Building An Email List

With so many optin email lists out there, your really need to
come up with a hook to attractive subscribers. It needs to have
something special or different. It could be something you offer
inside every newsletter issue, like interviews with experts. Or
the hook could be a unique incentive that website vistors can
take advantage of immediately when they sign up.

Here are 3
ideas you can use for your own sites, or use as inspiration to
get you thinking a little outside of the box:

-- Build an Optin
Email List by Creating a Private Members Only Site or Section
--

Create a private web site and have people sign up to get
free, immediate access. For example, you could say, "Subscribe
to our free e-zine and get free access to our private membership
web site!" You can choose to have them receive a username and
password every time they want to login, or you can just provide
a link to the site in your welcome email.

Your private members
only site can be as big or as small as you want. Some of the
things you can include inside are: reports, software, articles,
ebooks, etc. Inside the site, you can advertise your affiliate
programs, as well. And you can follow-up to let them know about
updates, new products they might be interested in, the latest
news in your industry, etc.

-- Build an Optin Email List By
Giving Subscribers a Free, Tangible Gift --

Instead of offering
a free ebook (or a whole package of them) like most everybody
else, promise to give your visitors something they can hold in
their hands if they give you their contact information.

For
example, you could say "Subscribe today and get our new report
mailed to you via First Class." You could print out your report
on standard 8 x 11 sheets of paper, fold it up, put it inside an
envelope, and mail it off.

Or you can offer a tips booklet and
mail it to new subscribers. Or you can create your own CD full
of information targeted toward your market and mail that. Or if
you have a wholesale supply of a product of interest to your
subscribers, then you can send one to each new subscriber. The
possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

Follow-up
possibilities include: articles (your own or written by others),
tips you pick up, news in your niche, reviews of products or
other interested, related websites, etc.

-- Build an Optin
Email List Through a Contest or Sweepstakes --

Hold a free
contest or sweepstakes at your website where they must give
their contact information, including their email address, to
enter. Make the prize something that your niche market will be
interested in. Otherwise, they'll never want to enter.

If you
already have an ezine up and running, you could offer free
automatic entry for new subscribers. For example, you could say,
"Subscribe to our free newsletter and get automatic entry into
our contest." You'll also want to retroactively include current
subscribers.

You can announce the winner(s) at the end, as well
as send any new contest announcements or product announcements.
Or you can make this an ongoing contest, where you give away the
same thing to one (or more) lucky people every month. That way
you'll entice many subscribers to stay on your list.

You can
find niche products to give away through wholesalers or
dropshippers. Or you can create it yourself. One of my favorite
ways to do this is create a CD-Rom with a guide or report (or
sometimes several) that my niche market will find interesting.


Once again, you can follow-up with tips, articles, news, new
product announcements, or just an announcement of each monthly
winner(s).

Hopefully, now I've inspired you to take some action
or encouraged ideas of your own with these tips. Any idea, the
more popular it gets, requires you to think outside the box
every now and then in order to be effective. Building an optin
email list is no different. And with newsletters and ezines
saturating the Internet day by day, you need to offer something
a little different to make them want to sign up to yours. Or
you'll just end up getting left behind.


Paul Kellum has a new article directory,The Article Shopper. You
can submit your articles for free, and also get free content for your
website,ezine or newsletter. http://www.thearticleshopper.biz

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