- List Building Secrets: Top 10 Easy Ways To Build a “Seed” List – Part 1
- List Building Secrets: Top 10 Easy Ways To Build a “Seed” List – Part 2
List building is easy… once you have a list. With a list of your own, you can grow it fast through “joint ventures” or “ad swaps”. (Which I do almost daily.)
The problem is, you need to have a list in the first place to be able to do ad swaps.
The answer to this conundrum is the “seed” list of a few hundred names. It is a starting point in list building. It is your ticket to creating real equity in your Internet Marketing business in the form of a responsive list of email subscribers.
That seed list, however small, will allow you to set up joint ventures with other list owners. You can work with lists of similar size or approach the lists that are 2-3 times bigger than yours, in which case they may send your offer to a segment of their list or ask you to mail multiple times to match the clicks.
So how do you get there if you are starting from complete, utter zero?
The following is a brief (and by no means complete) overview of the methods of building a seed list fast.
1. Get a Friend to Send Out a “Solo” Email For You
Several Internet marketers I know got their start in this profession with the help of their friend or a relative who already had a list. Hey, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being lucky or having the right connections. If this shortcut is available to you, take it.
2. Pay Someone to Send Out a “Solo” Email For You
In lieu of a friend who would send out your stuff to their list for free, you can find someone who would do it for a fee.
If you don’t have the money to pay for this, trade your time. Everything has value in this world. In exchange for having a successful list owner build your list, you could handle their customer support, write some articles for them, build web pages, sit their baby, walk their dog, cut their grass… you get the drift. Now don’t be shy. Go through your Inbox and reply to some of the emails you are getting from various list owners and ask if they could use some free help around their office (in exchange for building your list, of course). Contact those who appear to be doing everything by themselves, with no staff to help them in their daily “grunt” work.
3. Buy an Ezine Ad
This tactic is very similar to #2. Except this time we are going after lists that routinely sell advertising “space” like solo emails and banners.
A couple of places to meet ezine owners and buy email ads would be Rent-A-List and Directory Of Ezines.
4. Create a Product And Offer 100% Commission
Okay, okay, maybe this method isn’t as easy as some. However, if your talent is in creating content, it won’t take you long to put together a special report, an ebook, a set of videos or audios, or a software tool. Most people don’t have either the skill or the confidence to create their own products. Hence they are always looking for new potentially lucrative things to promote.
Now imagine how excited they are going to be when you offer them 100% of the money! They will promote your product like crazy!
On the technical side, you can collect all the money first and then pay it out to your partners. Or you can simply link the Add to Cart button on your sales page to your partner’s PayPal account(s) and have them receive it instantly. They make all the commissions, and you see your list grow rapidly.
Here are some ideas for you to make the most out of this tactic:
a) Run all the leads through a squeeze page. After all, you want to build a list, right?
b) Upsell the leads with a front-end offer as soon as they opt-in (that’s the one that you are paying 100% of commissions on). This offer should be almost irresistible and a high-converting one to make it worth your partners’ time.
c) Come up with a second and bigger upsell or a continuity program that will put money in your bank account. Now you are growing your list and making cash at the same time. You may decide to offer affiliate commissions on your second upsell to make your deal even more appealing to your partners.
5. Enter a JV Giveaway As a Contributor
A JV Giveaway is an online event that allows you to submit a “gift” and receive leads that are interested in downloading your items. You are usually required to promote a JV Giveaway event. You could promote the event to your list if you had one. Otherwise, you ask a few of your friends to join. They’ll thank you for giving them access to dozens and possibly hundreds of great freebies from all the contributors. You can also promote it through Twitter and Facebook (and it doesn’t take much time make some friends there).
Click here for the list of the upcoming JV Giveaway events.
Tomorrow will we review five more ways to create a “seed” list.
Technorati Tags: ad swap, ad swaps, build list, Email Marketing, joint venture, joint ventures, List Building, seed list, swaps
Twitter: CaptnAffiliate
June 9, 2010 at 9:56 pm #
Great advice, Alex – for most people starting out, especially those without a lot of seed capital, the giveaways & the social media sites are the best ways to start building their list til they get it up to ‘swappable’ size.
Doug Champigny recently posted..A Pretty Good Podcast Is All You Need – A Podcast How-to
Alex…very sound and great advise for the new and the ones who want to build a list even bigger. Thanks!
L J Parsley
Twitter: alexmakarski
June 10, 2010 at 9:42 am #
Hi Doug, yes, I agree it is the best *free* way to get started in list building. It takes a fair bit of work, time, and dedication. So let’s not forget shortcuts are available to those who can muster a few hundred bucks as their start-up fund.
Twitter: olgajenney
June 10, 2010 at 9:46 am #
Hey Alex,
Another great lesson from a great teacher.
Building a list is probably the most important thing that an internet marketer can do. Thanks for simplifying it for those just starting out.
Every time I follow your advice my list grows and becomes more responsive.
Looking forward to learning so much more from you.
Olga
Hey, Ad swap list building is another very useful technique that is useful for building really big lists
Regards,
Sophie
Twitter: ronbarrett
June 12, 2010 at 11:51 am #
Alex,
Very good information. I use #5 all the time and am working on #4.
Looking forward to the next five tips.
Great tip. I look forward to the next set.
Thank you Alex, please keep them coming.
Excellent advice. You post reminds me of a few methods that I had almost forgotten about. Ad swaps have definitely proven productive in the past, and I plan to revisit the tactic soon.
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Twitter: SandyHalliday
June 13, 2010 at 4:47 am #
Looking forward to reading part 2 Alex. It’s is one of the hardest things to get those first few subscribers on your list that will allow you to participate in Ad Swaps. Then you have to have a very good ad.
When it comes to Giveaways Newbies without a list are also at a disadvantage as they are often unable to get enough people to the event through their affiliate links to keep their gift high enough in the listings to get seen. The key here is to find a giveaway that does not downgrade you for this. Some marketers are kindly helping Newbies this way.
Sandy Halliday recently posted..Outsource it for a Fiverr!
Hey Alex,
Great insight. I wish I had this information when I started online, so many hours and money was wasted. If you are just starting online Alex is the go to man to learn the ins and out of this game. I highly recommend adswap and giveaway to build your seed list.
Thanks Alex for sharing.
Twitter: alexmakarski
June 21, 2010 at 12:13 am #
Richard,
I do adswaps almost daily. And giveaways have helped me start both my lists. Gotta find good giveaways though. There are so many of them going on and most are a waste of time. Usually I get 20-60 new subscribers from a giveaway. One particular giveaway gave me over 500, but that’s very a-typical.
Alex
Twitter: http://www.mentertainment.com
June 24, 2010 at 5:56 pm #
Alex, you and I seem to be going parallel… maybe we could join forces, somehow? What do you think?