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Your goal with this report is to complete the tasks, in order, so you will have the mechanism in place to automatically capture subscribers to your list and start sending them your email messages.

After getting your list up and running, you’ll then use the techniques in the last part of the report to learn more advanced list building techniques.

I was always told to begin something with the end in mind. With that thought, we are going to skip the mechanics of the list building process until we create some of the things that will be needed to plug into the "nuts and bolts" of list building.

And I briefly want to mention that this course is written from the concept that your web site makes an offer, or perhaps even many offers. The concepts are the same whether you are selling a report from a one page sales letter, or have a mega-store with loads of physical merchandise. If you don’t have a web site set up to sell something, you can still benefit from this course. It works well if you are an affiliate seller, and later in the course you will learn to make a simple web page to get list subscribers interested in being on your list.

This Quick Start List Building course is not "about list building." IT IS "LIST BUILDING" (emphasis intended!) Each lesson has tasks you must complete and step-by-step actions you must take in order to get results from the lesson and be ready for the next one.

If you do a lesson a day, and your web site gets decent traffic, by the fifth day you should be getting subscribers!

If you haven’t got the time right now to do the lessons in daily steps, take this course at your own pace, complete each lesson, and then move on to the next. Doing all the steps is more important than how fast you do them!

In list building, as in many things, nothing happens without action. You are about to learn how to take intelligent action.

Today I want to ask you to think about what your goal for your list is. I know you want to make money. :-) But what else do you want from it? In short, you need a mission statement, which we’ll call a "List Mission."

I also want you to think about what differentiates your web site offer, and thus your list, from the rest of the crowd. Write down three key things that you can do for your list. Think about it from a potential subscriber’s viewpoint. We’ll call these your "List Keystones." They must tie directly into your "List Mission."

I also want you to think about something valuable you can give to your potential subscriber as a gift to them for subscribing. This something, which we’ll call a "list gift" from now on, is an offer of something of value (to them) in exchange for their contact information. It must tie in to the three key things you can do for your list, your "list keystones", which means it also must tie in with your "list mission."

People get stuck on the list mission. But really there can be many right answers. Some could include:

• to become recognized as an expert in my niche
• to help my subscribers stay informed about my niche
• to give them truth and value so they are loyal

Having a list mission is necessary for your long-term success. Your web site and the offer on it have must have focus to be successful. So must your list. Your list mission is the framework. Every message you send to your list should fit into that framework.

The answers to the second question, the three list keystones, are what we are going to use to construct your list "offer." Yes, you actually have to make an offer to get more than just a trickle of new subscribers to your list!

Make these list keystones the most important things you have to offer your list, from the subscriber’s point of view, not yours. Put the items in order of importance. Can’t think of three? One is enough IF you can list at least three BENEFITS to go along with it.

And that’s part two of the list keystones. Make sure that each of your three list keystones have a benefit for the subscriber. Write out what these benefits are. Make sure every message you send to your list fulfills the promise and benefit of at least one of the list keystones.

Now comes your "list gift." Remember we are going to give our subscribers a "free something" in order to ethically bribe them to join our list. In the real world, good salespeople are able to follow up after face to face contact. They get the follow up information simply by asking.

In the virtual world, we have to do things differently. We have to give the potential subscriber an incentive for them to give us their contact information. In the course, we call it the "list gift."

This "list gift" has to be something that subscribers will instantly recognize as desirable AND valuable. From your potential subscribers point of view, what would entice the most people to take action and put their name and email address in the subscribe box at your web site?

If you have an info-product, the list gift could be an excerpt. If you sell software it can be limited use freeware. If you have merchandise it can be a special subscribers only discount, coupon, or offer of free shipping. The possibilities are endless. Just make sure of one thing. Your list gift must be targeted to your market AND have quantifiable REAL VALUE to your subscriber. In other words, can you put a dollar sign on what you are going to give them?

Markets differ but I have found that perceived value of my ‘list gifts’ generally has to be $10 or more to entice subscribers. The correct value for this differs from market to market, and is something you will learn over time by testing and tracking. Evaluate what will make the best ‘list gift’ to get potential subscribers motivated enough to take action. Do this from your potential list subscriber’s point of view, not your own.

This is the pop quiz :-) You’re not done until you fill this out.

1. My mission statement is:

2. My three list keystones are …………………………benefits are

1.

2.

3.

3. My "list gift" will be:

In this first lesson you’ve learned the basic concepts you need to provide focus for your list, to provide valuable content that benefits your list in some way, and to give them something of value to get them on your list.

In the next lesson you are going to create your first list message and create the basic mechanism for getting subscribers to your list.

In lesson 1 you created a mission statement, made your list of "list keystones" and associated benefits, and chose a "list gift." Today you will set up the mechanism for delivery of your list email messages, get familiar with it, and write your first list message.

Today’s lesson is the only time in the Quick Start List Building course you will need to spend money. That is for a hosted autoresponder account. As with ISPs, web hosting, and other Internet services, there is not a good free service for the mechanism of email list hosting and message delivery.

But the good news is that the best professional service for this costs only $19.95 a month.

This mechanism for communicating with our list is called an autoresponder. More specifically it is a sequential autoresponder, list database, and email broadcaster all rolled into one list building animal.

There are other, just slightly cheaper services that offer autoresponder services. Been there, done that, got the T shirt, but that’s about it. I made the move to Aweber, as have many of my savvy business associates who gave up on more expensive services that couldn’t get their list messages delivered as well as Aweber. I don’t know anyone who has moved permanently back to their old autoresponder service after using Aweber. Enough said, just go with the best.

Repeat. Go there and sign up for the service. That’s the only sales message you get in the entire course. Don’t make the mistake I made when I started building lists. I used a cheaper service and got frustrated with it for many reasons. I ended up at Aweber and have never looked back. Now I never have to worry about the list fulfillment part of my business. If you ever have a problem you can call them on the phone and talk to a human being. I’ve never had to do that.

If you just absolutely must go with a different service, or are already with one, you will have to modify the steps below to fit your particular autoresponder’s control panel.

After going through the sign up and then the confirmation process at Aweber, login to your account. You’ll see your default list name.

In your Aweber control panel, go to "List Settings."

Change the default List Name you were given to the email address name at aweber you want for your list. Choose something that relates to your overall list mission and web site. For example, the List Name email we chose for this course is kickstartlist.

Fill in the rest of the page, but don’t worry about the "logo URL" and the "divider html" fields for now. Make sure you use a valid email address at the bottom and check both boxes for it. HIT SAVE!

If you get stuck on any of this, there are videos in the Aweber Help menu. Also a lot of your questions will be answered in the Knowledge Base section of Aweber Help. Or you can always call them on the toll free help line.

Staying in the "List Settings" menu, click on "verified optin." Select one of the pre-filled subject lines. You can add a short sentence identifying your list so your subscriber can relate this confirmation email back to you. Hit the SAVE button.

Don’t make the mistake of wanting your verification email customized. This will take some time and delay the rest of your progress. If you absolutely must customize this message, do it later, after your system is up and running.

Next, still in List Settings, go to the Global fields menu. You’ll see your "signature" and contact address. In your signature put your customary sign off, and your web site address. Make sure your contact address is correct. Once again hit SAVE.

Now go to the Messages menu. Edit your first message to a "test" message. Just put the word "test" into the subject and the "plain text message" box and save the message. You’ll see a "test" link after you save the message. Click this and you will get a popup that asks you for a name and email for a test message. Put your name and email address in and send it to yourself.

Now go to your email account and read the message.

Congratulations, now you know how to put in your autoresponder messages!

Get in the habit of testing all your messages before sending them. It prevents embarrassing mistakes that make you look unprofessional.

From now on I suggest writing your messages in Notepad, or whatever TEXT editor (not a word processor) you like. For now, we will only be using the plain text messages in Aweber. Be aware that there are features in html messages that are unavailable with plain text messages. And by the way, you can send both types at once, your subscribers’ email programs will load the proper one.

Writing your messages outside Aweber prevents losing lots of work when your ISP hiccups, your power sags, you get the blue screen of death, or whatever else Murphy sends your way. Because he will.

Are we having fun yet? That’s enough for this lesson. Pretty easy now that you’ve done it? And there’s no quiz:-) But there is an assignment. Write a short welcome message to your list. Write it with your list mission, your list keystones, in mind. Tell your subscribers what’s ahead and tell them how they can get their "list gift." If you’re stuck on that last one, just write some filler about it. We will "unstick" you in the next lesson.

In lesson 3 we write!

In lesson 1, we created the mental framework for your list. In lesson 2, we created the physical framework for it and wrote your welcome message. In this lesson you are going to write two more messages and load them into your Aweber messages section.

You have already written your welcome message, haven’t you? It was your assignment from the last lesson. If you haven’t written it yet, don’t sweat it, you can write it today.

We have a goal today. When you finish today’s lesson you will have three messages preloaded in your Aweber autoresponder sequence, ready for your subscribers.

Does it seem we are doing things backwards? You may wonder why we are writing messages before we have a way for our subscribers to subscribe. The answer is that once they subscribe and confirm, your first message is sent instantly. So you want to have the messages there. If something prevents you writing messages for a few days, you want to be comfortably ahead of your message delivery schedule.

Your list gift is ready, isn’t it? If you are stuck on this, consider the following possibilities:

mini course via email,

pdf download,

discount for expensive product,

free product,

subscriber only coupon,

free subscriber only notice of exclusive sales and discounts,

audio download,

video download.

If you have an info product you can summarize it and offer the bare bones as a mini course. This is a fast way to get started on your email messages also, as the content of your first several messages will be the mini course itself.

If you have a physical product you can offer it free, or free with a small charge for shipping, give subscribers a coupon, a twofer, whatever works in your market.

If you have a downloadable software you can offer a limited version of it.

If you have a technical product or are a service provider, you can offer a "white paper" on your product or service. This is just another name for a mini course. But it sounds more professional, and for B2B markets it is a good buzzword.

For most, I suggest the mini-course or white paper approach. If you have a physical product or a store, then a subscriber only time limited discount, freebie, or coupon is probably the way to go.

If the concept of giving something away to get subscribers to your list bothers you, think about this: Selling in the real world, you would see your prospects face to face. It is part of the sales process to ask them for follow up information.

The best way that we have found in the virtual world to get their follow up information is to ethically bribe them for their name and email address. Give them something good, of real measurable value, that they would want to have. At first, they are going to judge the value of being on your list by what you give them. Only later will you be able to become a "trusted source." You do that by continuing to provide great information to them.

Here’s something very important that many get wrong. Give them their list gift AFTER they have confirmed their email subscription. Their gift should be delivered in the first scheduled message, which, by default, is sent immediately after their confirmation. Many times I see the gift given on a thank you page at the web site, accessible just after they enter their name and email address. Don’t do this.

They get their gift without confirming their subscription if you do it this way. And odds are they will never confirm.

This "list gift" itself can solve most of the problem of what to write for your first autoresponder message. Resell the gift a bit, tell them again how to get it, mention how they got on your list, tell them about all the great stuff you have planned for them, and what’s coming next. Let them know how often you will mail them, and let them know WHO the email is coming from so they can filter or whitelist it to their inbox.

ALWAYS tell them what’s coming in the next "regular" message. I say regular because you may send a broadcast to your list in the meantime. Make it a teaser so they will want to open your next email. If you don’t know right now what it is going to be, just add "watch out for the next installment in x days."

You can go back and edit your previous messages once you know what’s in the next message.

Now on to writing. Ugh. Many of you don’t like to write.

Do you like to write?

One simple way around this is to tape record your messages. Have someone type and edit them for you.

Or have the entire message creation done for you by a freelancer at eLance or some other like site.

Or get private label content and re-write it.

If you are doing a mini-course the easiest way is to just copy and paste excerpts from your info product into your mini-course. Don’t give it all away, save the real goodies to motivate buying.

Things to remember:

Always write your messages in a text editor like notepad and save them. Then copy and paste them into your Aweber message section.

You need to stay comfortably ahead of your message schedule. I suggest always being at least two to four messages ahead at first.

Your autoresponder messages aren’t etched in stone. You can edit any of them at any time.

Final tip for this little section: always use the personalization feature of your Aweber message editor to add the first name of your reader to both the subject line, and to a few key places in the message text. For me it is easiest to do this after I paste the message into the Aweber message editor and save it once.

Then I use the Aweber message editor to place the personalization where it belongs. This prevents my mis-typing the token for that function in notepad. I am a crummy typist!

If writing a mini course, see below, but this section is worth a read for the simple technique of how to start an article to get the reader’s interest.

If you don’t know how to start your message, use one of the best ad writing methods: tell a story.

Once upon a time is a magic opening. We are all conditioned to pay attention when we see or hear that opening line. It may sound corny, but it works.

Put these four words:

Once upon a time...

in your text editor, and then just write it. And write it like you were telling it to a friend. Imagine a person sitting across from you in a restaurant booth. Write the story like you would tell it to them. Imagine the conversation, and just write it.

For your first messages, keep it short and sweet. Give good information that will keep your subscriber’s interest. At the end of the message, let them know they’ll be getting another message, and when. Tease them a bit with the next message subject line to condition them to look for it.

To get your email messages opened you are going to need a good subject line, one that will hook your reader and make them want to read more. The "once upon a time" works well. For the time being, don’t try to be the world’s greatest copywriter. Write as if writing a letter to a friend, or telling them a story face to face. Be natural. Be yourself.

If once upon a time won’t work, fall back to the journalism basics:

who, how, what, why, when, where

They all work well. Start your subject line with one, like these examples:

Who was this guy to tell me he made $500,000 from home?

How could you make $500,000 from home like this guy?

What exactly did this guy do to make $500,000 from home?

Why didn’t I learn how to make $500,000 from home like this guy does?

When are you going to learn to make $500,000 from home like this guy does?

Where did I find out how to make $500,000 from home?

All simple who, how, what, why, why, when, where, questions that you can apply to almost any product in any market. There is no such exact $500,000 product of course. I made it up on the spot, and wrote those subject lines in a minute, all from who, how, what, why, when, and where.

Your message text:

Leave out the sales pitch for now. That’s right, no selling yet. We start the relationship by telling, not selling. We are going to put "money links" in the Aweber signature field. Your first messages will have only these as "money links." Those who are ready to buy will find them.

For example, using our example headlines above, we tell a story about how we discovered this $500,000 guy; about how we procrastinated buying the $500,000 information; then after we bought and read it how we procrastinated doing what he said; but when one day we finally put his plan into action, we started making money. We close with something like, "If this sounds like something that could work for you, see the link below."

In your signature file there is text that says:

"Here’s where to find more info on the $500,000 guy."

And you put a link to the product right below that text. If you don’t want to put it in your signature file permanently, just put it as the last paragraph in your message text.

So here are the guidelines for the first two messages:

once upon a time

who how what why when where

tell don’t sell

short and simple

money links in signature only, or at bottom of message

You can offer the mini course as an email series, or as a one time download. Your email series doesn’t have to deliver the lesson. The emails can point the reader to a post on a blog or a page on your web site. If doing a download, make the download in a universal format. For the written word make it a pdf. For audios use MP3. For videos use Flash. How to do all this is beyond the scope of this course, but specifics are covered later in the ListBuild List follow up messages you will get to this mini course. If you need to find more about "how to" then just go to the b4a.net web resources page at

and check the links for free pdf programs, or web site audio and video.

I prefer the email series for a mini course. It conditions people to receiving email from you, it builds your "authority" status almost immediately, and it solves the problem of what to write in your first messages!

The message spacing of your mini course should be no more than three days apart. Use two days as a default. If you think this is too often for your market, then try three days. In some markets you can get away with every day.

You can set your email minicourse up two ways in your Aweber control panel.

1. Your minicourse prefaces all other messages.

If so, you need only one list.

2. Your minicourse is on a different listname, and subscribers are automatically subscribed to the mini

course list when they get on your main list, or vice versa. There is a delay in the dual subscribe process, so if you want the mini course lesson to go out first, make the regular list the one automatically subscribed to, and point your subscription boxes to the mini-course listname.

1 is simplest. 2 opens more possibilities, and lets you change things. Running your course on a different list allows you to stop using the email course if you change list gifts. It also gives you two lists, and there is the possibility people might unsubscribe from one list but stay on the other.

If you add the mini course messages as a separate list, you use the list automation feature of the Aweber control panel to put subscribers on both lists simultaneously. After the mini course is over, those messages stop. But your main list messages continue.

Because your mini course is so content oriented, as a natural process of the content you can sneak some "money links" to resources in the message body, especially after the first couple of messages. Just a word of caution if putting resource links into your message body. Don’t make your mini course a pitch fest. Use money links only as a way to expand the reader’s knowledge and abilities, tied directly to the subject at hand. A list is a long term asset, so treat your new subscribers well, and most will stay with you.

So with all this in mind, take action, rewrite or write your welcome message and the next two autoresponder messages. Paste them into your Aweber message editor, save them, and test.

That is the assignment for this lesson, and you must get it done before you continue, because in the next lesson, we are going to be getting subscribers. You’ve got to have something to send them, loaded and ready to go in your autoresponder sequence!

That’s it for today’s lesson. I know it was a long one. In the next one you’ll learn how to put a subscribe form on your website. It will be a shorter lesson, I promise, and if your site gets traffic, you could have subscribers almost immediately.

In lesson 1, you created the mental framework for your list. In lesson 2, you created the physical framework for it and wrote your welcome message. In lesson 3 you wrote two more messages and put them in your message sequence.

Now it is time to create the mechanism that will get subscribers for you! You will need to know how to paste a bit of code into the source view of your html editor. If this is Geek er Greek to you then get whoever does your web site to do it for you.

If your web site gets some traffic, it is entirely possible you will start getting subscribers later today! You just have to do this lesson.

At the main menu page, click on "Leads." Click on the "web form generator" button. A page appears that will actually let you design almost any type of subscriber form.

Click on "design new web form." Pick the "inline" type. It is usually preselected. Give your form a name.

You can use this form to design an entire page, but for now, we are only concerned with a subscriber box. Just use the default settings for the form, enter your "list gift" sales pitch, which can go something like this:

Subscribe now to The Mighty Widget News and get a free Mini Widget! You’ll also get updates on all the Widget news sent right to your inbox. Just enter your first name and email address below and click the button.

For a mini course it could go like this:

Learn the exclusive secrets that only the power Mighty Widget users know! Our five part Mighty Widget course will have you widgeting with the big boys in less than a week!

Then of course you have to deliver on the promise :-)

Two things to mention here, add a "no spam" disclaimer, and a statement that their email will never be sold traded etc. You’ve seen these statements all over the web. The best place to add them is in your web site source, so they are under the box, and only positive statements appear before the subscribe form.

Also, most forms on the web seem to want the name first, then the email. Aweber’s form is backwards for this, but just use the arrows to relocate them before saving the form.

Change the ‘submit" text in the submit button caption to something less generic and something that encourages action: get your free course now, claim your instant access, free access now, are some examples. You can do this later if you like, as you can edit this form any time and have the edited form be displayed on your web site WITHOUT making any changes to your web site source code. This is very handy!

The form generator includes a generic "Thank You" page that subscribers are taken to after they click the submit button. For now, use this generic thank you page. A later lesson will cover custom "thank you" pages.

You might want to build your future web sites pre-loaded with the subscribe box sales pitch and disclaimer in your web source code. You can do this by leaving an empty paragraph between the subscribe box copy and the no spam disclaimer for the subscribe box.

Then just get the inline Aweber form with only the name, email address, and submit button. This makes adding a form to the perfect place on your web pages a piece of cake.

When you are satisfied with your form content, save it. You can preview it as much as you like, but it may look just a tad different on your web site. You will see a link on the saved form that says "get html." Click this link, highlight the first short version, the javascript one, and copy and paste into a new notepad file.

Now open the html editor your site is in. Open the index page of your site, and find a PROMINENT place to put your subscribe box. It should be in the first screen of your page. For an example of a good location see

This is super-affiliate Rosalind Gardner’s dating site. Learn from the best, and place your subscription box where it can be seen! You do want subscribers don’t you?

Notice also that Rosalind offers her web site visitors an incentive for subscribing.

OK, back to the task at hand. In your WYSIWYG view in your html editor, find the place on your web page that you want to insert your subscribe box. You might want to insert a table for your subscribe box in that location. You might not. That depends on your page.

Now the easy way to do this. In your html editor’s WYSIWYG view, put your cursor on the exact spot on the page that you want to place your subscribe box.

Switch to "source" view. The cursor should be in that same exact spot. If not, find the right place and put it there.

Now simply copy and paste the javascript code snippet you already saved in notepad to this spot in the source view. Save the page. View it to make sure it looks ok. If you mess up your html editor most likely has an undo feature.

When the page and form look right together, upload your revised page to your web site. After you have uploaded the page, open your browser and go to the page and sign up for your own list. Make sure you do this, so you can see what your subscribers are getting. You can catch a lot of errors this way, and fix them!

It also gives you a painless way to save an archive of your messages for later recycling and rewriting.

Congratulations, You’re now in the List Building business! If your site gets some traffic you might have subscribers very quickly. That’s why we got our first three messages preloaded.

That’s it for this lesson. It probably took less time to do than to read. In the next lesson you’ll learn some free ways to add additional subscribers.

Here’s one to do today.

Put a link to the web page that has your subscription form in your regular email account’s signature file or function. This simple thing gets me subscribers, site visitors, and sales continuously with no extra effort and no extra cost.

This is lesson 5 of your Quick Start List Building course. In Lesson 1, you created the mental framework for your list. In Lesson 2, you created the physical framework for it and wrote your welcome message. In Lesson 3 you wrote two more messages and put them in your message sequence. Lesson 4 taught you how to create the mechanism to get your subscribers’ signed up to your list.

Today we are going to learn free ways to get targeted list subscribers and fill your autoresponder with messages.

Before you take any of the actions in this lesson, you should have at least three messages loaded into your Aweber account. These are your welcome message and first two autoresponder sequence messages. Doing these tasks was part of Lesson 2 and all of Lesson 3. You’ve got to have those messages ready to go, otherwise you’re not going to have anything ready for all those new free subscribers you are going to get!

If you didn’t do this at the end of Lesson 4, now is the time! The first place you want to set up a link to your subscribe box is in your regular email account’s "signature." This is easily accomplished whoever your email provider is. Just search the email account or program’s help section for the term "signature."

Then, type in the full html link to your web page that has your list subscribe box. Use the complete path, not just the domain name or part of it. Now there is a link to your subscribe box on every outgoing email you send.

And it goes without saying that you should have a link for your subscribe form in the signature of your Aweber messages. Also a simple statement to encourage forwarding of your messages to others. And tell them how to sign up if they got your message forwarded from a friend or associate.

More than likely there are newsgroups, forums, or discussion lists for whatever your web site and list focus is. You may already be a forum or discussion list / newsgroup member for the general topic. If so great. If not, immediately find a well-trafficked discussion forum for your topic. You can easily do this with a Google search for X discussion, X newsgroup, X forum, where X is your topic.

Spend some time reading through the posts for whatever forum or group that seems most "on topic" for potential members of your list. If you can find some posts that you can respond to intelligently, then join the forum, set up your forum signature file to link to your subscribe page, and post away.

Forums all differ according to topic, moderators, and members, but a few general hints apply to all. Make sure you have something to add to the topic. Don’t just post to be posting a link for your list. Many forum members will consider this forum spam and will call you on it. Your posts could even be deleted. That’s not a good way to start.

Also avoid posting a new topic that will be seen as just a hit and run attempt for hits to your web site and/or list subscribe box. Let forum members get to know you by starting with a helpful response to already made queries. Once you are known in the forum you can expand your posting.

There are many ways to make forums work for you in your online endeavors. In this short course we don’t have room for all of the ins and outs of forums.

Remember the key points. Don’t post just to put your link in the forum. Contribute. Once again, you must "give to get." Be helpful, courteous, and respectful. If someone flames you, ignore it. Becoming involved in contentious topics brands you as a trouble maker instead of a resource. You want to become known as a trusted resource to the forum members, not as "Joe Ego."

Because there are so many ways forum posting can help grow your business, I have a gratis download for you of a forum guide at

You’ll need Winzip to unzip the file and it is an exe file only viewable on the PC. Not only can you read this book, you also have resell rights to it.

The above two ways are the quickest no cost methods to get subscribers for your list. Now a long term way, not quick, but extremely effective.

Around the Internet there are sites that warehouse articles. Some of these article sites have thousands of articles available on their sites. By writing articles about your topic, you can submit them to these sites too. And if you are writing messages to your list, you can use these same messages - you may have to modify them a bit - to submit to these article sites. More of the nuts and bolts details for article writing will come to you in a later lesson. This is just a heads up to make you aware that those details will be coming. For now, concentrate on getting enough messages loaded into your Aweber autoresponder sequence. Later you will learn how to use these messages as the basis for article writing.

For now, in this short course, you need to get your message writing done. If you stay comfortably ahead of your messages, you can then concentrate on the additional ways you will learn to attract more subscribers to your list.

So here is the to-do for this lesson: Write enough email messages to fill your autoresponder message sequence out three weeks. You’ve already done three messages, which is a week’s worth of regular messages, unless you are doing a mini-course, in which case it is probably 5 days worth.

So for most, four more messages need to go into the hopper. If you are on a twice a week mailing schedule, you’ll have three weeks ready to go. You can then continue that schedule, or fall back to a weekly schedule.

Mini-course people, your assignment is to complete your mini-course. Probably you’ll want to add a follow up message two or three days after the course is over. So for example, if you have a five lesson course that runs every other day, you’ll have a mini course follow up written for the same interval, two days, or perhaps with an extra day’s delay. Then start your regular marketing and content messages, and get your autoresponder stocked out to three weeks worth of messages, including the course.

Arrange your message interval so that an important message gets sent to your subscribers on every seven day anniversary of their joining your list. You can play with your message intervals to make sure this happens by the end of week two. Then say you want to contact them automatically twice a week after that for a while, you just set your intervals to 3,4,3,4. Then you can go to 7 day intervals after that. This is an old trick that is based on the fact that the original day your subscriber joined will probably continue to be a good day to contact them. If you get your most important marketing message to them at 7 day intervals from their original subscribe, they are more likely to be able to read it.

Today’s tasks are to put a link to your subscribe form in your signature files. Also do some forum posting, with your subscribe form link in your forum signatures.

Then make sure you have written enough autoresponder messages to fill your sequence out to the end of the third week.

Have you heard of a squeeze page?

Most marketers credit this term to email marketing whiz Jonathan Mizel. Maybe you watched his videos that were a bonus with your Aweber account.

The squeeze page is also known as an optin page. Alex Mandossian calls it a "shy yes" page. Some just call them landing pages. We’ll call it an optin page from now on.

What an optin page does is make a simple request of the page visitor. It asks for their name and email address. It serves no other function than to get this information. Of course you will most likely have to give them something to get this.

In essence, it’s a mini-sales page for your newsletter. As such it has a headline, a list of benefits, your "list gift" - some call this an ethical bribe - and a subscribe form.

THAT IS ALL.

Repeat. That is all that is on the page. No outbound links. Yes that includes Adsense. Especially no Adsense!

Potential subscribers have two choices. Subscribe or leave. Now I can hear the objections already. What if they don’t subscribe? They’ll never get to my sales or product page!

Ah, in your Aweber control panel you can generate an "exit pop." If they fill out the subscribe form they then go wherever you want to take them. If instead they hit the back arrow, an exit pop can be your subscribe html inserted in your exit pop. Or how about a simple redirect to your product page or a related affiliate program?

That way you have a chance to make some money from the people who don’t subscribe. If they change their minds and buy from your product page, now they’re on your customer list. If you instead send them to a related affiliate page, you still may make some money.

Granted, in sending them to an affiliate web site, they never get on your list. That’s the bad news. The good news is that if they truly were targeted traffic you stand a good chance - essentially the conversion rate of the affiliate page - of making money from them anyway.

So there’s a way to monetize even the people who don’t join your list. For those people who do join, the next lesson will show you ways to monetize them immediately. But a warning in advance for that. Some lists do not respond well to this.

I am showing you this technique because you get another shot at the person who already said no. Since they already blew off your offer, who are you offending?

People who say yes to your optin are another story, and in the next lesson we tell that story. In the meantime.....

Making an optin page is easy if you have your list mission, your list keystones and benefits, and your list bribe handy.

In your html editor open a new page. Give it a color background. Dark blue usually works. In that page, insert a fixed width table. I often use 700 pixels. You can make this table a percentage, but people with large monitors end up seeing a huge page thatis less effective.

Now insert your headline, your keystones as bullet points, the bit about your "list gift" or ethical bribe, and the subscribe form. Get it looking good, save, and you’re done.

Here is a mini catalog of effective optin and landing pages:

Note how the last page is a sales page but has a subtle unblockable popup that offers the reader a free valuable report in exchange for their name and email address. The three straight optin pages will give you a feel for what an effective optin page design is. The fourth page, while a sales page and not a straight optin page, still has a very effective optin call to action.

You may want to put a different Aweber subscribe form on your optin page than on your main website pages. There are many "it depends" for this, so use your own judgement for that.

Also around the web you’ll see many audio links on optin pages. This is a great idea IF you know how to do it, you have a good voice, and have good audio copy. But unless all that applies, leave audio off your optin page for now.

While not every one will subscribe at your optin page, those that do will be targeted subscribers, the kind more likely to stay with you and respond to your offers.

Some types of web offers do not do well with the optin page. While I think there are few cases where this is actually true, it may take some creativity to get a working optin page if you are a web retailer or the like.

But in this case there is a type of optin page called a reverse optin that may work for you. Essentially you work your optin page into the customer browsing, with offer of an immediate incentive if they subscribe to your list. This is done by counting the number of pages they browse, and then taking them to your optin page at a certain point.

In this type of page, you do have to let them keep browsing if they don’t optin. So there should be an easy way to let them out of the page. Details on this type of page will be forthcoming in the ListBuild List member emails.

So your assignment today is to make your optin page, and upload it to your web site. Go back to the forums where you post. Change your signature link to that optin page, or add it if you can have more than one link.

Add the optin link to your Aweber and regular email signatures.

Take the time to design a proper optin page now. It will pay off for the long run. And don’t worry if it is not perfect the first try. Get it up and fix it as you go. As a general rule, better optin pages are shorter rather than longer, and have very little text other than heads, subheads, and bullet points.

With the list mission, keystones, and list gift you learned way back in lesson one, the content for your optin page is almost automatic.

If you are still mystified by optin pages, here are a couple of resources to help you make effective optin pages.

In the next and lesson we will delve into ‘the back end." No it’s not anything kinky!

I hope you are using the Quick Start List Building course and have gotten your list up and running.

A few lessons ago I made a promise that the only sales pitch in this course would be for the Aweber autoresponder service. I hope that you have learned from this course that you don’t have to buy a bunch of books about email list building to actually start building a profitable email list.

Of course there is always something to learn, and I don’t claim to know it all. So in the last lesson you were shown a couple of low dollar, high value resources to enhance your list building efforts. In the Listbuild List member emails you will get recommendations for products and services that I have found to be useful and well worth the investment.

In today’s lesson, you are going to learn about how to handle your list when a prospect becomes a customer. Also you’ll find out ways you can further enhance your sign up process and qualify your prospects when they subscribe by making a custom "Thank You" page.

First, the Custom "Thank You" Page.

Your Aweber form generator allows you to specify your own thank you page that subscribers go to after they hit the submit button in your subscribe form.

You can do a lot with "thank you" pages. But the basics first. The thank you page should remind your subscribers that they will need to confirm, give basic whitelist instructions, and remind them of their "list gift" bonus to prod them along the confirmation process.

Make sure you put a big link to your sales page, home page, or a related affiliate program at the bottom of the thank you page. In some cases you can forego the thank you page and send them directly to your sales page or home page from the Aweber form.

Remember, you can always go to your saved javascript Aweber form and edit it. So you can change the thank you page destination at any time for your saved form. When you edit the form, and then save it, your changes take place almost immediately.

Then the changes you make to the form in your Aweber control panel will automatically apply to the subscribe forms already on your web sites. But remember this only works with the Javascript code. Very handy!

So how do you handle list prospects who become customers?

With kid gloves of course. They have voted to spend their money with you. You’ll need to make a special thank you page for them.

In your Aweber control panel, under the List Settings tab, is a section called List Automation. You can use this feature and a short thank you landing page in your

sales process to remove a prospect from a prospect list and onto a customer list. You’ll have to create the customer list of course in your Aweber control panel.

The List Automation feature automatically will unsubscribe a list member from one autoresponder series when they subscribe to another. So for example, if your prospect list is widgetprospects and your customer list is widgetbuyers, then when your customer is subscribed to the widgetbuyers directly after they purchase, they will be unsubscribed from widgetprospects at the same time.

You do this by making the first landing page, after their payment is confirmed, a contact capture page – just another Aweber subscribe form. There you ask them to register the product, be informed of new releases of the product, great deals like the one they just got, etc. Of course the nature of your product determines how to set this up. Then send the customer on to the download page, or a big thank you and shipping information page if it is a physical product.

It isn’t mandatory to do this, but you really don’t want your customer getting continued sales pitches for your widget, do you? The alternative is to take them off manually.

Your customer list is your "A" list. Treat them well. Send gifts, customer only discounts, whatever you can think of to keep them buying from you. Which brings us to the backend. No it is not what you are thinking…..

When a person buys from you, he’s more likely to buy from you again. So you should have related products at different price points to sell your customer. They have already bought from you. You are now elevated from just trusted information source to trusted product source.

And now you have another very profitable sub-list to have some prewritten autoresponder messages for. And guess what, you already know how to do this.

Your customer list should be the most valuable asset you develop. You should earn more money from your customer list then you’ll ever make from front end sales alone. Don’t get so caught up in getting new customers that you forget about those more valuable customers, the ones that already bought from you.

Plan an ongoing campaign for your customers. If it is something that would appeal to both customers and prospects, put it in both autoresponder sequences. Or if it is something that can be broadcast to both lists this is easily done in your Aweber control panel.

Now there are many more techniques for the back end of your sales process. We’ve only scratched the surface. But this is the quick course. Just be watching for your ListBuild List member messages for more on the back end.

Now you should have the "foundation" for your List Building. (pun intended.) But there are a couple of more topics I want you to explore, the first of which is article writing.

This Quick Start List Building course outlines exactly the process I follow to create a list for most any niche. If you have found optin pages to be as effective for your marketing as I have, you may want to start your web site building with just an optin page and then build a site around the premise.

Another thing you want to think about for new web sites is to use the list mission, list keystones, and list gift concepts from the beginning, applying them to your sites as you build them. Then you simply apply them to your list concept, and you’re in business.

You now have a set of tasks you have mastered. You have learned to work with your autoresponder and load it with messages. You know how to motivate web browsersto subscribe to your list. You know what to do with them after they buy.

Put a daily action plan into place. If you do one new thing every working day to make your list better and bigger you will succeed! Concentrate on stocking your AR with messages and developing new subscribers.

Today, the topic is submitting articles to article directories found across the web and getting subscribers from the articles you write for those directories.

A great way to get more free targeted subscribers for your list is to post to article directories. Write 350 to 700 word articles pertaining to your offer, topic, or content. Be sure your article contains useful, pertinent information that will get your readers’ interest and leave them wanting more information from you.

There’s an art to this, the art of leaving them wanting more. This is something you’ll have to learn, but just keep in mind not to let the cat all the way out of the bag. In the article, let them see the cat’s face, but leave the rest of the cat at your web site or better yet, in your newsletter.

At article sites, the articles you submit allow you to have a resource box at the end of the article. This is the key to getting readers back to your optin page or web site. In this resource box is where you’ll put a link, maybe you’ll even be able to insert two links back to your optin page.

You can set up special optin pages for specific articles, or you can just send them all to your main optin page. There you remind them about the cat, and that your newsletter is going to show them the whole cat! Add bonus, add subscribe box, and presto change-o, another subscriber.

While article writing can seem like a chore, in reality you have already written the articles as the content of your email list messages. You need only twist them around a bit, leaving some key things out, but hinting at them, and telling them in your resource box where to find out more. Remember back in the previous lessons - you were told to write your messages in your text editor and save them? Now you know why. Rehash and redo them for your article writing and posting.

One bonus of article writing is that the submission sites often have high value to the search engine spiders, and can give your website a high rank one way link.

There are some formalities when submitting your articles to article sites for publication. Each article directory has a different set of posting guidelines. Just be sure to have your resource box include your name (and company name, if you have one) and that all-important link to your web site or optin page. If you have professional credentials that tie into your subject, write a brief bio to include them as well.

Here are a few of the better article submission sites:

Of course there are sites that specialize in submitting your articles for you. Here are a few of those.

The cheapest way to get started is to start with the most highly trafficked article sites. Check the top 5 in the directory list first. You may get all the article distribution you need from these sites. Many webmasters and eZine publishers pick up articles from these sites to republish.

Remember, use only your own content when submitting articles to these sites. While the article posting method of getting subscribers is slower than forum posting, long term it can become your strongest free source of optin leads.

One other up and coming tactic that can get you a few subscribers is commenting to blogs in your niche. It usually isn’t as fast as forum posting, but it is a good long term source of subscribers. Remember to handle your blog comments professionally, just as you would in a forum.

Take the time to write a good article and post it to a few article directories. Try to post an article a week. You’ll be amazed by the long haul results.

A special resource for today’s lesson is Jim Edwards’ "Turn Words Into Traffic," the best learning tool for getting traffic from your article writing.

This lesson is all about paying to get subscribers and learning how to make this cash outlay put some money back in your wallet, so these methods can build you a list with minimal or no outlay.

Some popular paid list-building techniques:

EZine ads

CoRegistration Lists

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Using eBay for leads

Self-funding paid campaigns

When it comes to building a subscriber base, a little bit of money should go a long way. Most paid list building methods are relatively inexpensive, and if used properly will more than pay for themselves in a short period of time. In fact it is possible to make your external list building efforts self funding!

Before we go into the self-funding aspect, we will review the most popular paid list building methods. One thing needs to be said here, and that is that most of these paid techniques are not as instant as forum and blog posting. The only two that can provide instant results are Co-reg leads and PPC. And both of those have a learning curve to get the best results. Also, think about using something like the profit funnel system to make these paid outlays self-funding. There is a link to the profit funnel system in the resource list at the end of this lesson, if you missed it in the previous lessons.

For every paid method of obtaining subscribers, you will need your optin page or web site URL and a brief (one to three sentence) description of your site. Word your description the same way you have for your optin page.

In fact the best way to use paid methods is to drive potential subscribers to your optin page, and no where else. The description you write is essentially a little classified ad for your list’s offer.

You will also need a list of keywords you want people to be able to find your site with through PPC search engines. You can use the popular search tool at Overture for this.

Many online newsletters, commonly called eZines, make profits selling classified ads. If you can find one relating to your topic, with a large subscriber base, it may be worth buying an ad, or even a series of ads so that repetition of your sales message converts more prospects into buyers. If the same subscribers see your advertisement for three or four weeks in a row, more of them will visit your site.

The best way to place ads in eZines is to seek out e-zines and newsletters that either deal directly with your topic or would be of interest to your target audience. Find out how large their subscriber base is and ask about their rates. Don’t forget to ask about any special deals they may offer. Comparison shop. Look for well-written newsletters or e-zines with fair rates and discounts for a series of ads. This will help you make the most of your advertising dollar. Check these newsletter and e-zine directories to get started:

E-zine Directory: Over 3,500 e-zines and newsletters searchable by topic or keyword:

Jogena: Hundreds of e-zines, list updated frequently. This site also features a directory of free e-books you can download and give away as incentives to your customers:

The most bang for your buck in an eZine is usually a "top spot" listing. This is a listing at the top of the publication. It is the best place to be and usually well worth the extra money it costs. Again, do some comparison shopping, start small, continue with the eZines that get results, drop those that don’t.

This term seems to have a lot of meanings, but I am going to use it to mean the display of an advertisement for your newsletter on a web page. It has nothing to do with buying those large lists of supposedly optin subscribers. Opted in to what? They didn’t optin to your list, did they now?

The co-reg you want to use is list building done in real time. You buy a certain amount of optins from a service who will display your ad on a web page where browsers optin to it. It may be displayed as just a one sentence description, with a check box for them to subscribe, or it may actually be more like a classified ad which you can optimize to make convert well. Services that offer this type of ad are the ones to look for.

The advantage co-reg has over PPC is that you pay for a subscriber, not per click.

The web site displaying your newsletter ad is also usually displaying other competing newsletters in the same category as yours. So make sure your ad copy is good.

Avoid entirely any service masquerading as a co-registration lead source that really just sells long lists of email addresses. Yes they may have all the pertinent subscriber info, like name, email address, even the IP address of the subscriber.

Yes they may tell you these are "fresh" leads, eager to get your information. It’s baloney.

If you buy one of these lists and email the addresses you get, you are a SPAMMER, plain and simple. DON"T DO IT! Since this is a spamming technique, reputable services like Aweber and GetResponse will not let you add leads obtained this way to your account.

Typically the lists wholesalers sell get these names for fractions of a penny. So you can see why they’d like to get you to buy their lists! The lists are broken down into smaller files, and sold again and again. Whoever you buy a list like this from is making all the money. You’ll just be throwing your money away.

Check forum postings about buying long lists of names. I haven’t found anyone happy yet. I have found quite a few postings of people who actually lost their email accounts at their ISP, their web host, and had their domain name frozen because of spam complaints. Just don’t do it.

A legitimate Co-reg service will generally offer two types of subscribers, single or double optin. One reputable service even offers triple opt-in subscribers. When using a legitimate Co-reg service, people who select your newsletter offer are either checking a box, or their information goes straight to your sign up form or list email address. This is the better of the two options.

Many big name marketers have built lists using co-reg services. If you do this right, it can be a good way to add interested subscribers. Do it wrong, and you might as well burn fifty dollar bills.

The pitfall of using any Co-reg list is this. Say you are buying double opt-in subscribers. If you put them through the process of opting in again at Aweber or GetResponse then you will lose quite a few. They get frustrated with the process. They already opted in twice. The good news is the ones you get will really want to be on your list!

So you have two choices. Buy the cheaper and generally lower quality single optin subscribers - and in general I don’t recommend single optin Co-reg lists except for this- and make them confirm their optin to your autoresponder, which then makes them bonafide double opt-in subscribers. Yes you will lose quite a few, but the cost of single optin subscribers is low. Another way is to set up a separate autoresponder account with co-reg companies that offer them. This of course adds additional monthly cost to getting your leads. These co-reg company autoresponder accounts will allow single optin for the co-reg leads you buy from them.

You then get these single optin co-reg list people to get on your regular autoresponder list by offering them specials. To get the specials they have to optin to your main autoresponder list. You do this by sending them to special optin pages where they optin to your main list to get the special offer. Of course, if you want to remove them from your Co-reg prospect list, you will have to manually delete them from the Co-reg company’s autoresponder when you get them on your main list.

Just as for any other type of subscriber, you will need to have compelling ad copy and a sign up "list gift" offer for your Co-reg list ad. Your newsletter ad is usually displayed among other ads for similar newsletters, so you must make your offer attractive enough to win out over the other featured newsletter ads.

A twist on paying for Co-reg subscribers is the exit popunder strategy of companies like List Inferno. As a member of their service, your ad (along with a bunch of others) is displayed after web browsers leave another member’s site. So this is a cooperative effort for all the members. It is a fair exchange, but in my opinion there are better and more lucrative uses for exit pops. A few years ago this worked very well but doesn’t work as well now, as people have gotten tired of any sort of popup or popunder.

Here are two Co-reg services that many big name marketers have used with success

World Wide Lists

Lead Factory

Pay-per-click ad campaigns bring visitors to your optin or landing page by advertising your site on the search results page of keywords related to your topic. When a web searcher types in a particular search term and clicks "search" at a search engine like Google, these ads are displayed above and to the right of the normal search results.

The term "pay-per-click" refers to the way you pay for the ads: a certain amount is deducted from your account each time someone clicks on your link. The most popular PPC program is Google AdWords; basically, though, all PPC campaigns have some common features.

Using Google’s Adwords as an example, here’s how it works: When you sign up with AdWords, which you can do with a mere $5.00 deposit, you submit a list of keywords. For example, if you were offering an e-book about how to increase web site profits, a list of your keywords might be: web site, web site, web site profits, increase profits, internet, internet profit, online profit, online business, internet business, web site business, make money online, and so forth. Come up with as many keywords and search terms as possible so you can increase your chances of getting visitors. You may also consider including common misspellings of your most important keywords; in the previous example, possibilities would be: bizness, busness, inernet.

Yahoo! offers a popular PPC program called Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture). The major difference between starting with Yahoo PPC ad programs is that Yahoo requires a higher deposit to fund an account. At the time of writing this, Yahoo requires a $50 deposit. Between Google and Yahoo, you may find one more effective than the other, and it’s always helpful to try multiple methods. More traffic to your optin page means more subscribers!

One important difference between Google and Yahoo is that Yahoo is more transparent for users. You see all competing bids. You know where your bids stand. Like Google, you can set a daily budget. For most, I would recommend cutting your teeth at Yahoo! and then trying what you learn there on Google.

When you know what your conversion rate is (or if you even have one!) it will be easier to craft a Google campaign.

Advanced PPC techniques are outside the scope of this report. There are many tricks in PPC. If you are new to it I suggest limiting your daily budget to a small amount that at first you can afford to just throw away. If the possibility of throwing your money away bothers you, then starting a PPC campaign may not be for you.

PPC works if you can fine-tune your ads and keywords as you go along. Inevitably when starting out you are going to pay for clicks that get you nothing. By updating and tweaking your keyword bids and your PPC ads, you can get good results wth PPC. But if it sounds a bit intimidating let it go for now.

Read Perry Marshall’s excellent book, there’s a link to it in the resources below, and come back to PPC later. And remember many large lists were built without using PPC at all.

As a final tip, my PPC results have shown dismal click throughs in the content display. So my advice to you is to stick to search display of your ads only.

This works mainly for info products or service based businesses as the cost of a physical product may be too high to put a cheap teaser auction on eBay. There are many ways to put this technique to work on eBay. I don’t pretend to know them all. Here’s one example though.

You offer products or product excerpts targeted to the kinds of people you want on your list. Offer them cheaply, for less than a buck. As of this writing, ebay will charge you around 55 cents for a less than a dollar auction with a gallery image. Now put a way on your auction page for people to see your web site (has to be non-sales so an optin page can work for this). But check the latest eBay rules. You may have to do this by getting your auction viewer to your eBay "about me" page.

People will actually buy your listings. So they go on your customer list. People who just look at your auction can also can get on your prospect list. So for one 55 cent outlay you may get five or six list members. And since you are collecting money at ebay on the subscribe, you may actually break even or make a little money on the deal!

The man who wrote the book on this is Jim Cockrum. I’ll refer you to his excellent book, How To Turn Auction Traffic Into Cash.

In the eBay section above you learned of a possible way to make email list building actually pay you. This next method is a twist on all the other paid methods that adds the potential profit element to all your paid, and maybe even your non paid, list building efforts. It can make your paid campaigns pay for themselves, or even generate a small profit.

Wes Blaylock has an excellent tutorial on this, called the Profit Funnel. I found it well worth the $17 outlay. Besides the nitty gritty on the method, you get to swipe some great looking optin page templates he has used successfully.

In a nutshell, this is how it works. After your new subscribers get to your thank you page, they are redirected to a sales page for one of your products, or for a related affiliate product. This product HAS to be pertinent to the list topic, convert well, be relatively inexpensive, and offer real value. It is not always easy to find an offer like this. To pull this off, you may have to invent an offer specifically for your list.

You can give new subscribers one or two chances to get this special offer. If they don’t take you up on the offer at the thank you page, give it to them again in a p.s. in your list welcome message.

There are software scripts that automate this process, but it is a simple thing to do with a simple delayed redirect from the thank you page, and then a direct link to the offer in the list email welcome message, usually in a p.s.

One thing you must be careful of when doing an offer like this to monetize your list building is to make sure that this technique does not cut into your subscribe rate. You have many chances to sell to your list members if they stay subscribed. But lose them right away because they are upset with you for selling them so soon and you’ve lost them forever.

There are some types of lists that don’t respond well to the profit funnel technique. So think about the mindset of your list before doing this.

That’s a look at different ways to pay to get people on your list. Of course there are many twists and variations to the process. ListBuild List members get lifetime updates on the techniques that are working now to get more subscribers opting in to your lists.

And there are other ways to build your lists once you have them established. JV deals and ad swaps are two methods that will be covered later in ListBuild List member messages. But unless you already have an established list of some size, your potential partners may not be very interested.

Here’s a resource list for today’s lesson:

Ezine directories

Pay Per Click

Co Reg Services

World Wide Lists

Lead Factory

Leads from eBay - Jim Cockrum’s excellent book:

Turn Auction Traffic Into Cash

Profit Funnel

That’s all for today. Lots to investigate, so have fun.

The Quick Start List Building course took you through the entire process of creating a list from scratch. For any marketing niche, the process is essentially the same. Since you now know how to start a list, this final lesson will focus on what to do next.

To be most effective with your list marketing you need a plan. Autoresponder messages need to be written, subscribers need to be gotten. New offers for your list need to be found.

This takes a bit of time. I don’t know how it will work best for you, but I can tell you what I do to stay ahead of my autoresponder sequences, find new subscribers, and research content and offers for my lists.

In my daily "to do" list I have my autoresponder sequences listed, along with what messages I need to write to stay at least two messages ahead of my earliest subscribers. So when I find something that pertains to that particular list, I make a note of it in my "to do" list.

Then when I am in writing mode I already have a list of topics, maybe some content, and some potential offers. I generally write two or three messages at once. When I have them written and tested, then I check to see that the sequence of messages makes sense.

If not, I may move them around until I am happy with the sequence. Note that I am not moving messages into the sequence of what I’ve already sent!

I spend time in forums and blogging, to see what is on people’s minds for the topics I am writing about.

I spend time testing and researching new products, and old ones I may have overlooked, to see if they would be of benefit to my lists.

I write ads for PPC and co-reg services, and maintain the ad campaigns.

I look for JV or giveaway partners to promote my lists. I review my old autoresponder messages and review them to see if they need editing or rewriting.

I write articles to promote my lists and submit them to article directories.

I review my list gifts to see if they are still pertinent.

Of course I don’t do all of these things every working day. But having my ‘to do" list always ready makes keeping up with my message sequences and list tasks a snap.

One question I’m frequently asked is, "When do you stop sending your autoresponder messages to your list?"

My answer to that is until they move to another of your lists, or they unsubscribe. I know marketers that have messages out two years in their autoresponder sequences.

This is not as much work as it sounds, as the original messages go out maybe four to 6 months and then recycle the sequence. If this sounds like overkill to you, rest assured that there is a reason for this. Remember that not all your list members will be ready, willing, and able to respond to your offers when you present them.

But if you keep in touch with them, when they are, you stand a very good chance of getting their business. What happens if you don’t stay in touch with them? Someone else gets their business.

The real pros like Jonathan Mizel just keep sending to people forever. Jonathan calls this grind and drip. You grind out a series of messages, and you drip those messages on your list until they buy (yay, they’re on another of your lists,) or leave.

When your list is big enough, you may move to only broadcasting messages to your lists. If you have the discipline to do a list broadcast on at least a weekly basis, then this may be ok. But consider that you may have a week you are short of time, content, or offers.

I’d guess that most of the fair to poor marketing messages I get fall into the broadcast category. The temptation is to bang out a message and get it sent. In the rush, a lot gets forgotten. So take the time to craft your broadcasts as if they were going into your permanent sequence.

And you may find a way to work a broadcast message into your stored message sequence. By all means, test your broadcasts before you send them! When I get a hastily put together message broadcast, with broken links or something else obviously wrong, I hit delete. Many others do likewise.

People will leave your list. It is a fact of list building life. Don’t take it personally. Just keep building your subscriber numbers. If you get 100 every month, and lose 20, you shouldn’t panic. You’re still way ahead of the game. People leave your list for a variety of reasons. Many of them have nothing to do with you. But if you consistently lose more than two old subscribers for every ten new ones, maybe you need to take a second look at your process, content, and offers to see what’s going wrong.

One of the best ways to get feedback on this is to simply ask the unsubscribers why they left. Aweber automatically asks them for you when they unsubscribe. You’ll get what they say on the remove email you get from Aweber.

Make sure you are always looking for new subscribers to your list, making it worth while to subscribe to your list, and keeping your existing subscribers happy with great content and great subscriber only deals.

The final thought I want to leave you with is that your success with your list building efforts depends on you. It isn’t something that will be done for you. You need to focus on the tasks at hand, and act to get them done. By building a list, you are building a long term asset for your business. With a list, you are practicing relationship building and relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing is one of the buzzwords now, but don’t discount it because of this. It is important to understand how different the relationship you build through repeated contact with your list differs from your relationship with a first time visitor to your web site. Having the list relationship allows you to move from "suspect" status to "trusted source" status.

Who would you rather deal with? Suspect or trusted source?

A final thought.

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