Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories
Have you met your lists? I mean, if your list is very big, you certainly don't know each member personally. But if you're selling more than one product in more than one niche, how well do you know the people you're selling to? Oh, there might be just a few people who email you on a regular basis. But do you know your group as a whole? What do they want? How to they talk? Where do they discuss the niche the list is built around?
All of these questions are very important when you consider list maintenance. The first thing you need to remember is that a list is people, not just mindless mail bot receivers. Email addresses are probably all you see, but your niche list has certain expectations. If you can't fulfill those, it's a sure bet that your list will dwindle.
What do they expect?
Most of the time, you'll be part of the niche because you're into it. You're all about it. That's really the best way to go about marketing. Know what you want to sell. But if you get into something new, you'll have to do some research.
For instance, what if your kid gets this really fun toy, maybe an radio controlled car, right? And you can't keep your hand off it. You're just crazy about it, and see the potential in the market after doing some basic keyword researching. OK, so if this is your first experience with radio controlled cars, other buzzwords are "RC" cars, "table top cars," "ready to run" cars, and if you don't know what an RC servo is, you'd better find out.
Go to Google Groups or Yahoo Groups, plug in the words "RC cars +FAQs." When you see one that says something like "RC Cars for Newbies," you'll find a whole catalogue of information to help you craft some fine autoresponder messages.
The whole thing is that you want the people on your RC list to trust you. If you don't even speak their language, that will never happen and they'll never buy.
So, where do these people play?
We've already talked about Google Groups and Yahoo Groups, which are both great places to find people in the RC car niche. But here's a different idea, why not just plug RC cars into Google and see what you come up with. Webmasters with sites or blogs built around your niche are another great source of clientele.
Go to Google or your favorite search engine, and plug in "RC cars." You'll see a whole list of sites dedicated to the hobby. If you pick out sites that aren't selling your product themselves, and email the webmasters. See if you can strike up a relationship with them. Eventually, you'll be able to see if he or she would like to form a partnership. You put a link to your squeeze page on their site or blog, and you pay them 50% of whatever you make.
If the site has a PR4 or above and an Alexa rank under 100,000 it's probably a good site where you can get traffic. If you set up more than one partnership like this, you'll have list members and money coming in, providing you have the right product. And if you contact several webmasters, you'll have those multiple streams of income working for you 24/7.
List building the right way and marketing to them smartly is really a system. First, have a hot product that will sell. Next, be creative about driving people to your squeeze page, which will always be the front door to your affiliate page.
Marketers fail because they forget these steps. Win! Find your niche, and pave the road to riches with a firm foundation. Then, start list building It's the only way to succeed.
As CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc., Tellman Knudson has become a list building ninja. Pick up all of his proven list building secrets at MyFirstList.com.
