Next 7 Email List Building Lessons (Total 14)

At last! Yesterday I finally received my trial copy of Derek Gehl's best-selling "Insider Secrets" – I've been looking forward to reading it so much that it seems much longer than a week since I ordered it!

Wow – it's great! It'll keep me busy for several months, as I begin to apply all the great Internet marketing strategies he provides...

Now let's get to work! As promised, here are the next 7 list building lessons:

List Building Secret #8 - Write Free Articles

Here is some advanced article-writing know-how...

While it's a given that you will put your newsletter subscription address in your resource box at the end of your article, this is actually not the best way to get people to subscribe to your newsletter.

The best way is to write a few free e-courses that people can subscribe to via an auto-responder and weave the links to these into your article.

Here is what I mean, and I can tell you now, HARDLY ANYONE is doing this yet – this is really cutting edge Internet marketing.

Let's say you have a newsletter on Ice Fishing and you're in the middle of writing a few articles to send out for publication. Here is a way to make your hard work yield great results.

Go to Aweber.com, buy a monthly subscription to their service and then start writing up to 2 or 3 free e-courses on all things to do with Ice Fishing. Then plug them into your auto-responder.

So what is the point of this when my real goal is to encourage people to sign up to my newsletter? Well, article writing has come under attack recently, by people who believe that cutting the writer's by-lines is acceptable - they just steal your content as their own. So instead of trying to fight these people everyday of the week, I've accepted this is going to happen and have provisions for it, and in fact, it probably works in my favor.

Somewhere in my article, I let the readers know there is this great free e-course they can sign up for. I don't mention that I wrote it myself, I simply weave it into my article, providing them with a great free resource.

I then provide them with the auto-responder link and explain how they can sign up.

This method, like adding your sign-up box to the resource box you include in your article, also means that your readers don't actually have to visit your website to sign up to your newsletter.

Your newsletter subscription information might read a little like this:

"To get more information on how to catch more bass on a weekly basis, sign up for our newsletter by sending a blank email to youremail@address-here.com"

List Building Secret #9 - Use A Sales Letter To Get Subscribers

An increasingly popular list building technique is the use of direct sales letters. Marketers are actually creating a sales letter similar to the one they would use to sell an actual product, but instead in an 'order now' link, they offer one that says 'subscribe now'.

You wouldn't even know by reading the sales letter that it's not for a product until the very end.

This gives these marketers the WOW factor. By making your newsletter sound so valuable that potential subscribers can't believe that you are giving away so much information for free.

This is marketing at it's best - it's exciting. Marketing is meant to be exciting, just like life!

List Building Secret #10 - Archive Your Newsletter Copies

Sometimes people are hesitant to give away any sort of information over the Internet, including their email address, for fear of being spammed.

But if you allow people to read your back issues without having to signup for your newsletter, this will show them what type of content you do write, encouraging them to sign up. It also fosters a feeling of trust between you and your potential subscriber.

This might seem counter-productive – why should readers subscribe to your newsletter when you are giving away all this information for free?

The difference is that newsletter subscribers get each issue 2 weeks before non-subscribers.

List Building Secret #11 - Use A Paid For And Well Known Auto-responder

I can't stress this enough. Don't use free Auto-responders or mailing lists! These services can go down at anytime and are not professional looking at all.

Plus they also get used for spamming and are abused badly.

Use Aweber.com for a reliable service. They offer all you need in an auto-responder.

List Building Secret #12 - Trade Ads With Other Publishers

This is a simple method of generating new subscribers instantly. Basically, you place an ad for other publisher's newsletters in your newsletter and they do the same for you in return.

This is not my favorite list-building technique, but it does work. But there are a few things you should bear in mind before using this method.

Trading ads with other publishers works well when your mailing list is in its early stages. It's difficult, however, to find suitable ad swapping deals that are worth your while once you have 10,000 or more subscribers.

But until then, how do you find publishers that are looking to trade ads? Easy! Do a Google search for the following:

"your-market ezine"

For example:

"Gardening Ezine"
"Gardening Newsletter"

Then just contact all the publishers you can find and ask them if they are willing to trade ad space in their newsletter for ad space in yours.

Don't just send out a generic email to publishers. Sign up for their ezine, look at their website, and personalize any contact you make with them so they know you're not just harvesting email addresses.

Sometimes you don't even need to trade ads with people in your exact market. Just because you run a gardening ezine, that doesn't mean you can't trade ads with landscaping ezine. Use your imagination, and pick out publications that you think will also appeal to your target market.

List Building Secret #13 – Set up A Contest

This is one of my favorite list-building techniques. Find a group of publishers willing to run a contest with you that you can offer to each of your lists of subscribers.

To enter this contest, the subscribers from your list must subscribe to the other publishers' lists and vice versa. This increases the list of everyone involved.

The contest could be for anything, depending on your market. Perhaps the publishers you contact all have ebooks for sale - you could give a free copy of all your ebooks out to the winner.

You then setup a domain for this specific contest and put all the information needed to enter there. You then let everyone on your list know about the contest, and how they can enter.

Here are the steps to make this happen.....

Find 4 or 5 publishers in your market.

Contact them with your idea and let them know that you are willing to do all the work - all they need to do is give you their sign-up information and something to offer as part of the prize.

Setup a special domain name and website, and write a sales letter that tells people how to enter and any other information they might need.

Write a mailing piece that each of the publishers can use to promote the contest.

Get a firm date from these publishers when they will run the contest mailing piece.

Send these publishers the names and email addresses of your subscribers, and ask them to send you theirs.

Add the new subscribers to your list - make sure you check for duplicate email addresses so you don't annoy people by sending them the same email twice!

Pick a winner!

List Building Secret #14 - Do An Article Recommendation

This is something I learnt from Greg Schliesmann and I only wish I was one of the publishers he joint ventured with in this deal, as it resulted in thousands of new subscribers for everyone involved!

For this technique, you will once again need to contact 4 or 5 publishers in your field – they could even be the same ones you used before. Get these publishers to agree to run one of your articles.

That's it - nothing tricky here. And if they agree to run your article, you will get thousands of new subscribers virtually overnight.

Write an article about the best newsletters in your market - those would, of course, be the publishers who agreed to run your article.

Make the article objective, though - don't just blatantly plug newsletters. Everyone who runs the article will get subscribers and so will you – everyone is happy!

Sometimes you have to make things happen, especially with Internet Marketing. Don't wait for people to contact you, YOU make it happen. You can do this, it's not hard, just think outside the box.

This method will also work for products as well. You don't just have to plug newsletters, you could get all the publishers together and write an article about the best products in your market. This way everyone can make sales and affiliates sales just by running your article.

So there you go! Another 7 great list building strategies! Apply as many of them as you can today to ensure your online success.

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Email: gerardas [@] netmarketingstrategies.com