Your websites are going to be one of the primary places where you build a list. Whether these are website you own or web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo, Hubpages etc doesn’t matter.
Every website you create needs to be focused on building a list. Every webpage you own should have a method for the visitor to subscribe to your list.
This means that no matter where someone enters your web empire, there is a way for them to get on a list so you can market to them.
It takes effort to get someone to your website and once they have come to your website there is a high degree of probability that they won’t come back again. Therefore, if you can capture their email address you can market to them at your leisure.
Every niche market you are in really needs to have a separate autoresponder list. For example, you would have separate lists for stop smoking, parrot keeping, potty training a child and keeping fish.
You may have a generic list for a broad niche, e.g. health tips or Internet marketing, though this can be problematically in some cases.
This separation of lists allows you to focus your marketing efforts. Each list gets sent offers that are of interest to them and because they are a tightly focused list you get a high conversion rate. For example, you send your fish keeping list information about keeping fish and your stop smoking list information and products about stopping smoking.
The generic list tends to be a bit broad for a high conversion rate. Health, for example, is very broad and some of your list may want to know about fitness, some about dieting, some about vitamins. Unless you have segmented your list into the different niches, how do you know which people are interested in which subjects?
This segmentation means people are only seeing offers that they are interested in and so you are more likely to make sales.
You can increase your opt in rate to your list by offering a gift for people to sign up. This may be a free report, a course via email or other product of value to your potential subscriber. This will encourage them to part with their email address and give you a chance to build a relationship with them by proving you provide quality information.
Make sure you don’t give away the farm with this though as if you give too much away, there is no need for them to buy your product.
The product you give away to your new subscribers should focus either on selling the product they were interested or on providing valuable information with links to either your other products or to affiliate products.
By doing this, you are effectively earning regardless of whether they return to your website or not. So long as they read the report and click on links you can earn from it.
Once you have traffic to your website, you need to experiment with different text on your subscribe form, pop ups / hover ads coming in at different times and different gifts to see which gets the highest response rate from your readers. Testing like this will ensure you maximize your sign up rate.
When you are selling a product you need to have two different lists. The first is for your prospective customers; the people who come to your website and just give you their email address in return for information.
The second is for your customers who have bought.
When someone buys the product they need to be removed from the pre-sales list to ensure they don’t get confused with the wrong sales messages.
This separation allows you to focus your marketing to each segment of your list. The pre-sales subscribers are sold your product and the occasional affiliate program. The customers are sold your backend products and other affiliate products.
Working like this will maximize your profits because you are able to target your marketing specifically to your list. If your customers get messages selling them the product they have already bought, it’s going to confuse them!
Make sure any autoresponder you pick allows for this level of automation as it will make a huge difference in your earnings and in how professional you are perceived by your subscribers.