You’ve decided to start an online business – how hard can it be?
You pick a niche become an affiliate marketer as you don’t have your own product, and thing are SLOW!
Your wheels are spinning and you’re not sure how to move forward – there are sooo many suggestions.
Let’s get to the BASICS….
You want to offer a product to your clients (leads) that solves a problem!
Simple, right? If it was that simple or even common sense, everyone would be successful, but they are not! So how do you go about that?
YOU NEED A LIST! That is…. a list of people who are likely to be interested in what you have to market. No point in marketing to the whole world – it’s the surest way to the poorhouse!
It would be like throwing spaghetti across the room to a wall – there is very little chance of anything sticking to that wall. Now, if your spaghetti was well cooked instead of al dente, has a lot of sauce on it, and you take a handful and put it against the wall for a decent amount of time, you’ll have much more on the wall!
How fast can you build a list? I’ll take you through short, medium and long term strategies.
Long term: With social media on the rise, there are a lot of social media methods to interact with your target audience: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linked In, Pintrest etc. A lot of it can be free or relatively low cost, but realise that it takes time to build your list using these methods and be patient, consistent and persistent.
Medium term: You can write a blog, concentrating on your niche. This also takes some time to build a list, as do videos, writing articles and SEO. It is a great idea to write a blog – people get to know you through your articles and, very very importantly, you brand yourself. You want to be a true business person and owner, not an employee.
Short term: Fast list building is done mainly through solo ads. These are emails sent to someone else’s list. Hopefully, they are intrigued enough to sign up to your list. It is scaleable, trackable and fairly precise, more so than all the other methods.
You now see how the various list building methods fit together and what you can pick. More than one method is advisable – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.