The first three steps to Internet business success are: (1) choose the right market… (2) choose the right product… and… (3) choose the right marketing process.
Once you have those three steps in place it’s time to build a big responsive list.
You may have heard that the money is in the list. Absolutely true. The problem is less than 10% of Internet marketers know how to build their list. So let’s discuss this all important topic.
My belief is that 90% of your success online depends on your ability to drive traffic to your site… and then… to get visitors to opt in to your email list. Making that happen is simple enough if you follow these steps…
STEP ONE: Adopt the mindset that list building is the focal point of your business. In other words, put all your effort into getting people to opt in to your list. Everything you do should have this single end in mind.
STEP TWO: Create a lead capture page. All the traffic you generate should be driven to this lead capture page. Which is nothing more than a web page where you advertise a free report, audio, video, mini-course or ezine about a topic your market wants to know more about. I prefer promoting my ezine.
STEP THREE: Drive traffic to this lead capture page almost exclusively. Of course, how you drive traffic is also critical. Let’s talk about traffic generation methods.
My favorite ones include: article marketing… ezine advertising… and… reciprocal joint ventures.
Article marketing is simple. You write up a 500 to 600 word article about a topic your market is interested in. At the end of the article you include a resource box with a link to your lead capture page.
Submit at least one article per week to the different article directories. You can do a simple search online to find article submission services and software. It’s best to use these instead of trying manual submissions.
Ezine advertising is powerful. In any market a number of ezines (or electronic newsletters) exist. The publishers of these ezines will accept both articles and ads. The ads are either classified or solo emails. Solo emails work better.
Again, ezine ads should be written to drive traffic to your lead capture page. Search online for ezines in your target market. You’ll find plenty of them unless you’re in a really small niche.
Reciprocal joint ventures work very well. You simply contact the ezine publishers you would otherwise advertise with and have them promote your free report to their list. Then you reciprocate by doing the same for them to your list.
Obviously, your list has to be as big or bigger than the joint venture partner’s to make this “MO” work. As your list grows joint venture opportunities will pop up all over the place.
Another huge point: Do something every day to drive traffic to your lead capture page. Consistency is the big key to growing your list. The more you focus on traffic generation the bigger your list will get.
In the next article in this series, we’ll discuss how to make money from your list.
