Just what exactly is a blog and how do people make money blogging?, you may be asking yourself, if this is all new to you, or perhaps you’ve just heard about it and wonder what it is all about. I consider myself to be pretty online business and marketing savvy, yet honestly the word blog is still a bit foggy to me, so I decided to start doing some research on this seemingly quite popular online activity. At first glance it appears to me that there are some who are making a very decent income with blogging while in contrast, others were delighted to be making a few dollars here and there with it. I thought for sure they were just being sarcastic, yet it actually seemed that they were being honest. Perhaps they had never made a penny online thus the elation?! I read a few comments that were ones like “I was so happy I made $1.83 last month!”

Sorry but I can’t stop laughing. I mean really, less than $2.00 in a month and that person wants to throw a party?! If I were to ever consider learning to make money blogging, I would first of all be sure I found out everything those couple-dollars-a-month people did wrong or just were too lazy to do, and then diligently study and learn from the ones who are making at least a grand or more per month on a consistent basis. Apologies if you were one of those couple-dollars-a-month happy earners, but come on now, unless you won the lottery and do not need to make any money, why on earth were you so happy over such a ridiculous ROI (return on investment)?  Do you want to make a decent amount of money blogging? Then read on to learn what I picked up from the experts, first of all from the infamous Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia, a blog is simply a part or type of a website. These blogs are normally maintained by a person with regular entries and can be commentaries, reports of various events or even such things as graphics or perhaps some videos as well. A typical blog uses a combination of images, links, media related to the topic, text and web pages, while also allowing for the readers or visitors of the blog to leave comments and messages, thus enabling interactions to take place. The interaction is often what makes blogs unique and distinguishes them from regular websites.

One of the very first things you will want to do if you are contemplating that you just may want to seriously learn how to make money blogging is to choose both a niche subject that could potentially bring in money for you, and a domain name which is based upon the research you have put into it. Then go on to buy that domain name, host it and set up your blog. Yes indeed, there is work involved! So if by any chance you were thinking you could just hop on Facebook or Twitter and start writing about your favorite sport and an hour or two later the money would automatically start overflowing into your bank account, I have to break it to you gently…it will not happen. You definitely need to take some time to really decide if you have the proper mindset to engage in something that will require your effort, energy, money and time before you just jump in blindly, hoping to make money blogging.

Researching until you find a profitable niche is a very important part of learning how to make money blogging. To find this you will need to learn how to grasp doing an effective keyword research. One well known blogger who seems to be a guru at this suggested downloading a free copy of Market Samurai and notes that although it is indeed free to sign up and go through their video lessons, after the free trial period you would need to buy the software for a reasonable price to be able to keep using the full version. However, if your budget is a bit tight, the best alternative would definitely be the free version of Traffic Travis. According to this blogger, Market Samurai is well worth the money and can save you many hours of time if you were to just try to figure it out on your own, what I can confirm as well. Apparently he went that route and spent years of trial and error and had disasters happen that he really did not want to go into, perhaps since he did not make money blogging at that time.  Anyone else been there?! I know I certainly have, so if you have plenty of time and want to take the long route feel free, but know that you also have somewhat of a shortcut available that does include a fee.

Next you will want to buy and host your domain name which I alluded to earlier, but remember, only after you have conducted a good amount of research so that you can have one that will be profitable for you. What is so great about buying a catchy domain name if no one will either know about it and thus not find it (I have to admit I have done that and actually put together a fantastic website that honestly I think barely anyone could find!) You will also want one that people will be interested in enough to read and stay plugged in with. Three places that come to find when searching for a great domain name and hosting are of course the very popular GoDaddy for domain names and HostGator and Bluehost for hosting.

Now it is time to get your blog installed and set up properly. Both HostGator and Bluehost are recommended as they provide cpanel hosting and will actually walk you through the steps via the telephone on how to install a Word Press blog correctly if needed. With their help, you can quite easily be set up and ready to go in about just ten minutes. If you prefer a different hosting company, be sure they have one click installations for Word Press. The next step is to optimize your Word Press installation. WordPress offers lots of free templates and plugins which will help to optimize your blog for whatever niche you are in. However, if you got some money left, I would recommend visiting the Semiologic website and buying the Semiologic Pro Package. This blogging software includes, in my view, everything essential for creating a successful blog. They provide a great service and will help installing their software. If you are on a tight budget, check out Alex Goad and Bryan McConnahea’s Authority Pro 2.0. This is not just a clean, crisp WordPress Theme, but it is extremely SEO optimized as well. You can probably customize anything you want with just a few clicks of your mouse. And don’t forget to start building your list right away when your blog is alive. However, make sure you are following the right list building blueprint to avoid start up mistakes, which can have a negative effect on your business. And yes, you will need a professional autoresponder service as well. Always choose one of the well known reliable ones and don’t opt for any free versions because you are building here a valuable asset of your business. Yes, this all can cost some money, but if you are looking to make money blogging seriously, you need to see this as a business and businesses do have expenses, and the fee is not so bad in the big scope of things.

The grand total for expenses for one year with just one domain can add up a bit. Still, it is quite a small amount compared to most every other business, plus you probably want to be in the $1,000 a month or more group rather than the “oh wow I made $1.83 this month!” group…right?! I almost forgot to mention you will need good, quality informative and entertaining content. If you are a good writer that is great, but if not you can easily hire a professional to do the writing for you. One very impressive company to look into is called Need-An-Article.com (or N.A.A.). They have great writers with extremely reasonable prices. Hopefully, this has been of some value to you, best of luck, work it seriously, and you should make money blogging even if it takes longer than you would like. However, there is one important task left you have absolutely to do…Take Action! Good luck!

There is absolutely no secret about Facebook’s traffic numbers and there have been quite a few discussions about it as well. Naturally, all businesses, regardless of their size, understandably tend to view this as an opportunity to make money online. Yet it is important to understand that without the appropriate work and some effort it would be rather unlikely to become successful here. Social marketing at Facebook, like anywhere else, does not mean just simply posting some comments or content now and then would be sufficient enough to establish a prosperous business. However, with the right strategy and some effort you can become respected in your market, creating an excellent exposure for your business. This in return will generate leads, which could turn into more sales for you. Even so, your Facebook success will not take place automatically without putting all the work and effort needed into your marketing, or perhaps by just deciding on a poor strategy.

One of the biggest mistakes made on Facebook as well as on the other sites is that people are inconsistent with their social marketing. Not being in touch with your targeted market regularly might lead to take the wrong actions. So maybe when you launched you were quite active, but then after a while you reduced your efforts a bit. Once you have realized that, you suddenly appear again and post quickly several status updates on your fan page. Now to top it all, you have possibly included some links for some offers you think are excellent and can be beneficial for your fans. Well, this is certainly not the way how you should use social marketing if you want to become successful on Facebook. Your market is aware about the fact that you have not been active or quite a while. Therefore, this unexpected action appears to be most likely negative and maybe spammy as well. So just be consistent with your marketing and talk to your fans regularly again.

Let’s look at yet another example of inconsistency concerning Facebook marketing. However, this time there is a different outcome. And bear in mind, social marketing is, in fact a way to brand yourself or your company. Therefore, you have to be always consistent in your messages. But that is not all, you must be professional as well as sociable at the same time. Achieving this successfully shouldn’t be that difficult at all, there might be a similarity to a job with strict boundaries. Subsequently, at your fan page always talk about your topic and avoid anything else people have not visited your site for. Making a joke and being relaxed occasionally is ok. But remember, keep things moving in the right direction which is the theme of your page plus your business branding.

There is no doubt that Facebook is continuously changing and fine tuning the overall user experience. For instance, you absolutely cannot make too many ‘friend requests’ to people you do not know. If you overdo this, then you are risking of being banned, and your account will be terminated finally. A tested way to avoid this is to search for the keywords in your niche. You will then be able to track down people interested in your topic. Now it is simply a matter of politely joining the discussions. This will positively contribute to a successful Facebook marketing after all.

The strategy and awareness of being consistent in your marketing and advertising is not something you find talked about very much on the web. Maybe people have not considered just how vital it is to be successful nowadays, or perhaps it is simply not addressed by many who write about business. Then again, if you don’t carry out your marketing and advertising strategies consistently, you might not achieve the outcome you have planned for your business. The reason for this effect is the functioning of human nature and how we understand what we see and respond to it. When our experiences don’t match with what we actually count on according to previous experience, next it will lead to uneasiness and might unconsciously appear illogical. The result is to step away from it, and this is correct for your marketing and advertising strategies as well.

For example, let’s take a look at  squeeze pages. It is most likely that we all have used the help of a squeeze page to develop our list. Once someone has subscribed, quite often he or she will then be shown a one time offer. Anyway, what is shown next after the squeeze page is entirely the particular marketer’s decision. Still, being consistent with your marketing strategy is rather important as you can see.

What we normally do not know is precisely how the visitor will feel about the squeeze page design like the color scheme, for instance. If this site is substantially different from the next one, it will definitely represent a kind of inconsistency and might create some sort of uncomfortableness for this person, meaning fewer conversions. A simple solution would be here to make both page designs look a lot more related.

Then again, this is true for other areas involving affiliate marketing as well. Let us look at review sites linking to various product pages. Well, it is probably quite impossible to match all the different sales page designs. However, it is achievable as well as beneficial to create a review site which makes it possible for a seamless transition to all those sales pages. The point here is to avoid uncommon designs, which won’t blend properly with the other sites. You are fine by just trying to adjust your color scheme as much as possible.

Providing a certain kind of consistency applies to nearly everything relating to your business, particularly the way you write your marketing messages. In general, most people are consistent with their email marketing strategy. Still, if you market to your viewers something, which is substantially different from what they typically get from you, it might lead to some sort of a problem. Anyway, it does take place, although it doesn’t appear to be a frequent problem. However, it occurs, which shows that we can believe that quite a few Internet marketers are either not aware of the need to be consistent or do not realize this at all.

Nobody denies that product creation is a challenging job. It requires time and effort to develop an idea for a great product, and then it actually takes even additional time and work to bring that idea to life. Needless to say, once you have designed that product or service, your time and hard work will have been wasted if you, in fact, won’t be able to persuade anyone to purchase what you have created. Therefore, what to do to convince someone to buy what you have made? In this article, we will take a look at some of the points you can do to launch your product or service properly so that people will get the message, and that they are really keen on buying from you.

I think the key issue is having a plan in place that you can follow. Do a thorough research to understand the most beneficial strategies to promote the products and services that you are developing. Do some analysis of the most effective way to roll out the type of product you have created and then generate a list of all the individual steps needed to guarantee a successful product launch. It will always be better to plan your promoting strategies in advance. Using this method you will have a targeted plan of action, which ensures that you do not miss or skip any steps. When you simply try to do your marketing without an appropriate plan you can overlook quite a few essential points, which mean that your product launch might not be as successful as it should be the end.

Whenever you can, it is usually a good idea to offer a free product sample to the people registering for your e-mail list. In the case that you are promoting a kind of service, consider giving away a modest free trial relating to the service you are marketing. Ensure that people are fully aware about the fact that what you are offering is just simply for promotional reasons, or you might end up either getting taken advantage of or perhaps alienating customers. Always make certain that you get something in return for your promotion. It could be someone’s e-mail or any other contact details giving you an opportunity to make a sale later. Your creativity is needed here!

Make yourself as present as possible. Participate in forums, publish a blog promoting your products or services, and showing you as an expert in your field. However, for all this it is important that you actually take time to join the communities relevant to your niche, to leave helpful comments on the blogs in your market and to be active in the forums specific to your products or services. Be energetic, invest some time. Get heavily involved in your community adding help and advice to the conversation. In the end, you are going to be better off, giving you a good chance of having a great product launch and selling a lot more of your products or services.

There are many different approaches to generate hype for what you are trying to market. Then again, for a perfect product launch it is important that you have a marketing plan ready beforehand, plus that you work hard to create some kind of excitement not simply for your product or service but also for yourself. And bear in mind, it is you yourself who is marketing your products. And it is a well known fact, that if you have a good reputation in your niche, and people know and trust you, it is much more likely they will purchase what you have to offer.

Clickbank is a great place to find affiliate marketing opportunities. You can search through just about every topic and type of product. There are internet marketer options involving everything from informational products and solutions to health supplements. It is one of the best places to get started with affiliate marketing. Of course, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you could wind up spending an awful lot of time and even money on something that does not make you very much money. So how do you make money with Clickbank when you are new? Here are a few tips that you can use to make your initial foray into Clickbank more worthwhile.

The first thing you need to do is choose a market that you want to work within. There are obviously some markets, like dog training, that are far more popular than the others. While there are some who insist that you need to choose the market that is the most popular to work within, this is not always the best advice. Additionally, it is not quite wise to pick the market that is the most anxious for products. You first need to choose a market that you have a passion for. The more enthusiastic you are about your subject the more you will want to work within it. So first think of the topics you like, and you are most interested in. Then, out of those you have listed, pick the market that is the hungriest for help. Choose your products from that.

If you are in the business of product creation and would like to use Clickbank to marketing your product, you have to look at certain things you need to do. It is vital to make sure that your product is very well made. The better your product the more likely you will be able to sell it outside of Clickbank. So imagine how well it will do when you have a bunch of keen affiliates interested in marketing it for you. Once you have created a fantastic product you need to list it on Clickbank. Make sure that you choose an adequate sales price as well as guaranteeing an attractive affiliate commission. One of the biggest errors made by Clickbank product producers is choosing an affiliate commission that is way too small. They seem to think this will incentivize affiliates to work harder. All it really does is convince potential affiliates to choose something else.

Trying to get Clickbank to work for you does not have to be all that difficult. The fact is that if you approach it with the right mindset, you can use it to make quite a bit of money online. This is true for both, people who want to sell something someone else has made and for those who create their own products who are looking for affiliates marketing it for a fair commission. The great part about Clickbank is that it acts as a sort of “middle man” for both of these types of opportunists. If you choose wisely, no matter if you are a product creator or an affiliate looking for a good commission, you can make plenty of money with Clickbank.

Writing a converting sales page or landing page may seem like an easy task. While it is not difficult, there are certain steps you need to take, and rules you have to follow so that you can promote your e-book or products the correct way. Quite a lot of people rush through this step, and as a result their product does not sell that well or not at all. Let’s assume, you were planning to write an e-book. You may think probably that writing an e-book is the same like writing a regular book, and you won’t need a sales or landing page. However, inadequate planning will result in all of your hard work going down the tubes. If this is your first time writing an e-book, here is a guide to help you create a proper sales page to compliment it.

Before you start with your actual e-book, first you need to write your sales letter. This will be the promotional page for your actual book. The reason you write your copy prior to the e-book is because the e-book has yet to be created. This leaves you open to make a powerful sales page since you are not limited to what is already in the e-book.

By doing this, you can describe to your potential customers what it will be about and what benefits they will gain from buying it. Once your sales pager is finished, you now have an outline for your e-book. I do hope, this will make any sense to you.

Purpose of a Sales Page

The sales or landing page has three main goals:

1. Grab the attention of the potential customer.

2. A detailed explanation of the benefits of the product.

3. Create a call to action – turn the visitor into a buyer.

The content of your sales page is the most important part on the page, so you do not have to add lots of graphics, which might confuse the visitors. You want them to focus on the content and not the graphics.

Sales Page Structure

A sales page is designed a particular way, and with good reason. You want to keep the customer interested and the content flowing smoothly.

You start with the header or title; next, the promises (what you will give them), testimonials (happy customers), product information, benefits to them, bonuses you are offering (everyone loves bonuses), guarantee (if they don’t like it, they can get their money back) and lastly the closing or summary.

Header

The goal of the header is to get the reader’s attention. This should be in a large font, bolded. It sort of sucks them onto the page. If you have a logo, you may include that as well, but DO NOT add too many things to distract them from your content.

The Promise

Here you basically offer the benefit – Learn How You Can Cure Your Acne in Two Days!!!

Testimonials

This should include feedback from customers who have received your product. You can usually exchange an e-book or a free CD for a testimonial. Include pictures where possible, those work best. Since video marketing has become so popular, marketers are even turning to video testimonials. What better way than to hear praises about your products in living color.

The testimonials are placed right after the promises, just in case someone is thinking your product is no good, or they have some negative feelings about it. If you wait and place it at the bottom of the page, they will have probably already moved on.

One important point I like to mention here: Please don’t fake any testimonials. They have to be real, written by real people. If you make it up, it could get you into some serious trouble.

Product Information

Here is where you can get creative. Since people tend to buy on emotion, here is where you show them your compassionate side and let them know that you understand, and explain your experience with that very problem:

“Acne can be tough to deal with; I know I had it too. You need to know that it is not your fault, and you are not alone. Many people are affected by acne everyday, but you can do like them and try xyz product. In just days, you will see the difference.”

I don’t know about you, but if I had acne, I’d be ready to place my order. The key is to identify the problem, relate to it, and offer a resolution. That almost always equals a sale.

The other thing I would stress is since e-books are different than regular books; you need to let your customer know exactly what they will be getting.

This will tell the potential customer the benefits they will receive when they purchase your product. Use bullet points to stress these points and add a testimonial, just in case they are having second thoughts. Give them as much information as possible here.

Bonuses

This is a tactic that has been shown to increase sales dramatically. Letting the customer think that they are getting a little something extra works really well. Adding a deadline on the bonuses tends to speed up the purchasing process because they don’t want to miss out on this golden opportunity. It has also been shown that bonuses reduce the risk returns.

Guarantee

With the number of scams being run both online and offline, potential buyers may be a bit skeptical about making a purchase. A solid guarantee puts their fears to rest because they know that they have the option of a refund. You can guarantee your product for 30, 60, 90 days or even lifetime if you choose. This lets the potential customer know that you stand behind your product 100%, otherwise you wouldn’t offer this guarantee. Make sure that your guarantee is clearly written with no fine print. Clearly state the terms of the return, i.e. re-sellable condition, everything must be intact, etc.

The Closing

The most important part of the sales letter is how you close it. Here is your last chance to sell them before they click away forever. If they have followed the sales page this long, they are definitely interested so reel them in and get that catch.

Here you include the greatest benefits, why they should act now, and emphasize again how you want to help them with their problem. Include a Pay Now button to make is easy for them.
Include a P.S., P.S.S, P.S.S.S., letting them now that this offer may not be available again, or it is selling out fast, and they need to act now.

Now that your sales letter is complete. You have to provide a way for your customer to pay for their product. PayPal works well for most, but there are other checkout services available as well.

Don’t forget to add a SSL certificate. This lets your customer know that their information is safe and secure. You must also include product delivery information: Buy now link; a detailed description of the product and what they will receive; delivery options or how the product will be delivered and the estimated delivery time.

Now that you have your sales page completed, it is the right time to write your e-book, and then to start marketing it successfully with that well crafted sales or landing page.

If you have been in the Internet marketing game for any length of time you know the word “traffic” comes up quite often. Drive traffic, buy traffic, organic traffic, targeted traffic…  This is a never-ending conversation and the reason why it is so important is because this is the foundation of the world of Internet marketing. Without traffic there would be no sales and without sales, there is no money to be made. Just as there are different types of traffic, there are different ways to generate traffic for your site.

Organic traffic

Also known as free traffic – Normally a little bit slower to obtain because you have to build it up. Relying on organic traffic is not a bad thing, especially if you are on a limited budget but just know that it does not happen over night, and it requires constant monitoring to make it successful. Patience is the key here. It can be done and quite rewarding, but I will take some time; in some cases, a lot of time.

There are a few ways to generate free traffic; some of these are blogs, which have gotten extremely popular, social networking sites, forums, article writing and submission. Blogs produce traffic based on the visitors who frequent your blog. Keep it exciting and you will build traffic.

Social networking sites generate traffic by creating a network of friends. The more they comment, the more traffic you are building. Once you have developed a network of friends you can, when appropriate, pitch a sale or two. The social networking sites were not designed for marketing, and they do not take kindly to people who blatantly promote their products.

Writing articles, takes a little time because there is some research involved, depending on your niche and submitting your articles to the article directories can be time consuming. There are programs available that will submit your articles to the directories for you. In other words, they will take your article and submit it to several different places. If you do not have the time to write, consider outsourcing the task. You can hire a writer to do 500 word articles for cheaper than you think.

Paid Traffic

This process basically works the same way, but the process is different. One of the great things about paid traffic is that you start generating traffic much quicker. If you create and run an AdWords campaign with Google, you start seeing traffic in minutes. Keep in mind that there is a little more risk involved since a pay per click campaign involves spending money on the number of clicks, even if you do not make a sale. This could be a substantial loss if you don’t play your cards right.

Is any one method better than the other? Who knows. Each person has their system, or take on what works for them and what does not. A combination is sure to generate some traffic along the way.

So you have finally built up a list and you are excited. You have a large enough list that you think you can probably quit the day-job and make a living selling affiliate products or even your own.

But wait, unfortunately there is one small problem, your sales rates are abysmal! You have got less than one person in a hundred buying the products you recommend. Are your sales pitches really that bad?

So you go into your autoresponder dashboard and see that your sales rates are actually pretty damn good for the people who opened your emails. But your tracking is telling you that a lot of them just are not being opened.

Sure, a lot of people on your list only signed up for the freebie. This is quite normal. However, if you have got an abnormally small open rate, then it might be time to consider if your mails are going directly into the spam zone. But how can that happen and hurt your list building efforts?

Simply, bad subject lines. Bad subject lines are the number one reason for ending up in the bulk spam mail folder. If your subject lines tend to have these key phrases:

#1 reason
Investment
Sales
Selling
Bonus
Free, Fr*ee, Fr*e, etc.
Cash
Paid
Winner
You have won

Then you are probably ending up in the spam zone.

There is only one solution: Quit using bad lines! It is really not that hard to think of interesting subject lines that do not include the words or phrase above. Just spend a little bit of extra time on your subject lines, which won’t take much, but would help to turn your list building efforts into a successful campaign.

Using the word “free”. The word “free” in your body text can throw you into spam folders just as quickly as having it in the subject line, when it is combined with certain other words.

Currently, some marketers can get away with “fr*e, f.r.e.e.” etc. in the body text of their emails. So go ahead and do that if you absolutely have to. However, it is a safe bet that someday, email filters will pick up on this trick.

There might be a solution: Just spend a few bucks on a thesaurus!

You send attachments. Attachments can be a big no-no if you are not someone a user consistently emails back and forth with. And as a list owner, you are probably not. With all the viruses, spyware, Trojan horses and worms out there, it only makes sense that attachments will land your email in the bulk folder quicker than you probably can say “rootkit”.

Therefore, if you have got a bonus download to give out to your list – and you should, every once in a while – do not send it via attachment. Instead, upload it to a server, then email the link to your list.

You are using your hosting account’s autoresponder. Professional autoresponder services like Aweber and Getresponse have been around for a while. They have taken steps to make sure they are not used for spam purposes and have built up a good relation with the major email providers. But there is a good chance that yourdomainname.com has not.

However, what’s more is that web-host autoresponders are usually slow as well. This can make a big difference if you are promoting the latest product launch against 20 or 30 other lists, or even against one!

You have to use one of the professional autoresponder companies to be successful, like GetResponse or AWeber – you can check them out for a $1 test drive for the first month. In the end, you will be glad that you did when you see what you got back for all the effort and time invested in your list building campaign.

An email marketing list can be a good, steady source of income if you know how to do it right. Here are three points to establish a successful list building campaign and keep your customers happy.

1. Imagine one reader for your list. This may sound a little counter-intuitive at first. After all, you want tens of thousands of readers on your list, right?

Of course you do. However, you want to target like you are reaching out to one individual. This is a carry-over from offline direct mail marketing that works well with Internet marketing.

This does not mean that you have to assume your readers are all cookie-cutter drones. They are not, and you won’t make much money if you assume that they are. But everyone on your list is going to have certain things in common. These are the things that interested them in your list in the first place.

By this, I do not just mean that they are interested in one certain niche, sub-niche or type of service or product. They also have many of the same emotional triggers when it comes to what motivates them. Your market research should include a profile of important points about the people you are marketing to.

Then, when you write your list messages, imagine you are speaking to one person. This is a simple mental trick that really will make your messages seem to be speaking to each reader individually, hence it will increase conversions.

If you are hiring someone else to write your messages, clue them in on your reader profile. Remind them of this trick – many content writers don’t have enough experience with direct marketing – and you will get more back for what you are paying in outsourcing fees.

2. Make sure your content centers on your reader. You do not just want to speak directly to your reader. You also want to speak directly ABOUT your reader.

Sure, on your end, it seems like it is all about money for you. However, your reader did not join your list to make money for you. Your reader joined your list for the value it can provide him or her.

So make sure that in every list building campaign your email messages reflect that. Do not ask them to help you out by buying your products. Help him or her by providing useful content that is centered around your reader. And when you throw in that marketing message, make sure it is centered on how buying the next product or service can fill that reader’s needs, whatever those needs might be.

3. Don’t just try and sell, sell, sell. Make sure you provide value for your reader by providing useful information with every message in your autoresponder series. There is nothing wrong with the occasional blast to your list about a great new product. But for most niches, you should send out a steady stream of content that your reader can find value in.

At the very best, constant blatant marketing messages will desensitize your reader, so that he or she will be unlikely to buy anything from you. At the very worst, your reader won’t find anything to value about your list and will unsubscribe. You don’t want that to happen, since it won’t give you any return for all the work and effort you have put into that very list building campaign.

Just because you have a substantial subscriber list does not mean generally that you are producing an income. They say the money is in the list, but list building goes just a little bit deeper than that! You could have a list of 10,000 subscribers however, if no one is buying anything what good is it.

Many times people focus on creating these massive lists, but they lose focus of what the list was for initially. Yes, it is to promote your products, but if your focus is merely on building a list, that means there is no focus on the subscribers. Let’s face it, out of site out of mind, can easily be applied to your list if you are not contacting them. In other words, if they do not hear from you, you are soon forgotten and that first email in six months might be replied to with an unsubscribe message. You have to put the same amount of work in to keep the subscribers interested as you did to get them in the first place.

Corresponding with your subscribers does not take a lot of effort. You want them to remember your name so when you promote a potentially profitable product they will say, “Oh I remember, that’s the guy that I purchased the great e-book from, I will try his product.” On the other hand, no contact and a high-priced item in their inbox will surely get the delete button.

An auto responder sending them monthly newsletters or emails is really all you need. No one wants seven emails a day from you, I do not care how good you are – it is annoying. You certainly want them to remember you in a pleasant way, don’t you?

Look at it from another angle. If you were in a store that you purchased from regularly, and every time you went in the sales staff was courteous and polite and assisted you with your purchases, but you go in one day, and it is like you are invisible. After standing there for five minutes or so and browsing through a couple of items, still no one has even acknowledged you. What would you do – leave the store mad a hell or ask for assistance?  Let us add something else here, there is another store two blocks away that has the same item. Now what would you do? Well, most people would leave the store saying in their minds how terrible the customer service is and how they are never going back, right? How dare, they treat me this way after I have spent so much money with them…

Now, look at your list building efforts, and take the subscribers on your mailing list. They read your sales page and responded. You replied a few times, they made a purchase and that is it until you want to promote your next product. Well, they have probably found someone else because you deserted them.

If you took the time to build your list, you should take the time to keep the subscribers happy, so they will stay with you. Remember for every one person, there are several sellers just waiting to snatch them away from you. So while the money is in the list, your list building efforts have to result in becoming a solid list of satisfied customers, or it will be quite useless to you.