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Have You Started Your List Building?

If you read my article from last week, “My Number One Online Mistake” you now realize that List Building should be your absolute priority from Day 1.

There is a huge amount of info out there on the web, promising ‘expert advice’ on how you do this, and
the latest  apps and training courses to make list building easy and faster than ever.

My purpose in this post is to cover the absolute basics required, and hopefully give you an insight
into what tools you need, not to show you how to build your list, but clarify the basics so that you can plan and decide what particular tools to use and then, what course or training you need to actually get it started.

So… a really brief overview of the how it works, is:

You offer something of high value to your website visitors, in exchange for their first name and email address. You collect their details into your list via an auto-responder service, and then you can send them emails as you see fit.

Some Important details to help you do this professionally are:

• Your webpage should be on your own domain name, on your own hosting account;
• Your Auto-responder service should be a well known professional service, such as , iContact or MailChimp. There are many to choose from, but Don’t go with a free service, you will regret it down the road. Aweber and Get-Response are renown for being ‘The Best’ services available.
•  Whatever your gift or bribe to get people to optin, it must be conceived to be High Value, and always give them more than they are expecting.
• As soon as they sign up, begin to build trust and a relationship with them. Let them in to who you are, and what they should expect from being your subscriber.

The first things you will need are:

1. Register your own Domain name, on your own Hosting account:
   Your own Domain name is conceived as professional, not as a hobby
   Make sure it’s relevant to your name, your company name or your planned Niche
   Without your own Hosting account, you will be very restricted in many ways
2. Get a list management service (Auto-Responder):
   For collecting your subscribers
   To set up your pre-scheduled emails
   To blast out your broadcast emails and offers
   Where you can create your optin forms
   To provide your subscribers with a system to unsubscribe or manage their preferences
3. Decide on a free gift or offer to give away:
   To entice (or bribe) people to opt in to your list(s)
4. Set up a webpage or blog:
   Where your optin form will live
   Where you promote your offer or give your visitors a reason to subscribe
   Where you will drive your traffic to
5. Targeted Traffic to your Optin Form:
   There’s no point in all above if no-one sees your offer and signs up, or if the people who do visit are not at all interested in your offer.

Get these things set up and you have the grounding to start building your list, and on your way to a consistent online income.

Thanks for reading, I hope above is helpful to you.

All the Best!

Peter