Happy Wednesday!

As you probably know by now one of favorite techniques for add hordes of new subscribers to my lists is to use JV giveaway events.  Heck, I even wrote a book about it and post weekly updates on new events on this blog.

I usually don’t promote events individually but there are a few events each year which I consider to be essential for anyone building a list.

The guys that brought you the most gigantic and most successful Easter Giveaway events of the last 4 years are back at it again.

Yes, Guido Nussbaum and Brad Smith have teamed up again and just opened the Pre-Launch of the Easter Giveaway 2010.

The Easter Giveaway is known to be one of the largest events that you can be
involved in to build up your list…

You will be able to build a huge list of subscribers in a short amount of time,
not to mention the commissions you can earn when you promote the  giveaway.

Signup now and start adding new subscribers to your list!

Click Here to Join as a Contributor

Happy Monday!

I guess I let the list building tutorial slip for a few days.  Sorry about that.  But now that I am back let’s get back into it.

By now you should have your squeeze page up and running.  Great!  Today I want to start talking about how to generate traffic to your squeeze page so that you can start getting some sign-ups in your autoresponder.

There are all sorts of ways to drive traffic to your new squeeze page.  There’s search engines, pay-per-click advertising, article marketing, forums, blogs, safelists, etc.

One source that I have successfully been using to drive traffic to my my sites for the last 7 years is free traffic exchange programs.

Traffic exchanges are sites that allow you to generate traffic to your sites by spending some of your time visiting other people’s websites.

I’ll be honest.  Traffic exchanges are terrible for trying to sell stuff because the people who visit your site through them are only there because they are trying to generate traffic for their own sites.

Traffic exchanges are only for two thing:

1. Building Your Brand
2. Building Your List

If you read the lessons in Affiliate Funnel you will know why it is important to always be building your personal brand online.

What you may not know about Affiliate Funnel is that it was created by the owners of some of the world’s largest traffic exchanges. As a result Affiliate Funnel has become one of the best resources available for traffic exchange users.

Affiliate Funnel is also home to one of the most important traffic exchange ranking systems which is updated every week. If you want to know what the top traffic exchanges are this is the first place to look:

http://www.affiliatefunnel.com/rank-report.php?rid=6698

Of course Affiliate Funnel will also provide you with all sorts of other traffic sources too but for now let’s just focus on TEs.

As I mentioned earlier, traffic exchanges are a great tool that you can use to build your list but only if you use them correctly.

I have a friend named John Guanzon who has really perfected the art of building his list using free traffic exchange programs.  John and another friend of mine (Winter Perkins) recently wrote an excellent book called “TE List Building” which I highly recommend reading.

John has given me permission to give away free copies of his book to my reader. If you want the secret to building a huge list with free traffic exchanges then you need to read this book:

http://getrichwithjerry.com/downloads/TEListBuilding.htm

TE List Building also makes a great gift to give away to your list.  To make money with the TE List Building ebook be sure to click the link on the download page for more info.

Here is the list of upcoming JV giveaway events for March 8, 2010.

JV Giveaway Events

March 13 – Gift Me My Money Giveaway
Contributors: 204  Gifts: 136

March 15 – Looking Forward to Spring Giveaway
Contributors: 211  Gifts: 162

March 16 – My JV Giveaway
Contributors: 200  Gifts: 122

March 27 – Easter Giveaway
Contributors: 112  Gifts: 67

March 31 – Peter Cottontail Easter Giveaway
Contributors: 167  Gifts: 92

April 1 – Easter Madness Giveaway
Contributors: 103  Gifts: 85

You can always find the latest giveaway announcements at:
http://www.GiveawayTactics.com

Welcome back to the money making series.

I mentioned in my previous post that I was going to share with you one of my all-time favorite Internet marketing sites today.

But first, let’s talk about funnels.

A funnel is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.  Well, in order for your list to be profitable it needs to be setup this way too.  This is called a sales  funnel.

At the top of your sales funnel you are offering something for free in exchange for new people joining your list.  It’s easy to get sign-ups this way if you are offering something of value.

As your subscribers continue down your funnel you can start sending them paid offers which earn you a commission.  The people who don’t like this will either unsubscribe or stop reading.  The others will keep reading and hopefully find their way into your primary business.

This is the way many of the top Internet marketing gurus build their businesses and it is the secret to making the real money with your list.

It’s safe to say I would not have known about any of this without the help of a
site called Affiliate Funnel.

Affiliate Funnel is all about promoting you first to get people onto your list. The site is a collection of list building tools, free traffic sources, and free affiliate programs that you can use to promote your list.

Inside Affiliate Funnel you will find ready made lead capture pages that you can use along with an email series that you can load into your autoresponder that is automatically sent to your subscribers when they join your list.

The best part is that the site is totally free unless you want to have the ability to add some of your own programs into their downline builder which I do recommend doing at some point.

When you join Affiliate Funnel make sure you visit the “Lessons” page to fully
understand how everything works.  It can get a little overwhelming but it is well worth your time to explore everything it has to offer.

Click the link below to get your free Affiliate Funnel membership.

Flip Your Downline, Fill Your Funnel!
	Join the ultimate marketing hub on the net and learn how to turn free leads using the best resources around into highly qualified buyers, team members and loyal clients.
Claim Your FREE Membership!

Now that we have all the safelists and giveaway stuff out of the way let’s get back to the list building.

My last post showed you how to get a product to give away to get people to join your list.

Do you have a product, yet?

Good.

Ok, I know you probably don’t have one yet but i’m going to keep going so you can come back to that step when you are ready. Until then, I want to show you how to create your own squeeze page that you will use to promote your product and build your list.

Just to get it out of the way, a lead capture page and a squeeze page are the same thing.  They are webpages which contain a piece of code from your autoresponder that are designed for one purpose… to get people on your list.

There are 5 things that make up a good squeeze page:

1. A Killer Headline – The purpose of your headline is to get your visitor to read the rest of your page.  Getting the perfect headline takes a lot of practice. Check out: http://www.copyblogger.com for some great tips to improving your copy writing skills.

2. An Eye Catching Graphic – A picture is worth 1000 words.  Having some kind of graphics on your page can really help your page stand out.  You can get access to all sorts of stock photography that you can use from sites like: http://www.istockphoto.com

3. List of Benefits – Your squeeze page should include a list outlining 3 to 5 of
the benefits of your product.  Notice I said “benefits” and not “features”.  If
you don’t know the difference do a google search for “features vs. benefits”.

4. A Call To Action – Now that you have your reader’s attention you need to tell them what to do.  “Fill out the form to get your copy now”.  It sounds  obvious but it makes a big difference if you don’t do it.

5. Your Autoresponder Code – Of course.  Just copy and paste the code from your autoresponder into the page where you want it to appear.

6. The Privacy Disclaimer – Just another way to ensure people that you won’t abuse their email address if they fill out your form.  It’s been proven that if you don’t include this you will definitely get fewer sign-ups.

Here’s a sample:
http://www.safelisttactics.com/jv.htm

Now that you know all the components that go into a squeeze page you probably want to know how to build one…

Personally, I like to make my own from scratch.  I have my own website and I use a free html editor to make my own pages.  For less than $10/month there is so much you can do with webhosting.  If you don’t have your own webhosting I use Servage but there are plenty of good hosts to choose from.

But even if you have hosting you still might not feel comfortable enough to make your own web page.  For that I offer several solutions.

1. Instant Bonus Page – I already posted something about this.  You can make bonus pages for free but if you upgrade you will get access to one of the most simple squeeze page makers around. Highly recommended.

2. AdKreator – This site is great.  It let’s you make stunning graphic  advertisements without having learn complicated programs like Photoshop.   There’s upgraded membership option that gives you the ability to make your own squeeze pages which is well worth the price.

3. TE Toolbox – TE Toolbox has a variety of free Internet marketing tools including a basic squeeze page maker.  While not quite as powerful as the other two squeeze page makers it’s not a bad option.

That all for now.

Are we having fun yet?

Great!  Because next I am going to share with you my all time favorite website which will give you access to all sorts of free tools that you can use to make  money with your list.

See you soon!

Welcome to March and a whole new month of safelist marketing.  Lots of good stuff to talk about this month so let’s jump right in…

First, the big news last month was all about the rise in popularity of safelist cheat software and the safelists owners efforts to fight it.  Well, I am happy to report that the war is over… and WE WON!  Mostly.  Andrew Baxter, the creator of the most popular software made an appearance at Net Marketing Forum and agreed to stop selling and supporting his software.  You can read the whole thread here.

Andrew also states that the developers of several other safelist cheat programs had sent him very angry emails because he had made his software so public resulting in the safelists adding anti-cheat devices.  I guess that confirms that there are still other cheaters out there but at least the anti-cheat stuff is working.

Also I want to remind everyone that while there are people using bots to click your safelist credit links this doesn’t hurt the effectiveness of safelist advertising.  When you spend your safelist credits your credits are used whether or not someone opens your email.  The bots just allow people to earn credits they don’t deserve.  This could result in more emails in your inbox but that also means more credits for you to earn.

There was a pretty huge launch last month.  List Effects is the new viral list builder from two of the biggest names in the safelist and text ad exchange industry.  To be honest, the site isn’t really pretty.  In fact, it looks a little too much like the inside of a text ad exchange… but it’s the results that matter.  And WOW is List Effects kicking butt.  Check the stats below and you will see why I am so excited about this new program.

A not so new program that I finally joined last month is List Building Maximizer.  I don’t know why I waited so long to join this one.  I guess I figure that newer sites aren’t going to have enough members until they have been around for awhile.  Obviously I was wrong.  Based on the stats below List Building Maximizer is crushing it!  If there are other great safelists like this out there that I am missing out on please let me know.

Ok.  Here are my safelist stats from last month.  These stats come from advertising my video splash page for Safelist Marketing Tactics.

“Clicks” is how many people viewed my splash page.  “Action” is how many people clicked the link on my splash page to go to the main site.  “Sales” is how many people joined my site.  CTA and CTS are “clicks to action” and “clicks to sale”.  I ranked these safelists by sales but it is also important to look at the other numbers to determine how responsive each safelist really is.

Not counting the two new sites it looks like I had a slight drop in my overall results from last month.  That could be a result of me playing around with my subject lines.  I am surprised that List Auction continues to drop.  This could be a result of how few emails they are sending out which means less credits for me to earn for my own ads.  It’s nice to see Got Safelist and Elite Safelist doing really well again.

Obviously the biggest winners this month are List Effects and List Building Maximizer. If you are not a member of these two programs yet you are missing out on some seriously good traffic.

I guess that’s about it for this month.  As usual my stats are a result of my efforts and the pages I am promoting.  Your results may not be the same but you can use my stats as a guide for deciding where you should be promoting this month.  How do I know which safelists work best for me?  I track my results.  If you aren’t tracking you are wasting a big chunk of your time.  You can get a free link tracker from TEToolbox.

Here is the list of upcoming JV giveaway events for March 1, 2010.

JV Giveaway Events

March 3 – Growing Success Gifts
Contributors: 474  Gifts: 182

March 13 – Gift Me My Money Giveaway
Contributors: 162  Gifts: 115

March 15 – Looking Forward to Spring Giveaway
Contributors: 118  Gifts: 81

March 16 – My JV Giveaway
Contributors: 145  Gifts: 102

March 31 – Peter Cottontail Easter Giveaway
Contributors: 91  Gifts: 60

You can always find the latest giveaway announcements at:
http://www.GiveawayTactics.com

Welcome back to part 4 of my money making series.

Did you read the book I posted a few days ago?

http://getrichwithjerry.com/downloads/imsf.htm

Good!

Now that you know all the benefits of building your list i’m going to start  getting into some of the nitty gritty details.

Ready?

The first thing you are going to need to entice people to join your list is some kind of bait. Bait doesn’t sound very nice though.  Think of it more as an “ethical bribe”.  The idea is to find something to give away that would be of interest to your target audience.

Let’s say you are selling a Twitter training video.  To attract your target audience you might want to give away some kind of product related to social marketing.  You probably wouldn’t want to give away something about SEO or article marketing because even though it’s Internet marketing related it doesn’t tie in directly with your main product.

The easiest way to do this is to take a free ebook that you found somewhere else and use that as your freebie.  Make sure you actually have permission from the author of the ebook before you decide to use it as a free giveaway.

You can find a nice collection of free rebrandable ebooks at Viral Ebook Explosion:

http://getrichwithjerry.com/recommends/vee

The advantage to using someone else’s product as your free gift is that it takes almost no work.  However if you want to build credibility with your subscribers eventually you are going to want to make your own.

Creating your own product isn’t nearly as difficult as it sounds.  All you need is a decent word processor such as of Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer and something to write about.  Both of these programs have the ability to export anything you write into a pdf file which is the format that most ebooks are distributed in.

It only takes a few hours of research on Google or YouTube to become an expert on almost any subject.  Well, maybe not an expert… but you can certainly learn enough to create an ebook that people would want to download.  Especially if that ebook solves some kind of problem that your  reader is having.

You’re not limited to just ebooks either.  You can do audio products and video too.  You can actually spend about 20 minutes in front of a microphone and have your very own unique product with very little effort.

So how do you send your gift to your subscribers when they sign-up?

If you have your own hosting the obvious answer is to upload it to your site and then send your subscribers the link to go download it.

If you don’t have your own hosting then I suggest using Instant Bonus Page.

Instant Bonus Page is a site that lets you create a download page that you can send to your subscribers which includes a link for them to download your gift.  It also puts some “bonus” offers on your page that you can use to make a
little extra cash at the same time.

Instant Bonus Page is free to use and it’s also really easy to setup.  Here’s the link:

http://getrichwithjerry.com/recommends/ibp

The next step is to put together a lead capture page or “squeeze page” which is the page you will promote that builds your list.  Of course that’s going to have to wait until later…

So keep checking back here or subscribe at the top of the page to get some of my best sources for building your own awesome lead capture pages.

See ya!

Jerry Iannucci

PS – When you join Instant Bonus Page you’ll see an offer for an amazing point-and-click lead capture system.  If you want a dead simple way to make your own squeeze pages and you don’t have your own website make sure you check it out.

Welcome back to part 3 of my money making series.

A few days ago we started talking about list building as a way for you to make money working from home on the Internet.  For myself and many others this has been the key to our Internet marketing success.

Today I want to share with you the step-by-step system that I use to make money with my list every day.  However, instead of trying to explain it all in this blog post I am going to refer you to an ebook instead.

Sorry.  No sense in me trying to reinvent the wheel when all this information is already out there readily available.

If you are looking for a step-by-step system to building a profitable opt-in mailing list there is no better place to start than Soren Jordansen’s “Internet Marketing Success Formula”.

You download a free copy here:
http://getrichwithjerry.com/downloads/imsf.htm

Save it to your computer and then take some time today to read the whole thing.

Don’t just skim… read it!

You will be glad you did.

Next time I won’t take the easy way out and i’ll show you some techniques you can use to create your own mouth watering freebies that can be given away to build your list.  Look for it in a few days.

Here is the list of upcoming JV giveaway events for February 22, 2010.

JV Giveaway Events

Feb 22 – 2010 Prosperity Giveaway
Contributors: 275  Gifts: 243

Feb 22 – The Queen Bee Giveaway
Contributors: 239  Gifts: 193

Feb 28 – St. Patricks Day Giveaway
Contributors: 228  Gifts: 118

March 1 – Hidden Treasure Giveaway
Contributors: 80  Gifts: 26
Invite Code: htg3jv

March 1 – Luck of the Irish Giveaway
Contributors: 274  Gifts: 186

March 1 – Shop4Bizness Giveaway
Contributors: 127  Gifts: 84

You can always find the latest giveaway announcements at:
http://www.GiveawayTactics.com

Welcome to part 2 of my exclusive money making series.

Today I want to start talking about my favorite subject… List building!

There  is is actually a lot more to this subject than I can cram into one blog posting but i’ll try and go over the basics to start with as much as I can.

If you are reading this chances are you have already tried promoting some kind of online business or affiliate program.  I am guessing you probably figured out  how to get some traffic but for some reason you aren’t getting many sales… if any.

Not as easy as you expected, is it?

Well, you are not alone.  Even people who are promoting free affiliate sites can have a hard time getting sign-ups.  That’s because most people don’t know them or trust them enough to join.

Trust is very important!

Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“All things being equal people would rather buy from someone they know and trust.  All things NOT being equal… people would STILL rather buy from someone they know and trust”.

So how do you build trust?  Well, it does take some time…  and it usually takes a lot longer than the time it takes for someone to read your site.

In fact, here’s what usually happens.  Someone visits your website, they read your offer and think “sounds interesting, but i’m not ready to commit to this right now”. So what happens?  They leave and probably never come back.  The time and energy you spent getting them to your site was wasted.

That’s where the autoresponder comes in.

Your autoresponder is the single most important weapon in any Internet
marketer’s arsenal because it let’s you follow-up with your prospect days
and even months after they leave your website site.

The way it works is that you offer something of value to the people coming to your website in exchange for their email address.  Your offer can be a free ebook, a newsletter, software, or almost any other “digital” product.

When your visitor fills out the form on your site their info is sent to your autoresponder which then begins sending out a series of pre-written emails to them.  These emails can be used to tell your subscribers more about yourself and your business while providing them with more free information that they can use which compliments the free product you first sent them.

Hopefully over time your readers will get to know you and even look forward to the emails they receive from you.  Once they begin to trust you it makes it much easier for you to recommend paid products and services that you can earn commissions from later on.

Another great thing about autoresponders is that once you have your emails series setup you can practically set it and forget it.  If you wanted to you could set it to send an email a week for the next 5 years and it would do it for you.

Compare that to sending someone directly to your website where you only have one chance to get a sale.

Unfortunately good autoresponders are not free.  That’s one of the few things that you are just going to have to bite the bullet on if you want to succeed in this business.  Expect to pay about $20/month for a good autoresponder.

I recommend using either Aweber or TrafficWave.  Aweber is considered to be one of the best and includes a lot of advanced features.  TrafficWave is a more affordable alternative that will definitely get the job done.

Both autoresponders offer 30-day trial memberships so there is no reason not to try them both and decide which one you like the most.

Ok, I think that’s enough one day.

I’ll be posting my JV giveaway events listing tomorrow and Ryan Hogan is about to launch a new product so look for my next post in this series early next week.

Subscribe to this blog at the top of the page and be notified any time this blog is updated.

Well that was fun.

As you may or may not know I have been working my butt off rewriting my first ebook which is all about advertising with free traffic exchange programs.  It’s been going slow but I really got into it again a few weeks ago and was hoping to do a huge relaunch at the end of the month… and then Tony Tezak released Traffic Exchange Solutions a few days ago.  D’oh!

Tony is sort of a legend in the TE world so there is no way I could realistically release my ebook right on his heels and expect any amount of excitement for it.  I guess that just gives me a little more time to work on my book to make it even bigger and badder than ever!  You’ll just have to wait a few weeks longer before you get a chance to behold it’s brilliance.  lol.

In the meantime I figure I should keep this writing thing going and post some new content.  I decided to write a short info series for the people who are still struggling to make money online.

Before we get started I should probably point out that while there are a whole lot of good free traffic sources and free services out there that you can use to build your business…  from my personal experience it is almost impossible to start a successful online business with absolutely no money.

Not exactly what you wanted to hear, right?

The good news is that it doesn’t take much money to start and most of the tools you will be using include affiliate programs that can eventually earn you a tidy profit every month.

So here is your first assignment…

Follow this link and download a free copy of a book written by my good friend Jon Olson called “The Pizza Plan”.  Inside you will find the exact budget that Jon used when he quit his job and started working online full-time.  It includes the “must have” tools that every Internet marketer needs.

Click here to get The Pizza Plan:
http://getrichwithjerry.com/downloads/pizzaplan.htm

Think about how much you are willing to set aside each month for your own online business.  You don’t need to spend as much as Jon did but if think you can build a successful online business with zero out of pocket expenses you are going to have a very long struggle ahead of you.

We’ll start getting into the good stuff next time so keep checking back here or subscribe to this blog at the top of the page so you don’t miss an another action packed update.

Enjoy the book!

Here is the list of upcoming JV giveaway events for February 15, 2010.

JV Giveaway Events

*Feb 17 – Daddy’s Birthday Giveaway
Contributors: 336  Gifts: 173

Feb 19 – Internet Marketing Giveaway
Contributors: 220  Gifts: 160

Feb 22 – 2010 Prosperity Giveaway
Contributors: 181  Gifts: 151

Feb 22 – The Queen Bee Giveaway
Contributors: 157  Gifts: 109

Feb 28 – St. Patricks Day Giveaway
Contributors: 193  Gifts: 119

March 1 – Luck of the Irish Giveaway
Contributors: 207  Gifts: 136

*Recommended

You can always find the latest giveaway announcements at:
http://www.GiveawayTactics.com

Happy Tuesday!

A new site is launching today that I am very excited about…

It’s a brand new viral list builder from my friends Jon Atwood and Frank Salinas called “List Effects“.

Why is this such a big deal?

Basically, Jon Atwood is sorta the king when it comes to credit based safelists and nobody knows more about text ad exchanges than Frank Salinas.  These
guys joining forces to create a new viral list builder means magic.

But it’s not JUST a viral list builder!

These guys came up with the crazy idea to also make their site an on going jv giveaway event.

Hello!  I LOVE giveaway events!

So not only are you building your list on the site (10 levels deep!) but you can also add your squeeze pages to send members directly to your own autoresponder.

Neat!

Jon asked me to help him out with the launch and since the site is now open I would like to personally invite you to join for free.

Click the link below to sign-up!

Click Here to Join List Effects