How to Build a List of Subscribers

I have a great job. I teach people how to succeed in the Internet Marketing industry. One of the best ways to succeed is through the building of a targeted list.

I have lists for many different online endeavors. I have a list for my writers who want to learn about what Internet marketing is all about.

I have a list for my heart health consumers, a list for Squidoo users, a list for people who just want to know what all I'm up to, and so on.

The great thing about having a list is that if you treat them well, they respond favorably whenever you advise them to buy something from you - or through your affiliate links.

But that's the key so many marketers miss - treating their subscribers well. They use and abuse their list, so the numbers rise and fall as consumers opt in, feel they're not getting value for the tradeoff of handing over their contact information, and opt out disappointed.

In this Hub, I'll teach you how to build a list. But then I want you to treat it right and maximize the profit potential from it. I'm also going to give you a free gift - a report on autoresponders that I wrote for my own list who didn't know how to use them. You can download the autoresponder tutorial here. (It's a zip file, so once you download it, right click the file and unzip it and extract the contents to read the report).

You're asking people to fork over their name and email address. I don't know about you, but the last thing I need in my inbox is more spam!

Until your subscribers get to know you, they can't fully trust that you're not going to abuse their contact information. And let's just be honest here, a lot of marketers do spam their lists - shame on them!

So to ease their minds, you have to flash your cards right up front and prove to them that you're willing to provide value in exchange for this highly protected information.

What freebie will you give? It can be a short report (even a 5 page opt in report is good) or the promise of a weekly tip email, or access to a members' area.

If you're in a niche like the dog niche, and you want to promote everything from dog training to picking out your pet to show dogs, then you might have one broad freebie about the various breeds and what you know about them.

Don't give away too much information. If you give away everything, you won't have anything to sell and share!

I'm assuming you've downloaded and read the free report I gave away (no opt in required) in the first capsule. This will tell you how to set up your Aweber account.

Once that step is done, you're ready to spread the word about your offer and catch it on fire to make it go viral. The very first freebie I used was called The Multi-Layered Mindset of Web 2.0 Marketing and I posted it at TiffanyDow.com. My list is growing, but it's almost up to 4,000 subscribers right now.

If you calculate a 2% conversion rate of a $20 commission on a product, that means whenever I send out a product my list will find valuable and if they trust my judgment, I'll earn a payday of $1,600.

On the flip side, if I send out an email about my own product, like a $57 private label rights package, and i get that same conversion of 80 people, I make a payday of $4,560.

So it pays to build your numbers. By making your freebie go viral, you'll see a larger response rate each day. Just today 8 new people have opted into my list. Yesterday I added 14 people.

So back to the viral question. You want to create free, viral reports so that whenever people share them with others, they're chock full of links back to your site and offerings. Now when I say chock full, I don't mean every other word is hyperlinked. I mean about 1-2 per page (if that).

Make sure you state that it's okay, and even welcomed, for them to share this with others. I have had many marketers with lists of their own take my viral freebie and share it with their list, who then came to my site after seeing its value and opting into my list, too!

Viral marketing can also be done via video marketing. I've created lots of free, valuable how-to videos (primarly for Squidoo), and posted them on YouTube with my URL in the description and spoken on the video.

You can also contact marketers in the same niche and allow them to share your report with their list. They get to give their subscribers something of value and you get to build alist.

I originally made this video for product owners to discover how easy it was to create viral rebrandable reports for their affiliates. But you can use the exact same technique to let people give away a freebie to their list that ultimately helps generate traffic back to your own offers.

Forum marketing needs to be done on the sly. And I don't mean sneaky, just not blatant and in-your-face. It's not welcomed in forums.

Instead, have a link to your free offer right in your sig file if it's allowed.

If it's not, then see if there's a place in your forum profile where you can add it. If you participate and give good tips to the forum members, they'll naturally click your profile to learn more about you and they'll follow your links from there.

Be a regular participant, too. Build a reputation as a quality contributor and they'll want to get on your list to see what else you can do to enhance their lives.

Yes, you can build a list right from your Hub Pages account. In fact, any social site like Hub Pages or Squidoo can help you build a list. Hub Pages allows links, so link yourvisitors to your free offer!

Squidoo lets you hyperlink images, so if you make a screen shot of your opt in box, you can hyperlink it to your squeeze page. You can see how I've done this on my lens at http://www.squidoo.com/informationentrepreneur.

Go there and click on my opt in box and see what happens. You don't have to opt in once you get there, but you can if you want to! You can do the same thing on MySpace - build a list from the peer network who begins valuing your opinion and advice!

You can't hyperlink your opt in form on Hub Pages, but you can do it via text link. And with my own personal experience, I've found that text links convert better than images anyway!

Make sure everything you do has list building in mind. It's no joke that "the gold is in the list." And you'd better have some gold of your own to share, too.

Make sure you link to your opt in page with everything you give away. Create viral experiences your niche will want to share with others due to the sheer value in it. And give back - far more than you take from your customers.

What have I given to or shared with my customers for free this year? Let's look at a couple I sent out as example:

1.) A link to a public domain image site where my subscribers can get images to use in their online marketing efforts for free.

2.) A free hyperlink creator. You type in the URL, type in the text, click a button and it builds your HTML code for you and copies it to your clipboard. Love it!

I think both of these are great resources. Sometimes, it's just a free tip I share. Other times, it's a tool, like my free keyword tool at http://www.tiffanydow.com/merrychristmas - I love it, too! It's called Keyword Dig.

So start building today, keep building tomorrow, and never quit building your list if you want to achieve the ultimate online success. No, I'm no guru with over 10,000 subscribers yet. But I do have people joining on a daily basis, and I form close relationships with my list.

They email me. I answer. Be good to your list and they'll be good to you!