Archive for May, 2011

30
May

I have just updated the calendar for all new upcoming JV giveaway events that are seeking contributors.

Here is the complete list of upcoming JV giveaway events that are currently seeking contributors for: May 30, 2011.

JV Giveaway Events

June 1 – The Hot Summer Giveaway
Contributors: 85  Gifts: 66

June 3 – The Experts Marketing Giveaway
Contributors: 133  Gifts: 104

June 6 – Kerry’s Birthday Giveaway
Contributors: 117  Gifts: 89

June 9 – Julie’s Birthday JV Giveaway
Contributors: 95  Gifts: 83

You can find a complete listing of upcoming giveaways on the events calendar at: http://www.GiveawayTactics.com

card1 med2 New JV Giveaway Events   May 30, 2011

23
May

Hello and Happy Monday!

I had a pretty rough weekend and I am feeling a bit under the weather today but I wanted to give a quick shout out for everybody who came out on Friday and listened to my live interview with Sterling Valentine as part of his List Laser 30 Day Listbuilding Challenge.

In case you missed it… here it is!

It was a little nerve wracking but I think it went well.  Somehow Sterling managed to get me talking for a full hour which not many other people have been able to do.  Hopefully I dropped a few good nuggets in there too.

I’m not sure if I will ever get fully used to doing these interviews but this was a topic that I am very passionate about and I hope some people found it helpful.

If you have not yet started building your list Sterling Valentine’s List Laser program is a great place to start.  Not only is it free to join but with 30 days of expert training you can’t really go wrong .

Click here to join!

 

10
May

The Evolution of My Squeeze Pages

Author: Jerry Iannucci

Happy Tuesday!

Today kicks off Sterling Valentine’s “30 Day Listbuilding Challenge” at List Laser.  In case you haven’t heard I have been asked to be a guest judge and one of the trainers for the challenge.

To be honest, I hate public speaking (who doesn’t?) so my mind has been racing trying to figure out what to talk about for an hour.  I’m sure I will probably spend some time talking about how I got started list building and that got me thinking about how far I have come with the design of my squeeze pages.

I thought it would be fun to dig into my archives and share some of my early squeeze page designs with you.

Some of these are pretty embarrassing but having durfed in front of a few hundred people I don’t think these can hurt my reputation any worse.

Aug 2007 – My Introduction to List Building

I won’t go into the whole story but back in 2007 I joined a very expensive online business opportunity and promoted it pretty heavily.  The company had a large variety of promo tools that we could use to promote the site including some very professional looking squeeze pages.

I remember we had the option to use the company autoresponder or subscribe to Aweber and manage our lists ourselves. Luckily I was smart enough back then to know that if I was going to be building a list that I want my contacts to be in my possession and not the owners of this program. I went with Aweber which I am still using today and believe it or not some of the contacts that I made back then are still active today.

I don’t have any samples from this period because I was using the generic company squeeze pages.  Let’s just say, they didn’t work very well.

Feb 2008 – List Building for Profit

The business opportunity I was promoting eventually closed (as they almost always do) but I still had my list and I was starting to see how powerful this list building stuff could be.

I decided to try building a list and using it to make money without having someone else’s business opportunity on the backend.

At the time I was doing a lot of advertising on traffic exchanges. I went and found myself a free rebrandable ebook about traffic exchanges written by someone else that I could promote to build my list.

Here’s the page I came up with:


Yes, that is Homer Simpson.

No, I don’t own the rights to that picture.

Yes, I probably could have gotten sued for using that.

Don’t worry.  I don’t do that any more and I recommend you don’t do it either.

But, even back then I was trying to do something that would stick out in the sea of generic affiliate pages that people were promoting in traffic exchanges.  Homer got people’s attention.  It worked.

I also knew the power of personal branding back then.  Yep, it’s the same picture I am still using today.  Seriously, build your brand!  It’s one of the best things you can do for your business.

What I didn’t know back then is the importance of keeping your squeeze pages “above the fold”.  What that means is that most people viewing your squeeze page in traffic exchanges or safelists are too lazy scroll down your page.  You need to try and keep all of your information within the viewing screen so people can sign-up without needing to scroll.

July 2008 – My Own Product

Around this time I started to see the benefits of creating my own free giveaway product instead of promoting one created by someone else.  I was still promoting pretty heavily in the traffic exchanges so I decided to write my own traffic exchange book.

Here’s one of the early squeeze pages I made for it:

Yeah, that’s pretty bad.

But I still have my picture, it’s a decent headline, the bullet points are good, there’s a call to action, I changed the “submit” button, and I included a privacy disclaimer.

If only it wasn’t so ugly!

By the way, not too many people remember this book and I don’t recommend that you go looking for it.  It’s seriously outdated and there are much better TE books out there today.

In fact, forget you ever saw that page!

June 2009 – Professional Design

In 2009 I started launching my own membership sites to support my ebooks.  This was a step up from what I was doing before so I starting spending some money to have a professional graphic designer create my squeeze pages for me.

The result:

Pretty nice, huh?

One of the things people don’t tell you about hiring a web designer is that you still have to do some work.  I assumed I could just pay someone some money and say “give me something awesome” but from my experience designers usually want you to tell them exactly what to do.  So I still had to write the copy and give them the general layout but the design is much better than anything I could have done on my own.

March 2010 – The Three Stooges

This is easily my most successful squeeze page so far.

It was originally a splash page but I recently remade it into a squeeze page that I could use to build my list.  It’s got a headline that you can’t miss and while the music may be annoying you definitely can’t ignore it when you are surfing.

Check it out:

To make this I basically just chopped off the header from my website (to keep it “above the fold”), deleted all of the content, and added the squeeze page.

And in case you are wondering about the copyright issue… that particular episode of The Three Stooges has fallen into public domain.  I think that means I can’t be sued for using it… at least I hope that’s true.  I just wish there were more good public domain videos that I could edit into something like this.

Present – Fast and Easy Squeeze Pages

Lately I have gone back to making my own squeeze pages using AdKreator.

It’s rare but every so often I get a brilliant idea in the middle of the night for a squeeze page and don’t want to wait weeks for a designer to make it for me. With AdKreator I can make my own professional looking squeeze pages and have them online in less than hour.

Here’s one of my most recent squeeze pages:

AdKreator is very simple to use and it’s a lot cheaper than constantly hiring graphic designers to make squeeze pages for you.  It’s also not nearly as embarrassing as some of the early designs I tried to make on my own.

So that’s it.  If you want to build your list you need a good squeeze page.  In most cases your squeeze page is going to be your introduction to your new subscriber.  Always put your best foot forward and do something unique that makes you stick out from the pack.

Also, don’t worry if your first designs suck because mine sure did.

1
May

The Best Safelists for May 2011

Author: Jerry Iannucci

Greetings and welcome to May!

Let’s hope this month brings a few more flowers and a lot less showers.

The big story this month is… List Bonus!  This new viral list builder quietly launched at the start of last month.  I say quietly because the site had been actively promoted for a few months prior to this as part of the beta testing so when the site officially launched there wasn’t much excitement surrounding it.

List Bonus is rocking!  Lots of sign-ups and very few emails in my inbox.  Check my stats below and you will understand why I am so excited about this one.

Viral Mail Profits is also starting to do really well.  This is the safelist and viral list builder organizer that just added it’s own mailer.  This is a unique mailer with some cool functions.  I have been spending a few extra credits when sending my ads to make people answer a survey question about my page.   This forces people to actually look at my page and gets me some valuable feedback as well.  So far, it is working great.

Ok, let’s get to the stats.

As usual I need to throw out a few disclaimers.  First, these are my stats based on my advertising efforts.  I am advertising my squeeze pages that promote my Safelist Marketing Tactics ebook.  Also, I do have upgraded accounts on most of these sites which sometimes allow me to mail more often than free members.  Your mileage may vary.

Total sign-ups in April from all safelists and viral list builders (including those not listed here): 209

Ok, here’s the stats…

Hits Unique Subscribers Ratio
List Bonus
1,683 73% 36 2.14%
State of the Art Mailer 3,801 74% 21 0.55%
Viral URL 42 88% 19 45.24%
List Adventure
640 58% 14 2.19%
Downline Builder Direct 1,301 55% 11 0.85%
Viral Mail Profits
545 77% 11 2.02%
List Zillion
445 73% 11 2.47%
The Lead Magnet 1,364 66% 9 0.66%
Elevated Power List
306 60% 7 2.29%
Quick List Profits 723 68% 6 0.83%

Excellent month for safelists and viral list builders!

As I said earlier, List Bonus is definitely the place to be advertising right now.

Nuff said.

Ok, that’s it for this month.  For once I don’t know of any new launches coming up in the near future.  That’s probably good because I have my hands full right now with more than enough safelists and viral list builders.

Remember, my results may be different than your own but the only way you will ever know is if you are tracking your results.  Don’t have a tracker?  Get one for free when you join TE Toolbox.  That’s what I use and it works for me.

 The Best Safelists for April 2011
Click here to receive a free copy of Safelist Marketing Tactics