Building Your List Tips From Ali Brown

If you have not heard it already, then you can hear it from me....The Money Is In The List!

Hi and welcome to Friday's blog. It is just about time for me to go and pick up my son from school and go for my compulsory glass or two of wine down at the beach with my friend Meredith. But before I go I wanted to share these tips that I got from Ali Brown today.

Ali is one of my mentors and is a very successful online entrepreneur who provides some really useful and actionable tips. (If you are not on her mailing list I suggest you sign up because her emails are fantastic).

This week she talks about the biggest bug bear most people have when starting an online business (or any business really). Building a list.

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel will benefit from these tips.

PS. If you are in Sydney and would like to register for my 1/2 day workshop it is now available for bookings. Feb sold out so be quick.

"How To Turn Your Passions, Skills & Knowledge into an Online Business".
Visit the pammieb.com website for more details.

Enjoy and have a great weekend.
Cheers
Pammieb
http://www.pammieb.com


"How to Reach Thousands of Your Ideal Clients and Customers and Skyrocket Your E-mail List"
by Ali Brown

One of the questions I'm asked the most by my clients is:

"How can I most quickly build my e-mail list?"

My answer is, find someone who's already reaching your target market in droves, and use THEM to build your list!

How?

With these three easy steps:

STEP 1:
Determine exactly who your ideal client or customer is.The more descriptive you can be here, the better. For example, don't just think "men". Think "men ages 18-40 who like sports and working out". Don't just think "small business owners". Think "women owners of professional service businesses that do less than $1 million a year".

Can you take on clients or customers who fall outside of this description? Of course! But you need to know who you're going after.Example: Many years ago, I spent a romantic summer week on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. My beau was wonderful in letting me decide most of the activities we'd do each day. But there was one thing he definitely wanted to do at least once - go bluefishing!

Now I'm not sure if you could have guessed this, but I'm not really into fishing. ; )But hey, I'll try anything once, so off we went to the docks. Now, I figured we could go on any boat with any captain and do this. But no ... we went with "Captain Dan the Bluefish Man" (who smelled like his specialty). Dan took us on his special boat to this special place off the island where the bluefish were, and we even used special bait that the bluefish liked. And we had great success - they just kept biting!I realized that if you know exactly what you're going after, you're much more likely to get it. The same goes for reaching your target market.

STEP 2:
Find other people, companies, or websites that are ALREADY reaching your target market en masse.Sit down with a cup of coffee this weekend and do some online research regarding your target market. What sites are they already visiting? What newsletters or magazines do they already read? For example, if your target market is stay-at-home moms, find the most popular sites they visit. Find the most popular e-zines they read.Come up with a list of your top five websites and top five ezines that are already reaching your ideal client or customer.

STEP 3:
Contact these websites and ezines and see if they will

• REVIEW your book, products, services, or ezine for their readers. If so, send them a review copy and follow up a week or two later. Request that when they run the review they mention your e-zine and direct people to your website to sign up
• accept guest ARTICLES. If so, then submit one of your best, with a short bio that links people back to your website to sign up for your ezine.
• SWAP ads or recommendations for each other's websites, products, or services. If you have an ezine that reaches the same target market they want to reach, this is a great win-win.
• do a CO-REGISTRATION deal. If you already have a good amount of e-zine subscribers and website traffic, they may be open to adding your e-zine to their ezine signup form if you do the same on your part. (Ideally folks should just check a box to subscribe to the additional e-zine automatically.)
• run a recommendation or ad in exchange for a COMMISSION on resulting sales. For example, you give them the ad to run, tagged with a link that lets you know if any sales come from it. (This is easy for you to do if you have an online affiliate program.*)
• accept PAID advertising. Banner ads, text ads, and other paid placements obviously cost you money, but if it's your only option and you really want to reach these folks, go for it. But be sure to track your results so you can see if it's working. (You'll need a link tracking program to do this.*)And these are just a FEW ideas to get you started!Remember, your #1 goal is to get people back to your site to sign up for your e-zine or other email list, because THAT is how you guarantee the chance to market to them repeatedly!(*I use and recommend www.QueenCart.com for automating your affiliate program and tracking all your ad links.)© 2004-2009 Alexandria Brown International Inc.

Online entrepreneur Ali Brown publishes the award-winning 'Highlights on Marketing & Success' weekly ezine with 36,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.AliBrown.com