How to Build a List – In this video I show how YOU can build a list 9,147+ subscribers in only 21 days! The product I created was quite expensive to get built, but yours doesn’t have to be! The technique I show in the video works for almost any sort of product or service. I didn’t use any of my business lists to promote it, which means you DON’T need to own a list to get such results! Here is, step by step, what you have to do:
How to Build a List
- Find something people need
- Get it made (visit oDesk and hire someone if needed)
- Give your members good value FREE
- Allow them to get the upgrade… in two ways!
- 1st way is a straight forward payment, the 2nd way is to refer members to you
- Provide your members with promotional tools
- Build your list using an autoresponder (Aweber or Imnica Mail)
- Launch your product using list builders (ViralUrl, ViralHosts, – see more below)
I also give a few examples so make sure you watch the video on how to build a list in full! If you’re looking for someone to create your product, visit oDesk. There are plenty of web developers, software developers, web designers and writers looking for work. I hired a few people on this site and was very satisfied with their work. Make sure they are qualified for the job before hiring them though.
In the video, I highly recommend that you get either Aweber or Imnica Mail, which is the autoresponder I use for my product. I prefer Imnica Mail because they provide great analytics and their plans are a lot cheaper than their competitors. When I’m talking about the traffic you have access to, I’m talking about list builders and mailers that anyone can sign up to.
List Builders are cheap ways to mail people who have agreed to get your emails. It is a way to reach people on a ‘shared’ list and get them to join your list. Of course it costs money to join, be prepared to spend up front, but then you can continue to mail your free optin product (with a paid upgrade & a viral aspect of getting referrals to your site) over and over again.
These programs will help you launch, it will send signups to your program, it will give you the initial people who will then go with their affiliate link and post on forums, blogs and social media sites to get the upgrade free… which should make you very happy because it then drives a lot of new signups to your site… Many of those new signups will then promote as well, turning your offer VIRAL! 🙂
– ViralUrl (When sign up take Gold, then Elite on the offers right after sign up for cheapest price!)
– ViralHosts (When sign up take Gold, then Elite on the offers right after sign up for cheapest price!)
– ListJoe
– ViralAdStore
Those 4 will get your stuff off to a good start if you upgrade with them. Then to kick on you can join a targeted community where you can get the word out quickly:
– ViralNetworks
As previously mentioned, I didn’t promote the product to any of my business lists, which means that YOU can do it too. The best way to drive traffic to the product page is to sign up to these list builders and get a TrafficZipper account, which will allow you to use all the mailers all at once and even save an email or 2 (up to 5 at a time) that it will send out at random for you, automatically:
Another benefit of joining is that it also allows you to compare statistics, and see which mailers perform the best. I made a short video to show you how it works, and why ViralUrl and ViralHosts are great choices when it comes to list builders and mailers. You can watch it here:
– Video – Optin’s are what counts… See the stats here
Thanks for watching the video! Now you know how to build a list, you should get started as soon as possible! I would love to know your thoughts so please leave a comment and if you like the video, feel free to share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter, or both! I look forward to hearing from you!
I'm an avid fan of your blog, and the content is always top notch - great reading. I'm always impressed with the variety of content and the way you get all the important steps outlined for processes, but still manage to keep it short and simple - few people do that quite as well.
Mike Purvis
Andy Fletcher
Todd Gross
Anyone wanting to see the site it is: http://www.SocialMonkee.com/
Hello Colin!
Incredible good tips you are giving here, I will follow them carefully!
I like the way you Upgrade accounts for your registered users just because they send you more people, it’s a great way to manage affiliates.
I will love to do that on my websites, can you please tell me what Affiliate System do you use for this?
Like in http://socialmonkee.com/ I will love to do that, 12 people = one free upgrade.
Thank you in advance!
Hi Colin thank you very much for your article. I think I want to ty the viral one. For this one http://www.SocialMonkee.com how does it work?
thanks
Solid information Colin. I would have paid to learn this stuff and yet you give it away. Fantastic.
Hi Colin,
Real great info here!! I’m curious though, after the 12 referrals we send over do we get compensated for any upgrades to premium as an affiliate since you use the affiliate code to track our referrals or is there another way to sign up as an affiliate to generate commissions?
Thanks!
James
Thanks again Colin for all the great info and I just looked at trafficzipper and it does seem very cool!!
James
Great step by step on list building. And FYI, socialmonkee rocks!
You give a wealth of information. With your tips I hope to achieve the level of success you have created.
Excellent tips and advice you GIVE away here. That’s the key… give away FREE Valuable information that even the novice marketer can follow! Thanks and many blessing!
Pastor Todd
Hi Pastor Todd,
Thank you for the kind post. Yes, providing value is the key to building a great product. The trick is to then continue improving. Once again, thanks for the great comment!
Bill,
sorry for the slow reply, missed this comment… Thanks very much for the nice words and keep up the good work.
Thanks for the information Colin. Will definitely put this to use.
Thanks for this post. This made it “gel” together for me a little more. I now understand the importance of list building to help build your list and how to use the list builders to actually help grow your list. Thank u!!!
You’re welcome Quaneshia 🙂 Stay tuned for more!
Great post Colin,
This is good advice, and I thank you for sharing this info. I’m a happy SM user.
I think the most expensive part of your proyect is buying the domains and paying for the hosting services, so my cuestion for you is, how expensive was to develop the web application to submit the posts?
Hi Paco! Thanks for the kind words! We have a full-time team working on this project so I couldn’t really tell you… It took our programmer about 2 months to design and build the site + all maintenance costs, supports costs, etc. That’s quite a lot of money but not all projects take that much time and money. If you’re an expert in what you do, you can create great information products for a fraction of what we paid for SocialMonkee. 😉
Nice insight into list building.
Are there ramifications of using a list builder to promote your website or product?
Awesome, I’m actually thinking of using this method in another way… but this also.
Can I ask you Colin, when the user has refereed the required number of people for the upgrade… how is this handled?
@BobReviewer The referrer’s account is automatically upgraded to the higher level. However all referrals must be active, so the system must know how to make the difference between accounts that have been activated, and those that haven’t. I hope this helps!
How can you keep track of who has referred friends to the newsletter? I don’t know how to automate the process so it will send someone my upgraded eBook once they refer three friends. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Thank you so much for the explanation, and advice. This has been very useful. Something else that I have found that helped out quit well, and was only $1 on Amazon, It was called The Highly Profitable List building Academy: Secrets to huge profits building list online. It gives you step by step help to build huge list. Hope this helps.
Can you use this for newsletters, to gather leads for a newsletter sign up, or must you have a product of your own?
 @andys280176 Andy, it works best when you can offer strong benefits to get a free upgrade by spreading the word for you. But yes, it can work for anything if you can think outside the box a bit