Free List Building Techniques
Last time we talked about the importance of having a list.
Now lets talk about how to build that list (get Traffic). There are a ton of different techniques you can use, many are free, some can be quite expensive. Here is a list of some of the things you should always to to help build your list. This is kind of the baseline, no matter what other methods you use make sure you are doing these as well.
These techniques are all free and work. To be honest, using techniques that cost money like Solo Ads will build the list faster, but why not take advantage of the free techniques as well?
So, here is my short list of Free list building techniques that work:
1. Email Signature, this one is obvious. Always have a link to a list building page in your signature. My standard email signature includes a link to my email sign up page and I get at least 1 new sign up per week, just from having that link in the email signature.
2. Thank You Page Form. If you sell a product then you should put a sign up form for a newsletter or your email list on your thank you page. Of course if someone purchases your product you can already send them emails, so use this opportunity to include a sign up for a different list. On some of my Thank You pages I have a sign up form for this newsletter and I usually get 1-2 sign ups per day from those thank you pages.
3. Social Networking. Of course if you are in business you should look into Twitter and Facebook, plus now you should be looking at Google+ as well. At the moment I am not too happy with Facebook. I am tired of their constant changing of privacy settings, they seem far more interested in selling ad space than supporting their users, but I have had good success there in the past. I usually post my new title announcements to my Twitter and Google+ accounts.
4. Having a Blog. It is surprising how successful Blogs have become since the latest Google updates. I run a couple of Blogs based around a couple of my hobbies and they frequently get 60-70 views per day, sometimes a lot more. Of course I have promotion boxes on those blogs about this newsletter and How To Gurus.
5. Article Marketing. Writing articles has always been a great way to get traffic to your web site. It is a little less useful now with the latest Google update. Google is specifically downgrading sites that use duplicated content, like posting your article. But if you like to write you can still use those articles in eBooks on Amazon, in your blog, and in newsletters.
I have more free techniques that I will be talking about in later posts.
One last technique that a lot of people don't know about:
6. JV Givaways. JV stands for Joint Venture, it is a common technique among the successful internet marketers where they will combine their skills or products for a new release or email campaign. Buying Solo Ads is one form of using Joint Venture tactics.
Another is to participate in a Joint Venture Givaway. These are special promotions that are run where a lot of marketers (up to 100 or more) post their free givaways onto a special list. When someone signs up for the list they then have access to a large selection of free content. Of course in your free content you will have links to your sales page, product page, list sign up page, etc. These can generate a large amount of traffic. Of course you need something to give away, maybe write up a quick article. Just make sure that you include some sales pitch inside the article, or at least a link to your list sign up page at the end.
Finding these JV Givaways is the hard part. What I do is follow people who look for and organize these givaways. They do the leg work. Here is a link to one of the several services that I use:
You will find a lot of great information on this site. Be sure to Follow them on Twitter for the most up-to-date notices. Also if you look through their site you will find several good Affiliate Products that you can promote as well.
And for those of you who are building landing and squeeze pages but need some graphics, here is a site with free graphics and other tools for you to use. They also have links to several very useful and inexpensive graphics packages. Many of the templates that they have are for personal use only, but those are great places to get ideas for your own pages.
http://www.spiceupyoursite.com
Next time we will look at more Free Traffic (list building) techniques and I will have more valuable sites to look at and products to promote.
Till next time, your success
George