Step 7 : Turn Subscribers Into Partners

Your subscriber list is easily the most accessible profit source open to you at anytime. They already know, trust and hopefully respond well to you so you have a good relationship going.

It’s more effective and easier to work with existing established relationships.

You must look upon them as partners in profit. Nuture and train your list to be successful, and you’ll be successful too! There’s something of a universal law in this.

The first step after creating and launching your product would be to set up an affiliate program, after which you get your subscribers to become your joint venture partners and affiliates.

Either provide them a copy of your product, or offer it to them at a superb discount, so that they know what they’re promoting. Create winning affiliate tools to help them, similarly as what you would for normal affiliates.

If you have a relatively huge and responsive list, plus a quality product, you’re going to get phenomenal results from this one tactic alone!

Some people believe that the list should be squeezed dry till the last drop of money is gone, but why not treat subscribers as partners instead as mentioned before?

It’s a definite win-win relationship, everyone benefits and make money together.

Similarly, this works even if you do not have your own product.

Step 6 : Create Your Own Product Based On These Needs

This next step will get you into product creation of your own.

By now (this may be 3, 6 months or more down the road) :

- You have an established ezine or opt-in list…
- Your subscriber list is growing bigger by the day…
- You are making money through various affiliate programs...
- You have residual income from certain affiliate programs…
- You’ve a better idea of what your subscribers are looking for…

You are ready to re-invest some profits into creating your own product!

Follow these points in preparing for your product creation :

- Survey and ask your subscribers what products they want
- Double check the potential at online forums
- Check if there’s a profitable market by determing how many people are searching for it at the search engines. Use tools like http://www.goodkeywords.com , http://www.wordtracker.com or http://adwords.google.com
- Look offline at magazines, newspapers to see what’s being advertised regularly and successfully.

Find a starving crowd and feed them!

Once you’ve come up with good product ideas, and had researched the market profitability of your ideas, start creating!

Step 5 : Recommend Affiliate Products That Fulfill Their Needs

Aha! The magic moment…if you’ve done all the above steps, you’ll have a list of responsive opt-in subscribers, who are eager to hear your recommendations!

This is where it’s different, you’re only gonna promote affiliate products that they want – as discovered previously. This approach almost guarantees higher clickthroughs and responses.

Here’s a good copy format to use for recommending affiliate products or services to your list…

· State the initial problem or needs that they are looking for

· Build it up to a worst case senario if they don’t find the solution

· Introduce a solution to them

· Write a genuine recommendation based on your own usage

· Tell them results you’ve experience

· Get their agreement that this is the solution to their problems

· Show them the results they can achieve by using the product

· Create an urgency

· Encourage immediate action

You can search and join suitable affiliate programs at the following websites :

http://www.cj.com

http://www.linkshare.com

http://www.clickbank.com

http://www.associateprograms.com

http://www.affiliatematch.com

Try to promote residual or at least a two-tier affilate program so that you can create residual income through a one-time action.

Step 4 : Find Their Needs

In all marketing and selling, you’ve got to find a need and fulfill it – NOT the other way round.

Similarly, find out the needs and wants of your subscribers. What are they looking for? What do they need to solve their problems? What specific information would help them achieve their objectives?

How do you discover these needs?

The best way to do that is to ask.

Using polls, surveys or basic email exchanges are all excellent methods of understanding your subscribers. This will be a rewarding and win-win experience.

For instance, conduct online surveys with them using services from…

http://www.surveymonkey.com

http://www.quask.com

http://www.custominsight.com/demo/free.asp

Step 3 : Keep Your Subscribers Happy

With almost 500,000 ezines (and growing) online, it’s all the more important to make yours stand out and gain your subscribers trust.

Your next priority should then focus on retaining current subscribers, on top of getting new ones. With that in mind, here are some strategies to look at to keep your subscribers happy!

Project Your Personality

Project your personality in your writing! Show some passion!

However, be positive here, never use your ezine to spread negative comments or throw cold blankets on your subscribers. That would come across as being unprofessional and having poor attitude, and you'll see people unsubscribing in droves!

I mean, even in the real world, who wants to be around negative folks?

So spread some good, old love instead. Be known as an editor who's real, approachable and friendly to build a better relationship with your subscribers.

Show Some Respect

You should be treating your valuable subscriber as a friend. I'm sure you won't mislead, ignore or harm your friend?

What I mean to say is treat your subscribers with respect. For starters, never bombard him or her with senseless ads every two days! And keep your classified ads to the absolute minimum, separate solo ads from your regular issue. And never promote just any product to your list just to earn a buck.

Your goal is to provide quality information.

Remember, trust is difficult to acquired but easy to lose…it can be gone in a second.

Contact Me Please

Always provide a valid and working email address so that your subscriber can contact you. Do not attempt to hide your email from them. And if your phone is available, all the merrier!

We’re talking about a long-term relationship here, and how can a relationship be started or sustained without some form of communication??

Subscribers may need to contact you for assistance, questions or feedback. Open this avenue to them, it’ll benefit you too.

And I forgot one important thing…reply to emails!

Work Hard For Your List

Here’s an absolutely crucial factor – YOUR ezine must be able to provide what the subscriber wants….in other words, true value.

Ask yourself, what makes a subscriber subscribe?? To get your ads? No! He or she does so as they believe your ezine can help satisfy their needs.

That is, the associated value, real or perceived, that your ezine can provide them.

This may come in the form of good content, resources, reviews or discounts,etc.

What I’m suggesting here is, you’ve got to work hard for your subscribers….

• Provide relevant quality content, or write your own articles!

• Give them valuable tools and resources that cater to their needs

• Seek and negotiate geniune discounts and promotions for them

• Keep them up to date in their areas of interest….etc!

Putting serious effort into your ezine will make your subscribers appreciate you more, cause it shows.

Step 2 : Generate Subscribers

Once you’ve got your ezine set up and ready to roll, you’ll need to start getting opt-in subscribers. Every promotion and advertising you do should be targeted towards this aim. Here are PROVEN methods to generating new subscribers :

· From Your Website

Place a subscription box on every page of your website. Visitors may enter from many other pages other than your main index page. They may never even visit your main page, so make sure your subscription box is visible on every page of your website.

Use a pop-up or pop-under to allow subscribers to sign up easily. This has been shown to increase response rate by at least 300%!

· Incentive Subscriptions

Provide attractive incentives or reasons to subscribe to your ezine, related to your target market needs. The incentive may be in the form of a free ebook, software, contest, free ad, ecourse or combinations of the above.

It’s simple and nothing new but don’t let this fool you, it still works like a charm and many internet marketers are not utilizing it fully.

Everyone should include this as part of their list-building strategy. I recommend using this technique in the following ways…

Create A Killer Subscription Page

You’ve got to build an attractive subscription page WITH an irresistible offer to entice potential subscribers to hit the subscribe button.

The best types are those in the ‘direct response’ style - clean, simple, eye-catching web pages carrying action–oriented sales messages.

Now let’s break it down, what must you include in your subscription page to build your list? Here’re the THREE most necessary factors...

* Benefit-driven Headline *

Tell them WHY they should subscribe. What do they gain, what can they expect? Sum up your biggest benefit or unique advantage in the main headline.

* Irresistible Incentive *

You’ve got to create a superb incentive that any breathing prospect would be crazy to miss out on!

How? Do something different, packed it full of value, and again, make sure that it’s relevant to the market you’re targeting at. A good gauge would be something you feel you could SELL equally well.

If you’ve seen from my subscription page, what I’ve done is created a huge bundled package of quality ebooks. Notice the high ‘percieved value’ attached? This is an example of what you can do.

* Eye-catching Image *

Words sell, yes, but so do pictures, perhaps even better for this particular strategy…

Your subscription page should (no, make that a must) have an ecover of your ezine or whatever you’re giving away. An ecover provides ‘tangibility’ and increase the percieved value of your product dramatically.

Promote your new subscription page everywhere and in no time flat, you’ll be able to have your own huge guru-size opt-in list…without having to pay a single cent for it!

· Write Viral Articles

This has got to be one of the best methods of free advertising that can get you more subscribers and build your credibility at the same time!

Write quality targeted articles and allow them to be freely published. The key to using articles for effective free advertising is by making sure your article is informative and then encouraging clickthroughs with a killer ‘ad’ in your resource box.

For further information on writing articles, read "Write For Publicity." :-

http://www.web-source.net/write.htm

Major directories to submit your articles to include :–

http://www.bestezines.com

http://www.makingprofit.com

http://www.ezadsuccess.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.marketing-seek.com

http://www.connectionteam.com

http://www.homebiztools.com

http://www.addto.com

http://www.netterweb.com

http://www.ezinearticles.com

· Ezine Directories

You must submit your ezine to be listed in ezine directories. Here are a few good directories :

http://www.newsletter-library.com/ven.htm

http://www.arl.org/scomm/edir/template.html

http://www.coalliance.org/forms/ej.suggest.shtml

http://www.edoc.com/jrl-bin/wilma

http://www.newsletteraccess.com/database/reg.html

http://www.yotta.com/magazine/addfree.htm

http://www.linkfinder.com/submit.html

http://www.dominis.com/Zines/publishers/add-howto.html

http://www.etext.org/services.shtml

http://inkpot.com/submit/

You can also do a search at any search engine for ‘ezine directory’ without the quotes.

· Ezine Advertising

Ezine advertising can help build your subscriber base easily. Look at it as an investment which you can recoup back from in the future.

Common ezine ads offered are – Solo Ads, Sponsor Ads (top, middle and bottom sponsors) and Free Classified Ads.

I’d recommend using top sponsor ads only for the best results at an affordable price.

Again, creating a killer ad is important. Track each ezine ad to determine which gives the best bang for the buck.

Check out http://www.charlesfuchs.com/soloads.htm for some recommended ezines to place ads in.

· Co-Op Advertising

If you’re an ezine publisher, you have a choice of joining an ezine co-op.

What this co-op basically does is provide you subscribers, with the condition that you allow at least one free ad per subscriber in your ezine when they join.

Memberships into these co-ops are normally free, and they do work to get you subscribers fast.

However, a word of warning…these subscribers can be mostly untargeted. They join for the free ad, you’ll have to cultivate them slowly. Plus make sure that you’re able to keep up with publishing new ads, I warn you, it can get quite disastrous as they pile up!

Here are two examples :

http://ad-coop.com

http://www.ezine-coop.com

· Pay-per-subscriber services

Do you know you can actually buy subscribers?

This is a good way to build your initial subscriber base quickly to kickstart your ezine. Such services promote your ezine FOR YOU. Potential subscribers who are interested can sign up through a shared subscription box for your ezine. They offer either single or double opt-in subscriptions. They are often known as co-registration services.

View paid subscribers as an investment. Cultivate and build them into profitable subscribers as they’ll not trust you immediately. Note that while you may want to invest in pay-per-subscribers services, it can be a risk too. There MAY be certain percentages of unsubscribes, undeliverables and even accusations of spams. But as long as you have full details of their subscriptions as given by the providers, you’re safe.

Some of the respected co-registration services used by many internet marketers :

http://www.HipLists.com

http://profitinfo.com/leadfactory

http://www.ListOpt.com

· Subscription Network

Join a shared subscription network to gain new subscribers. Each webmaster have to place a unique code on their sites, which displays an exit pop-up consisting of each other’s ezine details. Potential subscribers can just check each ezine they want to be subscribed to. You basically be leveraging on each other’s traffic and promotion.

Again, your ezine description ad will play a big part in converting more subscribers.

The two most popular shared networks are :

http://www.subscriberdrive.com

http://www.subscriptionrocket.com

· Viral Marketing

Get subscribers by leveraging on other people’s effort. This can be achieved through viral marketing, which though nothing spectacularly new, still produces amazing results!

The basic forms of viral marketing include creating free-to-distribute viral tools such as special reports, ebooks, ecourses or softwares.

Submit them to freebie sites, online forums, on your own website, include them in package or membership sites, etc. Another proven way is to create a service that allows people to gain referrals, credits for recruiting members, eg. traffic exchanges, downline clubs, etc.

Step 1 : Start An Ezine, Newsletter Opt-In List

This is the foundation and building block of the entire 7 step system.

Any ‘guru’ worth their salt will tell you that having your own opt-in list is absolutely necessary if you’re thinking of making respectable money online at all – and it does not matter what you’re promoting.

Let me make it clear - you won’t be truly successful as an internet marketer without your own opt-in list!

Ever wondered why the whole world seems to be shouting that “the money is in the list!”? Cause it’s true.

Having your own list of responsive subscribers enables you to generate money on demand or drive traffic to any website. It’s also the ultimate form of free advertising for yourself. You know ezine advertising works, so why not start YOUR OWN instead of paying OTHER ezines all the time?

Before you start, you’ve got to consider among many things :

- Your ezine name - eg. Online Biz Secrets, Joe Dude’s Internet Tips, etc.

- Your ‘personality’ or branding

- Nature and content of the ezine

- Format – Text, HTML or web-based

- Publication schedule – Weekly? Bi-weekly? Monthly?

- A subscription web page

- A list host/sequential autoresponder to store subscribers’ data and to manage your ezine

One of the best way to brainstorm ideas for the above is by subscribing to renowned ezines in your niche area. Learn from them and notice how these editors write or format their publications - format your ezine around their proven methods!

The 7 Step System

Let’s break it down. This 7 steps are deceptively simple but effective :

1. Start An Ezine, Newsletter Or Opt-In List

2. Generate Subscribers

3. Keep Your Subscribers Happy

4. Find Their Needs

5. Recommend Affiliate Products That Fulfill Their Needs

6. Create Your Own Product Based On These Needs

7. Turn Subscribers Into Partners

10 Reasons Why People Don't Buy From You

1. You don't make people feel safe when they order. Remind people that they are ordering through a secure server. Tell them you won't sell their e-mail address and all their information will be kept confidential.

2. You don't make your ad copy attractive. Your ad lists features instead of benefits. The headline does not attract at your target audience. You don't list any testimonials or guarantees included in your ad.

3. You don't remind people to come back and visit. People usually don't purchase the first time they visit. The more times they visit your site, the greater the
chance they will buy. The most effective way is to give them a free subscription to your e-zine.

4. You don't let people know anything about your business. They will feel more comfortable if they know who they are buying from. Publish a section called "About Us" on your web site. Include your business history, profile of employees, contact information etc.

5. You don't give people as many ordering options as possible. Accept credit cards, checks, money orders, and other forms of electronic payments. Take orders by phone, e-mail, web site, fax, mail, etc.

6. You don't make your web site look professional. You want to have your own domain name. Your web site should be easy to navigate through. The graphics should be related to the theme of your web site.

7. You don't let people read your ad before they get your freebie. When you use free stuff to lure people to your web site include it below your ad copy or on another web page. If you list the freebie above your ad they may never look to see what you're selling.

8. You don't attract the target audience that would buy your product or service. A simple way to do this is to survey your existing customers to see what attracted them to buy. This information will help you improve your target marketing and advertising.

9. You don't test and improve your ad copy. Thereare many people who write an ad copy and never change it. You have to continually test and improve your ad copy to get the highest possible response rate.

10. You don't give people any urgency to buy now. Many people are interested in your product but they put off buying it till later and eventually forget about it. Entice them to buy now with a freebie or discount and include a deadline date when the offer ends.