

The Squeeze Page – The squeeze page is the first thing your visitor is going to see. This is where they will enter their email address. That’s why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. It’s also got to be free from distractions. And your call to action must be clear!

Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. Your call to action tells the visitor what to do. You opt-in rates will take a dramatic nose dive without it. It’s strange, but if you don’t tell people what to do, they won’t do it.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page add a video to it. You only have a few second to get your visitors attention – video helps! It also allows you to tell them what to do several times. Then at the end of the video you can print “sign up now” on the video.

It’s OK, if you’ve never made a video before. It’s very easy to hire people for a couple hundred bucks to make one for you. There are also list building systems that give you squeeze page templates.

The Bribe – The next thing you need is an incentive to subscribe to your list. People need a good reason to part with their email address. Nobody likes spam, so most people guard their email closely. So make your “bribe” a good one!

The key to a good bribe is that is has value. It has to be something that people actually want. And something from which they can derive a benefit. A few ideas:

  • An eBook
  • A piece of software
  • Videos
  • A multi-part email series

You’ve got to create some great content. Something that’s useful and helpful to your visitors. And of course it has to be free. If you make it good enough, they will give you their email in exchange.

Once again, don’t worry if you don’t know how to create the freebie. You can just pay someone else to make it for you. Simply tell them what the topic is and they can write the content. One easy and effective bribe is a 5-part email training series. You can have ghost writers create emails for under $25 an email. So, a great premium will cost you around $100 – $150.

There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. Two critical aspects of using a follow up series. First of all it has to give the subscriber what you promised – valuable information. It also has to generate revenue for you! Mixing some affiliate products into your email series is a great way to do this. Affiliate products are easy because you don’t have to do anything at all. And it enables you to generate cash right away from your new list.

Your Confirmation Page – The last bit is the thank you page. This is where your visitor goes after opting into your list. It’s nice to give them some great content right away. Then they feel good about giving you their email address. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. So when they get your email, they’re happy to hear from you.

This is another case where you can get a complete marketing package. Or you can do it yourself. You can either write the content pages on your own. Or have someone ghost write for you.

Summary

It doesn’t matter if you do all of this yourself. Or hire someone else to do it for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The key is to start building your list. Because once its built… You’re free to make money at the push of a button.

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Affiliate Business Tips

February 21, 2012 7:58 amLeave a Comment

If you’re not preselling, you’re losing money

The number one strategy to increase your affiliate sales is preselling.

Before we start, let’s talk about what preselling actually is. Preselling is both an art and a science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then you send them to the site that sells what you’ve prepared them for. When done correctly, your reader will not even notice.

The gist is that you give your reader some useful information. Then send them to the sales page. We’ll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. Before we get into that, you should understand what’s in it for you. Just a few of the reasons you want to presell.

  • It helps your reader trust you – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. And the more clicks you get the more sales you’ll make.
  • Preselling is disarming – Nobody likes to be sold something. By not doing that to them, your reader is less defensive. Unguarded reading means they’re not filtering what you say. So your content get absorbed.
  • It puts them in a buying mood – Your readers are now receiving your message. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. This includes the sales website you send them to! Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
  • It increases your sales – You’ve prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. With the guard down and trusting your recommendation. The only thing that can result is increased sales!
  • It boosts customer loyalty – People like to make their own buying decisions. Versus being pitched or convinced. And this makes them feel better about the product they purchased.
  • Your profits go up – Happy customers ask for refunds much less often. Which means you keep more of your affiliate commissions.

The need to presell is clear. You make more money. And increase your customer satisfaction. It’s a win-win-win!

How does it work?

You’ve learned the importance of preselling. And hopefully you’re convinced you need to start doing it. So, it’s time to break down how it works. Like we talked about before, it’s an art. And it’s a science.

Becoming an artist

Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. Honestly, the only way to do this is to provide real value in you content. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. That is, they have to be wanting more when you refer them to the product sales page for the product you’re trying to sell. And since they’re more open, they are more likely to make a purchase.

It’s also a science

You also have to include some very specific things.

The first is how you present the information. You’ve got to map out your strategy before you start writing. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. There are two ways to accomplish this with great content. First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. The other method is to explain all the details and expose how difficult it is to do what you’re explaining. Whichever method, you send them to a product website that solves the problem you just created.

Next, you have to use “convert linking” methods. Instead you link directly to the product sales page. That’s because nobody likes to click on affiliate links. But, without your affiliate link, how do you get credit? Well, that’s part of the science of this whole process. You use an image tag to cookie your reader before they leave your site.

The next trick is to hyperlink specific words and phrases inside the content of the article you’re providing. Hyperlinked words are clicked more than anything else. Plus, if you link on relevant words, it only makes sense to click on there.

Using this system, you’re virtually guaranteed to increase your affiliate business success.

Unfortunately…

Doing all of this right is really hard! Let’s look at the skills required to pull it off: Awesome content. First of all, you actually have to write great articles and give value to your readers. Which means you need to be both knowledgable on the subject and capable of writing a high-quality article. Strategic writing. Yes, you must providing useful content. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And still leave them wanting more. The other approach is to reveal a self-evident problem through the information.

Choosing your products. Next, you’ve got to pick the right product to presell. Even if you get the article written. All your efforts are wasted if you send your reader to the wrong sales letter.

Techy stuff. And finally, you need the technical know-how to embed your image tag and make sure you get credit for the sale. This is pretty easy – you just make a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image with no border and make the “source” of the image your affiliate link. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)

Summary:

Now you know exactly how to presell effectively. Preselling properly will boost your affiliate profits up to 500%! So, start now and develop preselling content for all your affiliate promotions. Please don’t be lazy. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.

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Traffic Generation Tips

February 9, 2012 8:37 amLeave a Comment

The most important thing in any web business is traffic – lots and lots of traffic. Obviously, this assumes you actually have a reason for wanting this traffic. What you do with the traffic when it gets to your site could be any number of things. The most crucial aspect of this process is getting the visitors to your site.

How, then do you get traffic to your site?

Here’s a short list of great, free traffic generating methods:

  • Web 2.0 Methods
  • Articles Directories
  • Video Sites

And here’s how to use each method…

Web 2.0

A Web 2.0 site gives its users the ability to interact with each other and create the site’s content together. The exciting thing about Web 2.0 sites is that you get to add your own content and it becomes part of these sites. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. The benefit of this to you is that your content is now considered as part of these sites. By placing links to your websites in this content you’ve created, you get traffic from the site and search engine ranking for the keywords you choose. The direct traffic from the Web 2.0 sites themselves is only part of the benefit. How to generate web 2.0 traffic is something we’ve only scratched the surface on. I don’t want to be exhaustive – I want to give you an overview of all the methods…

Article Marketing

Article marketing really builds on the Web 2.0 concept. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. In typical web 2.0 fashion, article sites rely on user-generated content (i.e. your articles). Just as with the other web 2.0 sites, having your content included gives you immediate traffic and search engine ranking. And in addition to this, other users can take your article and place it on their own website. And in return for getting to use your content, these other users include links back to your website that gives you further search engine ranking and more free traffic. If you want to generate traffic from articles follow these steps:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Write specifically to target these keywords
  • Be sure to link to your site on the keywords you’ve chosen. Do this inside the article itself and in your author’s bio.

Video

Our discussion would not be complete without talking about video. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. So, just like article marketing, video marketing enables you to add content to authority sites. And in addition to this, because Google and the others love video so much, you can get listed for highly competitive keywords much more easily.

OK, so how do you do effective video marketing?

  • Sign up for YouTube
  • When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
  • Put relevant “tags” in your profile
  • Include a link to your main site in your profile
  • Add 1 or more videos to your profile
  • In the title, the description and the tags for each video, include your main keywords

Putting it all together.

If you take action on the items listed here you’ll have free traffic in no time.

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Membership Niche Selection Tips

February 5, 2012 8:14 amLeave a Comment

Let’s talk about niche selection. This is very important to ensuring the profitability of your membership website.

Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market

If you want your membership business to be profitable, you have to find a marketing with fanatics in it. What’s a fanatic? It’s someone who is so excited about a certain topic that they will spend their time and money on information about it. Now that we know what we’re looking for, let’s talk about how to find them…

  • Here’s something you may not have considered – magazines! We’re so internet-based these days, it’s easy to forget about them. Because it’s becoming harder and harder to keep print periodicals profitable these days, if you see a magazine on the shelves, you know it’s making money. And that means there are lots of people interested in it. If they can make money in a print version, you can probably make money with a membership website.
  • You’ve got lots of opportunities every day to see what people are interested in. Just pay attention to what people talk about on the radio, at social gatherings, at the store or restaurants and anywhere in public. People generally talk about things they are interested in. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
  • Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. By the same token, if enough people are interested to hold a convention on a certain topic, you can definitely find enough people to build a membership business around that same topic.
  • What about your interests and hobbies? There’s a good chance that others are interested in these things, as well. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
  • Google Trends. This is a great way to figure out what people are interested in. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. The reason people are searching Google for info on these topics is because they are interested. And the fact that it’s made it into Google Trends tells you LOTS of people are interested. These are the niches you want to be in – lots of people actively searching means lots of opportunity.

Next – Figure out if there’s money in it

OK, so you’ve got a great idea for your niche membership business with lots of fanatics. But will they actually spend money? One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

OK, how do we figure that out?

  • First go to Google and type in the name of your niche followed by “blog” and “forum”. If there are blogs and forums related to it, that’s a good sign. This tells you there are people who are actively interested in your niche.
  • Check Amazon, eBay and Google Shopping to find out if others are making and selling products in your niche. What you’re trying to figure out is if anyone is making money in this niche, and if people are selling products it means they are making money.
  • Watch Google Adwords for a period of time and look for ads the run again and again. Adwords ads are expensive, so people only run them repeatedly if they are profitable. And to be profitable, they have to be selling products and making money.

Finally – Figure out your barrier to entry

After figuring out a good niche and determining that other people are making money in it, the last thing to do is decide if you will be able to enter the market. Here are some things to look at to figure this out:

  • Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. That’s because it’s much easier to build a membership business around information vs. any other kind of product.
  • The next thing to look at is the competition. You don’t want to try to break into a saturated marketing, so figure out how many people are already selling in this niche.
  • Unless the market is just so big that it doesn’t matter how many competitors there are, you want to limit the competition. So evaluate the size vs. the competition.
  • How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Some niches are made up of people who require lots information and have a very long lead time, and some markets are filled with people who will spend lots of money right now.

Putting it all together

OK, now that you’ve figured out what niche you’re going to go into. Determined there is money to be made and that the competition is not too strong to break into it. You’re ready to start your membership business. If you’ve done your homework, your business will be a success because you already know your market is a profitable one with room for you. Learning how to run a membership website is a topic for another article…

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Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

February 3, 2012 8:11 amLeave a Comment

The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night.

But, first…

The first thing you need to do before you start going after any traffic is keyword research. The reason this is so important is that you are going to be building content and traffic sources for specific keywords. So you need to make sure the keywords you’re targeting are worth targeting.

Here are the important considerations for your research:

  • Are the keywords you’re interested in attainable? Take a look at the “strength” of others websites (and how many) are already targeting these keywords.
  • Will the keywords you’re targeting bring buyers? If you don’t do your research you’ll end up with a lot of traffic that doesn’t buy from you. This is not what you’re looking for.
  • Will these keywords bring affiliates? If you want to build a huge business, you’re going to need affiliates to help you. So make sure you are also targeting keywords to attract affiliates.

Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. Experts are expensive and don’t guarantee results. The upside is that these two factors keep most everyone from even doing their keyword research. What I recommend is using website traffic software to save the time of doing it yourself and the money of hiring someone else. This will not only speed it up. It will give you better results, as well.

Only then can you start getting traffic

Now that you’ve completed your keyword research, you can begin using these keywords to get traffic to your website.

Here are a couple of clever ways to do this…

  • Surveys
  • “Help” Websites
  • Video Sharing Sites

Surveys

Here’s the thing – people love surveys. It’s human nature. And if you make it interesting, other people will post your survey on their website. And when they put your survey on their site, they will include a link back to your website. Think about that – you get website traffic for free just for making a survey! Using just this one extra idea will put you ahead of your competition . . . who think surveys are for gathering information! Just make the question interesting enough that people will want to share it with their own visitors.

“Traffic Traps”

Sites like Yahoo! Answers allow users to ask and answer each others’ questions. Once again, the main reason for this site is not the reason you’re interested. The other thing they can be used for is to get traffic to your site, leads for your business and sales! Now, you can do this all by hand – visit a classified ads or answers site and one by one copy and paste contact info. But a much smarter method is to use website traffic software to do it for you. Then you just get a daily batch of fresh leads delivered to your inbox.

Video Websites

No doubt you’re aware of YouTube and other video websites. These sites generate massive traffic and people watch over 2 billion videos a day on YouTube alone . So don’t miss out of this incredible source of free website traffic.

You don’t have to be able to make awesome videos for this to work. One super easy thing to do is take an article or website you’ve written. Then simply record yourself reading the text and you video the screen with a simple screen capture program. I’ve even seen software that will automatically convert an article to a video!

In Closing

It’s not that hard to get traffic to your websites. Use your noodle and come up with things other people aren’t doing. Plus, there’s lots of great software out there to help you.

Get started right away:

  • Step 1 is researching your keywords
  • Set up some viral surveys
  • Build your traffic traps
  • And definitely include video sharing sites

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Affiliate Marketing Secrets

January 3, 2012 2:56 pmLeave a Comment

Winning Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Affiliate marketing is by far the fastest way to get started making money online. This is when you refer traffic to someone else’s product sales page, they do all the hard work of developing the product, making the sale, delivering the product and supporting the customer, and you earn at least a 50% commission

The benefits of this are

  1. You can get started really quickly because you don’t have to create a product, craft a sales letter, develop the website, develop marketing materials, or set up the ordering, billing & delivery system.
  2. It’s completely hands-freefor you because the product owner does all the hard work of support, maintenance and billing.
  3. There’s no risk for you, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So if you send visitors you will get paid.

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

OK, but it’s not all rosy…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Less than 10% of the visitors your send will actually buy the product. 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. If you do that, you can contact them again and send them back the product website multiple times. This will increase the number of sales you make. And if you’re a super star affiliate, you’ll provide high-quality content before sending them to the product website.

Here’s why you want to implement these affiliate marketing strategies:

  1. By building your own list, you’re creating a renewable resource that you can tap again and again for instant profits.
  2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

If you want to create an affiliate marketing system like this, you’ll need the following:

  1. A lead capture page, preferably with video
  2. Several high-quality content pages
  3. A multi-part email series with at least 5 emails in it

The video squeeze page is where you’ll direct your traffic instead of directly to the product sales page. This page is where you collect your visitors’ contact info and add them to your autoresponder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. After subscribing them to your email list, it redirects them to your content mini-site.

You content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. While they’re reading the content you’ve provided, your email system is already following up with them to send them back to the product website again and again.

There’s no doubt that it’s worth the effort to put a system like this in place, because doing so will increase your profits by 500% or more. And after you get it all set up, it runs on total auto-pilot. You just refer people to your lead capture page, instead of the product sales page.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. These kinds of services will build the whole system for you and then just give you a video squeeze page (with video), pre-written emails, 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 drawback is that you won’t be the only one using these affiliate tools. But the internet is huge, so this shouldn’t really affect you.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to “outsource” each of these compnents. Whichever way you decided to go, it’s critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you’re at all serious about your business.

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