List Building Exposed – E-Mail Secrets

Secrets To Building A Super Responsive List

List Building Secret #1 - Make Your Content Relevant Keeps Your Subscribers Happy And Boosts The Number Of People Who Will Recommend Your Newsletter To Their Friends.

One of the biggest problems I see newsletter and ezine publishers having online is that they write about subjects no one in their market is interested in. They just write about whatever they think people want to know about without doing any of the research, which is a huge no no.

Another problem is, publishers who have a market well defined don't then write the content in their newsletters that interest their readers. There is no use having an ezine on coin collecting and running articles on stamp collecting just because you couldn't be bothered finding the right content for your ezine. This is easily overcome. Just send out an email asking your readers what they want to read. Also sign up for other ezines in your market and see what they are writing about.

List Building Secret #2 - Add More Subscription Boxes To Your Website

Sounds simple enough, but few people actually do it. If you have a 100-page website, you should have 100 newsletters subscribe boxes on your website. You can integrate a subscribe box just about anywhere on a website. You could add one just before an article starts, in the middle of an article or even at the end of the article. As long as you have good content on your website, you won't have a problem getting people to subscribe to your newsletter.

List Building Secret #3 - Offer An Outstanding Bonus Or Gift

I've had a problem in the past with offering freebies to get people to subscribe to your newsletter, but I also know it can work well if done properly. Why do I have a problem with it? Well, I really want subscribers to be signing up for my newsletter because they want my newsletter not because they want the freebie I'm offering. The best way to offer a freebie is to create one yourself and not something you have reprint rights to with 500 other people. You want it to be unique, and you want it to be something that plugs your newsletter heavily. Do you know what makes a good bonus? Back issues of your newsletter!

List Building Secret #4 - Use Free Viral Ebooks To Get New Subscribers

Want to get thousands of new subscribers for your ezine without spending a cent on advertising and you've tried all the methods above but you still want more? Viral marketing is the way to go! Writing viral ebooks that get passed around Writing viral books is nothing new, but it's still a great way to get your newsletter noticed. There are a few methods you can use when creating viral ebooks. You can either create them as a free product or charge for them and give people the reprint rights to the product so they, in turn, can give your product away while making some money in the process.

I prefer the reprint right route. The key here is, once the momentum of the first book wears out, write another and another and another and another! All in the same method, all with reprint rights and all with your newsletter subscribe from plastered in them. The goal really isn't to make money from the sales of the book, it's to get more subscribers. So again, find a group of publishers in your markets, let them know you created a new ebook with sales letter that they can use and plug straight into their website and give them a mailing promotion to use and tell them they can have the book for free and that they can either sell the book or the book and the reprint rights to their customers.

This is easy money for them and more subscribers for you! Doing audio interviews with experts in your field also is a great idea to get more subscribers. I'm not going to get into how to create audio products as that's a whole other book, but interviewing experts over the phone and recording it on mp3 will get your newsletter splashed all over the Internet, especially in fields other than Internet marketing where people don't expect to get this much quality information for free

When you take marketing tactics from the Internet marketing field and apply them to other niche markets where they have never been seen before, you will get noticed more. Everything has been done in the Internet marketing field, we are all immune to even the most brilliant marketing tactics as we see them almost every day, but other niche markets eat these things up. Creating audio interviews isn't hard at all equipment wise and finding experts to interview is a piece of cake.

Do you know how I find experts in any field almost instantly?
Well, most FAQ pages at FAQS.Org/faq/ have who its written by and an email address for them. These guys are obviously knowledgeable in their fields, and they would make great experts interview. Tell them you want to interview them because you've read the information they've written and it was great and you think your subscribers would appreciate the information.

Most will do this without charging you a cent if you are outside the marketing field, they will just get a thrill out of being interviewed. Once you have these interviews, tell all the publishers you've been in contact with recently that you
have this great set of mp3's just completed and you want to offer them for free to their lists. Setup a section on your website with the download link to these mp3's and also put a subscribe form near them for your newsletter and you will be surprised how many people will sign up AFTER they listen to your mp3s. Don't make it so these people have to sign up for your newsletter before they get the mp3s.

List Building Secret #5 - Use Pop Up Windows

Pop up windows are still effective ways to get subscribers, especially in niche markets. Creating popups on your website is as easy as pie. There are however a few different types of popup windows you can use. The pop-up window on exit, which pops up after you leave a website and the popup window on entry which obviously pops up when you first go to a website. You can do a web search to find tons of popup programs. I prefer the popover that can’t be knocked out by popup killers. So when someone visits your website they get interrupted by your top message you want to get across immediately, i.e. asking them to subscribe to your newsletter, etc.

List Building Secret #6 -Use Name Squeeze Pages
Name Squeeze is a big buzzword lately and it's something people have been beating to death, but it really does work. Name Squeeze is nothing new, it's just that Jonathan Mizel gave an old technique a new name and new appeal. Good marketing on his part.

List Building Secret #7 - Buy Leads With Co-Registration

Quick and easy way to get subscribers, but not the best way. That's how I describe Co-registration. Some marketers swear by it and have great results, others fail and have to throw out the entire list they bought because it's riddled with fake addresses, spam complaints and basically freebie seekers. So what is Co-registration? Basically, its building lists by buying subscribers from a 3rd party service. Here is how Dr. Raplh Wilson put it.....

"Co-registration is a widely-used approach to increase the size of your e-mail lists. Co-registration works this way: After completing a subscription form or upon leaving a website, visitors are invited to subscribe to one or more e-zines. If yours is listed among these and the site gets a substantial amount of traffic, you'll begin to receive a number of subscriptions. "

List Building Secret #8 - Write Free Articles

While it's a given you will put your newsletter subscribe address in your resource box at the end of the article, this is not the best way to get people to subscribe to your newsletter. The best way is to write a few free E-courses that people can subscribe to via an autoresponder and weave the links into your article.

Here is what I mean, and I can tell you now, HARDLY ANYONE is doing this. Let's say you have a newsletter on Ice Fishing and you're in the middle of writing a few articles to send out for publication. Here is what I would do. I would go to Aweber.com, buy a monthly subscription to their service and then start writing up 2 or 3 free e-courses on all things to do with Ice Fishing and plug them into my autoresponder. Now, why would I want to do this if I really want people to subscribe to my newsletter? Well, article writing has come under attack by people who believe cutting people’s article bylines out is acceptable. They just steal the content as their own. So instead of trying to fight these people every day of the week, I've accepted this is going to happen and I made provisions for it, and in fact, it probably works in my favor.

So in my article, while I'm writing it, I would let the readers know there is this great E-course for free they can sign up for. I wouldn't mention it was mine. I would just weave it into my article and it looks like I'm providing them with a great free resource. I would then provide them with the autoresponder link and how to sign up.

List Building Secret #9 - Use A Sales Letter To Get Subscribers

This is something I've seen a lot of lately. People using direct sales letters to get new subscribers for their newsletter. They are actually creating a sales letter like they would for a product they are selling, and at the end of it, instead of an order button, they have a subscribe here button. You wouldn't even know by reading the sales letter that it’s not for a product until the very end. This gives people the WOW factor. You make your newsletter sound so valuable that when they find out it's free, they go "WOW, I can't believe they are giving all this information away for free". This is pure marketing at it's best, and it's exciting. Marketing is meant to be exciting, just like life.

List Building Secret #10 - Using Mp3s To Get More Subscribers

Doing audio interviews with experts in your field also is a great idea to get more subscribers. I'm not going to get into how to create audio products as that's a whole other book, but interviewing experts over the phone and recording it on mp3 will get your newsletter splashed all over the Internet, especially in fields other than Internet marketing where people don't expect to get this much quality information for free When you take marketing tactics from the Internet marketing field and apply them into other niche markets where they have never been seen before, you will get noticed more. Everything has been done in the Internet marketing field, we are all immune to even the most brilliant marketing tactics as we see them almost every day, but other niche markets eat these things up. Creating audio interviews isn't hard at all equipment wise and finding experts to interview is a piece of cake.

Do you know how I find experts in any field almost instantly? Well, most FAQ pages at FAQS.Org/faq/ have who its written by and an email address for them. These guys are obviously knowledgeable in their fields, and they would make great experts interview. Tell them you want to interview them because you've read the information they've written and it was great and you think your subscribers would appreciate the information. Most will do this without charging you a cent if you are outside the marketing field, they will just get a thrill out of being interviewed.

Once you have these interviews, tell all the publishers you've been in contact with recently that you have this great set of mp3's just completed and you want to offer them for free to their lists. Setup a section on your website with the download link to these mp3's and also put a subscribe form near them for your newsletter and you will be surprised how many people will sign up AFTER they listen to your mp3s. Don't make it so these people have to sign up for your newsletter before they get the mp3s.

List Building Secret #11 - Archive Your Newsletter Copies

Sometimes people are hesitant to give any sort of information away over the Internet, especially there email addresses even if what you are offering is free, due to spam. But if you allow people to read your back issues without having to signup for your newsletter, this will show them what type of content you do write and will make them want to join. You would think having your newsletter issues archived would cut back on subscribers wanting to subscribe because they can get it without giving their email address away, but this is not true. What you do is tell them on the website that newsletter subscribers get each issue 2 weeks before non-subscribers.

List Building Secret #12 - Use A Paid For And Well Known

Autoresponder
I can't stress this enough. Don't use free Autoresponders! These free services can go down at any time (with your list) and are not professional looking at all. Plus, they also get used for spamming and are abused badly. You can use Aweber.com ($20 per month) or an autoresponder like AdtrackResponderPro that works on YOUR server at a one-time payment. You get unlimited use and no monthly payments.

List Building Secret #13 - Use Free Forum Posting

This is a great way to get not only more subscribers for your newsletter but recognized as an expert in your field. By posting helpful suggestions in forums in your market, you will get a lot of good attention. I'm not going to get into a whole lot about this subject as it's pretty easy to get started.

1) Find forums in your niche
2) Read some of the back posts and see who’s the boss, who posts good content and what the rules are
3) Start posting with informative information and include your little newsletter byline at the end of your post or in your signature file

List Building Secret #14 - Trade Ads With Other Publishers

This is a simple method of generating new subscribers instantly. Basically, you place an ad for other publishers newsletters in your newsletter and they do the same for you in return. It's not something I'm a huge fan of, but it does work. But there are a few tips you should know.

The trading ad's for ad's with other publishers works well when your mailing list is small and growing rapidly. It's very hard to find suitable ad swapping deals that are worth your while when you have 10,000 or more subscribers. So how can you find publishers that are looking to trade ad's? Easy! Do a Google search for the following.

"your market here ezine" (without the “quotes”) or "your market here newsletter" (without the “quotes”) (I know that’s a strange phrase but it works good “:>o) You’ll find a lot of players in the ezine/newsletter field… Or try examples like this but tailored to your specialized area…
"Gardening Ezine"
"Gardening Newsletter"

Then just contact all the publishers you can and ask them if they are willing to trade ad space in their newsletter for ad space in your newsletter. Don't just spam these people. Actually, sign up for their ezine, look at their website, personalize any contact you make with them so they know you're not just harvesting email addresses and you will do well.

Some of the time you don't even need to trade ad's with people in your exact market. Let's say just because you run a gardening ezine, that doesn't mean you can't trade ad's with landscaping ezine. Do you get my drift?

List Building Secret #15 - Setup A Contest

This is my favorite method. Basically what it is, is you get a group of publishers all to agree on running a contest to their lists and you run the same contest to your list. To enter this contest, these subscribers from your list must subscribe to the other publishers lists and vice versa.

The contest could be for anything, depending on your market. Perhaps the publishers you contact all have ebooks for sale, you could give a free copy of all your ebooks out to the winner. Anything with value with work. You then set up a domain for this specific contest and put all the information needed on that. You then tell your list about the contest and where to go to enter and how. Everyone on your list who enters then gets subscribed to the other publisher's ezine and you get their subscribers.

Here are the steps.....
1) Find 4 or 5 publishers in your market
2) Contact them and tell them your idea and that you are willing to do all the work, all they need to do is give you there signup information and something to offer for the contest
3) Setup a domain name and website/sales letter that tells people how to enter and all the information needed
4) Write a mailing piece that each of the publishers can use to promote the contest.
5) Get a firm date when these publishers will run the contest mailing piece and how often
6) Send these publishers the names and email addresses of subscribers
7) Add the subscribers to your list, make sure you check for duplicate email addresses so you don't add people already on your list
8) Pick a winner!

List Building Secret #16 - Do An Article Recommendation
SUPER HOT IDEA!
What you do with this idea is get together 4 or 5 publishers again, and get them to agree on running an article that you wrote. That's it, nothing tricky, and if they agree to run this article they will get thousands of new subscribers virtually overnight. What you do is you write an article about the best newsletters in your market, and those would, of course, be the publishers who agreed to run your article. Make the article objective, don't just blatantly plug newsletters, write it like a news reporter would. Everyone who runs the article will get subscribers and you will get subscribers and everyone will be happy.

Sometimes you have to make things happen, especially with Internet Marketing, don't wait for people to contact you, YOU make it happen and you can do that, it's not hard, just think outside the box. This method will also work for paid products as well. You don't just have to plug newsletters, you could get all the publishers together and write an article about the best products in your market. This way everyone can make sales and affiliates sale just by running the article.

List Building Secret #17 - Thank You For Subscribing Page

Simple enough. Get a group of publishers together and tell them you want to send new subscribers of your ezine to a page that recommends signing up for their ezine and that they do the same for YOU. You see it all the time. You subscribe to an ezine you see on a website and once you subscribe you are taken to another page that recommends other peoples newsletters that you should join. This is pretty much a better version of co-registration, but it costs you nothing.

List Building Secret #18 - Buy Ezine Solo Ads
Whenever I advertise with ezines it's usually solely with Solo Ads. These are ads that are sent out by themselves, unlike classified and other ads that go out in the ezine itself. This ad will go out by itself, so it needs to be a fairly good length. While some people say shorter ads work better for the simple fact the reader has less to read, in reality, a very well written longer solo ad will pull much much better. There are usually word and length limits to these ads so when you are creating them, it might be good to check around at what the normal length of a solo ad is in your industry. You might even check out the posting guidelines for other ezines so you can know exactly how long they like their solo ads. The best bet to make a compelling solo ad is to work really hard on the headline. If you can write
a very compelling headline for your ad, the rest of the ad should follow.

List Building Secret #19 - Submit To Ezine Directories
The best ezine directories are paid for and they are: Topezineads.com and Directoryofezines.com

Here are some free ones:
http://www.go-ezines.com
http://www.ezinelisting.com
http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/submit.html
http://www.ezine-dir.com
http://www.list-city.com
http://e-zinez.com
http://www.published.com/index.html
http://www.homeincome.com/search-it/ezine/index.html
http://new-list.com
http://inkpot.com/submit
http://www.published.com/list/submit.html
http://www.listtool.com/cgi/listTool/addList.cgi

List Building Secret # 20 - Use Classified Advertising In Ezines
These are small ads, usually four or five lines long that go out in the ezine itself. They don't work anywhere as well as solo ads, but they are cheap as chips. The secret here again is to write a very compelling headline. The best way to use classified ads (the best way to use any advertising on the Internet) is to send them straight to your opt-in mailing list from the ad, where you might be promoting a free course via autoresponder all about your product. Once you have their email address, you can contact them over and over again until they buy or unsubscribe. This is by far the best method of advertising with classified ads.

List Building Secret #21 - Use Top Sponsorship Ad's In Ezines

These ads are at the top of the newsletter and are usually the first thing people read. They usually cost about half the price of a solo ad, but they usually don't pull anywhere near as well. They are also usually 5 to 8 lines long, and you should really concentrate on your headline, and leading them straight to your autoresponder.

List Building Secret #22 - Network All You Can
Everywhere you go, network with people. You never know exactly who you might run into. Let as many people as you can know what you do and that your the best at it. Going to seminars and trade events is a great way to network with people in your markets and a great way to start building relationships with key online businesses. You never know who might be able to help you with something down the track.

List Building Secret #23 - Create And Sell Ebooks or give them away FREE!

This is just a very quick overview, but if you want more information on creating Ebooks, I suggest you do a web search on it to find some good resources in your particular area of interest. Here’s one I really like you can check out that covers a lot of info product terrain. Now, back to the explanation. Whether you like it or not, having your own product gives you more flexibility in your online advertising AND believe it or not, compiling an Ebook is no more then a weeks work part time if done correctly. However, it could end up taking a lot longer. If you don’t have a lot of time you can get ebook products with private label rights and customize them with YOUR own links as the only work you would need to input into the product. Do a web search for Private label ebooks to see what you can find.

Ok, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. What is a viral marketing Ebook and why should you create one? A viral marketing Ebook is a book which sole purpose is to be spread around the Internet quickly, by any means possible. It's not meant to only make you money on the front end. You want other people selling it and giving it away to as many people as possible. Why? Because the inside of that book it has YOUR subscription signup info all over the place AND is also full of your affiliate links leading to other related products. Every time someone buys or gives away your book or resells it, (depending on how you want to do it) more people will be seeing YOUR links. And this is costing you what? NOTHING… Exactly!

The best example I can give you of this process would be by Yanik Silver. He created 2 marketing books that spread over the Internet like wildfire. He gave everyone who purchased the book for $19 or $17 (depending on the book) the rights to sell it or give it away to their customers. Needless to say, thousands of people starting selling it and promoting it all over the Internet. To this day, he is still earning good money from that book, plus he became one of the most well-known Internet Marketers to date. So how do you go about creating your own viral marketing Ebook?

Here are the steps.

1) Come up with a product idea based on the affiliate program you've already chosen and are already promoting. Coming up with ideas isn't hard. For example, if you are going to be promoting a digital camera affiliate program, why not create a free OR inexpensive book report on 10 quick tricks to becoming a successful digital photographer. You can find that info online in a web search and then rewrite it in your own words. Since you are saving your reader time by compiling this info in one place it’s valuable to them. Then throughout your report, you can recommend your favorite related affiliate programs while picking up new subscribers plus all the backend commissions you can make from your affiliate links in your ebook. This is PROVEN FORMULA that really works! A good way to come up with ideas is to look at what others are already selling or giving away and mimic that. You don't need to reinvent the wheel here, so PLEASE don't make things harder then they have to be.

2) Get the tools you need to succeed
You are going to need a few tools here.

A) A domain name

B) Webhosting

C) Autoresponder

You will need this so you can contact your prospects that don't purchase straight away. This is where you will give away your free course or someway to entice them to give you their email address so you can contact them periodically. Send follow-up autoresponders to run your newsletter or announcement list If you're not familiar with the uses of follow-up autoresponders, check out these sites.

D) Credit card processor
Just use http://www.clickbank.com. This step is too easy. They will let you accept all major credit cards and start an affiliate program for a one-time setup fee of under $50. They do take a percentage of every sale, but this is so much cheaper than getting your own merchant account. Just about everyone selling Ebooks online is using Clickbank. However, it’s much easier to set up order buttons at Paypal.com or Stormpay.com which allows you to get immediate sales orders. If you are not using other affiliates to sell a particular report you may want to go with Paypal and or Stormpay for some of your products sales.

E) Ebook Software
You will more then likely want to create your book in PDF format so everyone can read it. Some Ebooks come in EXE format, but mac users can't read that format, so I find it best to use PDF. You can create your book with these free resources:

PrimoPDF – PDF creation tool
http://www.primopdf.com/
Print to PDF from any application. Grab a copy of this and learn it. Very handy.
http://www.pdf995.com/download.html

Also…
Adobe - Do it online
http://createpdf.adobe.com

Or, at the time of this writing, you can get it done online, for free, by Acrobat. They have an offer to convert up to 3 documents from any Microsoft Office application or standard web pages, up to 50 megabytes

F) Ebook Graphic Design
I recommend getting a good graphic designer for your eCovers. Here’s a couple of good sites to get really nice design work done.
http://www.hypercover.com
http://www.pixelstoprofits.com

3) Outline your book chapters into articles

Writing a whole book in one sitting is hard, and trying to write a book without outlining the chapters is nearly impossible. The first book I ever wrote took me over 6 months but now most of my books take me less than a week to finish and that is with a sales letter and website up. All you have to do is think up 12 to 15 article topics in sequence and write about them. Each page should be around 700 to 1000 words, full of useful information, not information people could get for free.

4) Write your content

Like I said just before, you need original content. There are too many books out there now where people are just regurgitating information others can get for free and this lowers the value of your book, which means fewer people will pass it around and even less will read it. If you are really stuck with your writing, I suggest that you do the following. The best way to get a good amount of original information without writing it yourself is to interview experts in the field. For instance, if you were writing a book about improving your golf handicap, I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find some local experts who you could grill in person, over the phone or even via the Internet and you can then put all that information in the book. It's also a good selling point.

Also, remember when your writing what the point of this book is. The point of the book is to earn you an ongoing commission with affiliate programs, so don't feel like you can't throw some affiliate links in, because you can, but make sure it's tactful and in place. Another good idea would be to put a "Subscribe to my newsletter" section in your book as well, so not only will you make commissions on sales, but also generate leads without doing any extra work. Make sure you clearly state in the front of the book, that the buyer can sell this book as his own. State that he has Resell Rights to the product and can sell it or give it away if he chooses.

5) Create your sales letter

This is where you will be selling your book from and is critically crucial to your success. Creating a sales letter takes a lot of work, especially if you're new to the whole thing. The best way and the way I use is to mimic successful sales letters. Here’s the system to help you do just that and since you are reading this book you will get a huge discount off the normal price by clicking here. However, if you want to hire a professional copywriter, your looking at thousands of dollars, plus royalties from your book sales.

Remember that you can sell your book with reprint rights, which means when they buy the book they can sell it as well. This is a huge selling point for you. You will also be giving them your Ebook cover, website graphics and sales letter to use to sell your product.

6) Plug in a free 5-day autoresponder series

The best way to write your free 5-day course that your prospects get via your pop up window. An easy way to create your 5-day course is to take some chapters out of your book and put them in as a free teaser. Remember to emphasize urgency. You want to make these prospects who don't buy straight away feel like they are missing out on an opportunity of a lifetime and considering the low price of the book if they don't buy, more then likely they weren't really interested or were freebie seekers from the start.

Note: If you need writing done for you, you can outsource to have stuff written for you and it doesn’t have to be too expensive depending on how much you need to be done. You can go to http://www.eLance.com and find writers that will bid on your proposal to write for you. Do not discount this outsourcing method – many marketers hire out while still having a hand in the final product but without having to write it or do all the research.

7) Advertise!

Depending on your topic, you will want to target different people. However, no matter what topic your selling on, there is one market who will want you advertise your book to Internet Marketing group. All they care about is that they can resell it as their own. Your book could be on almost any topic but all they care about is the fact they can sell it on their own. This is why niche type of books can do so well. The key is to target people in your market and then the Internet Marketing crowd.

List Building Secret #24 - Start An Affiliate Program To Promote Your Newsletter

You could start your own affiliate program solely to promote your newsletter. This has been done before with some success, especially if you know how much your subscribers are worth to you, money wise. If you know that every subscriber to your newsletter is worth 50 cents to you, you wouldn't mind paying 20, 30, 40 or even 50 cents per subscriber to your affiliates, and that's a pretty good deal for you and them.

Another less risky way is to do the following. Create an ebook, or some sort of digital product, with value, sell it for around $20 to $30 and give affiliates 100% of the sale. You won't make any money selling the product, but you will get a huge mailing list of not only newsletter subscribers, but customers. You can see someone doing this exact thing at DoubleYourDating.com or SecretAffiliateWeapon.com. Affiliates are sending him thousands of new subscribers every day and thousands of customers every day because he gives them 100% of the sale of his ebook.

List Building Secret #25 - Use A Dynamic Email Signature

This is so simple, yet people forget to even do it or do it properly. If you send out quite a few emails every day, this is a great method to pick up some new subscribers. All you need to do is at the end of each email you send out, have a 4 line ad for your newsletter. You could use a classified ad you've already written for ezine advertising. You will be surprised how many people will sign up for your newsletter.

List Building Secret #26 - Press Releases: Not Dead, Just Evolved

Mark Twain once said the rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. The same may be said for the press release. It’s not dead, but its mission has evolved. Those PR practitioners who are spreading these death rumors would have you believe that press releases should never be written, nor distributed. I take issue with this old-school thinking. Let’s talk about the evolution of the press release into a solid tool for helping organizations deliver key messages to multiple audiences in the digital age. In the not-so-distant pre-Internet past, press releases were aimed solely at trade and consumer media outlets. The media acted as the gatekeepers, taking your information and making decisions about how, or if, to use it.

Organizations today are able to bypass the media filter in a number of ways, thanks to the net. Consider this: both journalists and consumers use the web for research. More than 550 million searches are done daily via the web. And, every month, US web-users conduct 27 million searches at Yahoo! News, Google News or other news search engines. According to recent surveys by Middleberg/Ross and the Pew Internet Project, we learn that:

- 98 percent of journalists go online daily
- 92 percent do it for article research
- 76 percent to find new sources and experts
- 73 percent to find press releases
- 68 million Americans go online daily
- 30 percent use a search engine to find information
- 27 percent go online to get news

But you need to think differently about writing your releases in this new age. You can extend the power of your press releases beyond the media by positioning them for search engine pick up. In effect, your press releases become a long-lasting, online, searchable database about your organization. Once properly written with both readers and search engines in mind, you need to distribute the release. PR Web™ and PR Newswire are my two favorite ways to get the message out. Both services help you reach into the newsroom and beyond. PR Web emails press releases daily to between 60,000 - 100,000 global contacts points. Journalists, analysts, freelance writers, media outlets, and newsrooms, as well as your average web users are signed up to receive this information. Also, it distributes releases via FTP, XML feeds and through a network of its own websites. PR Web-related sites are in the top 2,500 most visited sites. Every release sent out through PR Web is optimized for search engines, and PR Web guarantees your release will be picked up by Yahoo!

A granddaddy of press release services is PR Newswire, which distributes directly into the central editing computers at daily newspapers, newsweeklies, national news services, trade publications and broadcast newsrooms. It reaches a total of 22,000 media points in the US alone. All releases are distributed to and archived in more than 3,600 websites, databases, and online services. Additionally, PR Newswire’s website is in the top 2,000 most visited sites on the Internet.

Finally, let’s take a look at the online media room. Its primary purpose is to provide journalists with easily accessible data about the organization, such as executive bios, earnings figures, key contacts and other solid, factual information. An organization also should place news releases here, particularly those aimed at key stakeholders like employees, strategic allies, and investors. Technology savvy consumers often visit online media rooms for the same reason journalists do: they expect to find factual information there. Churning out releases and dumping them willy-nilly on the media is a dumb practice. But using releases as a strategic weapon to reach key audiences across the digital divide is smart PR. Practitioners who believe the news release is a dead need to evolve, or they will be the moribund ones. If you really want to get the most out of Press Releases automating most of the tasks involved… this is the tool you want.

List Building Secret #27 - Give Your Newsletter Personality
What makes you different from any of the other newsletters out there in your market? 1 thing and 1 thing only. YOUR PERSONALITY. Don't be a lifeless drone, add some spark to your writing… Yes, you should be informative but you can also inject other parts of your personality too. You can be funny, witty, controversial, etc… but just don't be boring!

Your ultimate goal is to get people to know you, like you and trust you! List Building Secret #28 - Make Sure To Keep Your Newsletter Off Spam Lists!

Here are some very useful tips to make sure you stay out of hot water when it comes to being called a spammer.
* Make Sure Your Email Message is Compliant with the CAN-SPAM Law.
* Keep detailed records of all subscribes and unsubscribes. IP addresses, when they subscribed when they unsubscribed.
* Don't ever purchase bulk email lists or harvest emails from the Internet.
* If you use co-registration companies, make sure they are reputable and don't use shady methods of traffic gathering.
* If you have an Affiliate Program, make sure you abide by any "anti-spam" provisions in your agreement.
* Avoid using spam trigger words like "spam, free, special, guaranteed" etc....

If you need to you can hyphenate them… Example: F-R-E-E.

List Building Secret #29 - Setup A Membership Site Just For Subscribers
Want to really boost your subscription rate? Start your own membership site solely for your newsletter subscribers. You can see a real example at UndergroundInterviews.com. The key here is to make sure your content is fantastic, so much so that you could actually have to pay customers for it. Keep it updated constantly. Another thing that can come in handy when running a membership site is getting some first-hand knowledge if you haven’t had any experience with running a membership site, this is crucial.

List Building Secret #30 - Setup A Free E-Course For New Subscribers
This step doesn't have to be difficult. This free course is the vehicle to promote whatever it is you want to promote, whether it be an affiliate program, your newsletter (which is a given) or your own product. It will also be the catalyst that allows you to contact these leads as often as you want. I will warn you now, however, that you don't want to contact them every day, maybe not every week, only when you have something substantial to email to them. This keeps your list happy, and not full of junk emails that no one will end up reading.

First off though, we need a title for your report. No one is even going to subscribe if it doesn't interest them. This is where a lot of writers really wreck a perfectly good report. You have to make your title as exciting and straight to the point as possible.

Here are a few examples of very poor titles.

Make Money Online
Migraine Relief Report
Create Your Own Products Easily
Play Cricket Like A Pro

I might have been a little harsh to say that they are poor titles, they just lack any spark or imagination. Here are a few suggestions I have to spruce those titles up, and these can be used in any other titles as well.

Make Money Online In 7 Days With Residual Income Affiliate Programs
Stop Migraines In 5 Easy Steps
Create Sizzling Digital Products Instantly, That Sell Like Crazy Bat Like Border And Bowl Like Lee, Play Cricket Like A Pro!

So what is the easiest way to create your own free 5-day course?
The best way to create your free course is to write 5 or so articles yourself on the subject your promoting and putting it into a free course. The problem most people have when they try and do this is that they try and write thousands of words all at once and they get tired and never complete it. If you break it down into sections, it's a lot easier. For example, if I was to write a free course on creating your own fishing lures for profit, I would write something like this.

Article 1: Why fishing lures are so profitable
Article 2: How to create your own fishing lures from your table
Article 3: How to automate the whole lure making process
Article 4: How to market your lures offline
Article 5: How to market your lures on a budget online

And in each of these articles, I would weave an affiliate link into somewhere or mention my newsletter. The information has to be of high quality and not just a blatant plug-a-thon. If you do this, you will certainly get a lot of people unsubscribing from your list. Of course, you can't really just send your prospects a bunch of articles, you have to weave them together. For instance, the first email they get could be a thank you for subscribing email, with a don't forget to get your free gift line in there somewhere. This first email, you should try and hook your prospects, so if you have an article section that's better then the rest, put it on the first day.

List Building Secret #31 - Start Your Own Forum

This is a great way to get new subscribers to your newsletter. Building a community within your website brings back repeat visitors, which means people will more then likely sign up for your newsletter if they keep coming back. You can see an example of this at Howtocorp.com and go look at the forum. He has his newsletter signup form there and product recommendations. People love to help other people and answer their questions, so after a while you won't need to be answering any questions yourself. The best way to start your own forum is to do it yourself with software and host it on your own web hosting.

List Building Secret #32 - Contact Previous Customers And Clients

This is just another simple method most people overlook, but they don't realize just how powerful
it is. If you already have a list of customers or prospects, tell them your starting an ezine and let them know they can subscribe anytime they like and get all the information for free. These people have already proven their interest in you or what your selling, so it makes perfect sense they would want to hear from you more often then they already are (if at all!)

List Building Secret #33 – Use Pay per Click to get Subscribers

This is something that people starting are not doing enough … As you know, pay per click search engines like Google’s Adwords program or Overture’s PPC engine (now owned by Yahoo) require you to pay when someone clicks on your website. Most of the time marketers drive this paid traffic to a sales page to sell something for a commission. However, if you want to get more conversions out of this traffic, give them something FREE that compels them to subscribe to your newsletter. After they are on your list you can now sell to them without the paying per click and you what you have is a paid opt in the situation that is well worth it as long as you do it right.

If you stay on topic of why they subscribed and were able to get them by paying a low cost per click, you now have one of the best ways to get new subscribers to opt into your list with a pre-driven interest in what you have to offer.

List Building Secret #34 - Give Permission To People To Use Your

Newsletter or Excerpts of It In Their Own Works
Tell people who are already subscribed to your newsletter that they can pass the newsletter on to friends and also allow them to use parts or all of YOUR newsletter in THEIR ezine. Of course, you would get credit and a link back to your site. This is sort of like article writing, just with your newsletter full issue or excerpts in place of an article. You can even let them have the affiliate link to make money from your product review or tip. However, the credit you get for writing it always leads back to your signup page.

List Building Secret #35 - Send Testimonials To Products You've Used
This is an easy way to get a trickle of new subscribers daily to your newsletter. Whenever you use a product or service you really like, send them a great, glowing testimonial and they will gladly put it up on their website and put a link to your website subscribe page with it. The trick here is to get as many people who read your testimonial to your website and to subscribe to your newsletter. The best way to do this is to register a new domain name solely for catching subscribers from testimonials, something catchy, and put a name squeeze page as your main page. You will slowly get a nice stream of new subscribers every day for as long as the product or service is selling for.

List Building Secret #36 – Buy a Popular Product and Offer it FREE to One Winner!

A cool innovative way to drum up some new subscribers is to go buy a popular product and give it away where one person will win it in a drawing. This is a variation on a contested concept but more value is added since a premium product is a lure. Several hundred people may sign up to win the product but only one person can win. For all the others that do not win, you’ll have to keep them happy if you want them to remain on your list. So what you will do is add in a nice free bonus BUT don’t tell them about it till after the winner is announced.

Then… give them the unannounced bonus and make it valuable too so they won’t feel left out.
They’ll love it… and you’ll have a win, win, win!…
How can you select a winner?...
That’s a great question…
One good way is to publish a question and like radio stations do. The first correct response that comes in gets the prize. Or you can simply do a random pick a name out of a hat type concept and here how you can do it internet style.

Grab a copy of your list saving it into a text file… Close your eyes and scroll down till your gut tells you to stop. Where ever the mouse cursor ends up is it. Now highlight that name – you have a winner. It doesn’t have to be complicated just use a simple random, HONEST way you derive your winner… and mission accomplished. (Option) You may even be able to get more than one winner if you want to negotiate more than one download. Example: You get 5 product downloads of the same OR even 5 Different products could work. Therefore, you would have 5 winners. More excitement, more winners… more subscribers!

List Building Secret #37 – Post Your Free Ebooks or Reports At Other Websites
There are many websites that want your free content. When you create free reports, make sure you also offer them to other websites OR at BLOGS that thrive on FREE content. Note: Many blogs allow you to add comments or feedback and as long as you are not spamming them - BUT being informative, you can slide-in your information which ALWAYS should contain links leading back to your subscription page. They’ll use YOUR content for THEIR purposes to fill-up content space… but your reward is follow-up residual subscriptions that can keep on trickling in and they can really add up!

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