The Money is in the List!

If you have been on line for any length of time and been looking through the Marketing sites and blogs you will have seen a recurring phrase “The Money is in the List”

If you haven’t been online for very long don’t fret because that’s what this Blog is all about…helping you to overcome the fear of dipping your toes in the water without it taking a decade or shortening your lifespan in the process!

What does this mean? The Money is in the List?

Well …do you want the Short answer? the Smart answer? or the Long answer ? We’ll go for something in the middle for starters I think!

The List is the Subscriber base you have built up, which enables you to contact your site visitors on a follow up basis…and heaven forbid “sell them stuff”. Ooooh no one said anything about selling or follow up…isn’t that really difficult?

Please relax and read on!

How do you build up your Subscriber base and create this “Magical Mystery List”?

It’s really quite simple actually. In real terms you have to persuade Site visitors to give you their E Mail address so that you (a) know who they are and (b) can contact them again and again and again…over time you understand!

Isn’t this sounding rather like a lot of hard work cranking out e mails to your subscribers? What if I have a hundred subscribers or even a thousand?

The Autoresponder Works its Magic

This is where Technology comes in and plays its trump card! With a suitable Autoresponder account, which is the second most important part of your marketing arsenal, you will be freed of the drudgery of replying or contacting all your subscribers individually.

An Autoresponder account which doesn’t cost the earth, will do all the contacting for you All you have to do is to create a sequence of suitable replies or recommendations and these will be sent automatically to your subscribers at whatever interval you deem appropriate.

There are several really good Autoresponder companies out here but the one with the best reputation and the one that we use along with most successful marketers is A Weber. They have great flexibility, great staff and as many features as you need for a successful operation.

We are not in the business of sending floods of email every day or even every other day. Some marketers do however and if you subscribe to too many lists (there we go again) you will regret it and probably become a little peeved in the process. So be warned! We will talk more about how many subscriptions are sufficient and how many is too many in another post.

Next question is how to you persuade visitors to part with their E Mail address?

What’s In It for Me?

Simple …you have to make it worthwhile. You know the WIIFM adage. What’s in it for me? If you can satisfy this primeval desire with perhaps a newsletter subscription offer or better still a freebie of some kind you will be well on the way to your first 1000 subscribers.

We’ll talk about the kind of freebie that gets visitors clicking and parting with their e mail addresses in the next post. Read each part of the equation and understand it before moving on to the next.

In each section we will give you a link to a site we recommend that will, when all the parts are integrated, add up to your Marketing Information Start up Strategic Toolbox  or  MISST for short.

Now go get a Coffee …you deserve it!

P.S Here is another Boomer Site we recommend.

Go check out Rosie’s excellent:-

www.bloggingforboomers.com

P.P.S  getting an account on Twitter could be a very useful strategy as you start to build your Blog.Go take a look:-

http://www.twitter.com/RobinPiggott

Effective Blog Commenting

Here is something all bloggers will benefit from, whether you are just starting off, planning on setting up a blog to promote your business or have already done so and have lost your way!

It is a well known fact that placing suitable comments on another persons blog is an effective strategy, particularly if the host blog has plenty of street credibility. You will gain some knock on effect from this. Comments get placed in search engine results so this could be a very worthwhile strategy if pursued regularly in your particular niche

One of the ways to improve your own reach with comments is to be quick off the mark when new content is posted and be one of the first to express an opinion.

The days of posting something on the lines of “Great blog you have here… please visit my blog on blah blah blah” are well and truly over unless you belong to that exalted group of the Spam 2.0 Community! Spam posts are a pain in the proverbial so you are going to have to stretch yourselves somewhat with some useful and pertinent comments if you are to obtain any benefit.

We have just discovered an amazing piece of software that can help you in your quest to becoming a recognised expert in your particular field and thereby generate more traffic and a loyal following to your blog. Blog Talk Monitor is quite simply an astounding concept and once installed, the software will inform you instantly a new post or piece of content, relative to your chosen niche, appears on the Web.

This will enable you to review the content, create a response quickly, or even produce some fresh slant on the topic for your own blog or web site. Writers Block will be a thing of the past and Blog Talk Monitor is your solution. It’s quick and easy and you have the facility to set up different keywords related to the niches you operate in .You could very easily become an authority on the subject before your competitors have even struggled out of bed.

Once in a while someone comes up with an idea that is simply awe inspiring and in this case it’s stating the obvious. We are using it to great effect and think you should give it a try yourself. You’ve nothing to lose especially since it is readily affordable. The Price ? Well there isn’t one! It’s free gratis, although I have my doubts as to the sanity of the author who is the renowned Jack Humphrey of Authority Site Center