List Building – What You Need to Get Started
 
In my last post I talked about list building and some of the benefits it brings to your affiliate marketing business. There are many reasons to be proactive with your list building.

But like anything else it requires tools. There are some things that you will have to have in place in order to get started with your list building. Until you have these essentials in place you will not be able to build a list of subscriber and customers.

Also like anything else you will need to make sure the details are taken care of and you will have to implement things – that means take action.

So, let’s look at the essentials – what you will have to have in order to get started.

Getting these things set up may be new and even boring for some. You may even think that working on these is an unproductive endeavor, but you need to get the work done. Production comes later.

For others, these tasks may be new. In that case you will have to learn WHAT they are as well as HOW to use them.

In either of these cases the matter still remains that you have to get them done. Why? Because, your internet marketing business depends on your list building efforts and list building depends on these tools.

Once you get these essentials in place you can continue on down the road of getting a large list of subscribes that you can communicate with and over time convert some of them to customers.

There are 4 tools that I consider as essential. Get them set up and you can start building your internet/affiliate marketing business:

1. You must purchase a domain name.

You will have to decide on a name for your online efforts. Once you have decided on a name and determined that the name is available on the internet, you will have to register the name. This is called purchasing a domain name.

It is considered by some to be a good idea to incorporate the theme of your website into your domain name. Some would say that you need to make sure that your domain name has keywords in it. Others would say that the most important thing is to keep it simple and make it easy to remember. You might start with www.yourname.com.

After you have selected your name, the URL you want to use, you need to register it with someone like GoDaddy or NameCheap.

2. Purchase hosting.

Now, that you have a domain name you need to get it visible on the web. This is the task of webhosting. There are many companies that offer this service. And there are many things to consider when looking for a hosting company.

Generally speaking it is not a good idea to register your domain and obtain hosting from the same company.
 
You should spend some time looking at the different packages that different companies offer. Determine your short term and long term needs and purchase the package that meets your current and projected needs. I would suggest that you insure that your package includes cPanel and Web Host Manager. This will provide you with the most control to create and modify your websites.

You should also pay attention to the guaranteed uptime. You want a high expectation that when someone attempts to visit your site that it will be available.

There are other things to consider. Do your research and get your hosting account in place. There are many good hosting companies; some that I recommend are HostGator, Ultimate Marketing Center, and Kiosk.

After you have selected your hosting company you need to transfer your domain name to the hosting company. You do this with the company that you purchased your domain name from.

3. Obtain a way to build your site(s).

This is easy it you know HTML. If you do not, then a good place to start is by obtaining a WYSIWYG editor. With this you can make changes to your pages without having to learn much HTML.

Even if you plan to make your main site a WordPress blog, you will still need to build web pages for things like squeeze pages, thank you pages, download pages, etc.

I recommend the following WYSIWYG editors:

Kompozer or CoffieCup HTML Editor

BTW, I would not recommend using Fantastico to install your blog. A blog build with Fantastico is much more susceptible to hackers. I would really recommend Expert WordPress as the best WordPress installer available.

4. Get an Autoresponder and setup a list.

One of the primary reasons that affiliate marketers have a website is to build a list(s). An autoresponder will be your primary tool for doing that. You will have to have one. It will provide the following functions and many others:

• Allows you to create mailing lists
• Manage your subscribers
• Aids in avoiding spam complaints
• Helps in testing and tracking results

You will find many companies that provide excellent autoresponder service. Select yours and learn how to use it. Become intimate with it. It will be your list building friend.

I personally recommend that you select Aweber or Ultimate Marketing Center. Many internet marketers like GetResponse as well.

With these 4 tools you are ready to start your list building journey and get your internet affiliate marketing business online into production. Your next tasks will be to learn how to use these tools to actual start the process. I see more work in your future.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, autoresponder, domain name, list building, web hosting, WYSIWYG editors

Mike Paetzold and I am back again for day 2 of visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week I will be discussing affiliate marketing. Yesterday I started with what affiliate marketing is. Today I will talk about the tools you need to be an effective affiliate marketer.

Now lets cut out the crap from the beginning as you do need to spend some money to be an affiliate marketer despite what all the sales letters promise you.

Yes there are free resources and I use some of them but ultimately to get good results there are some tools you need to pay for. The key is to use paid products that have an affiliate program you can earn from so that you can earn your money back.

Do that with your tools and you can have the advantage of using better tools and doing it for free (eventually).

Here are the tools you should have as an affiliate marketer at a minimum.

• Your own domain
• A hosting account for your domain
• An autoresponder
• Tracking

The first two are important because a good affiliate marketer is always looking to build a list first and your domain and a hosting account will allow you to start monetizing that process through the three page web site system I discussed in my first stop.

With out your own hosting you lose that chance to monetize the process.

As list building should be your focus even as an affiliate marketer you will need a quality autoresponder too. This will allow you to stay in contact with your subscribers and build a relationship. Now you can send them to your favorite affiliate product more than once increasing the chance of you earning a commission significantly.

Finally you need to track your results and if you are not tracking what you are doing it is impossible to know what is working or not working so you can improve it.

Fortunately you can get a domain for less than $10 a year and the balance of what you need you need can be had in one package at The Marketers Hosting for $20 a month. (That even includes an affiliate program for when you create your own product but we will stick to affiliate marketing.

Now for traffic generation there are other items you will need depending on whether or not you are going to use paid or “free” traffic. Yes I put “free” in quotes on purpose, You know that didn’t you .

You will always pay for traffic either with your time or your money or both so there never really is free. Now as I do almost no PPC type traffic I won’t discuss that but there are a couple tools for free traffic that you should consider.

First is to add a blog to the hosting you already have, preferably a WordPress blog as they are quite easy to make into search engine magnets.

Second I would strongly recommend a web based article submission service like Content Crooner if you are going to use article marketing fro driving traffic (and you should.) The time savings using a service like this pays for itself over and over.

Now there are lots of other items you can use for traffic like Squidoo, Hub Pages, etc but they do not qualify as tools at least to this Old Bald Guy.

That’s all for today tomorrow we will talk about content marketing for affiliate marketing.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends. You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy. Follow Mike on Twitter

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, autoresponder, build list, domain, web hosting

Build Your List Using The Memorial Day Giveaway

I know there are lots of giveaways on the internet these days, but they are still one of the best ways available to go about list building. And that is one of the best ways to grow you affiliate internet business and thus make money online.

Scott Drake and Pat Murray are hosting The Second “Memorial Day Giveaway” and it will open its doors on May 25th, 2009 at 9AM EST

This will be a massive list building exercise that is happening in just a few short weeks time. Don’t miss it. You can join as a contributor now. Get your gift(s) registered and be ready for the members launch.

If you have a free gift in the form of a digital download product (like ebook, audio, video, membership site access, etc) you can add it the gifts section. Then as people sign up for your free gift, you will be building your list.

You probably know that providing a free gift for giveaways means that you will have to build a squeeze page and a download page.

Your members will sign for your free gift on the squeeze page and then using your autoresponder you will send them to your download page where they will be able to obtain your free gift. A great and dependable autoresponder service is Aweber.

After signing up for the Memorial Day Giveaway you will want to promote it. This will be a great event for you list building efforts – get onboard today.

All you need to do to get going is signup and learn more about this great giveaway.

Make sure you checkout the Low Cost Upgrade Feature that the Memorial Day Giveaway is offering. I encourage you to take advantage of it.

This giveaway promises to be a great list building effort for your efforts to make money online and thus build you affiliate internet business. Join and upgrade today.

Technorati Tags: affiliate internet business online, autoresponder, giveaway, list building, make money online

List Building – An Essential Internet Marketing Tool

There is something that you absolutely must have in order to build your list. You must have a way to communicate with the subscribers on your list. If you are involved in internet marketing, eventually you must have a way to present your opportunities to people, especially those on your list. Also you must have a way to go about list building itself; that is a way to get people onto your list.

You are going to need an autoresponder.

What is an autoresponder? It is an email program that records people’s name and email information and sends out a message or a series of messages for you.

You will not be able to get around the requirement to have such a program. There are many email programs that can accomplish this task.

Some mailer or mailing list manager systems require that you download the program to your computer. There are several disadvantages to doing this. One is that your computer will be tied up while your emails are being sent – not a problem for a small list, but a major problem for a large list.

Also, you will generally have to depend on your own efforts to make sure that a large number of your emails get delivered.

There are also other mailer programs; you may like some of them. You could search the Internet for them. However, I recommend that the best way to deliver your messages is with an autoresponder.

Some will say that an autoresponder/mailer program is not personnel enough.

Some people seem to object to getting letters from an autoresponder/mailer program. But it is essential that you have some sort of automated mail system to handle the large list that you are going to build.

I don’t believe that you will find a successful internet marketer out there that does not use an autoresponder or a mail management program of some sort.

So, don’t worry that your emails, or the ones that you receive, are being delivered by an autoresponder.

You will not, nor will anyone else, have time to set down and write each one of those people with Microsoft Outlook or any other standard email program.

You must automate the process of list building and contacting the people on the list that you build. That is what an autoresponder does.

Your list will be very profitable to you. So, start building Your List Now.

A good autoresponder company will work hard to insure that their delivery rate is high and that a relatively small number of ISP’s block emails delivered by their autoresponder system.

So, again what is an autoresponder?

An autoresponder is a system/program that automatically sends out messages to a list of people. It will send one messages as soon as an individual signs up.

Then a good autoresponder will automatically send out unlimited follow up messages over the following days, weeks, and months. Once you get it set up you basically don’t have to do anything else.

Your autoresponder should also allow you to broadcast a message to your subscribers. This means that you will be able to send a message to your list that is not a part of your ongoing email series.

So, to build a list you are going to attempt to get people to give you their name and email address and then you are going to follow up by sending them additional messages with your autoresponder.

There are many autoresponders out there. I recommend the AWeber

Do not use a free autoresponder. Much could be said here. Suffice it to say, you will not get the services you need and you will probably have other people’s ads in your emails – not a good thing.

If you are involved in internet marketing, you must be involved in list building and you must have an autoresponder. Get one now and start building your list. Keep a look out for my next list building post. Subscribe to my RSS Feed or better yet use the subscribe form in the upper right of this blog and subscribe to my newsletter.

Lonnie Minton

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, internet marketing, list building