Marketing Oasis Blog

If you want to improve your response rates and increase your profits you need to start building a relationship with your subscribers using a simple strategy that will give you instant credibility and result in more sales of your products.

Its important to realise that your subscribers are actually real people with real feelings who require care and attention to keep them happy. Many list owners fail to acknowledge this and end up earning far less than they should because they could not be bothered to put in a little effort.

To try to understand how your subscribers feel you need to put yourself in their shoes and look at how you treat them from their perspective. This will give you an idea of how they perceive you and what their feelings toward you might be so that you can change your ways and start building rapport with them.

If you constantly ignore any emails that you receive and just keep recommending products every week trying to make a quick buck here and there you will become isolated from your subscribers because they will feel that they are getting nothing in return for being on your list.

To start building a relationship with your subscribers you will need to give something back to reward them for being on your list. The easiest way to do this is to send a free gift at least once per month which they will find useful. As well as this you should also be sending quality free content on a regular basis in the form of articles and reports.

Whenever you receive a question from a subscriber you should try to answer it as soon as possible so that they know you actually care about them. If you don’t reply to questions from your subscribers they will feel that all you care about is money and nothing else which will most likely result in them leaving your list.

So instead of trying to sell products to your list all the time you should concentrate on building a relationship with them to improve your credibility. Provide quality information in your emails that will teach them new things and they will appreciate and remember your help the next time you recommend a product.

If you still want to recommend products on a regular basis you can include links at the bottom of articles that you send to your list so that when they finsh reading the content they will visit the website. By using quailty content to sell products you will improve your response rates and generate more sales. The more that you give your subscribers, the more they will give back to you.

Technorati Tags: list building, building a list, how to build a list, how to build an opt in list

When you treat prospects and customers with respect and cater for their needs by providing them with a top quality service you will create long term buyers and repeat visitors. If they really like the service you provide they will more than likely recommend you to other potential customers.

If you provide enough other people with what they want, you will get what you want also. So if you provide quality content and an excellent service you will quickly build rapport with your subscribers who will in turn become long term customers.

So the key to creating a responsive list is to provide high quality information and unbiased views and opinions about various strategies and products in your chosen niche market. You don’t always have to be positive about everything, if you don’t like a certain product your subscribers will find it refreshing if you give your honest opinion about it (rather than just hyped up sales pitches all of the time).

Try to make your writing style fun and exciting by being creative and use casual language as if you were actually talking to them in person. If you can brand yourself by being different you will quickly stand out from the crowd.

In order to create a responsive list you need to focus on a specific niche market so that everyone is interested in the same thing. When you send relevant content and related product recommendations you will receive the best response because its what your subscribers are actually interested in.

Once you start to attract subscribers who have their own list you will be able to implement viral marketing. If you send high quality reports in PDF format (that include details about your website) your subscribers will most likely send it to their list as well and this will generate a sudden surge of new subscribers and sales.

Just make sure that when you have created a responsive list you don’t lower your standards because you don’t want to ruin the reputation you have built up. You must be very careful about which products you recommend and always make sure that you have actually used them yourself. Your subscribers will quickly lose respect for you if you start recommending poor quality products and services.

Building a responsive list takes a lot of time and effort but the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Once you are generating substantial profits you can always hire professional writers to create high quality content and products for you.

Technorati Tags: list building, building a list, responsive list building, building a responsive list

By far the most valuable type of opt in list is the customer list because they have already purchased from you before and will more than likely buy from you again in the future, but how do you quickly and easily build a list of customers?

Its well known that a customer list is the most responsive type of list because they are ready to buy and if they become familiar with you there is a good chance they could turn out to be long term customers who purchase multiple products over many months or even years.

Unlike a traditional opt in list where you give something away for free in return for the names and email addresses of visitors to your website you can only build a customer list by actually selling a product. But if you do it right you can easily build a list of customers very quickly.

To make this strategy work you need to create an offer and sell a product or multiple products for a low price of between $10 and $20. The offer needs to be unique so you will either have to create your own product such as a special report or you can bundle a group of products which you have resale rights to and create your own unique sales letter for the offer.

Then you need to offer affiliates 90% or even 100% commissions for each sale that they generate as this will attract many joint venture partners who have responsive lists. When customers order and reach your thank you page you collect their name and email address using an auto responder.

The customers are then directed to a page that explains how they can promote your product and earn 100% commissions and you can also send this information along with the download instructions in the email sent from your auto responder.

So your affiliates promote your product and send you customers who in turn become affiliates and send you more customers so the whole process is viral. Although you will not earn much profit from the initial sales you will be automatically building a list of customers which you can sell products to over and over again.

This strategy works well if you create a high quality product yourself because it will be unique and have no competition so more affiliates will want to promote it. All you have to do is write a 20 to 30 page special report and because the selling price is so low its far easier to generate sales so you will not have to write a long sales letter.

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The two heavy weights of generating profits on the internet finally meet in this one of a kind showdown, but which will emerge victorious and end up being crowned the winner?

If you have been marketing on the internet for more than a few months you will know that both list building and product creation can be extremely lucrative. Both can generate insane levels of income in a very short period of time.

But there are some clear differences between the two, the most important of which is that products such as ebooks and software will not generate profits on their own as they require demand and a target market. Opt in lists provide that demand and are the reason why many products become a success.

So if you have just started marketing on the internet or are still trying to get your business off the ground you should definitely concentrate on building a list first before you even think about creating a product.

The whole process is perpetual because as you generate profits with your list and increase your income you can use those profits to invest in product creation. If the launch of your product is not as successful as you hoped you still have your list to provide you with long term profits.

Bare in mind that creating your own product is not absolutely necessary if you already have your own list because you can still earn a full time income simply recommending other people’s products as an affiliate and you will not have to worry about any of the problems associated with having your own product (such as providing support and processing refunds).

Creating a high quality product requires a lot of research and investment to make sure that its a success. If you spend all of your hard earned money on creating a great product and it fails, what have you got to fall back on? This is why building a list first is so important because it will give you a solid foundation that you can rely on.

Sure, building a responsive list is not easy but if you are dedicated and committed to the cause and you focus all of your efforts on it you will have the best chance of success. So if you are looking for a stable and reliable income that will generate profits over a long period of time, building a list is definitely for you.

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The most important factor when you decide to start your own opt in list is whether you want to use a third party hosted auto responder service or an auto responder script which is hosted on your own website. If you choose the right option at the start you will avoid any problems in the future.

Each have their own advantages and disadvantages and it really depends which best suits your needs. If you decide to use a third party hosted auto responder service such as Aweber you will have to pay a monthly fee which is the only drawback to this option.

But there are many advantages the most important of which is that you will not have to install a script on your website or pay someone to do it for you. If you try to install an auto responder script yourself you may encounter problems which will most likely need to be solved by a professional.

The other main advantage is that you will not have any limits to how large you opt in list can get and your leads will be stored on a dedicated server and fully backed up so you won’t have to worry about any problems because the third party hosted auto responder service will handle everything professionally.

The problem with auto responder scripts such as Auto Response Plus is that the number of subscribers you can store will be limited depending on how much disk space you have with your hosting plan and you will also need to backup your list on a regular basis in case a problem occurs and all of the information is lost.

The worst thing that can happen is that after you have spent months or even years building your own highly responsive opt in list using an auto responder script your website has a major error or is hacked and all of your subscribers are deleted and lost with no way of recovering them.

Even if you did backup your list and have all the names and email addresses of your subscribers you will still need to go through the time consuming process of installing the script again, setting up the auto responder, and importing all of the leads.

This problem will also occur if you decide to change your domain name or move to a different hosting service so if you want to keep your list you will have stick with the company you are using to host your website. But if you reach your disk space limit or the hosting company goes bust or experiences problems you will have no choice but to move.

The main reason why many people use auto responder scripts is because you will only have to pay a one time fee of a few hundred dollars instead of a monthly fee of twenty dollars to use a third party hosted auto responder service. While it may seem more attractive to go for the auto responder script you have to plan for the long term and weigh up the pros and cons.

Its far safer and easier to use a third party hosted auto responder service because you will not have to worry about any of the problems associated with auto responder scripts. Although you will have to pay a monthly fee you can be sure that your list will always be safe even if you change domains or move to a different hosting service.

If you want to use a reliable third party hosted auto responder service you should seriously consider using Aweber.

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If you want to build an opt in list you need to create a squeeze page to collect leads but there are certain things that you can do to improve your conversion rates and increase the number of visitors who subscribe to your list.

A standard squeeze page is a small one page website that consists of a headline, bullet points, and a subscription form for your auto responder. The conversion rates will depend on how good the sales copy is and what type of information you are offering (such as a free report or email course).

The headline is the most important part of a squeeze page and its the first thing visitors will see when they arrive at the website so it must clearly explain the benefits of what you are offering. Common phrases used in headlines are “who else wants to learn how to” or “amazing free report reveals how to” and similar variations.

To make the headline stand out from the rest of the text you can use a different colour (such as red), a larger font size, and bold. You can also make certain words more visible by underlining and highlighting parts of the text as well as using italic and capitals.

If there is a huge demand for what you are offering you will only need a few bullet points as long as you have a good headline (you can also use a sub headline to explain further what you are offering). The bullet points are used to explain in more detail what visitors will learn from the information you are providing.

In the subscription form you can also use call of action phrases such as “send my free report now” or “give me free instant access” for the text in the submit button. This has proven to work far more effectively than just using standard words such as join or subscribe.

Its important that you only ask for the name and email address in your subscription form because this is what people are familiar with. There is no need to ask for anything else (such as a phone number or home address). To alleviate any fears visitors may have you should also include a short privacy policy under your subscription form to make sure they know you will not sell their information to anyone else.

After you have collected a few subscribers you should email them and ask what they thought of the information. If they found it useful you can ask them for a testimonial which you can use on your squeeze page to improve your credibility and increase your conversion rates.

One of the best ways to convey what you are offering to people who visit your squeeze page is to use pre recorded audio or video messages which allow you to communicate with visitors on a more personal level. Its far easier for people to watch and listen to a message than read text which is why videos have proven to be the most effective for increasing conversion rates.

If you want to collect as many subscribers as possible you should not include any external links on your squeeze page so that visitors only have two choices, either subscribe or leave. Once people have subscribed to your list you can promote the other pages on your website using your auto responder.

Its essential to make your squeeze page as effective as possible because it will determine how fast you build your list and how many subscribers will join. To ensure that you achieve the best possible results you should always make improvements and test new things until you have the perfect squeeze page.

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If you are serious about building your opt in list you might want to try some advanced strategies which can maximise the number of leads you collect while generating profits on autopilot. Once set up the process is completely automated and requires no extra effort to maintain.

First you need to set up your auto responder and your squeeze page using a free report or email course that is of high quality and make sure that the conversion rates are as high as possible.

The next part involves installing a tell a friend script on your website and combining it with a special offer which will be shown on the redirect page after each person has subscribed to your list.

On this page you offer a free copy of a high quality product worth $47 to $97 and the only way subscribers can get it for free is if they refer three of their friends to your list using the tell a friend script.

So for every one subscriber you collect you should get three more at no extra cost. Even if the majority or your subscribers only manage to refer one person you have still doubled your list building campaign using viral marketing.

The next part involves setting up a special one time offer which will only be shown to subscribers who complete the task and refer three people to your list. This offer will only be shown once and will be used to thank the subscriber for referring their friends by offering a special discount to a few high quality products.

This offer is not available anywhere else and gives a significant price reduction to show your appreciation for their efforts. So if you offer a selection of high quality products worth $197 you could reduce the price to $47 or less and really make it a bargain.

If you want to take it a step further you can create an up sell on the order page just before the person makes the payment which offers additional products or resale rights for the products for an additional fee of say $27. It works best if you keep the price as low as possible so the offer provides real value.

These advanced strategies are currently being used by many marketers to get the most out of there list building campaign without any additional effort and it also generates immediate profits before the subscribers have even received any of your auto responder messages.

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If you have decided to write your own ebook you may be wondering which type of format to use and how it will effect the way you sell it. Its important to know the difference between the two main formats so that you know which one best suits your needs.

After you have created the content for your ebook you will want to make sure that you maximise your profits by using the best format. The worst thing you can do is limit your target market by using a format that is not compatible with certain types of computers.

PDF

By far the most popular and reliable format for ebooks is PDF because its compatible with all types of computers and the documents always look exactly the same for all senders and receivers regardless of the hardware or software used.

PDF documents are great for presentations as they can be navigated by keyword search, table of contents, or hyperlinks which greatly increases their usability. They can also be magnified by up to 1600% with no diminishing of quality.

It enables faster viewing and easier navigation, storing, and printing which make it a truly global document exchange format. Its perfect for small and large businesses alike who want to create professional looking documents that anyone can view with ease.

To add to the benefits you can now brand PDF documents using software such as Viral PDF that enables affiliates to customise your ebook by inserting their own affiliate links allowing them earn commissions for each sale that they generate. This is perfect if you want to create viral ebooks that you can give to joint venture partners to send to their list and generate free traffic for your website.

The only drawback is that it costs a few hundred dollars to buy the software from Adobe but there are now many cheaper ways to create PDF documents so you won’t have to worry about wasting a large part of your budget just to create your ebook.

EXE

Using EXE compliers for ebooks used to be popular because its relatively cheap and comes with a built in brander to allow affiliates to insert their own affiliate links which is probably its main advantage.

But there are some major disadvantages with EXE ebooks that you should be aware of including the fact that its only compatible with Windows operating systems so people using Macintosh computers with Linux will not be able to view your ebooks which means that you are reducing your target market and potential profits.

Although most EXE compilers will allow you to design your ebook in HTML enabling you to include audio and video this also presents some other problems because different computers and browsers view website pages differently and will also view your ebook differently which can make it difficult to read.

Another major problem with EXE ebooks is that they can easily become corrupted with a virus if someone downloads it onto their infected computer. If they give the file to their friends they will be spreading the virus and this is why viewing EXE ebooks can be extremely risking.

So if you want to create your own high quality ebook that is compatible with all types of computers in order to reach the widest possible audience its essential that you use the PDF format to ensure that you maximise your profits.

If you want to quickly and easily convert your Word files into PDF documents you should seriously consider using a software program such as Instant PDF Generator.

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In order to become successful online you really need your own website, but how do you choose which hosting plan is right for you? There are many factors that you need to be aware of before you decide which company you want to use.

Firstly, you may want to use a free hosting service for your first website but there are some major disadvantages such as disk space and data transfer restrictions, banner or pop up adverts which you have no control over, and a lack of personal support if you require any help.

With website hosting accounts now available for as little as $3 per month for 5 gigabytes disk space and 50 gigabytes data transfer there really is no need to use a free service anymore.

Here are some of the factors you need to consider before choosing a website host:

1. The amount of disk space you require. If you plan on creating a large website with hundreds or thousands of content pages and various scripts you will need a hosting plan that offers unlimited disk space so that you never have to worry about how large your website gets. Some hosting plans offer a set amount of disk space with no ability to upgrade to get more so if you reach the limit you will need to find a new host and transfer your entire website which can be very stressful and time consuming.

2. The amount of data transfer you require. If you plan on sending a large amount of visitors to your website every month you will need a hosting plan that offers a large amount of data transfer (also known as bandwidth) so that you never have to worry about how much traffic you send to your website. If you reach the limit of your allocated monthly data transfer your website will become unavailable for the rest of the month which can result in a massive loss of profits.

3. The number of domain names you require. If you plan on creating many different websites you will need a hosting plan that offers the ability to host multiple separate domains on one account so that you don’t have to create a new account for each domain name.

4. Support for the latest versions of PHP, Perl, JavaScript, and CGI. This is essential if you intend to install various scripts on your website such as blogs, forums, article directories, etc…

5. Access to MySQL, SSL, and shopping cart. If you plan on using scripts on your website you will need to be able to create MySQL databases and if you want to collect credit card information you will need SSL for encrypted security.

6. Support for both DreamWeaver and FrontPage. Whether you use DreamWeaver or FrontPage you will need a hosting plan that offers compatibility with both in case you decide to switch and use one over the other.

7. Personalized email accounts. Its important to be able to create personalized email addresses for your domain name including mail forwarding addresses, catch all addresses, auto responder addresses, and the ability to retrieve mail with your email software.

8. Shared or dedicated server. The problem with a shared server (also known as a virtual server) is that only a small amount of disk space and data transfer is available and that many other websites will be hosted on the same server which can reduce the loading speed and availability of your website. Its far better and safer to use a dedicated server because your website will be the only one using it and you will have far more disk space and data transfer.

9. Windows or Linux server. In the past there were some major differences between Windows and Linux based servers but recent improvements have meant that these differences have now diminished to the point where you can make your choice of hosting company based on the features they offer rather than the operating system.

10. Live support. This is one of the most important factors when choosing a website host because if you ever have any problems you need to be able to instantly communicate with a professional to solve the issue. It can be very frustrating if you have to wait a few days for your help desk ticket to be answered.

This is a brief overview of what you should look out for before you decide to purchase a hosting plan. Its a good idea to plan for the long term and buy as much disk space and data transfer as you can afford to ensure that you don’t run into any problems in the future.

For affordable website hosting plans and excellent support you should consider using a company such as Host Excellence which provides all the essential features for very low prices and if you decide you want more disk space or data transfer you can always upgrade your account to a higher level.

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If you want to sell digital products on the internet such as ebooks and software you need to create a specific type of website called a mini site which is by far the most effective way of generating sales and converting visitors into customers.

The most simple form of mini site consists of only two pages which are the sales letter and the download page, but you can also add some additional pages such as a contact page so that people can contact you for support or an affiliate page so that people can find out how to promote your product.

Before you set up your mini site you will first need to use your HTML editor to create a template which you can use for each page. All you need to do is create a new page with one column and three rows and align it in the center. This will be the template that you will use for each page of your mini site.

The first row is used for inserting the header graphic of your product and the third row is used for inserting the footer graphic of your product. The middle row is where you enter the text for your sales letter and you can insert new tables if you want to align parts of the text in the center of the page such as bullet points.

There are different types of browser and settings that people use for surfing the internet and this will effect how your page is displayed when they visit your website. If you create pages that are too wide it will mean that some visitors will have to scroll left or right to view all of the text which can be frustrating and will result in lower conversion rates.

Because of this the best width for each page of your mini site is 600 pixels wide as this will ensure that the whole page will be displayed no matter which type of browser or settings visitors use to view your website. Another reason is that most graphic designers create header and footer images that are 600 pixels wide.

After you have created the sales letter for your product you just need to insert your order links at the bottom of the page and make sure that customers are directed to the download page after they have paid. The most popular merchants that allow you to accept orders are PayPal and 2Checkout but if you want a built in affiliate program without having to install any scripts you should use ClickBank.

As well as mini sites you can also use the template you have created for other pages on your website such as squeeze pages if you want to start a newsletter and build your own opt in list. After you have created your website its just a case of sending traffic to it and testing and tracking the results so that you can make some modifications in order to improve your conversion rates.

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