If you’re going to be successful in internet marketing, you need to build a list. It’s the one thing above all else that matters most. Once you have a list built, you can market to it again and again. It’s a resource you can tap at any time and generate income.

OK, but how?

Here are the three components of list building:

• Your Landing Page
• Your Bribe
• The Opt-in Success Page

The Squeeze Page – The landing page is the page that has your opt-in form on it. It’s the page where you ask them for their email address. That’s why it needs to look like a professionally designed page. And have an easy to understand opt-in form. And your call to action must be clear!

Failure to include a great “call to action” will result in failure. This is a definitive message that tells your visitor what to do. You opt-in rates will take a dramatic nose dive without it. The funny thing is that people just don’t know what to do unless you tell them.

If you want to add some extra juice to your opt-in page make it a video squeeze page. Adding video will help keep your visitors attention. And you can repeat the call to action several times int he video. Then at the end of the video you can print “sign up now” on the video.

It’s OK, if you’ve never made a video before. You can hire freelancers to do this for you for a few hundred dollars. Or you can get email list tools that have everything pre-built for you.

Your Bribe – Next, you’ve got to figure out what your bribe is. People won’t give you their email for nothing. Most people are very protective of their email address. So make your “bribe” a good one!

The key to a good bribe is that is has value. It has to be something that people actually want. And can benefit from. Here’s some examples:

• An eBook
• Software
• A video
• An email series

Basically, you just need some content. Something that’s useful and helpful to your visitors. And of course it has to be free. Bottom line is it’s got to be worth more to them than their email address.

Once again, don’t worry if you don’t know how to create the freebie. It’s super easy to hire someone to create it for you. You just pick the topic and they create the training. A 5-part email series is a good freebie. Each email will cost between $20 and $25. So, you’ll get the whole series written for under $150.

There are also list building products that include the follow up email series. There are two important things about the email series. The first thing is that it delivers value to your subscribers. And second, it needs to make you money. Mixing some affiliate products into your email series is a great way to do this. This is such a simple solution because you don’t have to create the product. And make money right away from your list.

Your Confirmation Page – The last bit is the thank you page. This is where your visitor goes after opting into your list. It’s nice to give them some great content right away. This helps them feel they’ve made the right decision giving you their email. It also sets the foundation for your relationship with them. Then they’re more receptive when you email them.

You can use a “done for you” email marketing system. You can also put the whole thing together on your own. And write it all yourself. Or have someone ghost write for you.

Final thoughts

It makes no difference whether you build your opt-in, bribe and thank you page. Or pay a freelancer to write produce it all for you. Or if you get a ready-done package. The key is to start building your list. Because as soon as you’ve got your own list . . . You can basically write your own meal ticket.

Learn Top Affiliate Secrets

If you want to get started quickly and easily in internet marketing, then affiliate marketing is for you. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just refer visitors to someone else’s website, they make the sale and deliver the product, and you get a percentage of the sale price as your commission (usually 50% or more for digital products).

Here’s just a few benefits

1. You’re able to start instantly without having to create a product, craft a sales letter, design the website, come up with support tools, or set up the ordering, billing & delivery system.
2. You have basically zero investment of your time because they handle the billing, support, maintenance, etc.
3. There’s no risk for you, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you already know that the visitors you send will result in commissions for you.

There’s no denying that these benefits make affiliate marketing the best thing going!

OK, but it’s not all rosy…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Most of them will not buy on their first visit, which means you’re losing over 90% of the traffic right off the top. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. She can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

How can you avoid this pitfall?

What you need to do is capture the contact info of your visitors before sending them to the product website. By getting their contact info, you can follow up increase your odds of making the sale by sending them back to the product owner’s website multiple times. And if you want to do it like a pro, you’ll give them some great content before sending them to the sales page.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

1. Owning a list of potential buyers gives you the ability to market additional products at the push of a button.
2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

Here’s what you’ll need to create affiliate tools like this:

1. A Video Squeeze Page (with video)
2. At least a few pages of great content
3. At least a 5-Part Email Followup Series

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you’ll send them to your lead capture page first. It captures the name and email of your visitors and puts them into your autoresponder, which then begins sending out the 5-part email series. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

The content pages provide valuable information for your visitors and make them more receptive to the sales message that you’ll link to from inside the content. And at the same time, the email series begins following up with them to get them back to the sales page, in case they don’t buy on the first visit.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it’s well worth the effort of setting it up. After setting it up, you simply send visitors to your squeeze page instead of the sales page. And the rest runs on auto-pilot.

Setting it all up yourself requires some skill, and if you’re not up to it, you can use a service like Affiliate Silver Bullet. With a service like that, you don’t have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. On the plus side, you’ll save a ton of time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. The drawback is that you won’t be the only one using these affiliate tools. But the internet is huge, so this shouldn’t really affect you.

Another way to accomplish this is to hire “outsourcers” through a website like Elance to build and put your system together for you. The important thing is that you start using affiliate tools like the ones described here right now! Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and money.