All the guru marketers will tell you “If you want to be successful online, you need to start building your own mailing list”. This article will give you the basic steps on how to drive lots of traffic to your website by building your own mailing list.

It does matter who you are or what level of marketing experience you have, building a mailing list is simple if you apply the right techniques. Below are the basic steps on how to build a mailing list:

1) First you will need an autoresponder. This is the workhorse and the backbone of building your list. An autoresponder is a program that automatically sends an email response to anyone that sends an email to your autoresponder email address. The autoresponder will allow you to put your business on 100% auto pilot.

To find the best autoresponders, go to any search engine and do a search on “Autoresponder Services”. You can compare different autoresponder companies and select the one you like the best. The majority of the companies charge $17.99 per month. This is a small amount to pay considering the money you will make by building you own list.

2) Lead Capture Form: This is the form that you will place on your website and this is where people will enter their name and email address in order to join your list. NOTE: When you join an autoresponder service, your account will already have your lead capture form set up. All you have to do is copy and paste the form on your website.

But before you place the form on your website, you will need to target your website visitors. In other words, what group of people will be interested in what you have to offer. For example, let’s say you were promoting a business opportunity. The type of traffic you should be driving to your site are people who are interested in business opportunities, working from home, making money online, home based business…etc.

So in order to attract these people, you might want to put the following heading on your lead capture form: “Subscribe to my mailing list and receive FREE Business Opportunity and Marketing Tips”. People like free stuff, so you will have no problem getting people to join your list. Once you have decided what verbiage you want on your lead capture form, do not place the form on your website just yet. You will need to do one more step.

3) You will now need to set up your messages within the autoresponder. When setting up your messages, your first message should be the confirmation message. The purpose of the confirmation message is to have the subscriber confirm that he wants to join your list. The confirmation process will also protect you from spam complaints. NOTE: Most autoresponder companies will have the confirmation email message already set up for you. So you will not have to worrying about what to say in that message.

4) You will now need to set up the additional messages in the autoresponder starting with message# 1. Message# 1 will be sent to the subscriber as soon as he confirms his subscription to your list. Message# 1 should be the information the subscriber has requested. When setting up the additional messages, you can choose how many days the autoresponder system should wait before it sends the next message. I recommend you have your messages go out every 7 days. If you send your subscribers 2 or 3 messages a week, your subscribers might find this annoying.

NOTE: Your messages should not try to sell your subscribers anything. In our example of targeting business opportunity seekers, your messages should be filled with business opportunities and marketing tips. Step# 5 below will show you how to make money with your mailing list.

5) Making Money With Your List: People don’t buy from strangers on the Internet. So as you build your list, you need to establish a trusting relationship with your subscribers by given them relevant and useful information. Industry standards suggest a subscriber will need to see your product at least 7 times before he feels he can trust you and buy from you. So build a trusting relationship with your subscriber first.

Once you have the subscriber’s trust, you can now start to recommend products and services to your subscribers. If you are part of an affiliate program, you can send an email to all of your subscribers recommending one of your affiliate products. When they click on your affiliate link and make a purchase, you will then earn a commission and this is how you should make money with your list.

NOTE: Before recommending a product to your subscribers, make sure that you try and test the product yourself. Otherwise, you will lose credibility with your subscribers if you recommend a product that does not work as advertised.

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