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An interested visitor who has been strolling through your site has finally come to just what she is looking for and is about to make a purchase. It’s a sunny afternoon, and her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the visitor’s large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree, suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and your sale is dust – unless you have had the foresight to utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do so much more than just automatically answer your email. Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed about your services or products, while building your reputation as a credible expert in your particular business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform them of current sales you are running and of promotional material that your affiliates can use themselves to increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books, movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder. Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your affiliate’s page in your autoresponder.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your sales potential. If your articles contain valuable information, many editors will print what is known as a resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and a brief description of your service or product. It can also contain your autoresponder address. Let’s say you’ve written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder accounts and create a master list that contains the titles of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally, include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can add their articles to your list, increasing the number of writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your articles when you’ve written new ones that they may want to publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances of converting visitors into customers. For example, if you’re selling a particular product, put testimonials about how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Let’s say you sell advertising on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your autoresponder to send the information about rates and how to place an ad automatically to all prospects’ email addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can also send notification of any special deals you are currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that each lesson has quality content – not a sales pitch. Your content will do the selling for you, and will do it much more effectively. You can include tips centered on a different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product. Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your course but are dragging their feet about actually making a purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new products or services, and the products and services of your affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an idea of the type of information you can provide and the quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have a record of the visitors’ email addresses who took your quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter send their responses to your autoresponder. Your autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software, membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from your website. Set up your autoresponder to give instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors that they may have free access to your affiliate page by simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request form for visitors to be notified of special offers or discounts in the future. This creates a very effective mailing list that contains the names of people who are already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should contain up to fifty links that would be of particular interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant ideas of your own!

If you’ve reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep upwith answering the mountain of emails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you’re ready to learn about autoresponders.

The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they’re eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive – or even free -method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices give you their feedback about your website – for free!

However, if you spend all your working hours answering these emails, how are you supposed to run your business?

The answer is simple: use autoresponders.

Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your emails
without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your email. For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of emails. Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder.

Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your email program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company’s server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your email account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a
standardized message whenever an email is received. The message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval of time.  For example, you can set your autoresponder to send out a new message every day for as long a period as you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free of charge. Your website hosting company often provides autoresponders as a free service.  If this is not the case with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge providing you attach an advertisement for their company to your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It’s a good idea to attach a signature to every email that is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your business identity every time a customer sees it. The more they look at your signature, the more likely your company will spring to mind when your particular service or product is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every staff member create their own personal signature. Of course, like everything in life, there are some rules and guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line. Make sure that your email program does not cut off your text! The content should include your name, your company name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact details, such as 800 numbers.  Lastly, always include a short personal message about your company. It should be a subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly your company’s reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create courses that you can then offer your site visitors for free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation about what is to follow. Your explanation should be enticing, getting the point across that you are offering free, quality information that your target audience will find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the topic title, information about your company and its services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more. Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

Of course, you have to write up your course before you can offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the material carefully, employing  professional writer or editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your autoresponder.

There are a number of free autoresponders you can use.  Try Aweber or GetResponse, or do a Google search and you will find a long list of free autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions on how to set it up and transfer your text.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing your email address carefully. Your website should contain different email addresses for different contact requests.  For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about sales.  It’s a good idea to set up one for the owner, such as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in a personal, approachable light and insures that direct contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of potential customers. This is an invaluable asset considering how many potential customers you usually have contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially, an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your marketing campaign.

Advertise Your Blog In Your Email Signature

If you have a blog that you are particularly proud of, and that you want to share with other people, there are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog noticed.

One of those ways is something that you do everyday, and that you may not even consider as a way to share your blog. Put the link to your blog in your email signature.

Chances are you send out emails several times during the day, each time you send out an email, you can advertise your blog by putting the address of your blog in your email’s signature.

It’s always a good idea to write something catchy like, See what I am up to now, or Read the latest chapter of my blog here, depending on what type of blog you have.

 The thing to remember about putting an adveritsement in your signature for your blog is to make it short, but eye-catching.

 You want people to be interested enough to want to click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them off.

Just like it is with any adveritsement, you want to give them just enough to be interested and take a closer look at what it is that you are advertising.

 Think about what it is that your blog is about. What is really going to interest people about it and want to visit, that is what you should include in your signature, and that is what is going to get people to go to your blog.

If you have an online business, you need a mailing list. It is your hotline to your hot prospects and you have to organize it well to get the most out of your list building.

 Here are a few things to bear in mind when building your list.

 Make your Mailing List Easy to Join…

 People don’t want to spend their precious time on working out things that are complex and time-consuming; they’ll go to another website if you make enrolling tough on them. Give a clear sign up box for your mailing list and also make it obvious that you will operating a double opt in mailing list. That means when they give you their details your auto responder will be set to send out an email link which they must click on to confirm that they want to join your mailing list.

 That way, people won’t feel trapped into your list building. You won’t lose many people by them not clicking on the link in the email and it will be worth it for the security you offer the people that do agree to join your mailing list.

 And to Leave…

 In the same way, make it easy to opt out of the mailing list in the future. People’s priorities and needs change and they may not always want to be on your mailing list. Don’t be scared by allowing them to leave. Telling people up front that they can leave your mailing list easily any time they want to just makes them more likely to join it in the first place.

 Keep in Touch with the People on your List on a Regular Basis

 Sending out a weekly newsletter is best. And, that brings up an important sub-point: send out newsletters often; at the very least, once a month. These newsletters fulfill all sorts of purposes. To name but a few:

• They remind people who you are
• They allow your to show off your knowledge
• You can promote your products and services

Make sure that you provide the people on your mailing list with helpful and useful information. If all you send them are ads for your website, you are not going to maintain a good mailing list; spam is a real turn off for subscribers.

 Actively Seek out Subscribers to your Mailing List

 It is not enough to set up a website and expect people to join your list. There are literally thousands of websites similar to yours; you must do something to generate interest and show what makes your mailing list better and more valuable to join than anyone else’s.

 So, visit forums, chat groups, blog sites etc. and post articles, essays etc. to generate interest in your list building. Make sure these are relevant to the business of your mailing list and you will be reaching potential customers who are already warmed up and wanting to hear about what your business has to offer them.

 Never underestimate the value of networking for list building. If you can find other firms/websites that will let you post a link to your site, you have the potential to build up your mailing list even more.

Quality not Quantity Matters in List Building

When it comes to getting leads for your list building and effectively keeping people joined up to your list, quality, not quantity is what counts. This matters in terms of the people on your mailing list, and also in the communication you send out to keep them there.

Quality Leads

It matters less about how many people are on your mailing list than whether the names on your mailing list are likely to buy things from you. If they aren’t, what is the point in them being on your mailing list?

For that reason, your list building attempts should focus on long tail keyword phrases rather than general keywords. This will enable you to get targeted prospects that are looking for what you are selling. That means you are more likely to get a sale because you are giving them what they want.

Keeping your Subscribers

List building is not the be all and end all of making a success of your online business. It is just a means to an end. The end is to keep a ‘captive audience’ of subscribers who are interested in what your business does so that you can drip feed information to them over time and encourage them to buy from you. This is the way to build up the trust of your potential customers in you. Until they trust you, they won’t give you their hard-earned money.

The key to creating an effective opt-in list is to provide your subscribers with quality information that will really help them. One of the best ways to do this is to provide them with a weekly, biweekly, or monthly e-zine. An e-zine is a newsletter or publication that is sent to subscribers who have chosen to receive your publication. You will learn more about this later in this book.

In order to build a database of potential customers and start collecting e-mail addresses, you’ll first need to set up a mailing list. This mailing list must enable your visitors to submit their information and subscribe them to your list.

Freebies?

There are many free list building services that will enable you to set up a mailing list. However, they are not recommended. They will not allow you to personalize your messages with your subscribers’ names and they require your visitor to reply to a confirmation message. That is where this post will help you!

There are many powerful ways to build your subscriber base. However, for now, we will only focus on the “best” methods of list building.

Customers’ Needs

The best marketing always focuses on the needs of a business’ potential customers.

• What do they need from you?
• Why do they need your products or services?
• What is going to induce them buy to buy from you?

In list building, don’t be trapped into merely marketing what your business does when you should be identifying the needs of your customers and working towards fulfilling these needs.

List Building Made Easy

People often think that you only build a list by getting people to visit your website and sign up. That is why they don’t bother, because they see that as being a lot of hard work. However, the longer you go without a decent mailing list, the more your business will suffer. Let us show you some easy ways to get started on your perfect mailing list without very much work at all!

Subscription Boxes

The first thing you should accomplish is to put an opt-in box to sign up to your mailing list on each of your website pages. This is very important for your list building. People come to your website from lots of different pages, not just the home page. They may never even go to your home page, so ensure that your mailing list sign up box is visible on every page of your website.

The best people to have on your mailing list are targeted prospects who are already interested in your company. If they have visited your website, you’re already halfway toward making them loyal customers.

Having a mailing list allows you to offer information regularly to these people, showing them what your company does, so they increase their confidence in you. Then you can start to offer them products and services and be more certain that they will be more likely to buy from you. It’s like having a semi-captive audience from which to build your products!

So how do you get these sign-ups to your mailing list?

Speculate to Accumulate

 If you have some money to spend and you want to invest it in your business, one way to get started on building your perfect mailing list is to simply purchase subscribers. You accomplish this through the placement of an ad.

 Warning!

 The perfect mailing list isn’t a list of random people who may or may not be interested in your business. You should try to find hot prospects who are interested in what you do and more likely to buy from you.

 Get specific

 So, you search for a website or newsletter that specializes in your area of interest. After all, if you’re a writer of TV and/or movie scripts, you don’t want to place an ad in a newsletter with information about breastfeeding! When people see your ad, they can just click on a box to be added to your mailing list. It’s a very effective method for quickly growing a list.

 The next tip is to buy a list of people who’ve expressed interest in what you do. The way this works is this: there are companies that compile lists of people, and what subjects they have said they want more information on. So, maybe some people have said they love science fiction, and would love to read books by new authors. If you own a publishing company, and most of your sales are via your website and Amazon.com (and other such sites), it could be very helpful to you to have a list of people interested in your subject matter. You buy a list from a company, and then send emails to those people. Be aware though that any mailing list you buy may not be specifically tailored to your requirements.

 Partner up

 The third step in building your perfect mailing list the easy way is to join forces with like-minded companies, and split the cost of buying subscriber lists or other marketing and list building activities. This allows you to build your list, yet not bear all the expense.

Create a Win-Win Situation to Improve Your List Building

For list building to be a win-win situation for you and your subscribers, and therefore have the best chance of making money from it, you should ensure you send your mailing list only useful information which is relevant to them. It’s like with those life Cover Plans for 50s, when you’re in your 20s and 30s – don’t you just hate getting those! Don’t commit such a faux pas with your own list building.

If you get your list building right and know who your subscribers are, you can use the mailing list to really boost your online marketing efforts. You can use it to warm up potential clients or pre-sell goods and services. If you’re not using your list building like this, your business marketing is not as successful as it could be. It’s as simple as that.

 Offering free gifts is a great way to pre-sell and is a great inducement to get people to sign up to your mailing list. Let’s now turn our attention to choosing and creating the right free offer to achieve your business aims.
 

Freebies Build Trust

 People love to get something for nothing. If they can get a useful free gift and all they have to do for that is to leave their email address with you, then they will be happy to do it.

The simple offer of a free newsletter from your website is very effective at building trust and building your mailing list. It will set you up as an expert, capable of passing on useful information. But, be sure to fill it with information that your subscribers will actually be interested in. also, a little humor always helps.

Quality Control

Your list building depends upon providing quality information to the people on your mailing list. If you have a website that is just chock full of good quality information that is useful to people, it will bring in more visitors and many of them will sign up for your mailing list.

A good way of proving your expertise at something is to write about it. Write articles, a book, an e-book etc. and give them away for free. Any type of publication that can get your material out in front of the public can be very effective. And don’t let the idea of a book overwhelm you. You can simply take articles, short stories, essays etc. that you’ve already done and “stitch” them together.

You’ll be surprised at how all these steps can work together to add prospects to your mailing list.

Here are the most effective ways to get mailing list subscribers using free offers:  

• Offer a free subscription in relevant newsgroups
• Offer a free subscription in related email discussion lists
• Offer a free subscription in relevant emails
• Offer a free subscription in classified ads
• Offer a free subscription in relevant forums
• Offer a free subscription in your email signature
• Issue press releases to publicize your free newsletter
• Offer a free subscription on ALL the pages of your website
• Rent relevant opt-in e-mail lists to offer your free subscription
• Offer a free subscription to members of relevant online clubs and organizations
• Exchange sponsorships with other related, but not competitive newsletters
• Offer “gift subscriptions” in your newsletters whereby someone can go to a webpage and give a subscription to a friend.

List Building with a Free E-book

Creating a free e-book full of relevant content and containing your website link by which they can directly join your mailing list is a great way to aid your list building. To allow this link building to become viral, allow people to distribute the e-book free of charge.

To fully realize the list building potential of this opportunity, create a “Free Gift” page in your e-book and put your mailing list opt-in box on this page. Use an incentive such as an exclusive free e-book which will only go to them as your free gift for new subscribers. In building your mailing list, you have to speculate to accumulate!

Creating and maintaining an up-to-date opt-in mailing list is absolutely essential. You should promote your mailing list in all the relevant places that you can.

More subscribers = more sales

Your e-book will potentially to be viewed by millions of Internet users. Make the most of this highly effective way of increasing sales.

Getting your E-book Written

The most important thing is to make a good e-book that the user will want to get for free. Don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself much of a writer. You can outsource it to writers who then give you copyright to the book in exchange for a fee more reasonable than you might expect.

After you get your e-book ready, ensure that you add your opt-in page or autoresponder URL to every page of the e-book, to help the user to sign up for your mailing list immediately, or you will lose them once that urgency is gone.

You can make an e-book that is just a few pages long or a long one that runs to a hundred pages or so; there’s no standard length. People like to receive free e-books, especially if they are interested in the information it contains. 

E-books are cheap for you to give away because you don’t have to maintain a physical inventory. You can send them to your users through your autoresponder, so delivery is quick. You don’t incur shipping charges, and you can give away as many copies as you wish. 

E-books can be given away for free as an incentive to sign up with you. Your mailing list subscribers can also give it away for free. However, the excitement soon fades over an e-book.

The trick is to keep writing new e-books all the time to keep your audience eager. You aim here is to increase your list size with more subscribers.  By increasing the number of links pointing to your own website, you can also rank higher with the search engines.

Ways in Which You Can Use E-books to Build Your Mailing List

There are several ways that you can use your e-book to build your mailing list, such as:

• Offer the complete e-book in return for referral email ids or testimonials, which you can use.
• Writing your own e-book makes you look like an expert in your field, and builds your credibility.
• You can post your e-book on various free websites, which will ensure an increase in the number of downloads.
• You might offer just the first two chapters of the e-book, giving the visitor the choice to buy the full e-book.
• Your e-book can help to build your mailing list if you make it a limited offer. Informing your visitor this e-book will only be available for free download for the next 24 hours creates a sense of urgency and encourages them to take advantage of the offer right away by signing up for your mailing list.

Ad Swaps for List Building

Ad swaps are free, making them a great for list building. They work by you finding people who publish similar e-zines to you, and asking if you can post an ad in theirs in exchange for putting an ad for their e-zine in yours.

Ideally, you will do this ad swapping with a few e-zines, and that should bring you a lot more subscribers. Once you find that a decent number of people have signed up from this traded link and you start to see the number of subscribers fall, you can assume you have exhausted that market and move on to some different e-zine lists with which to trade ads.

E-zines have greater usefulness than this for list building. People rarely sign up with you having only seen your link first. They need to learn to trust you first. They need to know that you know what you’re talking about… that you’re an expert. A well written, informative e-zine, which you will promise to deliver by autoresponder every week or every month can help to reassure them of these things, so you will get more links. They are great publicity tools.

Choosing Your Ad Swap Partners

You should choose a relevant business for your ad swap partner. They should not compete with you, but be in a business that complements yours. That way, you will get a target audience, who are warmed up, ready to buy from you. It is cheap, too, and as well as increasing your list building, you may make a good number of direct sales as a result of this ad swapping.

Most e-zines are archived online. That means that the life of your ad lives on into the future, without you having to spend anything at all!

You should also try to have some input into the placement of your ad within the e-zine. Choose as many related e-zines as you can, because the more you get your ad out there, the more people who will see the link from which to join your mailing list.

Ad swapping in this way also allows you to ride on the back of the trust that your ad swap partner has built up with his or her subscribers. By virtue of the fact that this internet marketer has allowed you to place an ad on an e-zine that they trust, they will feel that they can trust you too.

Now, you should have a mailing list, so you better use it! It’s a lot easier to keep selling to people who already know you, than continuing to find new customers. You need to make the most of the captive audience who are already interested in your business and what you have to offer. That is the real beauty of having a mailing list.

Trust is vital in business. Trust isn’t given to you overnight. It has to be built up over time, as you build a relationship with people, to entice them to sign up for your mailing list and to stay on it. Your mailing list and the communications you send out through it will help you to build up relationships with your potential clients.

Building your Mailing List through Relationship Marketing

To make the most of the opportunities afforded to you by your list building, you need to master the art of relationship management. This is the way to keep clients coming back to you, spending their money on your business, and this securing the future of your business. Your mailing list is the key to relationship building with your potential clients, which is why you should be doing it consistently.

The first step in relationship building is to be able to identify:

• Prospects
• Customers
• Loyal customers
• Former customers
• Lost leads.

Obviously, loyal customers are the ones that spend the most money. So, how do you start communicating with your mailing list to turn them into loyal customers?

Relationship Building through E-zines

People signed up for your e-zine because you promised to regularly send them quality information that is relevant to their needs. Make sure you do this and keep doing it, so they want to stay part of your mailing list. Make your e-zine informative, and don’ use it for the hard sell approach. That way, you will look like an expert in your field: someone they want to consult with. Include your subscribers and make them feel appreciated.

Here are some ways to do that:

• Post questions for your e-zine subscribers to answer from a choice of 3 answers, which they can do by clicking a link.
• Encourage feedback from your subscribers; you can provide a link where they can post their feedback and other remarks. Make sure you acknowledge these and perhaps offer a small giveaway to people whose feedback is included as a tip in your next e-zine.
• Invite questions and suggestions from your readers. Ensure that you reply to these in subsequent issues.

The point of e-zines is to foster the belief that you are an expert and can be trusted.

Email Marketing

The two main ways you will use the mailing list you have built is for regularly sending out e-zines and emails. That means that it is really important to get these right, or you will have wasted all that effort that went into building your mailing list. That is why you have to make sure your emails send out a powerful message.

So, on to your Message…

Real people will be receiving your emails. Humans. They will only be interested in one thing in reading your email: what’s in it for me? You need to make this clear very quickly in your email or you will lose your audience. So, concentrate on how your product or service can:

• Improve their business
• Make them money
• Look better
• Deal with a problem they have, etc.

It is often said that there is no ‘I’ in ‘sales’. This means that you need to focus on what your product or service will do for your potential clients. Never use ‘I’ in your emails, always ‘you’.

The tone of your emails is vital in building up a relationship with potential clients. In terms of sales, the most effective tone is friendly but business-like. Try not to sound too formal, though, as this will make people feel distanced from you and then they will lose the loyalty they feel to you which would have encouraged them to buy from you.

How to do List Building through Social Bookmarking Sites

The main social bookmarking websites are:

• Digg.com
• Twitter.com
• Delicious
• Addthis.com

To make the most of social bookmarking websites for your list building, there are a few techniques you should follow:

• Type the post in English. The website vistors will come from all over the world, but the majority will be able to read English – more than if you used another language, anyway.
• Use attractive anchor text, to entice people to click on your website link.
• Upload videos to Twitter and YouTube, to showcase your company.
• Put bookmark icons in highly visible places on your website.
• MySpace and Facebook can also be used to increase traffic to your website.

Forums and Message Boards

These are the most interactive of all websites. They get a lot of traffic and potentially that means a lot of people will see the link from which to join your mailing list.  You just need to include the relevant link in your signature which you add to each of your posts.

Here you can give your opinions, answer questions or post your own questions, or respond to what has been written. The things to remember when using forums and message boards in order to further your list building are:

• Be professional
• Show you are knowledgeable
• Stay on topic
• Don’t push your products and services; leave that to your website
• Make sure you use your signature every post and have your link in it

This is the way to use forums and discussion groups for list building without being accused of spamming. You should use them as opportunities to become known as an expert within your field. That way, people’s faith in you will grow and they will be more inclined to bring their business to you.

Sign up for several relevant forums and you will soon be well known; make sure you are well known for all the right reasons. On most of these online forums you will also be able to upload your profile. That is often visible to the public, so make sure it contains relevant keywords and gives a reasonable idea of what your business does and even what your business ethos is.

If your post is informative, people who read it will almost always click on your link to visit your website. If they like what they see there, and you have a link to sign up for your mailing list on every page, like was suggested earlier, they will more often than not join your mailing list. So, relax, and keep the hard sell off the forum. You don’t need to do it there and if you do, you will more than likely put people off.

When you join these forums, take some time to browse and find out where you can make your most useful contributions. A good tip if you have the necessary knowledge is to answer any questions which have not yet been responded to. Make sure you sound professional and like you know what you are talking about, in every contribution you make. Don’t just say ‘click here to find the answer in my e-book’. That really won’t work and will just make it seem like you are taking liberties with your membership to the forum. That will cause offence and could even get you banned and blacklisted, which would be a disaster for your business promotion.

It is also important to make your forum contributions regular. That is all part of relationship building and allowing people’s trust in you to grow. In time, people will visit your website through your link. They will also recommend you to other people.

Of course, you can always start your own threads in the forums. Good threads to start are those which directly relate to what appear to be the current problems. Always make sure what you write is meaningful. People aren’t stupid. If they can see you’re not interested in helping but only want to do your list building, they will avoid clicking on your link.

List Building with Competitions

Most of us will have entered a competition at some time. Isn’t it exciting when you win? Everyone enjoys that feeling. That’s why it’s a good idea to run a competition on your website and opt-in pages. They just need to give you their name and email address in exchange for an entry into the competition. That is a really effective way to build your mailing list.

Your autoresponder will send them an email confirming their entry. Prizes could be some useful tips, free report etc.

There are several different types of competitions that you could run in order to boost your list building:

Essay Competition

Give your readers a subject (or topic area) and word limit and let them know that you will choose the best essays for publication in your e-zine. That also ensures that they will sign up for your mailing list because they will definitely want to see their essay for themselves.

In order to get it into the e-zine in time and to create a sense of urgency, set a deadline by which the essays must be submitted. You should also issue some guidance as to what is acceptable content for the essays. Clearly stipulate whether, once submitted, or once published in your e-zine, the essays become your property. Think carefully about this, because if the writer retains copyright and they publish it elsewhere, what will that do to your search engine rankings and your credibility? However, publishing the content written by your subscribers is a great way to building up a good relationship with your mailing list.

Photo Competitions

Similar to essay competitions, you could run photo competitions linked to the theme of your website. They would work in the same way as described above. You can publicize these competitions more widely, this potentially getting more people to see your link, by advertising in competition directories. There are several of these online and they are easy to find through the search engines.

Remembering that your aim here is to get contacts’ email addresses to add to your mailing list, a much simpler competition that you could run is to have a draw of people’s email addresses, for which they win a prize if you are selected. Like with all these competitions, a good prize is some kind of information product (e-book, report or autoresponder course) which shows them dome more about your business and how it can meet their needs, so they are encouraged to buy from you. You can have these draws fortnightly or monthly – whatever suits you.

Instead of information products, if you have a membership website that people must pay to sign up for, offer a free premium access to your membership area.

Make sure you mention the value of the prize (i.e. the price for which you would usually sell it). That will help to generate interest in your competition as people know that they will be getting a worthwhile prize if they win.

To attract attention, your competition needs a catchy title, and then you should be able to get a lot of names for your mailing list as people will be eager to enter and win the valuable prize.

Pop-Ups to Aid your List Building

Pop-ups are a very effective way of getting sign-ups for your mailing list if they are used correctly. We all probably know what pop-up are – those little windows that pop up and open when a visitor clicks a link. Some of the most effective pop-ups appear when a visitor attempts to leave your website.

These pop-ups can be very annoying, or they can be viewed as a great opportunity to get hold of some valuable information. The trick is for you to make your pop-ups seem like they are in the latter category. You should present joining your mailing list as an opportunity not to be missed at any cost.

To make the pop-ups effective for your list building, you should ensure that your pop-up message sounds like they will be missing out on a valuable opportunity – perhaps for ever. That is the way to boost your list building through pop-ups as people will feel compelled to click on them and once they have clicked on them, they are more likely to feel that they may as well leave their details – and then you have them on your mailing list.

Warning!

However, there is a problem with traditional pop-ups because many people these days have pop-up blockers on their PCs. These are free and easily installed, so you have to make a little effort if you want to get around pop-up blockers, but it’s worth it for the boost to your list building.

You can use DHTML pop-ups which cannot be blocked.

Adding Pop-Ups To Your Website  

You can easily download free software from the internet which will allow you to create DHTML pop-ups. You can do this yourself without the need for professional help so you don’t need to worry about that.

Save your energy for getting your pop-up message just right. What you say in the pop-up is the most important thing. You need to convince visitors to leave their contact information, so how do you do this?

• Offer something like a free e-book or report in exchange for their email addresses.
• Ensure that your pop-up title includes a powerful keyword linked to your niche. That will also help to boost your search engine rankings.
• Make your pop-up ad catchy.
• Make your headline attractive. Your visitors won’t hang around if you don’t grab their attention right away. Make them excited in a few seconds so that they want to sign up to your mailing list.  You can even get software to help you with making these attractive headlines.
• Use few graphics or none at all. Your pop-up needs to load quickly or people won’t bother sticking around. A simple, stylish design is best.
• Make sure that your pop-up windows have a close option. There’s no point in forcing your visitors to sign up to your mailing list just so your pop-up will go away! People who really didn’t want to sign up with you aren’t going to buy from you. All this will do will give you a bad reputation.

If you use these techniques, your pop-ups should be catchy and compelling and that should ensure that they help your list building efforts.

Marlon, what is the main purpose of Gimme My Money Now?

I wrote it as a follow up to The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy.

The Amazing Formula covers a number of marketing methods. It also doesn’t cover product creation with much deth. I found that I was explaining to my closest friends exactly how to make money online in the same way over and over again.

So I decided to create a product that gave just one formula step-by-step that really works.

What is the main benefit of the Gimme System?

The product is all about action. It’s only 50 pages. That is because it’s an action plan. That’s all it is. If you want to learn marketing strategy, buy The Amazing Formula. But if all you want is to take immediate action and make money, that’s the purpose of Gimme.

Now, The Amazing Formula applies to all types of products and services. The thing about Gimme is, it teaches how to create a specific type of information product and market it using only one very powerful marketing method.

You don’t advise people, in general, to start with ebooks. Why is that?

The deal is, a lot of people can’t write well. It can take 6 months for someone to write an ebook that no one wants to buy. That’s why in Gimme I teach an info product creation method that is much faster. After you find out IF a product will sell, you can turn it into an ebook, course or whatever.

The problem most people have is finding the right horse to ride to begin with. My system teaches you that. In fact, it gives it to you on a silver platter.

Am I guaranteed to make money?

No. All business involves risk of gain and loss. If you can’t handle the potential for loss, don’t play the game. I do everything in my power to put the odds in your favor. And I tell you what works for me personally.

This is all based on my own personal experience. That is what separates it from a lot of products. A lot of people write things that sound good in theory. Some of them don’t even write their own products!

What separates Gimme from the other how to products on the market?

I’m friends with many if not most of the other online marketers who train people. So I would never criticize their products. In fact, many of them are very good. I endorse some of them.

However, Gimme is totally unique in that it is one marketing systsem from A to Z. Beginning to end. 100% action. No fluff. People sometimes make the mistake of only being satisfied if they learn something new.

That’s wacko! I could care less if you learn something you “didn’t already know” from Gimme. The problem is, people may know a lot of things. Some of them work. Some of them don’t. Do they really know which is what?

What I give you is one action plan without any fluff that I personally know works because it’s what I do.

You may or may not like it. You may or may not agree with it. It just happens to be what I do that works for me. If you want to know that, great. Buy the product. Do it. And I bet you’ll be very happy.

If you want your brain to be tickled by “new information,” there’s nothing wrong with that. But The Amazing Formula and I dare say you’ll learn some new ideas.

But if you want to take action and start making money asap, and if you don’t already have a product and you need to create one, get Gimme.

Why do you emphasize creating your own product? Can I really do it?

When you have your own product, you make an extra 50% profit vs. what you get from reseller programs. That 50% goes a long way. You can now afford your own reseller program, advertising and many avenues you couldn’t before.

If you aren’t an expert at anything, I teach you to tap into other people’s expertise. You don’t have to be an expert if you play your cards right.

Of course, I teach you HOW to approach experts. The approach is all important. Virtually everyone does it wrong.

How much do I make on the reseller program?

The cool thing about the product is you can sell it for 50% profit. You can do that even if you don’t buy it. Go to http://www.getyourprofits.com for details.

Anyway, you not only make 50% on Gimme, you make 50% on our upsells, downsells, other products, 404 errors and other things. We do the follow up for you.

Finding your life purpose can be a most difficult task.

You have to dig through so many layers of emotions. There are layers of experiences, failures and rejections that will make it difficult for you to work out what your life purpose is. It might take hard work exploring your subconscious and many attempts. But the payoff could be a wonderful change to your life.

Don’t anticipate that it will be easy to find your life purpose

It’s not easy work looking for your life purpose. It’s easy once you have found it because it will resonate with you. You will have the proverbial “aha” moment. But getting there requires a lot of patience and a willingness to dig into the archives of your mind to see what you discover.

Just because you haven’t worked out your life’s purpose up to now doesn’t mean that you have wasted your life or that you have been unsuccessful as a person. Everything is part of the palette of experiences that you want to acquire.

But, if you do find your life’s purpose you will find your mood lift, your energy increase, your well-being and health improve and in general you will enjoy life more. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have set-backs or problems anymore. It just means you will have more energy to resolve them with.

So how does one go about finding out what it takes to get on purpose?

It’s probably going to take quite a bit of effort to fight your way through all of the preconditioning you have taken onboard.  There are many reasons why you might find your purpose difficult to work out. Your parents might have taught you to be cautious and safe in your choices. Your teachers at school might not have recognized your true passion and directed you to something that wasn’t for you. You could even think that you yourself are not worth spending time on.

Whatever the blocks that you might be facing, take courage and start digging. The pay-off will be worth it. Find what will make you jump out of bed in the mornings, make you forget the time as you enjoy living with passion and captivate all who listen to you as you enthusiastically talk about your life’s purpose.

Where to start with this huge project?

Probably your first and most wise step to take would be to involve a good friend or a personal coach in this exercise. But do try and find a coach who doesn’t tell you what to do. After all, you’ve been told what to do all your life which is why you never found your life purpose in the first place.

Don’t make that mistake again.

All you want is somebody who will keep you focused on the main prize. Someone who will continue to ask whether this is truly what you would like to do. Is this what you can see yourself being passionate about? Could this be the direction you want to take? Would this choice make you happy? These are some of the questions that should be answered, especially if you think you might have stumbled upon your life’s purpose.

But how do you start?

Start by asking the plain and simple question: what would you like in life? Don’t worry if you get a list of things such as a sports car, a better job, more money, be happy, a life partner, a soul mate and much more getting onto that list first. Continue with the questions for as long as it takes.

Eventually some more serious stuff will surface. You will note that when you say something like, “I would like to create art that will make people happy when they look at it” that you could get a tingling down your spine. Or you might be able to relate to, “I would like to overcome my physical limitations so that I can inspire other people to overcome theirs”.

Think back on times in your life when you were really happy, where the days went by far too quickly, when you laughed all the time, when you smiled a lot and when nothing was a problem. What were you doing then? Could that be what is your life’s purpose?

It’s worth exploring.

You will wonder how to find it. It’s been passing you by for many many years. What will enable you to find it now? Some effort will be required, that’s for sure, but above all else you will need to stop being afraid.

One of the most common thoughts that will crop up as you try and find your own purpose is the statement that you can’t do it. You can’t leave your job, you can’t go back to school and study again, you can’t leave the life you are living right now.

That is a perfectly normal way to think. Your life is a series of instances where you have to weigh your options. You have to decide many times whether you should take the safe route or whether you should put yourself at risk.

As a young person you are more inclined to take a risk. Leaving home to go to college in another State seems exciting. It involves stepping out of your comfort zone as you have to leave your support system behind. It’s an adventure though when you are young.

It is not as easy to do as you grow older. Everything you surround yourself with is important in that it makes you feel secure and safe. You have the same friends, you take the same route to work, you spend your evenings at the pub down the road, you go on holiday to the same seaside resort.

Yet this very sameness lulls you into a false sense of security and seduces you into thinking that this is the ideal life. It therefore surprises you when you feel a sense of dissatisfaction within. Where did that come from you wonder? After all you are so lucky to have this wonderful life especially in comparison to how many people have to live.

This way of cocooning yourself is what makes it so difficult to work out what your life purpose is. You know instinctively that whatever it is, will require you to change if you want to follow your purpose. Things will not be the same again.

From a young age society has conditioned you to take the safe route. Go to school, do well so that you can go to college, get a safe degree so you can be an accountant, lawyer, doctor or teacher and find a stable job because this will take care of you for the rest of your life.

The thought of leaving this comfort zone behind and trying to establish what you really would like to do is very frightening.  Finding the courage to explore what your life purpose is could be is the first step towards finding your passion for life.

Finding your life purpose may not be easy but…

by Nikola Grubisa
You have probably read or heard about various myths (these are the truths that are valid only for certain cases, but not in general) surrounding wealth and wealthy people, all of which hinder your quest for financial independence. Here are the most common and most destructive:

Myth No. 1: How much you earn depends on how hard you work

If this were true, then the physical, blue-collar workers, who have been working hard for years, would have been the wealthiest people on earth. Of course, this isn’t true. They form most of the workforce and the vast majority of the middle-class.

If you witnessed your parents coming home tired from a long day’s work in your youth, you probably learned that money wasn’t a sufficient reward for all that effort. People who work “just” for the money often have debts because they comfort themselves with whatever they can buy, beautiful things they lack when working.

Myth No. 2: Being paid for something you enjoy isn’t work and you shouldn’t ask for money for doing something that is enjoyable.

Check this with millionaires. They all have so much money that they don’t need to work anymore. Nevertheless, they work for other reasons, challenge, satisfaction, fullness of life, activity, fun … and all are connected to a love for their work. If there was no joy in doing a certain task, they would do something else that would make them much happier and that enables them to realize their dreams.

In fact, if you don’t enjoy your work, you will never become wealthy doing it! However, just because you enjoy your work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get paid for it – in fact, that is the ultimate goal, to get paid for what you already enjoy so it never feels like you are at work!

Myth No. 3: You need to be in the right line of business to amass wealth

Do you think so? This must mean that all the people who are involved in the same business are millionaires. Of course, this isn’t true. In each business there are winners and losers; winners abound, even in businesses that consist of distasteful (to most) or “impossible” work like sweeping the streets, collecting the trash, working in a factory, pumping gas, selling newspapers, etc. On the other hand, there are just as many “losers” in businesses like selling real estate, management or being a stockbroker.

Myth No. 4: You need the right education to make a fortune

Are the most educated people really the wealthiest? Not at all! In this case, university professors would be the wealthiest people on earth. Ask them about their salaries, if you get the opportunity. The truth is vastly different – the wealthiest people are those who can convert their knowledge (or education) into money, in the best possible way. They can be highly educated people (like inventors, scientists, etc.) or almost ignorant.

Being formally uneducated does not equate to poor performance on the job or the inability to form a strong enough vision to carry a person to success – they can easily be experts without having a formal education.

Myth No. 5: It used to be easier

Statistics show an increase in the number of millionaires in the world every year. Talking about the “good old times” only offers comfort and a convenient excuse. If you look around, you’ll see there are people who behaved the same way in the “good old times” as they do now, yet their success has been recent. With technology and progress come new ideas, desires and needs and there are more business opportunities appearing daily to serve them.

Myth No. 6: I’m too old (young)

If you research the life stories of some of the most successful people, you’ll see that this isn’t true at all. Some became wealthy early in their lives (perhaps from the stock market), while others found their fortune in their old age. Ray Kroc, was more than fifty years old when he bought and made the first McDonald’s.

Myth No. 7: I don’t have enough money to start. You have to spend money to make money.

This is no different from any other excuse or “myth.” Like the others, it’s obvious this one isn’t true either. Many have made their fortunes starting from scratch, living in an apartment or working out of their garage and yet, they developed business empires that are worth billions of dollars today. The other elements of success are far more important than having seed money to start a business.

But yes, often money helps and it certainly doesn’t hurt. Like everything else discussed in other myths: it probably helps, but it is not always necessary.

Myth No. 8: I’ll begin when I know everything

Do you believe that you will know everything someday? Or even that you’ll know enough to ever be “really prepared now?” The more you learn, the more you see what you still need to learn. Success and obtaining wealth is a dynamic process. Even if you “could” come out of the gate knowing everything there is to know, some of those elements will change immediately and many will change rapidly. If you don’t decide now, nothing will happen. Live and learn.

Some millionaires have even allowed themselves to go bankrupt and then (even faster) recreated their wealth, sometimes even greater than before. Money itself isn’t the obstacle that is keeping you from being wealthy. If you’re really good in your business, don’t worry, because someone that will offer you money (a bank or business partner) will appear who will appreciate your talent knowing you are a very good investment opportunity. But you can’t sit around waiting for this – make it happen.

Exercise “taking action” as much as you can. Make your workplace better or more efficient. After all, even if someone else signs your paycheck, you really work for you. Even if you are an employee in a large corporation – it isn’t your corporation – but it is the only corporation through which you can prove what you are capable of right now.

All of us have what it takes to become a millionaire! Born winners, yet few of us know how to take advantage of and cultivate the possibilities hidden inside our own mind!

No one can ever grant you greater potential than your heart already holds…you need only discover its contents to find the one true path to your success in life. Born with the seeds to our success, the greatest decisions must always come from the inside! You will discover a new, deep well of fortune – yourself!
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Nikola Grubisa is a European Marketing and HRM Consultant and the co-author of a European bestseller “The Millionaire Mindset: How to Tap Real Wealth from Within”. If you are wondering how top marketers are marketing in Europe and at the same time want to discover the path to true wealth, please subscribe to his new free eZine “The Millionaire Weekly Memo”. Click here: TheMillionaireMind

What does it mean to be “On Purpose”?

Let’s try some questions. If you answer no to any one, or possibly even all of these questions you might not be living according to your life purpose.

This one is an easy one. Do you wake up in the morning excited to start the day, every day, not just weekends or on your days off?

How about this one. Do you love your work and is it a career for you or a burden?

Do you often read a book or article online because it is interesting and will enrich your life and could possibly increase your knowledge for your work?

Here are a few that you might want to answer yes to and if you so might just realize you are not on purpose.

Do you often find yourself eating because it makes you feel good, and it helps you cope better with the day?

Are you constantly looking to make more money so that you can do something else, although you have no idea what you might want to do?

How do you answer to this one.  Are you and your credit card best buddies? Do you binge shop regularly and have a cupboard full of clothes which you have only worn once, if at all?

Do you long to go on a romantic cruise because it could let you meet up with the man or woman of your dreams?

You’re in a loving relationship but you like to look at good looking people because there’s no harm in having some fantasies?

When you go on vacation to another city, and especially if traveling outside your country, do you wish you could live there because you imagine things would be so much more exciting, or settled, or interesting, or lucrative?

You would love to buy a new car because you know it will make you feel great to be able to show off to other people that you’ve made it.

You live in the wrong suburb. If you could move to the one on the other side of the city it would be so much nicer. And the houses are much bigger.

So how did it go with all of these questions?

Remember none of the answers to the questions above show that you are doing anything wrong. That’s not the point of the exercise. It was just for you to reflect on whether there are things you might be doing on a daily basis that make you feel better about yourself because you are not doing what makes you happy.

In other words you are not living on purpose.

Do you have the courage to find your Personal Life Purpose?