If you’re an Internet marketer without your own large and responsive mailing list, building one should be your top priority. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is great, but a change in the algorithm your favorite search engine uses could tear all your hard work to pieces instantly. If you have your own list though, this will only be a minor hiccup in your overall success. You can use your list over and over again to gather large profits.

But how do you build such a list? The most effective way is to give away something for free in exchange for a sign-up to your list. For example, write an informative PDF document to give away. It needn’t be big, but should contain valuable information about your niche that perhaps everyone doesn’t already know.

Then use that freebie to gather sign-ups. Here are some easy and effective ways to do just that. We’ll get to some advanced methods in later posts.

Article Marketing

Write some good, informative and relevant articles and submit them to article directories all over the web. You’ll be able to put at least one link in your “bio box” at the end of the article. This should direct readers impressed with your content to your opt-in form.

Although good article marketing practices are beyond the scope of this post, you’ll definitely want to post to Ezine Articles, one of the biggest and most viewed article directories on the net. I also like Jet Submitter which, with a little work on your part, will “spin” your article into many different versions, then post them in hundreds of article directories for you.

Ezine Newsletter Ads

Many large list owners will subsidize their costs by offering advertising spots in their letters or ezines. These will generally have a fee associated with them, but it will be well worth the cost if you have something of value that readers will click on. Offering something for free works quite well.

If you can afford it, try for a spot near the top of the letter/ezine; “above the fold” as they say. This will get you a ton of traffic.

Forum Marketing

Find and join all the forums you can that are related to your niche. Just read them for a while. Then start posting links to informative and free articles and videos from others that speak to problems you see members talking about. Offer them solutions. Your goal for now is to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

Then as people are starting to regard you as such, post one of your own articles without telling them it’s yours. Make sure it’s a tried and true article that has already garnered you many click throughs to your opt-in page. Do this in 10-20 forums and you’ll get a flood of traffic and sign-ups.

Another idea for using forums is to create a high-value product and sell it for a minimal price in those forums that allow it. Be sure you know the rules of the forum and make your product over-deliver. This will keep your enhance your expertise in the forum as well as getting lots of opt-ins.

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These are just a few ideas to get you started building that all-important list. Stay tuned for more advanced techniques.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 16th, 2010 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Email. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.