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Utilizing the Secrets Of Opt-in Mailing Lists

Do I need to start by telling you about the power of email marketing?

I am sure you are on a number of email lists yourself. Sometimes you just receive one promotion after another at other times you may get useful information in short bursts, or more indepth information but not that often.

Whatever you receive and for whatever reason opt-in mailing lists are created and maintained to let you the reader know that the writer/list owner is an expert in their field and to promote products that they think you will want to buy.

Without a mailing list you have no one to promote too and without people to promote to you are limited in how you can make money. Of course with your blog there are other ways like advertising and Google adsense but you need a huge amount of traffic coming in on a regular basis to make a lot of money using those options.

While you wait for that to happen (because of course it will when you stick to your Blog Success training) you can spend some time collecting names and email addresses – or building your own subscriber base – which is known as an opt-in list but more commonly called your "LIST"

An opt-in list is a directory of email address that you have collected in return for giving out  a free gift/information. Your free information could be an ecourse, a free report, or a free ebook or maybe you will write a regular ezine (online newsletter) that you send out to those people who have "opted-in" or signed up to receive what you are offering.

By collecting these details what you begin to put together is a targeted list of people all looking for what you offer. For example if you offer a free meditation ecourse then you know people who sign up are interested in meditation. If you offer a free ebook on how to build your own pond then you know people are interested in starting a pond, building a pond, the types of fish/plants that go in a pond, how to look after a pond etc etc. It means you can send them product information – either your own products or as an affiliate – and earn an income every time someone buys something from you.

Here are 7 tips on how to create a comprehensive opt-in list for your target market:

Start Your Blog

Fairly obvious but it needs to be said. The first thing to do is to actually set up your blog and offer something free to the people you want to attract so they sign up. Make sure your signup box is in a prominent place on your blog (top right is the usual tradition) – I also include an exit pop up so that when people leave my site a web page comes up encouraging them to sign up for my newsletter. That means if for some reason they didn't see the sign up box on my blog there is another chance to catch them on exit.

Set up a promotion or a freebie

Give something away. Write a report, create an ecourse, ask a programmer to create a piece of software for you that you then give away. Record an audio interview with an expert in your field. Decide on what you will give away based upon the topic of your blog and do all you can to tell people about it. You might also want to have a lead capture page up. That is a one page website that offers your free product and nothing else. Once they sign up you can send them to your blog in the first email that you send out. Here's a great example of a lead capture page http://www.authorityblackbook.com/

Spread the word

Once you have your blog sign up box on your blog and/or your lead capture page make sure you tell everyone about it. Add your link in your signature at forums and other sites.

Example : Sign up to receive my free eCourse on how to improve your confidence in 7 easy steps http://www.yourdomain.com

You can use the signature plugin to make sure that the information about your free report appears automatically at the end of every single blog post and page you write. If you are using WordPress 2.7 all you do is log into your blog, scroll down to the plugins section, click on add new and then search for the signature plugin, hit the install button then activate it. All done! Complete the information and link to the details of your free blog.

Also remember to add the information about your free product to your Blog Success signature – you never know how many members might be interested in what you offer. Of course the more you post in the forum the more chance there is of people finding you!

Provide an easy opt-out option

Give people an easy way to remove their details from your opt-in list and once removed do not try and continue to send them emails otherwise you will be sending SPAM! If you are using a reputable company like Aweber they will instantly provide you with an easy opt-out link on every email you send. I have tried to unsubscribe from lists and people have made it difficult, requiring that I register, login and change my details. With those emails I just hit the TRASH button and they go straight to my spam box. Making it difficult for people to unsubscribe does not mean they will stay as a happy subscriber. They will just find another way to remove you or they will become annoyed at you and begin talking about how difficult it is to get rid of you on social networks. I remember reading a lengthy conversation on Facebook about a very well known marketer who wouldn't remove people. The title was something like "Has anyone ever managed to remove their details from X's list?" The problem was that even after opting out people still continued to receive emails from this person. It doesn't help your credibility. If people don't want to hear from you then let them go. They will always return at a later date if they want to.

Check other's strategy too

You may want to do your own thing and be an individual but you may also want to just take a brief look into what other people are doing in your niche to build their opt in list. Focus on the people that are in the top of your industry/niche. What are they doing? Do they use audio or video (offering a free audio is becoming poplar), do they offer free classes (free weekend workshops are becoming poplar too!) Take a look at what they are doing and see if you can adapt it in some way to enhance what you do. Remember this is not about copying the work of another person but merely using it to get ideas and inspiration for what you could do yourself.

Make Use of Offline Facilities

Create business cards, flyers or post cards that you give out at networking conferences. Leave them at events, training, seminars, workshops and any other place you attend. See if you can get your information placed in relevant places. For example, you may want to put your postcard about your free health and fitness video ecourse in a gym or at a local clinic. Use offline as well as online to build your list. I have found people after picking up their postcard and people have found me that way too. It works

Stay In Touch Often

Word of mouth is a powerful promotional tool. By staying in touch with the people who join your list you get to build a relationship with them. Encourage them in every email to forward it on to friends and/or have a system in place that will make it easy for their friends to join. The more you stay in touch and the more value you provide the more chances of someone on your list telling a friend. It can take time to build a powerful list of people who all enjoy receiving what you offer, don't get dazzled by numbers – just because a marketer has 20,000 people on their list it doesn't mean they have the attention of 20,000 people! Avoid using places that ask you to buy names/email addresses for your list – it never works out well! Instead enjoy building your list full of people that want to hear from you and building relationships with those people by providing quality content so that by the time you get to 20,000 people if only 30% of the people on your opt in list are reading your emails that's a nice chunk of change if you are selling a $97 product!

Is it worth building a list if I write a personal blog?

Yes! If you are running a personal blog it is still worth building a list because you can send them offers that they might be interested in. For example if your personal blog focuses on your life as a mother of 3 who has moved from London to New York you will be able to send all kinds of affiliate products relating to travel, moving, family related products, children related products, beauty/health related, marriage related products – there is a lot you can do and there are many products out there to promote so spend time thinking about what will fit best for your blog. Add a forum post if you need help in putting something together.

What if I don't have a product or don't want to create one?

Are you familiar with private label rights (PLR) products? They are products that someone else has created that you can use as your own. When you buy a PLR product you buy that right. There are different rights available depending on the person who created them so you need to check for each product. Some allow you to give the PLR product away as it is and other people insist you change it by at least 30% before it can be considered your own product and you can then choose to do whatever you want with it. At the very least if you buy a PLR product you should change the title of the product and get a new graphic image made. Why? Well because thousands of other people will be promoting the same product and if you just put your name on it and pretend you wrote it you may get called a liar if it is found some place else.

Type in PLR or private label rights in the search engines and you will find a whole range of information. Find a product that is suitable for your market by searching for it. E.g. "golf private label right products, beauty plr products for sale" etc and then choose what you want. Always read these products through because sometimes they are made cheaply in countries where English may not be the first language and you will find the grammar is terrible. I encourage you to read it all because some PLR products start great and get progressively worse as you continue reading chapters!

What If I can't think of what to say in my ezine?

You already have one major advantage over many ezine/newsletter writers and that is that you have your blog. If you are stuck for things to write about in your ezine then simple use your blog posts. Add the title, the first paragraph and then a link to read the whole post. This is also a great way to get your list back to your blog. Encourage people to leave a comment too. You may want to make every single one of your newsletters each week just highlight the top posts on your blog for that week. It will save you having to ever actually write a newsletter and you will never run out of things to say as long as you continue to blog!

Another way your list will benefit you

I am sure you are familiar with joint ventures. One marketer agrees to send out details about your product to their mailing list if you do the same – send out their product to your list. This happens when you have a large and responsive list of people. It provides both parties with an opportunity to make sales and increase the size of their opt-in list. People will find you as your list grows larger because your income will too! The more you can show ow much money you make from having a large list the more chances there will be for joint promotions – if that is something you want to do!

List Building Methods To Avoid

In my naïve days of being an online marketer I wanted things to happen quickly so when a well known marketer offered a list of 12,000 names/email addresses if I bought a product from him of course I went ahead and bought that product. The mistake there is that you can't import those names/email addresses into a reputable autoresponder, they won't allow it. Most reputable companies will want to know that the person actually filled in the form to receive your details so you can't use something like that.

Don't make leaving difficult

I mentioned this already but it is worth repeating. If people want to leave then let them. Why would you want to force someone to say. Make opting out easy and ALWAYS make sure you include an opt out link in your email.

No you can't use those round robin emails! I asked a woman once about the size of her list and she told me she had a big list of names built up from round robin emails. You know the type of email that your friends include you in and about 500 other friends! They send you a joke, or a video to watch or some other message and there with the email are a list of names and email addresses just waiting to be harvested! It was forwarded not only by your friend but by their friend before them and another friend before that. Sometimes emails are forward 6 or 7 times, each time with a huge list of names with each forward. The whole things is useless. If you use those names you are risking Spam complaints and you can lose your domain and/or hosting account. Not to mention the number of people that will reply and curse and insult you in their email!

List Building For Blog Owners Really Is Important

It is a well known and hugely researched fact that not everyone will buy something from you the minute they hit your blog and that people buy from those they know, like and trust. The best way to establish trust and to let people know that you are in fact not a scam artist but a professional is to provide them with an opportunity to download something free from you in return for their name/email address. You can create something yourself or use a PLR product - obviously your own work will provide more credibility.

Another piece of research that has proven results is the fact that it is easier to keep a customer who buys more and more from you than it is to keep finding new customers. For that reason alone it is worth having an opt in list because once you go through the work of finding people you can sell different products (as long as they are related) to the same market.

You might start with a free ebook on golf, before moving up to an ebook on how to improve your golf swing for $17, then you offer them access to a membership site that provides golf lessons via video (remember it could be your own site or you promote it as an affiliate) at $97 a month before finally offering private golf tuition or membership to a golf club. One customer could follow you all the way up buying over and over again.

That is the power of the opt-in list – never under estimate its importance.

About the Author

Jack Humphrey is the CEO of BlogSuccess.com, he is a pure blogger, has been teaching people how to make money with blogging since 2005 and has helped thousands of individuals and hundreds of small businesses succeed on the Internet. Join his free blogging community over at Blogsuccess.com TODAY!

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