Yep. Only 1% of affiliate marketers make it!

Now, that’s not what we say, not what we think. After all there are only the two of us running ANC and we do internet marketing full time. So, that’s…errr… one hundred percent.

But a new ANC member dropped us a note this morning. Here it is:-

Hey Guys,

I just signed up.

I just got an interesting email on CB affiliate marketers.

This CB VP stated that they had 1.3 million affiliates, however only 140 thousands made one sale every three months. In addition, only 1% made enough to live on.

Interesting, I would like to hear your comments.

And here’s Thad’s response:-

Hi,

Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.

The turnover rate of new affiliate marketers who come and go is very high, and many never stick with it long enough to see any real success. There’s many reasons for that…but I’ve always felt the main reason is most people who try it go in with a distorted view of the difficulty level. Affiliate marketing isn’t hard when compared with starting a traditional brick and mortar business, but at the same time it takes more effort that most of the so called gurus make it out to be. As a result, people typically jump in with expectations that are out of whack. On top of that, most new people entering the business never take enough serious action on what they learn.

I would say though, that the CB rate of 1% making a full time living is abnormally low industry-wide. There’s definitely more full timers than that, mainly because there’s also a large number of affiliates making money on other networks outside of CB. Also, CB is kind of the default network for most newbies…so the turnover rate is probably higher than others.

You might find this post by Steve Pavlina interesting. It gives a nice big picture perspective where you can see not only why the success rate with endeavors like affiliate marketing is typically so low…but also, it’s a good inspiration on how to push through that and be different:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/12/what-are-the-odds-of-becoming-a-black-belt/

Cheers!

Thad

OK! I just want to repeat Steve’s summary again (Thad is a huge fan of SP BTW.)

“Your odds of success in your field of choice won’t be found in any statistics. Success is a choice, not a coin flip. You succeed by deciding what you want, knowing why you want it, and committing to it.”

‘Success is a choice… not a coin flip’. Gotta love that line, right?

So, it got me thinking… what percentage of ANC members are part of that magical one percent, what percentage of Wealthy Affiliate members are part of that magical one percent?

Now, I don’t know the answer to that but I can tell you that the odds are much higher if you are a member of both. Well, I would say that I suppose.

But like I said before Thad and I took that route to becoming full time internet marketers and we know probably at least two dozen more people who took that route personally. Travis Sago and PotPieGirl being two of the better known.

Most who succeed though, you don’t even hear about… because they are not in the IM market. They just sit quietly in the background banking serious dough.

One such fella (I won’t name him) is a big buddy of Thad’s and he is a WA member… he was a member of ‘Destination Unknown’ when we ran that… he’s an ANC member now.

And he told us a couple of months back he was banking $500 / Day from just one of his niches. Yep, just one.

And do you know what he’s done… he’s given us the inside scoop! This month’s report is on this very niche!

(So, ANC members should head on over and grab a copy ASAP.)

And everyone should print a copy of Steve’s post and pin it on their wall.

You wanna be a black-belt?

Get some training… get some serious training!

Or you could just flip a coin…

Errr…. wuss! LOL!

Getting traffic to your list is obviously critical but you now have a secret weapon. Your list itself! Or at least, what you created to tempt people to sign up to your list.

You now have a bonus!

It doesn’t matter whether you have created just a simple tip sheet or a full 5 week course. You now have, in effect, a mini-product of your own!

Concerned at all about adding affiliate links to Squidoo lenses, Hubs, Ezines, Forum posts or anything for that matter?

Well, now you don’t have to be! Just point people back to your site or blog and get them to opt-in to your list via your bonus offer!

Likewise, with Social Bookmarking sites like Twitter and Facebook or Digg, Propeller and Reddit.

No more slaps, for spammy content!

I was going to write a little section about each of these but I now don’t see the point as I’m sure you get it already.

Whenever you submit to any of the free method sites just link back to your own site mentioning your offer.

“Free guide on ___________________”

I’ll add some more examples in the finished guide but I’m sure you get my drift.

A couple of other traffic generating methods are worth mentioning though, before we wrap up.

PPC marketing. This could possibly considered an ‘advanced’ technique in that you would be paying for traffic directed towards a free offer (your bonus) in order to get people to sign up to your list. You would then hope to make sales off the ‘back-end’. It’s not technically difficult, if you understand adwords, but it obviously carries risk. However if you have already tested that your list converts to buyers, the extra traffic a PPC campaign will bring could well be worth it in the long run.

List Swapping. This marketing technique is unique to list builders. And note, I am NOT talking about selling your list on to spammers. Rather if you come across something, a guide or a tool, that your list would like… you could send them over to the owner’s site where they opt in to their list to get it.

If you can arrange for this to reciprocal, all the better!

OK, I may do another post on some odds and ends and maybe some more tips. But it’s likely I’ll leave those for the actual guide.

If you have any comment or questions on this series of ‘List Building posts, please feel free to add them.

I’ll aim to get the completed guide available within the next couple of weeks and I’ll let you know how you can grab it.

In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed the series, got something out of it but above all that you have taken action!

LOL! I’ve been playing around again.

You know I love those natty ‘rhyming’ titles for our ANC niche reports, bonuses and stuff? Well, I thought I’d better come up with one for the forthcoming free ‘List Building‘ bonus guide.

And I have! But I’ve gone one better and designed a proper ebook cover for it. Here it is…

I think it’s cool! (Now that I’ve figured out how to add a background pic.)

I’m gonna make one for all our bonus guides.

It was very easy to do using a free program from virtualcovergenerator.com.

There is a paid version which I’m sure can do a much fancier job but this does me OK.

But even with the free version you can do CD covers, Newsletters or Boxes as well as the ebook cover.

Note: You do need Photoshop version 6.0 or higher as it works using ‘Actions’ in Photoshop (A bit like Macros in Excel.) You can access a free trial version of Photoshop here.

So, I’ve picked the title for the guide, I’ve got a fancy cover… now all I’ve got to do is finish it!

One more post to go then I’ll wrap the whole thing up.

It should be available by the end of next week.

Using a Broadcast messages is a powerful way to quickly get a message out to your list. If something topical or if a special offer comes up relating to your niche…use a broadcast!

Broadcast messages are ‘one off’ messages. They are not part of your mail message follow-up series and can be sent out at any time to all or just part of your list.

That last point is important. It may not always be appropriate to send out details of a new product offering or a new bonus you are offering to everyone on your list, particularly those who have just signed up.

In that case if you are using Aweber or Getresponse, you can split your list into a subset and only send out a Broadcast message to part of your list.

(I’ll cover the actual mechanics of doing this in the finished guide itself.)

It is much easier to sell something to your list via a Broadcast message but that is not the only reason for using them.

Remember, first though, you need to create a good relationship with your list via your mail message follow-up series. They are then more likely to open your Broadcast messages.

You can use Broadcast messages to:-

• Let your list know about a special offer. We did this successfully with the recent 7 Day $1 Trial of Wealthy Affiliate
• Important News. We let our list know when a new ANC niche report or bonus is available.
• A cool tool you have found. We did this recently with Google’s Wonder Wheel thing.
• Often you will send out a broadcast about something and then add it to your follow-up series. We did this with Potpie’s Squidoo 101 guide.

You can be more ’salesy’ in your broadcast messages provided you are adding value. Telling people about a short-term special offer isn’t a hard sell at all IMO. You are doing people a favour. I mean, what would they think if you didn’t tell them about it!

Broadcast messages also confirm to your list that you are ‘on the ball’. That you are the source to turn to for the latest news, gossip and offers.

Don’t overdo them… but it really does depend on how ‘happening’ your niche is. If hot topics and offers arise regularly don’t be shy to tell your list about them. They’ll thank you for it!

A good tip with Broadcast messages is to split test your headlines. Which simply means that you send out the same mail to your list but half of them get one headline and the other half a different one. In this way you’ll develop a good understanding of what works best for your list.

Do Broadcast messages work? You bet! I’ve given you some examples above of when we have, successfully used Broadcast messages but you need to work out the right balance and frequency of these messages for your own niches.

In the next post we’ll look at how you can drive traffic to get people on to your list…

flickr 'txd'

As some of you may have already seen, there’s a bunch of chatter right now about a new Adwords slap targeting affiliate review sites. One of the main posts being referenced is this one by Perry Marshall.

We think some of the severity and scariness is kind of getting pretty overblown and we haven’t seen any problems with our own campaigns, but we know some people are very concerned or affected with this recent update so we felt it was important to talk about.

We’ll buzz through a few of the issues that have been brought up around various blogs and forums and share what we think it means, as well as give you some key tips to keep in mind for improving quality score.

So What’s Currently Going On?

Here’s a few of the main issues being discussed and some of our perspective on it:

Was there an Adwords quality score update and system-wide sweep around July 21?

Yep, it appears that’s the case, just as they routinely seem to do now every 3 or 4 months.

However, from what we’ve gathered, it appears nothing has really changed as far as Google’s affiliate guidelines go. As time goes on, what typically happens with each new quality sweep is not so much a change in quality guidelines, but rather an enhanced enforcement of those guidelines.

Are there some high quality, high value affiliate sites that unjustly or mistakenly get nailed when these updates are done?

Yes. Inevitably there are always going to be “casualties of war” so to speak with quality score sweeps, which can and do affect high quality affiliates and merchants at times.

Is Google specifically out to get affiliates?

Unlikely. Affiliates can add fantastic value for search traffic and Google knows this, otherwise they probably would have wiped them all out by now. Unfortunately though, because there’s a lot of bad apples in the affiliate world that degrade overall quality, it’s no secret that Google does in fact set the bar higher for affiliates as they clearly state here:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=66238

Did Google update something something in their algorithm that targets “unmasked” or “naked” affiliate links on landing pages?

Perhaps…at least that’s what’s being reported. If that’s the case, we’re guessing it may be just a system update to more accurately identify affiliate sites.

Contrary to some of what’s being reported, many affiliate review sites with unmasked links still seem to be just fine. Just scan through a handful of niche topics and you’ll see plenty of them still running strong.

One side note along those lines though, if you’re doing anything serious in Adwords, you should be using some sort of conversion tracking system. Using virtually any tracking system will force you to mask your affiliate links anyway by default.

Are they nailing or even banning affiliates who routinely switch domains to get around slaps?

Maybe. There’s been some reports of that. We suspect those are probably more extreme cases though. The more you follow Adwords landing page and site quality guidelines and webmaster guidelines to begin with, the less chance you’ll have to encounter doing that anyway.

The bottom line here is this quality score crackdown doesn’t appear to indicate any major changes away from the existing Adwords quality guidelines for affiliates, just an enforcement. Whenever you’re affected by a slap, more often that not it’s because you’re doing something that doesn’t match up with their stated guidelines to begin with.

At the same time, we think Google does do some pretty stupid and unfair things sometimes. For one thing, the way they handle quality score and slaps is really ridiculous. The fact that for months they’ll essentially say “hey…you’re doing a great job…keep it up!”, then all of a sudden overnight they nail you with a poor QS across the board on a domain with virtually no chance to recover is simply ridiculous. They should do it more gradually and give people a chance to improve quality and recover.

In the scheme of things, we’d encourage you to face issues like this by trying to see opportunity and not feel like you’ve been defeated. Facing obstacles and overcoming and adapting to changes comes with the territory in any business, so the better you can adapt to changes, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Enforcement of Adwords quality guidelines is unlikely to get any easier, so stay ahead of the game, work hard to cover all your bases, and always take a hard look at the added value you’re providing for people.

A Few Adwords Quality Score Tips

The following suggestions don’t cover everything, but are just a few key elements that affiliates typically misunderstand, skip, or don’t know about:

• Build a real site with multiple pages – Trying to get away with a one page site these days is just asking for problems. Contrary to what some say though, you don’t need hundreds of pages…but make sure you have enough to provide a complete and meaningful experience for users. For a review site, having a comparison page, a review page for each product, and several articles will do just fine as your core content.
• Write original content – Don’t take shortcuts here. Take the time to write original content yourself or hire it out.
• Avoid duplicate content on multiple pages across your site – It’s perfectly fine and normal to have multiple landing page versions for testing, but make sure to block those duplicates with your robots.txt file.
• Try using “nofollow” tags on your outbound affiliate links – This may or may not help, but we suspect it may provide a little insurance on quality. The “nofollow” tag tells Google to ignore the link and that you don’t fully trust that 3rd party you’re linking to. In the SEO world at least, Google analyzes who you link out to, and it’s possible they may do the same in Adwords. You may trust the merchant you’re linking to, but Google may not, especially in the case of many ClickBank products.
• Make sure in addition to your main pages, you at least have an About Us, Privacy, and Contact Page – Many affiliates will include a privacy and contact page, but don’t think about having an “about us” page. This is a mistake. The Adwords guidelines clearly state they expect you to be transparent about your business and what you do, so an “about us” type page is essential to that. Write up a brief mission statement for your niche site and give a brief description to the user of how you’re trying to help them. That’s also a good gut check of how much value you’re adding with your site. Some other pages to consider including are FAQ, Disclosure, and/or Terms and Conditions.
• Optimize your site for fast load time and have clean code – Optimize those images and make sure you’re using a well coded template or a good clean site building program. Your landing page load time and easy to interpret code with good browser compatibility can definitely affect your quality score.
• Build your site with some basic SEO principles in mind in alignment with Google’s webmaster guidelines - Even if you don’t plan to do much SEO work, building it with some basic SEO elements in mind can be a big help. At a bare minimum, make sure you make good use of title tags, descriptions, appropriate use of H tags, etc. Also make sure you have a good and easy to follow navigation structure. Even if you eliminate full navigation on your ppc landing pages, make sure users can easily find your main site content, at a minimum by having some key links in your footer.
• As always, pay close attention to relevancy – Make sure your most relevant content on the landing page immediately shows in the browser above the fold. One relevancy example where people sometimes make mistakes, is on single vs. multiple product landing pages. If you’re bidding on a term like “best ink jet printers”, it’s probably best to send people to a multiple product page. If you’re bidding on a specific product name, it’s best to keep that landing page focused almost entirely on that product, especially above the fold.

If anyone has any other questions, thoughts, concerns, or experiences to share or talk about on this issue, fire away below…

Ho Hum… well you know I’m not keen on all this follow thousands on Twitter to get thousands to follow you, right?

Seems pretty pointless to me.

Anyway, I’ve just set up a Twitter account for one of our non-IM niches.

I’m not going to show you it or anything just yet but I’m gonna use this account to test whether Twitter has any real marketing value or not.

So, I’ll keep you updated as a go along with it.

The first thing I’m doing is finding people to follow who are in the same niche.

There are two good FREE sites out there that you can try:-

Twitter Search. You just type in some relevant keywords to you niche and it pulls up all the latest tweets where those keywords were mentioned. Check the people out and follow them! Easy peasy.

Twitterell. With this site you enter your Twitter details and then keyword(s). It then runs off for awhile and collects relevant Twitterers. Looks like you can then just group follow them. I’ll report back once the results are in.

I really want to see if Twitter can add any value to a non IM niche and this will be a good test. Like all the niches Thad and I are in, it’s hot, topical and highly competitive.

Your mail message series is what list building is all about. You must build a relationship with your list by providing value but there’s more to it than that…

Let’s start with your first mail. This one should be fairly easy. A simple welcome message that includes your bonus (the one you created to get people to opt-in in the first place) and a thank you for signing up. And that’s it! I wouldn’t put any links or sales pitches in this mail at all.

The only thing I would do is put a signature link under your mail at the end like this:-

Dave B / Thad
AffiliateNicheClub

This gives them an easy option to re-visit your site if they wish.

(Note: I’ll cover more ground in the finished guide on how to structure double opt-in confirmation messages and what you can do with your ‘Thank You page’ after they opt-in.)

Now it gets more interesting…

One crucial thing to remember is that it’s all very well having a list, if they actually open your mails!

There are a number of key points to take into account here:-

You must add value. The content of your mail message series must obviously match what you have a promised. So, if it’s a five part course you give them that, if it’s a weekly newsletter or a series of tips you give them that. Provide your list with free valuable content and don’t try and oversell to your list. If you consistently add value your list will continue to open your mails.

Don’t spam! This may seem obvious but you may not always be aware that you are even doing it. You see the definition of Spam varies from person to person. We’re not going to debate that here but one thing you can do is make sure that your customer’s ‘email clients’ don’t think you are spamming them. Yes, that’s right. All the major email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, Windows Mail have their own spam filters. They look out for certain words and phrases and the presence of links in all incoming mails.

If you are using a good autoresponder like Aweber or Getresponse you can check each mail, as you set it up, for it’s ’spam score’ and make adjustments accordingly. This is a very important test, don’t miss it out… otherwise you will have people on your list who simply never receive your mails.

A tip here is to add a brief note right under your opt-in form like this:-

(NOTE: Please add support@affiliatenicheclub.com to your ‘Contacts’ or ‘White List’ so you have no issues receiving the report.)

Don’t bombard your list with mails. Some of the ‘Gurus’ will tell you to send a mail out every single day. Unless you have promised a free 7 day course I would not do this. It does depend on the niche and what you are offering but I would think once a week would be a good rough guide. Remember, you may well be sending out the odd one-off broadcast message as well so don’t overdo it. At the same time, if you send out mails too infrequently your list will simply forget about you. Don’t let a list go cold!

Don’t hard sell to your list. I know it is incredibly tempting to stuff your mails with product links but this really is counter productive. People will get turned off and unsubscribe. For your mail message series just provide free useful information. Now, that information might be about a product that has helped you along the way. Fine… but pitch it like that… not ‘go here and buy this now!’

Again, it depends on the niche but try and and send at least 3 or 4 ‘informative’ type mails to every one ’salesy’ mail.

Grab ‘em by the headlines! You should think of a mail subject head line in much the same way as you would an article title or even the first line of an adwords ad. Your subject headline must grab people’s attention and make them want to open the mail. You can use call to action phrases like ‘Grab this’ or ‘Sign Up’ . Using words like ‘bonus’, ‘limited’ or ‘free’ can work well. As can questions or implications of success.

OK, we’ve covered the basics of setting up your mail message series. That’s the regular series of mails that will go out on autopilot to everyone that signs up to your list. In the next post we’ll look at the unique case of sending out one-off ‘broadcast’ messages as these can, and should be, handled differently…

Gave away free tips or a free guide to get people to opt-in to your list. It’s that simple!

It is crucial for you to offer your potential customers an incentive for them to opt-in to your list. This is taken as read in the IM niche and IMers are almost immune to it. Nonetheless you pretty much have to do it.

But it is equally important in any niche. People love to receive freebies! So, in exchange for their email you need to offer something in return. Not only must you offer something but you must be able to deliver it and it must be of good quality. Something they can’t easily get elsewhere.

We’ll talk about the types of things you can offer in a moment. But let’s first stress the importance of delivery. This is not an issue if you are using a good autoresponder service like Aweber or Getresponse. If you are offering a short guide or just a list of tips these should be included in your first mail response after opt-in.

If you try and manage your list manually you are bound to fail at some point and if you fall at the first hurdle you are out of the race. Another reason to avoid the free autoresponders.

So, let’s have a look at some of the things you can offer and how you go about obtaining or preparing them.

During your initial niche research you should actively seek out things that people are looking for in addition (or complimentary) to your product or service offering. This could be just answering some basic questions, a top 10 list of tips, a short additional help guide, some ways you have found a product useful, etc.

In other words, look for something that can add value to your product or service offering.

These series of posts are an example. I’m going to wrap them up into a free bonus guide for our ANC list. I could just offer it as bonus for people who join ANC but I want everyone to have it because I think it’s that important.

Another obvious example if our Free Bonus Niche Report that people can get just by signing up via the form on this blog. This is in effect a sample of what’s on offer to people who join ANC.

Make sure that wherever you place your opt-in form you have compelling wording around the form that clearly states what people are getting when they opt-in. Again, look at the example on this blog.

So, what things can you offer?

Merchant bonuses. These can be the easiest of all. Perhaps you can offer discount coupons or the merchant themselves may offer affiliates bonus guides, etc. The drawback with these is that other affiliates will be able to offer the same thing.

Bonus Guides. These don’t have to be large… just 3 -5 pages. Get OpenOffice (it’s free) and you can easily turn your mini-guide into a PDF.

Bonus Courses. If you can produce a slightly large bonus guide, why not break it down into smaller chunks and offer it as a 7 day or 5 week course. ‘The Big Cat Strategy‘ (available free on the right) was originally delivered in modules over 5 weeks. This has the advantage of also writing your first messages for you and will keep people on your list as they await the next lesson.

Free Chapters. This is more applicable to people with their own products. Simply send out the first chapter of your ebook. But as affiliates it could be possible to approach the merchant and ask them to let you do so. They may already do this and be willing to let you do the same.

Tip Lists. Probably the simplest to do. Just come up with a list of tips and include those in your first mail.

Newsletters. People love to be kept up to date with the latest trends and happenings in their niche. So, if you are really involved and interested yourself, this can be a great way to go.

Free Software. People love tools and gizmos, so if you can find a free one applicable to your niche, offer it. Even if you just provide a list of places people can get stuff from, you are adding value.

Advice / Interaction. Be careful with this one but it can be really powerful. You could offer to give ongoing advice and support in your niche. Whilst this might sound daunting, you could potentially gain a real insight into exactly what your customers needs and desires are.

Your niche research should provide the answer to the best thing to offer and where possible, in forums, etc just ask people what they want. Once you have even a very small list you can ask them also.

Don’t be daunted by creating a bonus. You could outsource the creation of a mini-guide or buy some PLR articles but initially just have a go yourself.

Remember, once you have created a bonus you can use it in a multitude of different ways that will more than pay back the effort you put in to create it.

In the next post we’ll look at your ongoing mail series, its content and frequency…

I thought I’d ‘interrupt’ the ‘List Building‘ series of posts and briefly talk about the mental rather than the mechanical aspects.

With hindsight I probably should have done this post first, although I did touch upon it in the introductory post.

It occurs to me that a lot of people have something of a mental block when it comes to list building. So, what I want to do on this post is help you over that hurdle, or at least open the matter for discussion.

I’ve also got a free video on list building that I’d like you to take a look at.

Thad and I did not start list building until we were 6 month’s into our Internet Marketing journey. Travis (of ‘Bum Marketing’ fame) did not start for more than a year after he started IM.

So, you are not alone, if you are fairly new to IM! What holds people back? I think there are several main areas of resistance and I’ll try to answer each one.

It is an advanced, technically difficult method. This is probably the biggest myth of all. List building, once you know the mechanics is one of the easiest of all the marketing methods. I mean what’s easier? Setting up an adwords campaign and trying to get a good Quality Score, knowing what keywords to bid on and by how much, managing your campaign budget, etc or just sending a mail shot to your list?

Technically, and trust me, I’m no techy, it is also one of the simplest things to do. Provided you use a good autoresponder service, like Aweber or Getresponse nothing could be easier. You set up a list with a message series, create an opt-in form, grab a couple of lines of code and bung ‘em on your site or blog. And that’s it!

It will take ages to build a list. Well, it will if you never start. But even just 1 or 2 opt-ins a day can mean you can have a list of 30 – 60 people in the first month.

It is expensive and takes a lot of effort. Aweber starts at only $19 / month, even cheaper, if you sign up for 3 months or annually and is very easy to use. Sure, it takes a little effort, at first, to set up a message series but once done it runs literally on auto-pilot. And you can do one-off ‘broadcast’ messages to your list whenever you come across something juicy you want to tell them about.

You need a huge list to make it worthwhile. Not so, (as you will see in the video). A smaller list of relevant buyers is all you need.

I have nothing to offer my list – why would anyone sign up? We’ll deal specifically with this point on the upcoming post on incentives. But you may be surprised just how easy it is to come up with an enticing free offer to get people to sign up to your list.

I don’t want customers, I am happy to be an affiliate. Thad and I both understand this mentality entirely. You’ll get bombarded with support calls, etc. Again, this is unlikely to be the case unless you are an actual product owner. Sure, you’ll get some feedback but this all helps you strengthen your campaigns and make them even better.

I have nothing else to sell to my list other than my main product. Believe me this would be unusual, no matter what you are marketing. This question came up recently in the Wealthy Affiliate forum. A lady was marketing ‘The Magic of Making Up‘ relationship guide and had no clue what else she could sell to her list. My answer: Try another better, cheaper product or even create your own; Could this actually be a confidence issue – plenty of guides on that; Could this be a personal issue, such as excess weight or hygene (e.g. sweating) – plenty of guides on that; Could the relationship just be doomed full stop – try promoting them Dating sites!

Oh! Before I forget. I want you to watch this free video. It’s by Tiffany Dow and it’s on list building (handy that). Tiffany’s main emphasis is on using list building with your own product. Don’t worry about that for now. There are some good general tips in the video but what I want you to focus on is the size of Tiffany’s lists. (Yes, she shows you inside her Aweber account!). You’ll note that her lists are not huge at all.

But they are lists of targeted relevant buyers and that is the key!

So, I hope that gives you a (very gentle) kick up the pants with regards to getting started with list building…

Ya know, I was getting all tongue-tied and twisted with this one, a touch of writer’s block even. Unlike me! LOL!

Thing is, I was gonna start putting up screen shots of how you set up a list and an opt-in form using Aweber… the usual thing you see.

Well, I don’t want to do that. Why? ‘Cause you’ve probably seen it before and you… err… might not be using Aweber. You could be using Getresponse. Fair enough, as long as you are using a decent autoresponder service. And they both have their own help files, etc and are pretty easy to use anyway.

Now, I will put some of that stuff in finished ‘List Building’ guide when I do it but for these posts I don’t think it’s appropriate.

Rather, I think we should talk more about strategy than the nuts and bolts. And, remember we want your thoughts and comments on this, OK?

Things like, where’s the best place to put your opt-in form, should you use pop-up forms, should you use double or single opt-in, different types of landing pages. That kind of stuff. Sound good? If not… say so!

Double or Single Opt-in: One of the things you first need to decide when creating an autoresponder mail list is whether you are going to go for single or double (also known as confirmed) opt-in. Double opt-in is the default when using Aweber. That means that when someone signs up to your list they are first sent a mail asking them to confirm that they really wanted to do that.

With single opt-in, people sign up to your list and simply start receiving your mail series. If you wish to take this route you must change the default list settings in Aweber before you have any subscribers. You cannot change it after that point.

Double opt-in is encouraged in order to cut down on the number of spam complaints you may receive. (We’ll deal with this topic more when we talk about setting up a mailing series.)

However, it can cut down on the number of people who are on your list as some people fail to confirm.

Thad and I use single opt-in for ANC but double opt-in in some of our other niches. Why? Well, we think in the IM niche people are pretty clued up about the whole process and therefore know full well that by opting in they will receive subsequent mails, etc. This is not always the case in other niches so double opt-in offers more protection.

Where to place your Opt-in Form: This will vary depending on exactly what you are placing your opt-in form on. Take a look at this blog. The opt-in form is placed predominantly at the top right hand corner. The top left corner can work just as well but bear in mind people scan web pages from left to right and then down.

The chances are you want people to first scan your posts and then let the opt-in form catch their eye. We use the same positioning on websites.

Landing pages are slightly different. By a landing page we mean a single page, with no main menu and often no sidebars. Have a look at the ANC sales page as an example here. The opt-in form is way down at the bottom. Why? Because it is a sales page. It’s designed so that people are not distracted but read through the sales copy and then either sign up and join or are interested enough to find out more by grabbing the free sample niche report.

If we were collecting opt-ins as affiliates on a review style comparison landing page we would again place the opt-in at the top right.

Squeeze pages are another option. They are simply single pages designed purely to collect opt-ins. Here’s an interesting example from MicroNicheFinder. It’s interesting because that is the default option if you promote the product via Clickbank. The alternative is the MicroNicheFinder sales page. I have spoken to James the owner and the reason he has the squeeze page as the default, is that he has found, over time that it converts better. That is, better for him, as he gets people on his list. (Currently, we are experimenting with pointing people direct to the sales page via our own links.)

Using Pop-up Forms: Have a look at that MicroNicheFinder sales page again. Boy, that pop-up form is annoying, right? It won’t go away. LOL! (I’ve spoken to James about that as well!). Thing is, as affiliate marketers we are all pretty jaded when it comes to viewing sales pages and seeing pop-up forms. Thad and I don’t use them for ANC for that reason. But they do work. Again James has said that the pop-up improves conversions.

We do use pop-ups in other niches.

Where you place your opt-in forms and whether you use pop-ups or not will ultimately come down to testing. Don’t just leave things as they are… test… and keep testing.

In the next post we’ll talk about using incentives as a way to get people to sign up to your list…