A List Building Strategy that's working extremely well for me.

I have not posted on this forum lately; but today, I'm going to share with you the list building strategy that's working extremely well for me. I'm going to keep this really short and simple. Do not ask me to provide proof of my earnings or links to my squeeze pages as I'm not here to sell you anything.

Here are some of my list building dos and don'ts - 

** For the giveaway, I rarely use a report that can be downloaded right after they opt in as a high percentage of subscribers will opt out the minute they get their hands on your report. 

I usually buy a high quality plr and turn it into a 7 to 10 day e-course. I do not use the PDF format to deliver the course. Instead, I do so via a wordpress private blog. I create a page for each day of the e-course. As I create these pages, I do some rewriting - such as changing the titles and headlines; and writing a small, one paragraph intro or summary of the page. I do not use a membership site.

If you need to know how to keep your blog private - from being indexed by search engines - the video below will show how.

WordPress Tutorial - How to Block Your Site From Search Engines in WordPress - YouTube

** I never redirect people to an offer the minute they opt in. To me, list building is about developing a relationship with your subscribers; sending them to an offer immediately after subscribing is not the best way to start building that long-lasting relationship. I find that waiting at least until the third day before I make them an offer work best in the long term. 

Since I only use high quality giveaways, I give them the option to get immediate access to the rest of the course (on the third day) for at least $7.00 ($17-27 if it includes professional, HD videos). I make this offer on the email that goes out to let them know that day 3 has been added to the blog; and at the bottom of that particular e-course page.

__________________________________________________ ________

Here is a trick I learned from the writer of "The 4 Letter Killer", David Bullock; according to David, this eBook was downloaded over 260,000 times. He was great at keeping his subscribers active, happy and anxiously waiting for his next email. I know this for a fact, I was one of those subscribers for over 5 years. 

His offer would be something like this: "Hello Frank, I hope you are having a wonderful day. I found something that can really help you with your online business. This system is so good that I decided to buy the rights to it so I can share it with you. Click the link below for complete details. P.S. Don't forget to click on the elephant at the bottom of the page for a nice surprise."

When you clicked on the elephant (pink, purple, blue; don't remember the color), you would be taken to a Paypal payment page where the price would be $10-$20 less than the advertized price. I found myself clicking on that darn elephant and buying his products every Friday morning; our relationship lasted until he stopped sending emails 6 years later. I suspect that there were thousands of elephant clickers on his list.

Later, I found out that the "exclusive product" he bought just for me were resell rights items from the Unselfish Marketer membership site; but this didn't upset me for they were of high quality and I always learned something from them.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

** On the squeeze page, I always use two fields - First name and email address. Personally, I think that if you want to develop a relationship with your subscriber, you need to make them feel that they are more than just an email address to you. 

** For my squeeze page - I use the one that comes with the product or I develop my own using OptimizePress. Most of the private label rights products I purchase provide excellent marketing material. I also use Presell Crusher to create presell surveys landing pages. 

** On day 1, I tell my subscribers how important it is for them to stick with the e-course 'til the very end; they get an introduction to the course; my promise to them; what to expect over the next few days, etc. Day 1 is basically a sales or presell letter to the course. It works great! Sometimes, I get emails asking if they can buy the entire course right after they have read Day 1.

** I keep my promises. On my squeeze page, I promise that I'm not going to share their info with other marketers, and I keep it. I keep this promise by not doing ad swaps or selling solo ads.

** I only email my list two times per week - Freebie Tuesday and Bargain Friday. On Tuesday, I sent them something that is related to the course for free. I make sure the info is good before I send it to them. On Friday, I sent them an offer. It could be my own product or a high quality resell rights products. 

** I do promote clickbank products within the e-courses. Especially the ones with rebilling. I tell my subscribers that they will be added to a mailing list once they make a purchase; I also remind them that they can get a refund within 60 day and can opt out from the seller's list any time they wish to do so.

** My favorite niche is online marketing / mmo as it offers so many products you can offer; but there is one that I really enjoy, it's the dog training niche. I recently developed a course from an e-book and mp3 I purchased 6 years ago. It's a 15 day course, but by the third day I give the subscriber the option to pay a small price to have immediate access to the rest of the course; I get a lot of takers to this offer - and of course, I practice that "David Bullock thing". I have a picture of a dog at the bottom of the sales page and tell them.... Click on my doggie for a nice surprise"; two things happen when they click on my doggie, 1 - they get a $10 discount and .... 2 - I hear my cash register going crazy ... ching!-ching!-ching! 

** I usually buy a new domain name for each course and install wordpress on the root domain and subdomain. The root domain is for the landing and presell pages; the subdomain is for the private blog I use to deliver the course.

** How I promote my e-courses - For each e-course I develop, I create a fan page, a youtube channel and a slideshare account. My goal per day is to upload at least 5 videos to youtube and facebook and 5 presentations to slideshare for the first 7 days. I upload the same videos to youtube and facebook; the power point presentations is basically the same info as in the videos. After 7 days, I have 35 videos on youtube, 35 on facebook, and 35 presentation on slideshare sending free traffic to my e-course squeeze page. Recently, I started buying bookmarking and blog posting gigs from the Warriors For Hire forum and this has greatly increased my traffic and opt ins.

How long does it take to upload each e-course? In less than a day I can have the e-course, fan page, youtube and slideshare account done. I could do much better - but my love for netflix's sci-fi movies will not let me.

About my video marketing - My videos and presentations are not spammy; I do provide useful information. I never had any of my videos banned or deleted by youtube. I use youtube's creative commons on a daily basis. Youtube cc has some great videos that you can use as your own without worrying about copyright infringements. They even provide you with an online editor so that are able to add an intro and ending with your info to these videos. Below is the link to the youtube creative commons video editor.

https://www.youtube.com/editor

As of today, I have 15 e-courses uploaded and getting me subscribers on a daily basis. My initial goal was to get at least 10 subscribers per e-course - per day. I have achieved that - and more. I have found this to be the best and fastest way to $100 per day online. 

To get started, you'll need a hosting account, an autoresponder and a high quality plr product. I stay away from free autoresponders - as they are not really free.

If you have any questions - other than asking me for one of my links - don't hesitate to ask.

I leave you with this.....

** As a marketer, you will always be building a list - whether you want to or not. If you are not building a list of your very own .... then .... you are building the lists of the owners of the products you are promoting. Which list do you want to build?

Best Free Services for Internet Marketing

What are the best Free Services that help/aid in your Internet Marketing career? The main one I have been using is Google Analytics, are there others available?

 think it depends on what you're marketing actually. Generally, these are some free services that I use and I'm sure others will have a lot more suggestions.

1. SocialOomph for posting on Twitter.
2. Free WP plugins to help with content distribution
3. MailChimp is a free service for building an email list
4. Most all of the main social networking sites are free to join.
5. StatCounter. I use this instead of Google Analytics because it's just easier to read.
6. Market Samurai has a free version. It's really good for keyword research.
7. Totally Tweetable helps with content distribution and marketing via email marketing.

Internet Marketing VS Starting A Business?

Right now everything is in front of you. Before you dive in, I would check a few things.

What do you like to do? There are businesses you could get into and quickly find that they don't suite your personality, your desires, your temperament.

What skills do you already have? If you already have certain skills and talents, why not take advantage of those in your business? So maybe you like to write, or create graphics, or you're a programmer - those are all skills that can lead you to a profitable business.

How would you spend your time if you weren't working? Surprisingly, a good number of people have turned their passions into a business. Sometimes it works, other times it backfires . . . but right now you have the ability to steer the subject of your business in any direction you like so take advantage of your many, many choices.

Finally, every business should begin with market research. You need to understand what potential there is for profit, where that potential lies, who will be your competitors, who (and where) is your audience, what are the problems and opportunities in the market, etc. Find out as much as you can about the environment you'll be working in so that you can maximize and focus your effort and resources on things that will give you a good return for your time and money invested.

The very best to you,

Steve

P.S. Save your money for later when you have a working business idea and a proven business model. You will have time to scale and ramp up your business later and the cash will come in handy at that point.

How To Increase Your Internet Marketing Productivity Overnight

Hey everybody,

I wanted to share a tip that can potentially increase your marketing goals overnight!

Ready?

Okay, this tip I actually learned from a sales guy, but it still applies.

This may be a bit obvious, but it works for me!

1)You basically create a schedule of everything you need to do each day.

Writing your thoughts on paper can release the load on everything on your mind, which may help you think more clearly on your internet marketing goals.

2) The next tip is to create a star on the tasks that you want to focus on that day.


Trust me! In my experience, this helps a LOT! It should help you gain some good flow in the way you go about your schedule. NO, I'm not telling you to be so very very specific; but getting your intentions down on paper has a way of those actions being accomplished
very much more smoothly! Keep reading for tip 3!


3) Create a top 10 that will have the greatest factor in progressing in your goals. Then circle a further top three from that top 10 list and focus on them!

An important part of internet marketing, is to spend your time not only on the 'right'' tasks but the most important.

We all need a focus factor too, and I believe these tips can help you move forward, no matter what's your marketing plan!

How to earn $100/day with adsense?

Not sure about how many more articles you need to write, and I'm also not so sure it matters,
what matters is your traffic numbers, etc.

Realistically, your page impressions should be around 1000000.0 (1 Million).

A DAY?

Yeah....


If your Page CTR = 1%
and your Cost per click = $.01
and your Page eCPM = $0.1
and your Page impressions = 1000000.0 (1 Million)
and out of those your actual Clicks = 10000
then your Earnings will = $100

A page impression is what Google counts every time a user views your page.

The page clickthrough rate (CTR) is the number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.

The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad.

Page effective CPM (eCPM) represents your estimated earnings for every 1000 impressions you receive.

Check which articles your traffic is visiting, research why some articles are getting more views than others what is different and improve your future articles from that you can learn from your current statistics.

Rather than wondering how many articles you need to write consider driving more targeted traffic to what you already have, upload a new article say once a week (or every two weeks) adding unique content to the site.

Consider a FB page based on the niche you are writing the articles on and get unique FB likes to the page and drive the traffic to your site, even offer a freebie, so you can create a list which you could use to sell to as an other outlet rather than putting all your eggs in one basket such as Adsense. Think twitter, again drive traffic to your site, remember YT and all the other usual sites.

My own opinion is that if you are dependant on Adsense be careful and look at other ideas such as the list building I mentioned above always nice to have another project in the pipeline.

What does Monetize exactly mean?

Various ways of creating income streams. For example, if you put Google Adsense ads on your blog you are monetizing it with Google's PPC affiliate program. It you were selling a product of your own and you placed a banner on your website that led to your sales page that is monetizing it.

You can "monetize" on this answer above by implementing those two strategies,
as opposed to just reading them and not implementing them.

In simple Language: (My version).

Some examples:

You can turn an "idea" into money by bringing it to life.
(create a product that sells, or an income producing website, (Facebook and Youtube were good ideas) and you just monetized your idea.

You can turn your knowledge and skills into money.
(write a book about stuff you know, and if it sells, you just monetized your knowledge and skills).

You can turn web traffic into money.
(Warrior Forum converts their current traffic into money by offering the WSO section for a fee to Internet Marketers who want to sell products.
WF monetizes its forum traffic.

eBay Tips - Learn How to Use Online Warehouses to Boost Your eBay Profits

When it comes to starting an eBay business you have to have products to stock your eBay store with. Many people start an eBay business to sell a single product from their personal home collection. They will generally do this to make a profit from a single item or product that they are trying to sell from home. However, you can continue your eBay store after you have sold your "at home" items and products, by selling products from online warehouses.

There are thousands of online warehouses that have products of all types, sizes and prices. You can actually sell these items in your eBay store and can make a profit. Additionally, you will save yourself time and effort since you won't have to package and send out the items on your own. When you sell one of these items from your eBay store you simply go to the online warehouse and complete the order and they will ship the products out for you.

If you start an eBay business there is no reason why you shouldn't "take the easy way out". With online warehouses you will save yourself a great deal of time and money. Additionally, you will have access to thousands to millions of products that have a proven track record of selling and producing a profit while also being able to provide your customers with the products and services that they desire to purchase. There is no better time than right now to start an eBay business and to begin making money immediately.

Need Help?...3 Simple Ways You Can Get an Experienced Marketer to Help You

1. Do a proper search using the Search function

When you have a question, I am sure it is classified under a certain topic such as "Adsense", "blogging", "squeeze page"

Identify that these are keywords which you can easily key into the search function.

Spend about 10 mins searching for it and I am sure you can get to read similar thread which you can learn from.

Even if they do not address your question, you can pose in the same thread and other Warriors will most likely respond because you bother to spend time searching for it and you replied in a related thread.

I always go to the profile url and click on "past posts" or "past threads started by the warrior"

You will be surprised to find more gems of knowledge littered among the many posts and threads.

Open a notepad and copy and paste those notes you want to keep for future reference.

2. Ask what you can contribute to other Warriors 

What you want to seek may or may not be found in the forum. We won't know. 

Warrior forum is very big and Google is much bigger.

Go to Google.com to search for what you want. You may find something useful and what you can do next is contribute what you have found in the forum.

Post what you have found. I am sure many Warriors will appreciate your posting because you are helping and what you have solved may be same as what others are facing too.

This is a good approach because...

firstly, you have learnt how to solve your future problems by looking at other sources

secondly, you get to help other Warriors and I do believe in the replies of the thread you started, there will be new ideas and comments and you will grow to a higher height in the process of sharing what you know.

This is the best gift you can give for yourself because the eagerness to learn and to solve your own problems is one of the very important factors to succeed in your business.

3. Be respectful and share genuine interest in what other Warriors are doing
Yes, there are many experienced marketers in this forum such as Michael Mayo, Andy Henry, Bev Clement and many more...

They are very busy people and I really appreciate their time for coming to this forum to see what sort of help they can give.

Of course, they can't help everyone here but what I respect most is they are always eager to give back to the forum.

So if you want to learn more about specific topic, go check out their signature for their blog urls, sales pages etc...

Go find out what they are doing.

You can always use the PM feature and first share with them specifically what you like about their work and ask a question.

If they reply, thank them. Give them 2 to 5 days. It is worth the wait.

If they don't reply, no hard feelings. Most likely they didnt check their PM. Drop them a reminder.

Respected Warriors like John Taylor, Paul Myers will do their best to help. Sometimes they are just too busy, they will reply they can't help at the moment.

Respect them...thank them and move on...At least now you are taking action to control your destiny and guarantee your own success.

Another way is opt into their list and follow their newsletters..go read their blogs...

In summary, you realise what I have shared here is these you can do...it is only when you take ownership of your life and your action...you will succeed...

Newbies - Don't fall into this trap - You're being fed BS

You may have heard the term 'sell the sizzle not the steak'? (it means if you're selling something sell the exciting part rather than just give boring description of the product itself)

Well - I'm just here to warn you that much of the sizzle you're being sold doesn't actually come with steak.

Here's a reality check.

Most people in IM are not making money. Probably 90% of those who are - are making less than they're spending on IM stuff.

Of that remaining 10% - probably half of them are not making enough for it to be their only income.

Making 'good' money online REQUIRES A LOT OF WORK.

Now, I know you're being fed sizzle that says - here's how to make a few grand in a few days, and yes it is possible - I've done it and even shared how I did it, but......

Even when someone says it and it's true - it's not the reality for most people that try to copy it.

I'm not just saying this from personal experience - I get out and about a lot and meet people, other IMers who are working hard to make money - most of them are not really making any money.

The real kicker to this is - that is regardless of what tools, courses and systems they've bought which promise to short-cut their success.

These tools, systems, courses, ebooks, videos etc.... will not suddenly make you great money.

The MAIN factor that will effect your success is - HOW MUCH WORK YOU DO.

Now, obviously there's a certain amount of knowledge required and many people are buying information products and coaching etc to short cut their knowledge gathering - that's absolutely fine and a good idea. 

But I'm telling you - if you think that you're just waiting until you finish your first ebook - then you'll be rich, don't kid yourself. 70% of IMers have written at least one ebook and even if they sold some, it usually doesn't last and it's just a tiny part of making money.

What you don't see is just how MUCH people making money really do.

For instance - I have several hundred websites of my own and several hundreds blogs and social accounts etc...

Why? because it means that I don't need to rely on anyone else for me to be able to get traffic, links and sales to my own products.

The biggest problem most people have is being able to turn their traffic on when they need. If you have that targeted traffic tap - then you can always make money.

The problem is - it takes time to build it.

I know that people are always telling you to get this tool or that system - the thing is - did you notice how every one of them seems to be the 'only one you need' or 'the best tool of its kind' - and the underlyng assumption is that it's all you need.

The Twitter tools are a classic example - as soon as a few marketers realised that Twitter is popular and people will buy stuff if you tell them they now need twitter and the latest Twitter abuse tools - they create whatever they think is what people want to see and sell the hell out of it.

It probably won't surprise you to hear that most of the Twitter 'automatic adder' tools will get your account banned. Twitter hates people abusing their systems the same as Google does.

These tools are not the answer to your problems.

They're adding to your problems.

With all that said - we're making the situation worse every time we buy into the latest hype or tool.

The things you're doing to 'help' yourself are the very things that are sabotaging your success.

Looking for shortcuts all the time is NOT the way to be successful - can you imagine an olympic athlete saying "I'm going to stay in bed today instead of my morning run - I have this drink that says it will give me energy when I need it", or for that matter a farmer who waits until 2 weeks before harvest and then tries to quickly grow his crops at the last minute because he couldn't be bothered to put the time in and plant them when they should have been.

You need a plan - a plan that actually points you to a successful result. Not some generic thing that 'should get you 'some' results.

If you went to your bank manager and said "I need $5k to start an online business" and he asked "so can you show me how and when you'll make that back" and your answer was "well, I'm going to spend $2k on this traffic course, then pay some people I don't know below minimum wage to write articles for me and then just watch the cash roll in" what his reaction would be?

There are 2 pieces of advice I would like to humbly offer you today.

1 - Don't underestimate the amount and consistency of work that is being done by people who seem to be 'easily and quickly' making great money.

2 - Before you invest yourself fully into your online activities (this is something you need to do really) when you get to the point where you've read about or heard of an 'easy' way to make money - take a deep breath, sit down somewhere quiet and be really honest with yourself and ask this question - "Do I really KNOW what the plan for my online business is? (are you hoping to pay your mortgage, or support your family) and will the activities I'm planning to do be able to get me there? if I'm not sure - are they activities that I can measure and be able to tell whether I need to supplement/replace them at some point?"

People will tell you all sorts of things, usually for the right reasons, often out of enthusiasm or excitement - but most of it will not be true for you.

Don't base your business and your dreams on what people are telling you. Use your brain, assess things for yourself and make a plan that's right for YOU.

Certainly model the success of others but don't expect copying people or buying the latest "how to make $5 in 5 days" WSO will answer your problems.

Ask yourself the questions that challenge whether someone is trying to make you cut corners and not do your business in the way you know really needs to be done.

Take your business seriously and don't kid yourself that hard work is involved. Almost ANY IM money making strategy will work if you just get focused and take consistent action in a direction that you understand and can see how and why it will work.

Don't waste your money buying lots of tools - they're just there to help you be more effective once you already know what works for you.

And don't be afraid for ask for help - working with others makes your IM journey MUCH more fun.

Beginners: You CAN Make Money.. (Here's How, In 5 Steps)

I've been seeing a lot of the posts and conversations lately, and decided to make this post almost as a refresher, mainly for beginners. (FYI- To me, a beginner is someone who isn't making money online, or not very much. Sometimes I get this "I've been online for 3 years!", but at the end of the day, if you're not doing what you're here to do-- make money-- then you're still a "beginner".)

With all these launches going on and buzz surrounding new things every day, it's SO easy to get lost in the confusion, especially for people just looking for something to help them get off that "square one". Maybe that's getting their first sale online, cracking their first $100 day, or even their first $1,000 day. 

You get lost in the confusion. That's where I found myself many many times over, and when I did, here's what I made myself do: go back to the basics.

So, what I'm going to tell you here is just that. Forget the new course on whatever and stop reading all the hype emails you get (and I know you get as many as I do). Just stick to the basics, which work WAY better than anyone will say they do.

Follow This Outline Below, and DON'T over-complicate it. "Making money online" is hard only if you look at the whole picture at once rather than taking it step-by-step and breaking down exactly what you need to do. None of these steps by themselves are hard, but they can be if you make them:

1.) Find a market to go into, then pick a niche in that market that people are looking for.

Not sure how this is done? Two ways I'd recommend:

• Go to Clickbank and scan through the various topics, looking for products that are selling well. When you select a category, in some cases Clickbank will give you sub-categories as well. Pick one that interests you. In most cases, a product found here will be a 'niche' product already.

• Go to Amazon.com and look through the magazines. These all represent broad markets (in most cases), so keep digging until you find a sub-niche in that market. You can do this by clicking through the various topics, and it will give you new magazine titles within those narrowed-down topics.

Example:
Broad Market= Health & Fitness
Sub Niche of that market= Acne Cures (found through Clickbank by searching: Health & Fitness > Remedies)

Tip: This generally goes pretty fast. I found that one above in a matter of minutes. If you're not sure you have a viable niche, then verify that there's products for it using Clickbank, or Google search "your keyword + affiliate", with the goal of finding affiliate programs for products in your niche. These are going to be the products that you'll promote to your list that you're going to build.

If that checks out, then you have a viable market. No sense in entering a niche that has no products you can promote, as that normally indicates that people aren't necessarily willing to buy information in your niche. Nor does it make sense to enter a niche that no one is searching for, so to find out if they ARE searching for whatever niche you've picked out, go here: https://adwords.google.com/select/Ke...rceLegacy=true, and type in your "sub niche" keyword to search traffic volume for.

For me, it was "acne cures", and I found that there are numerous keywords that all get relatively high amounts of searches each month, both locally and globally. If you use the above link to check the keyword searches, you can also view Adwords PPC competition by dropping down the "View Columns To Display" field. (If you don't have a budget for PPC, then don't worry about this!)

At this point, I'm going to stress that you don't over-complicate things. And don't be discouraged by a lot of competition, especially in the search engines. You're not going to be ranking websites organically or anything, which is a whole other beast that is counter-productive to what I'm trying to show you here (how to get started fast), and if you're going to try, there's many, many more rigorous steps involved.

With this, just make sure there are products floating around in the niche you've picked out, and that people are searching for information in your niche. Once you get in front of a computer and actually do this, you'll be surprised at how fast it can go.

Total Time: 1 hour
Total Cost: $0
2.) Find a problem people in that niche are having.

Once you have the niche narrowed down, do a search for "your niche + forum" in Google. Find the top forums from that niche/industry and check them out. See what people are talking about or what they're having issues with. This is basic market research, and goes remarkably quickly. You're just scanning for a problem; any problem. In fact, while in the forums, you can usually find hot topics just by looking at the threads with the most views/responses on it. I've gotten so many ideas and money magnets from doing that.

Once again, don't over-complicate this or make it more difficult than it is. Just find a damn problem people seem to be having.

Total Time: 20 minutes
Total Cost: $0

3.) Google Search that problem to find the answer.

Literally, go to Google and type in the problem people are having. In the above scenario, I went to Google and searched for: "how to get rid of acne", and found this site: How to Get Rid of Acne - howtogetridofstuff.com

Done. You're now an expert on acne cures, or near enough. People are looking for this information too, and you're going to give it to them in step 4.

Total Time: 20 minutes (at the max)
Total Cost: $0

Note (in response to some replies to this part of the thread): The reason this works and is easy is because you're notselling the information you're finding here; you're giving it away. You're essentially doing the research for other people, and people always want the work done for them. When it only takes a name and email to get it handed to them, most of them will give you that.

4.) Set up a squeeze page to give your newly acquired information away.

Yes, you'll need an autoresponder. You can try Aweber for 1 month for only $1, which is all you need. If you don't have any squeeze page templates, Google search "free squeeze page templates." After doing that, I found these ones, which seem to be decent enough for me: Winning List Building Templates from Tellman and Shawn 

(Side note: Why are these templates decent enough for me? Because they're from Tellman Knudson and he not only uses them himself, but he also makes a ****load more money than I do. Whether these are awesome templates or not, by using these for the time being and getting something out there, I'm going to outpace everyone that does nothing or that keeps looking for a 'better' template. Don't reinvent the wheel.)

Then, if you don't have a program to edit HTML templates, download NVU, a free HTML editor, from NVU.

(You'll notice that when you're in doubt or need help, I'm recommending you Google search your problem. Not only will you probably find your answer, but you'll learn how to solve problems by yourself instead of ranting on forums about how "it's not working for you".)

With the above templates from Tellman, he already includes the sales copy that he's personally tweaked and gotten to convert. All you do is change a few things here and there, customize it to your niche/information, and you're done.

Don't make this take all day. Perfectionists are broke for a reason, and making something grammatically correct and "just right" won't drive hungry flocks of visitors to your page. Keep in mind that although you're going to feel productive after this, absolutely nothing you've done thus far will put money in your pocket. So don't take all day, there's profits to be made yet.

Add 7-10 follow up messages into your autoresponder, including one that goes out right when they opt in that gives them a link to either download your information, or that takes them to a "Thank You" page where they download your information (if you don't have one of these pages, it's conveniently right underneath the Squeeze Page Templates from the link I included above (from Tellman Kundson)).

Then, I'd personally pre-set one message to go out the following 2 days in a row after they opt in. You want to establish an initial contact with your list and reinforce that connection over the following 2-3 days to get your foot in the door.

As for the remaining 6-9 messages, set the emails to go out every other day, and in each email include your affiliate link (which you should probably have a redirect for, or link cloaking) to that affiliate product we found earlier. This is the first way you can monetize your list. Don't worry about the other ways until you have a list with which to monetize. 

Total Time: 2.5 hours
Total Cost: $1*
*If you don't have a domain and hosting, you can use Weebly for the website for now. It's free, and you can either choose a template for the website, or add in your own HTML. In that case, you'd copy all the HTML from your squeeze page (in NVU, just click the "Source" tab at the bottom left of the window), and copy all the lines of code. Then in Weebly, paste that in the HTML editing field. If you're unsure how to do this, just submit a support ticket there and they'll tell you how to do it. It's not hard, just slightly technical.

If you want a website of your own, I'd recommend a .info domain since they're only $.99 now at GoDaddy, and Hostgator has hosting packages that start at $4.99/month (to get coupons for this, Google search "Hostgator Coupon Codes". Easy, eh?). So, if you go this route:

Total Cost: $6.98 ($1 + $.99 + $4.99)

5.) Drive traffic to your site. (Or, put your URL in front of people from your niche.)

This is where everything normally falls to ****. People get so hung up on "traffic generation" that instead of actually doing the work that will drive visitors to their site, they squawk about how it's not working. It also doesn't help that most of the 'gurus' make traffic into some huge, multi-faceted ordeal that only their latest product can alleviate. 

But, the underlying thing here is that getting people to your site is where the dirty work comes in. You have to put in time for this, which surprisingly most people won't or don't want to do. They want to make money, but won't spend the required time to do it. Instead they search for the magic button, which as the people that have put in the necessary time already know, doesn't exist.

What I'd like to say is this: forget the term "traffic generation". When I did, I stopped having issues with it. Instead, think of it as putting your URL in front of people from or looking for information on your niche. Sounds easy enough, right?

So, grab a beer (or pepsi, if you're under age) and get to cracking. Here's some ways to do this:

• Google search "your industry + forum" to find related forums in your niche. Forums are potential jackpots, since they can be full of like-minded people that want what you have. Copy the headline from your squeeze page and paste it into the signature you're normally given on the forum (found in your Profile, normally), and link that back to your squeeze page.
  
  Then go into the forum threads and post relevant comments, or just respond and engage people. This isn't tough, and I shouldn't have to tell you to not be one of those spammy douches people all hate in forums.

• Go to EzineArticles.com and search for your industry. For this example, I'd search for "acne cures." See what people are writing about, and just rewrite their articles. Hey, information isn't exclusive and you won't get brownie points for playing fair.
  
  (Note: Notice I didn't say to "copy" the content. I don't condone that, nor should you. This has proven to be a point of contention for some readers of this thread, so if you have a problem with this, here's a solution: either pick a familiar topic you can add value to, or spend a day just reading about your chosen topic. If it's "acne cures", like in this example, spend a day reading about various cures online and/or visit your local bookstore and read some books on it over a cup of coffee or something (perhaps even an iced blueberry coffee from Dunkin Donuts.. Yes, you can enjoy this step). Take notes and use those notes to create articles. But even still, guess what? You're just re-writing other people's content anyway, so we've more or less come full circle here. At the end of the day, just make sure you're creating articles; it's purely for traffic regardless.)
  
  Shortly thereafter, whichever route you go, download Brad Callen's free Article Submitter software (not sure where it is? Google it.) and submit your article to every site you possibly can. Then do this 2-3 more times each day. (What, you thought it would only take a few minutes? Not if you want to make money it won't.) Also, see the "Advanced Breakdown" portion below for more on this..

• If you have a budget to use toward marketing, I'd go to Yahoo and sign up for their Sponsored Search program. It's their version of Google Adwords, only I find I get cheaper clicks from their sponsored searches. I'm not claiming to be a PPC expert, but I've tested and spent a lot of money trying various things, and from my own experience, I get cheaper clicks on Yahoo's Search Marketing.

Quick note: you're trying to build a list, so make sure all your traffic is being directed to your squeeze page! 

Total Time: As much as you have
Total Cost: Between $1 and $6.98

Here's an Advanced Breakdown of what you can do for more traffic (this is a goldmine for traffic generation):

1. Write an article. Or 3, or however many you want.
2. Submit that article/those articles to the top Article Directories, for which you can use Brad Callen's free Article Submitter Software. (Hasn't let me down yet.. You just load your article content in there then go down a list submitting them to the various directories in the software.)
3. Download Techsmith's Jing, a free screen capture software.
4. Turn your articles into videos using Google Presentation (a free Google Document program, similar to Microsoft's Powerpoint), and capture the video + audio using Jing. You'll need a microphone for this, which can run as little as $10.
5. Sign up for a free Tubemogul account and submit your Jing-created video to the various video-sharing websites in TubeMogul. You can do that, or just sign up for the $1 trial at Traffic Guyser and get the video, article, social bookmarking, and postcast submissions all automated and syndicated.

Total Time: As much as you have (plus a day or so to register to the sites in the software listed above)
Total Cost: Between $1 and $7.98 (providing you have a microphone)

(Notice that this series of steps can be completely free, excepting the microphone and/or $1 trial to Traffic Guyser.)

If you do this Advanced Traffic method, it's going to be time intensive. I've whittled it down to about 1.5 hours, all said and done, but setting up the software and registering to the various sites they store for you (which you only have to do once) will take a solid chunk of time, maybe a couple days. But after you do that, your daily input for driving traffic to your site is very minimal. 

...And that's all I got! 

Don't over-complicate any of this. You're building a list around information people want, and giving it to them by using a squeeze page and traffic. Easy enough, but it can get VERY complicated when you start adding things to it. So don't add anything to it.

Both myself and some highly successful friends have done this repeatedly in more than a handful of niches, and can honestly say that the only way it won't work (at least to get you that first sale or more) is if you do nothing or don't want to work for it. In which case IM isn't for you anyway.

Hopefully this helps some people, and as I said before, it's meant to be a break from the confusion, geared towards helping people get out of the rut or get off that "square one" they tend to get stuck on.