3 Ways To Build A Profitable Opt In List Quickly and Easily
If you're looking for an easy way to build a list of email subscribers, look no further than opt-in lists. Whether you're interested in building your first list from scratch or adding new users to an existing list, these tips will help you make the most of your time and get the most out of your money spent on building a list.
Building a Mailing List From Scratch
The first question you need to ask yourself is: "What kind of list do I want to build?" You'll find that some of the lists which people create for opt-ins are very similar—you might want to think about things like your subject line, your opt-in page message and so on. But there will still be things you decide that differ from list to list, and one of those things might well be the opt-in process itself. For example, some people use a pop-up opt-in form. Others use a link or a coupon code which users must enter. While both work, you'll find that everyone has their preference. The important thing is that you figure out what works best for you and use that in your opt-in list building efforts.
That aside, there are three main things you need to think about when deciding how to build your email list:
1. What Would Make You Want To Opt In? Your first thought might be to ask yourself, "What would make me want to opt in?" It's a good mindset to have, because it focuses your mind on the fact that you're trying to reach out to other people and offer them something of value—and not just blasting them with offers for things which you want them to buy.
Your goal should be to provide the best possible value for your target audience. This doesn't mean that you have to create an infomercial! Simply providing a free resource is a good start, but you can make it more valuable if you can offer something in exchange.
The old saying, "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will eat for the rest of his life" has always been true—and every day he will know how to fish. This is the idea behind marketing, too—giving people something useful is a good start. But as well as providing useful content, you can also give them something in return for their contribution to your email list.
For example, there's nothing more valuable than a link to a product or service. But if you can give your sign-ups access to free stuff which they can use at no cost, that's even better. It gives them what they're looking for and it keeps them on your list for the next time you have an offer for something which they might be interested in.
2. How Do You Want To Recruit Your List? Building your list is a two-person job. You have to both build a list and keep it. So you have to make a decision about how many people you want your email subscribers to be. If you're building your list from scratch, don't let the fact that you're starting with zero people on it fool you into thinking that this is not an important part of your opt-in process!
A good opt-in process will always build your new list until there are 100 subscribers in total. In fact, I've seen some opt-in processes where there are no subscribers at all. These are usually people who are taking a zero-cost approach to opt-in lists, and they're not going for the long game. In these cases, you'll need to create a survey—or take other steps—to find out how many people you've actually got.
Once you've created 100 subscribers on your list, what do you do with them? There are a number of different things that you can offer them, but there are two main options:
1. Do A Survey Or Get Info From Them
The most common way to use your list is to give it out to other people who might want it. You can use your list as an email newsletter where you send out one or two emails per month. Or you can use it to send out a survey about your target market (or just about your list subscribers).
2. Keep Your List Updated
Depending on what you're planning to do with your email list, you have a few different ways to keep it updated. At the very least, it's a good idea to send out an email once every two months or so to people who are on your list and remind them that they're on it and that they're definitely interested in what you have to say.
3. Encourage Your Current List To Share With Others
You can encourage your current list to share with others by offering some incentive. One of the main things that you can offer is extra access to things which are only given when your list has reached a certain number of subscribers—you'll get access to downloads or other materials.
But where you can really make a lot of money with an opt-in list is by doing paid advertising using it as a source audience for your paid advertising campaigns.
4. Add Your List To A Trading Exchange Or Other Hub
You don't need a separate list to do this. You can always add your own opt-in list to a place like ClickBank, where you can sell other people other people's email lists. And if you're not looking to sell your list, then you can just simply use it to send out more emails and increase the number of people on it
This is actually one of my favorite ways to use an opt-in list—I add a lot of them to PTC sites and as long as the company isn't claiming that they own my data, I'm OK with that.
Conclusion
There are many different ways in which you can build your email list, but there is no one true way. The objective here is to give you some insights into the basic principles of how lists are built. If you can follow this, then you'll be well on your way to building an email list which can be used to market a wide range of online businesses and other online assets.
If you want to learn more about getting started with an opt-in list, then you should check out the OptInMonster Academy , where I've got a whole course dedicated to exactly that—and we're going to take an in-depth look at opt-in processes from A to Z! 3.