I hope you have been enjoying this series of posts on how to really make money online. Everything I have explained is part of what I actually do to make a full time living. If you apply the same principles and processes then there is no reason why you can’t do exactly the same thing.
In my last post I said I would explain exactly how to get people on your list and I will do that in this post.
“The money is in the list”. You will have heard or read that man times I’m sure. However most people still do not build a list. This is a major error and will normally lead directly to failure or at least limit your long term sustainability.
To be more exact the money is not in the list. It is in the products you can sell to your list. Having a list means you can send the same people to multiple products and make many more sales than just sending your traffic to one offer.
Think about this. Not everyone likes the same thing, not everyone has the money to buy things every day, not everyone is at the same level of experience. So one person may buy something today, they not buy something another day. They may not buy because they do not like the product, they might not buy because they do not understand the product, they might not buy because the product is too advanced fort them.
So if you mail one visitor to one product it’s almost a hit or miss affair as to whether they will buy it.
On the other hand, send them to different products at different times and the likelihood that will buy something goes through the roof.
So that is one reason why you need a list.
So how does this work in practice?
The solution is to get that email address so you can send multiple offers (and info) over a period of time.
So, as I have said previously, do not waste your traffic by sending it directly to an offer. Even if that is an affiliate offer.
With you own offers it is much easier to collect emails but with an affiliate offer you do not control the sales pages. This means you must capture the emails first.
There are different ways of doing this. For instance simply add in an email capture form after a visitor clicks on the link to the sales page. This will likely reduce your conversions dramatically as it adds additional things to before the customer gets to the sales page.
My personal preferred method is to create a lead magnet to get the email first then send the visitor to the sales page either with an autoresponder redirect or in a follow up email sequence.
What exactly is a lead magnet?
Basically it is a free offer that is so compelling that a huge portion of your visitors will want to get it. To get it they need to give you their email address of course.
A lead magnet is normally offered via a squeeze page. A squeeze page is simply a web page with only two options.
1. Add email address to get free offer
2. Close the page. (Tip: you can also use an exit pop-up to try an alternative offer at this point)
The mechanics of a squeeze page is pretty simple. It normally consist of a small pitch or headline that “sells” the free offer and an email form (i.e. first name and email) where the visitor can add their name and email address.
The headline could be text, an image or even a video but it should be short and to the point
The whole squeeze page should be visible on an average computer screen. So the headline and the form should be seen by the average visitor without scrolling down the screen.
The email form is simply a short piece of code that your autoresponder will give you. When added to the page it will then add any visitors that completed the form to your mailing list and redirect them to the free offer.
With the email captured you can then send them to the offer you are trying to sell. However you don’t just send out a sales email straight away. As you have the email address you can now do much better. Create an email series of 3-5 emails. Start off with delivering some useful content (related to the product you are targeting).
In subsequent emails explain the problems and maybe the manual solutions. Then hint that you may have a great solution to the overall problem and finally send a straight sales pitch about your latest product.
Because you will have engaged with your subscribers in the previous emails the open rates will be much higher and the likelihood of purchasing will also be higher.
Of course you can rinse and repeat the same thing for any number of offers. And once these emails are entered into your autoresponder they will go out automatically.
So all you need to do is keep adding subscribers to your list.
You can send additional traffic to your squeeze page. You can create multiple squeeze pages. You can micro niche your squeeze pages and create separate lists for specific targeted products.
For instance a “free calorie counter” can build a diet related list, “top 10 aerobic exercises” can build a fitness list, or “50 free high PR backlink sources” can build an SEO list.
Now promote highly related products and your conversions will go through the roof.
With this kind of lead capture in place you can be profitable with very little traffic. Even a few new subscribers a day can quickly build up to put plenty of money in your PayPal account each month.
If you want to know exactly what you need to do to create full time business on-line then check out my personal training at the link below