One term that internet marketers absolutely love to throw out on forums is that “The Money is in the List!”.  Go to any major marketing forum and you will hear stories of marketers making hundreds of thousands (supposedly) off their newsletters and opt-in mailing lists.  After hearing a bunch of this about 6 months ago I decided I would give it a shot myself.  I signed up for an Aweber auto-responder account and then created a free ebook to convince people to join my newsletter.  At first I didn’t really know what I was doing and couldn’t find any good way to truly get people to sign up but as with blogging I caught on pretty quick (this is only my 5th post ever).

What were the results you may ask?  Well, I have found that with a well written auto-response alone I can make a good amount of money.  If you would like to check out my original set up, you can find my first opt-in list here: Seven Day Newsletter + Free Ebook.  I found that by writing articles I got a fair amount of double opt-in subscribers, but not as many as I would like.  I quickly learned that the best way to get people to subscribe is actually with a “gray hat” tactic, going around to various internet marketing forums and posting up links to my ebook.  Technically most would consider this white hat but if you haven’t learned it yet, I am a true believer in white hat marketing and I don’t like to introduce biased/self promoting threads on forums.

Now you probably want me to get to the meat of it and talk about money and conversion rates.  With double opt-in email lists a person must agree to subscribe twice, creating a very interested lead.  As a result, this targeted traffic can be very easily monetized if they are not lured in under false pretenses.  I have found that my simple 7 part automated response to subscribers spread out over a month results in an average conversion rate of 7%, which works out to nearly $3 per lead that I get to my mailing list.  I frankly do not track it well enough to know if these conversions came off the ebook or the newsletter, but I get the feeling it was the newsletter that did it.  These kinds of numbers are truly amazing though, I would like to see any webmaster that is getting $3 per visitor.  As a result, I will most likely be creating a similar thing for this blog soon as I have started writing an ebook on the art of blogging including: monetization, link building, marketing, social networking, blog networking (comments), forum promotion, etc.

So, now I can see you salivating, you want me to make a bulleted list of what to do to get these kinds of conversions.  Okay.

• Sign up with an auto-responder of some sort, the two biggest are GetResponse and Aweber.  I have tested both, and I greatly prefer the layout, delivery, and tracking in Aweber.  If you would like, you can Sign Up Here.
• Create something that would make people want to sign up, the content of your newsletter/opt-in list alone usually isn’t enough of an initial factor.  I would suggest creating a free ebook to give away with redistribution rights.
• Put a link to your ebook/opt-in form on your websites/blogs and especially in forum signatures and resource box of various articles.
• Post often and eloquently on various article directories and forums to get people to realize that you are an authority figure in your field.
• Use a double opt-in form (required by Aweber) to get truly interested leads that won’t simply hit the spam button in their inbox.
• Have a pre-written 5-10 response follow-up message list, each providing good content while promoting a product.
• Use targeted broadcasts interlacing content with products to get a nice conversion rate, then you go cash your huge check after taking a picture and sticking it on your blog.

Congratulations, you are ready to start making money with an opt-in list!  If you would like to take Aweber for a test drive, You Can Here.

You can expect me to start a newsletter soon for this blog, along with a report or ebook on tips to becoming a successful blogger in a short time period.  Thank you all for aiding in my quick expansion.

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