When you start to  build a list chances are you will see the term permission email marketing… so what does it mean exactly?

Permission email marketing is the term given to sending information to a subscriber after getting what we call a Confirmed Opt-In. “Ok Dave, but what is a confirmed optin, you’re not making this any easier…”

OK, well let’s use our own internet marketing email list on this blog as an example, you see the box where we say “the good stuff is on the list” ?  (If you aren’t the list, then why not?.. because the good stuff is on the list ) Well when you enter your details and hit the subscribe button you will notice that this is stage one of the opt-in process.

Confirmed Opt-In (some marketers call it Verified Opt-In) is the process used to make sure only people who want to receive your information are subscribed to your list.

As I say, what I have described above is the first stage. Here is how the whole thing comes together.

Just around the time I was considering leaving my day job to work from home full time (circa fall 2007), someone gave me a flier for a local ‘internet marketing’ workshop, hosted by Stores Online. I figured, hey, it’s free, and knowledge & another perspective can’t hurt, right?

Well, naive as I was at the time (there’s been a lot of water under that bridge in 3 years!) I didn’t step outside the process to observe (as I should have), but allowed myself to get sucked in, hook, line, and sinker. Needless to say, I now enjoy watching these sort of things unfold from a detached (and somewhat cynical) marketing standpoint; watching presentation techniques and closing devices and the whole bit. Back then? Not so much.

So we go to this Stores Online presentation, they give you a free something or other (I think it was a day planner or something stupid) and do their best to wow you with the potential profit that exists in selling things online. Well, I already knew that. Thing is, I’d ready the 4 Hour Work Week just a couple months earlier, and Timothy Ferriss had several amazing examples of guys that had made a lot of dough with their web stores. With that in mind, I was an easy target. I had already sort of decided at the time that I wanted to start my own web store, and they were presenting an opportunity to do just that… or so I thought.

Anyways, at the end of the evening, Stores Online said we’ll give you a one day workshop for free – you just have to pay for your lunch – and we’ll teach you about all this fancy internet marketing stuff. Ok, sounds like a plan. Thank you so much for the opportunity Stores Online!

(side note – you can request a ‘free invitation’ to a Stores Online workshop near you at their homepage. Nothing quite like inviting yourself to a party, is there?)

Stores Online Pro: Slick Marketing Masters

Thing is, I already knew 97% of what they were talking about from an internet marketing standpoint, but I wanted the tools they were offering to get going quick. So I go to this day long presentation – because that’s what it was, not a ‘seminar’ – and I ‘learned’ all about their product. Not so much about internet marketing…

Anyhow, before lunch they’d steeped you full of success stories, we’d heard from live speakers ‘living the dream’ – and they’d put the offer on the table (unspoken: so you have time to phone whoever you need to at lunch). After lunch they stepped it up a bit, finally closing near the end of the day with a strong scarcity offer.

IE – if you don’t act TODAY, you’re totally screwed.

Well gee, thanks Stores Online – I guess I’d better drop the wad on your offer then!

Kind as they are, those Stores Online Pro folk, they offered I believe it was a 7 day money back guarantee. I spent several thousand dollars with them to get I think it was 5 web store licenses. That allowed me to use their store builder software on 5 sites. If memory serves, it was roughly a grand a piece.

So I jumped on board, planning on getting this up and running as soon as I’d quit my day job, which was scheduled for a month or so away. Of course that put me way beyond any guarantee period they offered, and think about it for a moment – unless you went home immediately the day after and jumped into this thing full tilt for seven days straight, you’d actually have no idea what you’d truly gotten into by the time the guarantee period expired. The learning curve is STEEP!

In other words – unless you got buyer’s remorse the very next day, and were smart enough to act on it, you’re screwed. Personally, I had no idea what I’d really gotten into until months down the road…

Stores Online Review In A Nutshell

Ok, so let’s get down and dirty here. What is it that makes Stores Online such a ripoff? Here’s what I can remember off the top of my head:

• The upfront cost of $1000 per license is a total ripoff. All over the internet you can find software packages that will allow you to accomplish the same thing as Stores Online Pro at a fraction of the cost – often between the $150 to $300 price point. And in many cases, that fee will give you unlimited licenses.
• Their software “Stores Online Pro” platform is archaic, antiquated, and asinine. It does not (at least at the time when I was immersed in it) have the ability to integrate with 3rd party industry standard applications. Things like RSS feeds, a dynamic blog, email auto responders and more were simply not on the table, despite the Stores Online claims of being cutting edge. PHP? Forget it. Critics will say that Stores Online provides an auto responder – but I say it is absurdly simplistic and incapable of handling even the most basic of standard auto responder functions. (See our Aweber review for details on a true industry leading auto responder system).
• Their software conveniently integrates with drop shippers like Doba who also have shady reputations, and also lock you in to monthly fees, just so you can list products on your site. It is a bit of an old boys’ club in my opinion. Estimated fee to have a drop shipper account? Something like $30-$50 a month. On top of that, you’re getting pricing similar to what you might find on Amazon (how you gonna mark that up enough to cover costs and get rich?) Oh – and they never tell you about how much work it is to find a true on-demand drop shipper on your own. Virtually impossible for the market I chose (digital picture frames). Despite the amazing ‘training resources’ Stores Online provided, I only ever came across suppliers willing to send out big batches of product. Definitely not what I was looking for. (True drop shipping means you get an order for product XYZ, and your supplier ships the required quantity directly to the end-user on your behalf. No inventory required.)
• Speaking of fees, don’t forget the $30 hosting fee Stores Online charges you to have your store online! Yeah – in a world where $6 or $7 per month gets you unlimited domains with unlimited databases and email accounts (see our Hostgator review) the $30 Stores Online fee is a blatant rip off.
• Their store software is not at all intuitive. Web design with Stores Online flies against all known standards you’d find elsewhere, and instead you’re left stumbling around in their menu system. Want a custom theme? No problem – but you’re going to have to pay $100 per hour for a programmer’s time. They never told you the stock themes sucked, did they?
• It claims to be database driven, but you still end up managing things manually. I found keeping track of items a real chore.

The Stores Online Slimy Sequels

The other thing that you’ll never hear about is once you drink the Stores Online Kool Aid, they will give or sell your contact information to a whole slew of other blood-smelling sharks. After a while I began getting rather intense sales calls from all sorts of business growth type companies with a coaching program for this, that and the other thing. Apparently Stores Online is in bed with other coaching outfits that will give you ‘advanced training’ that isn’t available through Stores Online themselves – training that is specific to the Stores Online platform, and if you honestly want the fast path to success, well by golly, you better be on board! (I’m talking about PMI here). I also heard from legal eagles trying to help me setup the legal side of my business, I heard from business growth guys who wanted to help me build a business plan, I heard from SEO gooroos who wanted to help me rank better than Google itself.

Imagine that – so many pleasant conversations with nice sales people, and all I had to do was give Stores Online my credit card number.

Stumbling Through The Stores Online Nightmare

When I finally did quit my day job, I did indeed dive deep into the Stores Online system. I picked a niche (digital picture frames). I researched drop shipping suppliers (ended up being pretty forced to use Doba and Operation Dropship – both have monthly fees). I got setup with a credit card merchant account (another $40 a month). So far I hadn’t sold a single thing, and I was into it for at least $150 a month, just to have a website.

I spent literally hundreds of hours on this store. Once the thing was built, I poured countless hours into writing articles, link building, even making review videos – all in an effort to build the site and generate traffic. I tried this, that, and all sorts of other things. I went through their coaching, and walked away with nothing to show.

After a while other projects began to take up more of my time, and I began to let it slide. Sure, it had generated a few thousand in revenue, but the profits were nowhere near break even considering I needed $150 to stay open. Roughly 18 months later, I sat down one sunny afternoon and had a long, hard look at my Stores Online fiasco.

I decided then and there to pull the plug.

There is definitely such a thing as throwing away good money after bad, and I’d had enough. I consciously decided to scrap hundreds of hours of hard work, cut my losses, and turn the site into an Amazon affiliate site, based on WordPress. WordPress would finally, at last, give me the freedom I needed to actually do things I’d wanted to do for so long with the site. Amazon gave me a totally free, hands-off source of products at the best prices. Sure, I was only getting a 4% cut, but it was for zero effort, and zero ongoing cost.

I bought a WordPress plugin that allowed me to import Amazon products into WordPress, and within 2 days I had a fully functioning Amazon store. Then I pretty much walked away from it. That first month, I made a clean $50 profit from that site, and it continued to generate $30-$50 a month after that. Unbelievable. Finally I was free of the Stores Online boat anchor, and I was actually seeing some positive cash flow for once!

Store Online Preys On Innocent People

You’ve probably never seen an ad on the internet for Stores Online. Ironic, seeing as they apparently are the grand masters of selling stuff online. However, you might have seen their direct mail on your kitchen counter. They are masters at offline lead acquisition, pulling you first to an evening info-session, then further into an all day sales pitch. The model is tested and proven in all sorts of industries, and the Stores Online marketing department is at the top of their game.

They get you in a time-sensitive crunch, where you don’t really have time to research who they are and what they do. Everything is structured so that you get pulled into the little world of Stores Online; they keep you isolated from truly reputable sources of information that would open your eyes to see what a sham they’re running. This goes for the pre-sale part as well as the post-sale.

The travesty of all of this is that they do an excellent job of sucking in very well-intentioned people, taking many of their precious dollars, just to sell them a dream. I’m not saying Stores Online can’t be made to work – I’m sure their success stories are true, but those are a tiny percentage. I know, because I joined a forum full of people like me (screwed Stores Online customers trying to make the best out of a bad thing) at the time.

The Stores Online Alternative

My Stores Online saga was a rather unhappy experiment early on in my business, and thankfully I’ve since moved way beyond that point. Looking back, it serves to keep me humble, knowing I’ve been taken in with the best of them.

That said, I’d love it if my experience can serve as a warning to other people, and hopefully prevent others the same level of frustration I encountered in dealing with Stores Online.

So if not Stores Online, then what?

Well, if you’re just getting your feet wet in internet marketing, then the best thing I can recommend is to join our member’s list – it’s free, just enter your name and email below – and we’ll show you step by step case studies of live websites that are actually making money. We’ve learned the hard way so you don’t have to. We’ll show you how to do it for a fraction of the time and money it would take with Stores Online, and more importantly, you’ll be getting sound marketing advice that has been proven over and over online. Not by someone we read about, but by us. Enter your name and email below to get started. Unlike Stores Online, we will not sell or rent your contact information to others!

Further to that, don’t sell physical products. The markup is slim and you have to deal with suppliers who can disappear or cut you off at any time. Selling information products is FAR more profitable, in many cases  you’re close to 90% profit on a sale. Some retailers have made good money on the internet, but the majority that make it big are either selling information or services, and usually both.

That said, if you’re really interested in the Stores Online concept, and want to build your own web store, then I recommend thoroughly researching your options beforehand. There are some amazing options available now based on the WordPress platform; you can also go with Yahoo stores or one of the other solutions. But please heed this simple advice:

Do NOT Swallow The Stores Online Pro Fishbait – It Isn’t Worth It!

When the penny finally drops, and you realize that you really should start to build a list, then you have a choice of companies for your email marketing software needs, and in this Aweber review post, we’re going to take a closer look at the leading email marketing company… Because when it comes to email marketing and building a list for me, there is only once choice, and that is Aweber…

Aweber Review: Why I Use Aweber

I have been an Aweber customer for over 5 years, and in all that time, I have always received first class customer support. I can still remember being pleasantly surprised to receive a welcome phone call from them when I first signed up.

In the last year, Aweber has greatly improved the design side of their service, which in fairness was overdue.

The changes were worth the wait though, and in my view have ensured that Aweber remain the leader in providing email marketing software. The interface has been updated, is far more user-friendly, and provides more options than ever before.

Click Here To Test Drive Aweber For 30 Days For Only $1

Aweber Review -- Web Form Generator

One of the big improvements in the new Aweber design is the web form builder. Members of Aweber’s Development and Design team talk about the new web form builder in the video below. Apart from being exceptionally easy to use, the new web form builder also offers a good number of pre-existing templates that look very good right out of the box -- and you can find one for nearly any market you might be in.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1PMQ48pQzg

I don’t know about you, but I like to know the companies I spend money with are trying their best to make things better for me and my business.

Aweber Review -- Pricing

The good news about Aweber is that getting started is affordable.

As you can see from the price table (below), the price of using the Aweber email service grows with your subscriber base.

Aweber Review Subscriber Prices

Aweber Discount

Aweber stands behind their email marketing service by offering you the first month for only $1.

Unsure if Aweber is the right email marketing service for you? Then just sign up for the trial offer.

The only reason a business like Aweber can offer such a promotion is because they stand behind their product. In short, they deliver. I would not be a customer for five years if they didn’t, and we would not be using Aweber on this internet marketing blog if we did not think it was the best email marketing software on the market. But hey don’t just take my word for it, check out this video of Aweber reviews below to see that I am not the only customer who loves Aweber.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB2x0Q6CILs

If you understand the value of email marketing, and the need to build a list then Aweber should be your email marketing software partner. It’s pretty much that simple.

Click Here To Test Drive Aweber For 30 Days For Only $1

Working  With Aweber Will Enable You To…

• Boost your website’s traffic with email marketing
• Turn passive visitors into active subscribers
• Convert more sales  (This is Traffic-Offer-Convert Remember)
• Get precise subscriber tracking and targeting
• Access to excellent customer support

Something You Want To Know? Then Be Sure To Leave a Comment Below This Aweber Review.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it said “Build a list!” “Build a list!” “Build a list!”

Just as frequently you’ll hear the phrase “the money is in the list.”

In my experience, these phrases are thrown around like candy at a pinata party, yet it seems like hardly anyone actually knows how to build a list, or better yet – what to do with it! Hopefully this post will dispel any silver-lined clouds of confusion you may have floating around your cranium on this issue. Let’s start at the beginning.

Why Build a List

Before I show you HOW to build a list, I really need to first make sure you understand the importance of WHY. I’d heard and read all about how if I didn’t have a list, I didn’t have a business, and I understood the concept. But it wasn’t until (somewhat) recently that I finally started drinking the Kool Aid and began to actually build a list as if my life depended on it.

Dave on the other hand, has been building lists since Fred Flintstone st

first rode on a dinosaur, but I’ll let him tell you about that some other time.

If you truly believe something, then your actions will change as a result. If your actions don’t change, then although you may say you agree, you don’t truly believe what you’re saying.

Belief produces action.

Why Build a List Reason #1: Insulation

To give you an example, a while ago I was promoting a personal loans offer using pay per click. It was making me a lot of money, but I was direct linking. I never built a list with the hordes of traffic I was moving, and one day a small thing we now call the ‘financial meltdown of 2009′ happened, and the particular offer I was promoting was killed in the United States. Finito. So, I re-focused my efforts on just my home and native land, Canada, and went happily along at a tenth of my previous volume, until one day someone at Google decided to play whack-a-mole and I got hit.

Boom – no traffic, no money.

If I had been building a list all that time, when the first problem came along (offer dies) I could have simply sent a new offer to that list. Now, forget the fact that I was in a finance market for the moment, and think about your market. Is there more than one offer in your market? I should hope so. Let’s look at the weight loss market. So you’re promoting some flavor of the month acai berry product, but then six months later everyone has figured out the thing is garbage… well if you’ve been smart, and built a weight loss list (as opposed to an acai berry list), then now you still have something to go on. You can shift gears, and send those people a new flavor of the month offer. If you never built a list, then I hope you’re well stocked with Mac & Cheese.

Ok, so offers die, offers change. Perhaps the affiliate manager thinks you’re on crack and bans you. Perhaps the affiliate network sees you’re moving some serious gravy and cuts you out of the loop. Bad stuff happens, but the point here is that when you build a list, you’re insulated from those things. You still have a connection with all those people on the list, and at the end of the day, you’re able to send them to new places.

Ok, so what about the second scenario I mentioned? Google’s whack-a-mole strategy of internet ‘cleanup’ has thrown thousands of businesses around like the balls in a lotto machine – you never know who gets canned and who comes out the lucky winner.

Once again, when you build a list, you become insulated from market shifts… in the first problem, the offer changed. With Google, the traffic changes. With a list, you still have access to those people (ie traffic) and you can send them to new offers.

Why Build a List Reason #2: Increased Conversion

When you build a list, you gain the opportunity to build a relationship.

Think about it. Have you ever gone to a party, met someone who seemed interesting, and then never saw them again in your life? I’m sure we all have.

Do you think in that moment, when you met the person, if they’d asked you for a favor, let’s just say a $100 loan, would you have given it to them? Possibly, I suppose, but probably not. (maybe you’re a bit more generous with your greenbacks than I am, I don’t know).

Now change the situation, you end up seeing this person multiple times over the next few weeks and months, and build a good relationship. At some point in there, they ask you if you could loan them $100 to help them out of a jam. Now, you’re more likely to at least consider it, right? That’s because you know something about the person you’d be dealing with, you’ve got some history together, you happen to like them, and in the end, you don’t mind helping them out.

In this scenario, “you” are the customer, and the “friend” is the merchant (ie he’s asking for money). At the end of the day, the transaction floats or fails based on the level of trust and relationship – and that is very hard to develop that in a chance meeting.

Now, backup for a moment, there are of course other factors at play in a purchase decision, but relationship is a biggie.

Fact is, if you get a prospect onto your list, you now have the ability to followup and build a relationship with that prospect. You can build trust, credibility, empathy, you have the ability to hit them with deadline based offers, and most importantly of all, they’ve given you permission to contact them with information about the product or market they’re interested in.

Having these followup options greatly increases conversion. There’s this theory out there that a prospect needs seven points of contact with your business before they’re going to buy something. Sure, some people buy right off the bat. But I think what is meant here is that you need at least seven points of contact in order to get the maximum number of people to buy. If you only ever have a single point of contact, you’re throwing away sales. Plain and simple.

It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Some people simply aren’t ready to buy when they’re doing the research. I do that all the time. I’ll get it into my head that I’d like to buy a new camera or something, jump online and research for an hour, then decide I’ll wait until the next model comes out. Well, if any of those retailers that I looked at were trying to build a list, and had followed up with me over the next few months, chances are far better that I would ultimately have bought from them.

Why? Because they’re the ones near the top of the pile in my brain that contains information on camera retailers, and they’re there purely because of repetition.

How much more so in a non-commodity market?

I’ll give you an example. I teach guitar online, and of the many ways I could have chosen to go about doing this, I chose to build a list. I give people free guitar tips, but I encourage them to get onto my list. I also have lessons that I charge money for, and I promote those to my free content lists. Many times, I’ve seen people that originally signed up for my free content end up actually buying something months later. 4 months, 6 months… Do you think that person would have every bought something from me if I hadn’t been following up with them every week, or at least consistently? Nope – I would have been as forgotten as yesterday’s lunch. Plain and simple – if I did not have that person on a list, I would have never, ever have gotten that sale. Sometimes it takes dozens of ‘points of contact’ to finally close a sale, and if you build a list, you gain the ability to do that.

Now, let’s pick a more direct example. On all my product sites, I send people first and foremost to a squeeze page. Please note, you can’t build a list without asking them to signup! You’re going to have to get past the fact that a good number of people aren’t going to want to give out their email address, and resign yourself to dealing with the rest. Face it, if they’re not willing to give you their email address, do you honestly think they’re going to whip out their VISA in the next 30 seconds?

So before I ever send them to a sales message of any type, I’m making sure I build a list. Now, we can talk all day about the mechanics of what happens next, but this is the relevant part for now: the more followup emails I add into that ‘prospect’ sequence, the more sales I get as a result.

It truly is fascinating. On several occasions (I need to do this more often!) I’ve gone back to those lead lists, and taken the time to sit down and write yet another followup email. Sure as shootin’ I’ll see a few sales come through in the next day or so, just from that email (which is now forever part of the sequence). Over the next few weeks, as other people reach that stage, I’ll see more sales. That’s something I haven’t even touched on yet – the sheer power of automating this much followup is simply staggering, when you consider it. Last I checked my account, I’d sent more than half a million emails in the past 30 days alone…

Takeaway: If I had not written that one extra email, I would have completely missed out on those additional sales.

This means that when you build a list, you build the opportunity to greatly increase the conversion rate of your initial batch of leads.

Why Build a List Reason #3: Understand Your Prospect

There is no better way that I can think of to properly understand your prospect: their challenges, their wants, and their desires than to… get ready for this: ASK THEM!

When you build a list you get the opportunity to ask your subscribers all sorts of things. When I first started to build a list for my guitar tips, I scheduled an email in the sequence that asked them how things were going, where they were at as a player, what they wanted to learn, etc etc. Over that first month or two I gained an incredible amount of valuable insight into my market that I never could have gained just by observing from outside. (I’ve since removed it due to overwhelming amounts of email!)

In addition, you might be surprised at this, but the very act of asking actually builds tremendous relationship with your list. Often times I’ve had people shocked that I actually responded to their questions or comments. Strange, I guess they thought that my dog wrote all those emails…

One other thing you can do to take this a step further is to actually send a survey to your list. When you build a list, it will (in time) become your business’s most prized asset. So why not learn as much as you can about that list? Send them a survey every now and then! You’ll likely be surprised what you find out, and this can really help direct your product development strategy.

Alright, I’ve probably beaten the ‘why’ part of this to death, let’s move on to…

How To Build A List

There are many different ways to build a list, but with much testing, I’ve developed a fool-proof method that will allow you to build a list every single time. Are you ready for it? Here it is:

1. Send traffic to an opt in page.

Hmm, strange, but I think that pretty much sums up most of the $997 list building info-products I’ve seen out there.

Sure, you can talk about different types of traffic all day long: PPC, CPV, CPA, affiliates, JVs, organic search, viral, Facebook, YouTube, articles… the list goes on, and if you follow this blog, you’ll see us talking about ways you can use those traffic sources to build a list. But at the end of the day, all you need is a single traffic source (hey, you could even post fliers on bulletin boards around your town) and then send that traffic to an opt in page.

You don’t need content (at least initially). You don’t even need an offer. You don’t need a product, you don’t need to be an expert.

Traffic to Opt in Page. Want a bigger list? Send more traffic. Improve your opt in page.

Now, of course you need someplace to keep and manage your list. I use and recommend Aweber. They give you a month for $1 while you get started. There are others out there too of course, but personally Dave and I both use Aweber for all our lists. MailChimp, iContact and Constant Contact are among the other more popular list managers.

So let’s deal with the top 3 excuses that people use to avoid having to build a list.

1. I don’t have any content.

Who cares? Carrie Wilkerson, the Barefoot Executive, famously started off without any content. In fact, she started out with nothing more than I’m recommending here: traffic and an opt in page. After they’d opted onto the list, she went about finding out what they wanted to hear about, and THEN she went about getting some content.

Speaking of getting content…

2. I’m not an expert in anything.

Actually you’d be surprised what other people might consider you to be an expert at (topic for a different day), and besides, that’s beside the point. You don’t have to BE the expert, you simply have to find the content. Anyone can spend a few hours researching online to come up with a decent amount of content that true experts have created. By summarizing or passing on that same content, you’re providing value. I remember reading about one guy whose real ‘expertise’ was in researching stuff; he wasn’t personally the expert, but by finding the best information he was able to build a list that appreciated what he sent.

Plus, you can always hire an expert, which is remarkably easy these days.

3. I don’t have a product.

So? When I started building my guitar list, I didn’t have a product either. I started with free content, interspersed with affiliate offers (which didn’t do that well), until I figured out what my list wanted and needed. Then, I went about finding a way to give it to them. Surprise! They actually bought from me, because I’d already invested into that relationship. You DON’T need a product before you start begin to build a list.

Present Them An Offer

Ok, so perhaps my 1 step plan is a teensy tiny bit abbreviated, but I still stand by it. However, you seem like a nice person, so I’ll elaborate a little on that. To get prospects onto your list, you’re going to need to offer them something in exchange for their name and email address. That does NOT have to be an offer to buy something, and in fact should not be. I’m talking about something like joining your newsletter, perhaps you have a free report you can give them, perhaps you’ve got a useful list of something you can give, or a free video, or a something. Maybe its a three-email plan to solve world hunger. Whatever it is (and again – puh-lease don’t over complicate this!) you just need to give them a reason to subscribe.

But Can’t I Just Buy a List?

No. I have never heard of anyone having a good experience buying an email list. If you’re thinking of it, please lie down until the feeling passes. Do you honestly believe that you’re going to get one hundred thousand *targeted* prospects for $100? Then, keep in mind that you’re not the only one buying that list either…

Seriously though, buying a list can work with offline marketing; this is done all the time through big list brokers, and can be very profitable if done correctly.

However, we’re talking about online marketing here, and yes, you need to build a list of your own. I’m talking about building a relationship with your list, and how can you do that when they don’t even know where, when or how they met you, or who you are?

Speaking of – I would be remiss here if I did not practice what I preach (build a list), and take the opportunity to ask you to join our own list here, at TrafficOfferConvert.com. Our members get access to our best money-making strategies, demonstrated by live, current case studies. All you have to do is enter your name and email in the following form…

Well, this has been going on for long enough, so I’d like to summarize all of the 2800+ words in this ridiculously long post in three short words.

Please take them to heart and ponder them as deeply as you’re able.

Build A List

You’ve heard it said a million times before – the money is in the list.

OK – so that means we have to build a list the instant we get the chance… in other words, the first thing you send your traffic to is an opt in box. You get them onto your leads list, and follow up with them as a prospect.

Now, at some point, ideally very soon, but very possibly not-so-soon, that prospect is going to hopefully become a customer.

What happens then? I mean, from a nuts and bolts perspective, do you keep that customer on your prospect list and continue sending them promotional material for your offer?

Nope – chances are (ask me how I know) they’re going to get pissed off if you do this.

You need to now treat them as a customer, which means an entirely different approach.

For that, you’re going to need a new list.

Right – so we’ve got two lists now: a prospect list, and a customer list.

Here’s the question of the day: How can you automagically move people from one list to the other, without spending half of each day in Aweber?

Setting Up Automation Rules In Aweber

Thankfully, Aweber understands simple problems like the one we’re talking about here, and they’ve provided a way to easily take care of this automatically.

You’re going to have to have your two lists setup in Aweber already, and you need to have a way to automatically subscribe people to your customers list immediately after they buy something. That part should be pretty easy – pretty much all e-commerce solutions provide you with some sort of option along those lines.

The next step is to login to Aweber, and find the Automation menu (see pic at right).

After you’ve found the automation menu, you’re going to need to use a tiny bit of logic.

Don’t worry, they’re only going to give you three options, so you shouldn’t need to use up too much brain steam on this one.

Make sure you’ve got your prospect list selected (see top left corner of your Aweber account for the Current List selection box).

Now, think about what you want to do with that lead. When that prospect subscribes to your customer list, you want them to be automagically unsubscribed from the prospect list, right?

That means you need option 1 – “Unsubscribe from list XXXXXX when lead subscribes to” and then you need to select your customer list in the box to the right (see pic below).

After you’ve done that, make sure you save, and then you’re done.

Keep in mind that for this to work, your prospects need to be using the same email address to purchase as they’ve used to sign up for your free information. The only thing Aweber has to go on is that email address – they don’t look at names or any other information. So if your customer has used two different email addresses, he’s going to be on two different lists simultaneously. I hope that is about as obvious as it gets, but you never know…

Ok – one other thing to mention / caution. In my travels, I’ve sometimes found Aweber to fall down on this particular little rule. I had a batch of customers squeak past the automation rules recently, which caused a bit of a pain when I had to go back and explain why they were getting discount coupons to buy a product they’d already paid full price for (in case you’re ever in need of a downer, this often works better than Valium. I recommend taking with coffee).

That said, it does work 99% of the time, and that 99% is going to save you a heck of a lot of time, headache and frustration.

I remember when I got started online in 2004 – I built my first website page by page in Dreamweaver. I think it took me a week. Probably a 60 hour week!

And then, a few weeks later, experienced pro that I had now become, I had realized that my original design was pretty lacking, and so I had the brilliant idea of totally redesigning it.

Once again, by hand, page by page.

There goes another week. Too bad Tim Ferriss’ 4 Hour Work Week was a few years from coming out at that time – I sure could have used it then!

Fast forward to the present.

I’ve now got over a hundred sites in my ‘collection’ and every single one is built in WordPress. WordPress has become the internet marketer’s best friend.

Google absolutely loves domains with strong keyword resonance (an excellent topic for a different day) and so we find ourselves with lots of little sites, and the odd one or two that get much larger, such as a good sized blog as this will become one day.

So you need a platform that is highly flexible.

Great for mini sites, and yet strong enough to grow into a very large site.

That’s exactly what WordPress has become.

The WordPress Community

One of the best parts about WordPress is the fact that there is a tremendous community built around it. Just about any bizarre idea you can conceive of can be accomplished in WordPress, and often someone has built a free plugin to allow you to do that.

Let’s look a bit more closely at the main changes you can make to your site through WordPress.

Themes

Themes control the overall look and feel of your site, from the visitor’s perspective. How many columns do you want, what kind of navigation, your footers and all that stuff is controlled by your theme.

There are thousands of free themes online, and at least hundreds of premium ones. In my opinion, and experience, if you find a premium option that is going to solve the problem you have in front of you at the time, it is worth paying for.

With the release of WordPress 3.0, they changed the default theme to Twenty Ten. This theme is head and shoulders above the previous default one, which wasn’t very useful. However, this new TwentyTen theme is so handy, I’ve started using it for all of my new mini sites. So now you don’t even need to find yourself a new theme! In fact, I saw the member’s area for the recently launch Mobile Monopoly is actually built on this default theme.

I got a bit of a chuckle out of that.

Plugins

Plugins allow you to add all sorts of functionality to your site. Want to prevent your site from getting spammed? Something to increase security? How about a comment voting feature? Or perhaps a collapsing categories menu? All of these things would take a ridiculous amount of time and effort to create on your own in a static site, but with WordPress they are all available as free plugins.

Developers

If you’ve never touched html or php before, then WordPress can be intimidating. But the good news is, you can learn pretty much everything you need to learn either by free, or for a few bucks – and better yet, if you’ve got no interest in learning yourself, you can easily outsource pretty much anything you can think of to somebody else to do for you. Oftentimes for just a few bucks.

Why You Need a Site (WordPress)

The three requirements for making money are:

1. Get traffic (prospects),
2. Give them an offer,
3. And convert them to a sale.

Assuming we’re dealing online here (and we are) then you’re going to need a website. Sure, lots of guys are going to say “you can do it without a site”  – and to be fair, in some cases you can do that.

You can mask and redirect a URL directly to an offer. I even recently discovered a service that lets you do that, and then add a popup of your own to the page you’re directing to, so you could essentially build your list while direct linking to an affiliate offer (how cool is THAT?!). But even as intensely cool as that is, if you want to truly establish yourself in the market place, the only way is to use a website.

Sure – you can have a YouTube channel (and you should), or a Facebook fan page (and you should) but don’t ever let those be the sole place of interacting with your customers. You become dependent on very fickle third parties, and your long term business stability is always in question.

Far better to use all these tools to supplement your own site.

And on that site, you should be running WordPress. It is the simplest, easiest, most robust and flexible solution that I’ve ever come across for building websites.

Oh – I just about forgot to mention: It’s free.