One of my subscribers asked me what they should be doing to be successful online. They had tried many different strategies and, unfortunately, had lost a lot of money in different ventures.
What I would recommend today to anyone starting out online is list building, especially if they don’t have any capital to invest. Here’s why and how:
1. Very minimal start up and ongoing costs.
Start up costs are:
– Domain name ($10 per year)
– Web hosting account (less than $10 per month with Hostgator)
– Autoresponder account ($19/month with Aweber).
The ongoing costs is only the web hosting and autoresponder (less than $30 per month)
2. Build it free.
Almost all of the hundreds of thousands of subscribers I’ve had over the years, have come in from totally free traffic sources.
In the beginning I used traffic exchanges, safelists, adswaps and giveaway events. None of those methods are effective anymore.
To get free, targeted, passive traffic today I use mainly Youtube but also Facebook and my blog.
3. Long-term, residual income.
Building a list is the best asset that any business can have (online or offline). Having a list means being able to literally print money on demand by pressing a button.
Promoting affiliate offers will make you money once, but having a list means being able to make money over and over again.
4. Easy to monetize.
There’s no secrets here. If you want to know how to make profits with your list, simply opt in to email lists that you know the owner is making a great income and copy exactly what they are doing.
Take note of their landing pages, their free offers, the one-time offers and the back-end products. Then model your own list building after it.
You can’t fail if you do this.
Beware, as will all successful ventures, list building takes time and patience. There will be times when things won’t go as planned and you’ll be discouraged. Prepare for that! On the bright side, though, there will be days of euphoria when you wake up in the morning and find multiple “Congratulations – you’ve made a sale!” notifications waiting for you in your inbox 🙂
Hi there John, thanks for providing more fantastic free tips – I would add one more suggestion for your readers – find a small system that works, like niche marketing or something like that and then build on it – while list building is important many new marketers starting out have very little cash to spare so if they can find something that brings them in even a small amount of money this would given them confidence and the funds to go on to bigger and better things.
Have a great day
Lisa
I think you’re definitely right here – list building is the most effective way to market these days. It does take a while to build a large, targeted list, but it’ll pay off. At the same time, I’ve been finding it difficult to build a good list on a website offering a service people only use once every few years or so (i.e. a moving company).
List building – First we need a strong lead magnet , we want to give away something that has a high value, and is different to what all the other marketers in your niche are offering.
And the second thing is a strong squeezepage where the only option to the visitor is to opt-in or shut the browser.
Sure list is important. If you have potential customers you can make money. If you have great product, but don’t know anyone interested in buying it, you will not make money. Simple as that.
for me if you where starting today you must know what are your target, your plans ahead of time and you must know how to accept failures and learn from it.
Yes I’ve heard many people say that the money is in the list and I agree whole heartedly. The money is absolutely in the list. I actually had a lot of success building a list with a very simple squeeze page and an aweber account. It was a great experience.
It is much harder now start an online business than a few years ago, because the competition is much larger and stronger. It is much harder to find the niche that has not been discovered, and where people already do not earn good money.
Is it much harder to start an online business today? I’d say “yes and no”. Yes, there is more competition, but there is also way more opportunities and ways to promote products online.