Did you ever visit an Art Museum or Historical Place? If you have, you probably noticed that they have a sign in book for visitors. This gives them proof of their amount of traffic. It shows how much interest there is in the place. They have a reason for this. The more visitors they have and the more interest that is shown directly effects the amount of grant money they receive. So, just signing a guest book can mean the difference in success or failure to these places.

They also have a greeter. A person to make you feel comfortable and welcome. They might offer you a free brochure or souvenier. Something to show that they appreciate you stopping by.

Well, guess what! It’s no different with your Opt-In list. Your sign-up box is your registration book. Just as with the museum, the more visitors you have that put their name and e-mail in your sign up box, the more money you are going to make.

Your greeter is in the form of your introduction to the sign-up box, and this is where you give your free gift or souvenir. This can take the form of a free report, e-book, newsletter or e-course. This is the way the process works:

The person sees your sign-up box – You make your offer of what they will get. At that time you show on the bottom of the sign-up box that you value their privacy and will not share their email details. Near the sign-up box you explain that they must confirm their subscription by clicking a link in their email.

After they click the confirmation link in their email, they will they see a thank you page in their web browser that your autoresponder sends. However, the thank you page sent by autoresponders is pretty bland. You can take advantage of this by using your own thank you page that you can customize with any other information. Such as a special offer, or just welcoming them to your happy group and what they can expect to receive from you in the future by emails you will be sending.

Although this might seem a little complicated to a newbie, this is mostly done by your autoresponder which makes it quite easy and painless.

At the same time you should also know what you should avoid in building an opt-in list. There is one thing that you should keep in mind as the big no-no of building a list.

Never ever spam your subscribers. You must get permission from your subscribers, or else you might end up with a bad reputation. Another thing to avoid is making every email an attempt to sell. This also applies to the frequency of your emails. Do not pound your list with sales offers. Sure, you want to make money but give good information. Timely tips and advice along with your attempts to sell.

I’m not a great fan of pop-ups. They can sometimes annoy the visitors. There are also pop-up blockers now, which will make your efforts futile.

On the other hand you should refrain from flooding your subscribers with information. You might end up as an annoyance so much so that when you do give good and relevant information it will be ignored. It’s just like a person that talks too much, after a while you just tune them out.

The aim is to have many regular subscribers and keep them happy. Let them know that you always have their interest at heart, first and foremost and you will reap the benefits of their trust. You must always keep in mind when building the list that things don’t end there.

Once you’ve built up a substantial opt-in list, make sure that you maintain it well. Keep in contact with your subscribers. Send them updates. Keep giving out special offers and helpful tips. Freebies from time to time will be helpful too.
Just follow this and you’ll see, things can only get better.

Did you ever do that? Give a party and nobody showed up? I hope not. I must admit I never have either.

But, I’ll tell you what I have done and it’s just about as bad, maybe worse. I’ve placed ads and nobody answered them. Now, that really hurts – not only your ego, but your bank account.

Maybe that’s why so many people are afraid to place ads. I hear them say – “yeah, but what if I put in ads and they do not get a response? Then what?” Well, my answer to that is – you lost money.

So, why do ads not pull a decent response? How can you avoid losing money when placing ads? The answer – there is no guarantee that they will. But, you can almost assure a decent response to an ad by doing several things right.

When I first started in business I was going gung-ho. I spent money left and right placing ads, thinking that’s all there was to it – just place the ad and watch the money roll in. Well, the money rolled alright, but it went the wrong way – *out*, not in.

However, I did profit from those first dud ads. I profited by experience. I sat down and tried to analyze what went wrong. I read some books on the subject. I talked to some people who were successful in business. Boy, talk about going about it backward, that’s what I should have done to start with.

Here’s what I learned and followed successfully since:

1. The first thing you need to do – is target your ad. Place your ad where the right people will see it. People who have a need for what you are selling. You don’t want to target nudist camps if you are selling clothes and shoes. So make sure your message is going to the right places.

2. Write a headline that gets attention. Not just a mundane – “How I Make Money on the Internet.” Instead, how about – “The One Secret I Learned That Started Me Making Money.” ‘Secret makes people curious – what is the one secret you can learn to make money? They read on and that’s the whole idea. Target the right audience and get them to read your ad.

3. What should you say in your ad? Now, we’re targeting our web site here. Our web site is where we are going to make the pitch. This is where we are going to sell -make money on internet from our web site – not from this ad.

So what do we do? We hype our product. Be honest – but hype some (not all) of the reasons people need this product. How it will help them. What it will do for them. Don’t tell too much – just stir up their appetite, make them want to know more and then tell them where they can get the full information – from your web page.

Never tell the whole story in your ad. If you do, they will decide whether to buy or not right then – and probably they will decide *no*. Why? Because you can’t tell enough in an ad. The ad is only to spark interest and make them want to know more. Your web page does the selling.

Don’t be afraid to advertise, but don’t shoot your whole wad until you test the ad. If it does pretty good, test again. If it does poorly, don’t chase a dead duck – drop it. Try something else.

But don’t give up. You may lose a little at first, but that’s the idea of testing. You won’t lose much and you can live to fight another day. So -

– Target your audience. — Make the headline pull them in. — Don’t tell the whole story. — Sell from your web page.

You will succeed – you just have to start and test.

–May you always walk in sunshine,

–Hal Archer