Internet Business
In this post I’ll cover the importance of Building a list of leads in growing your business, how to go about it, and when you should start trying!
When I first started out trying to earn cash on the internet just a few months ago, I made the crucial error of thinking that simply having a web-presence and trying to flog a few Clickbank products would be enough to get the £’s coming in, at least on a small scale.
I’d been blogging on a topic of great interest to me (but in a small and unpopular niche) for about 2 years, and this blog attracts quite a lot of traffic (although I haven’t updated it for a while), but in total it’s earned me about £30 in Adsense. Not quite enough to retire on! I am also yet to make a sale on Clickbank, with this blog. This was initially my main incentive to start a new blog about working from home, although it has evolved considerably since it began, and is now far more about information than earnings (I leave this to my websites and affiliate schemes).
After joining a few affiliate programs (notably SFI and Cashburners ), I then went about joining traffic exchange sites and putting these affiliate splash pages in front of thousands of mostly disinterested eyes. OK, so I had a little success with this but the gravy train still refused to leave the depot.
On a quick side note: one of the best reasons I can give you as to why you should join SFI is that they have masses and masses of free marketing and internet promotion training. The stuff I have learned using SFI and by reading the blog posts on Leads Leap has enabled me to see a little deeper into this conundrum of cash generation, and understand that one of the keys to building a long-term residual income is List building.
So I built an information and content-rich website in an unpopular niche, making sure it was optimised as much as possible for SEO. As the website started getting traffic, I prepared an email tutorial series, delivered through an autoresponder, as a bait to entice visitors to opt-in to my list (another good way to do this is by offering a quality, free e-book or training video. Leads Leap has loads of free stuff you can use for this purpose). Every email tutorial sends the reader back to my website to read the full tutorial that has Adsense ads in it. Within each tutorial, I also try to promote affiliate products. Other than that, I do not follow up with the list anymore.
If you are spending time (and in many cases money) promoting a website, but don’t build a list at the same time, you are leaving money on the table without a doubt.
DO NOT build a list just for the sake of building one. I first tried to build a list by giving away a free e-book about a software package I use to automatically generate content-rich, Adsense ready websites, called Hyper VRE , and sure I got a few names on there, but I hadn’t taken the time and effort to plan a good series of autoresponder emails, targeted at the kind of people who’d be interested in Hyper VRE. So, yes, I got lazy with it, didn’t follow up, and have a small but redundant list that isn’t making me any money now. Just a waste of my time and the (limited) effort I’d put in.
If you are to build a list, you have to know EXACTLY how you intend to monetize the list. Otherwise, list building will just be a waste of time for you, as it initially was for me, therefore – planning is key!
In my example above, I offered a free tutorial. Those who opt-in are looking forward to that tutorial. When an email tutorial comes to them, they must go online to read the tutorial. And I monetize every tutorial through Adsense and affiliate sales.
Building a list is one issue, but maintaining the list is another.
You can build a list and get more sales out of your existing traffic without providing any form of maintenance; for example, there are some lists whereby I simply load some standard email tutorials that come with the affiliate product I’m promoting into my autoresponder. People opt-in to get the tutorial and since every tutorial ends up promoting that product, I manage to get some extra affiliate sales. For these kinds of lists, I do not need to spend any time or effort on maintenance. If the users want to unsubscribe, they just have to click the unsubscribe link. But very few people will unsubscribe because after the autoresponder series, they won’t hear from me anymore (in this case my autoresponder is set up to send 1 email a day for 9 days).
I am not saying that this is definitively the way in which you should manage your list. In fact, this may even be the worst list management strategy you may hear! But even the worst strategy can still increase your profits! Moreover, you are not doing something evil or unethical – your subscribers get free tutorials on the subject they are interested in, and you get more affiliate sales. It’s a win-win situation.
Note: Some marketers may teach you to keep blasting offers to your list until they either buy something or unsubscribe. I don’t do that. I want to maximise my profit, and keep people happy, not drive them away with endless offers.
I need to re-emphasise that this is not the way you should go about managing ALL of your lists; if you are building a list in a niche that you intend to firmly establish a name in, you will have to provide lots of support and follow up emails to build a relationship with the people in your list. This kind of list will need a lot of maintenance, and thus take up a lot more of your time and effort, but the potential return is also much greater.
When is the right time to start building a list?
There isn’t a single answer for this. (Sorry!)
If you are building a niche site, you may want to wait until the website starts getting consistent traffic. You won’t want to spend too much time preparing the material before the website shows any potential – after all, you could have the greatest follow-up series of all time, but if nobody opts in its completely wasted!
If however you’re promoting a program or offer in a big big way, you may want to start building that list immediately, so as not to lose the first people to use your site.
The key is basically to know whether a lot of traffic will be coming to your website, and how quickly. If, for example, you’re spending money on an Adwords campaign, you know straight away that you’re going to get a lot of click-throughs, and if your autoresponder series is not ready for this traffic, well, you’ve wasted your money haven’t you?
Read pragmatic recommendations about one way backlinks – go through this page. The time has come when proper information is truly within one click, use this possibility.
Internet Business Blog
Internet business blog : An internet business blog about how to make money online with an internet business.Internet is business.
Internet business related posts
Related posts:
- The Importance Of A Vital Aspect Of Internet Marketing – How To Conquer List Building.
- Email Marketing For Inexperienced Marketers And Beginning Online Marketers
- Free Back Link Building System – Automatically Build Back Links
- Contextual Link Building Technique Related To Your Home Business Site
- Work Your Home Business On The Internet In The Caribbean
