Today I have started a new website called “Traffic Gifts”, a traffic exchange and gift giveaway combined into a single advertising platform to increase website traffic. These are two powerful methods I have used over the last 5 years to build my opt-in list and to start earning a solid income online.

To go in a bit more detail about TrafficGifts, the system allows you to earn points in various ways which include surfing, referring new members and for each upgraded referral. You can even get points for upgrading your account which allows you to place your own gifts on the marketplace and rank them higher by assigning points to them. TrafficGifts takes this one step further and after so many days points are slowly removed from all gifts. This allows the most active users in the system to rank their products high.

If you are looking to grow your list and do it for free or at a very low cost then TrafficGifts is the place you need to be at right now, click here to signup for free.

On Sunday, February 13th, I’ve started the Pre-Launch of the Instant List Empire. The first launch week was huge and I didn’t even find the time to post about it here on my blog.

The Instant List Empire is a combination of a Giveaway Event and a Listbuilder in one program. You can use it to add new subsccribers to your lists by setting up a gift just like you do in a Giveaway Event. The only difference to a Giveaway Event is that your gift at the Instant List Empire will receive new signups for months and even years to come. It’s a never ending Giveaway Event. Next to this automated listbuilding feature you can also post your emails instantly to the inhouse list.

By the time of writing this blog post we have already over 1700 active members onboard and we are growing by over 100 new members a day.

If you haven’t joined the Instant List Empire yet, then do so now. It’s going to be a huge advertising platform that you can use to promote your websites and offers.

Click here to signup for free

Hey Guys,

my last post about 13 Ways To Get Free Website Traffic received many good comments and therefore I thought it’s a good idea to share some more ways to get free web traffic.

Here we go:

1.) Blog Comments

Many people know that some blogs use “do-follow links” and therefore they comment on these blogs to get backlinks to their websites. This in fact works to a certain extend but there is a more interisting way to do it. This strategy is very simple: You try to be the first person or one of the first people to comment on a popular blog.

When a new blog post is published on a popular blog many people will instantly visit this new blog post. They get informed through RSS Readers and sometimes by E-Mail. One example is this blog here… whenever I publish a new blog post I also send out an email about it to my list. Most of the visitors come in the first 24 hours and if you leave a comment early they will most likely read your comment and some click on your name which leads to your website.

The best way to get notified of new blog posts is by subscribing to the RSS Feeds of popular blogs.

2.) The Traffic Network

In my first “13 Ways to Get Free Website Traffic” post you’ll find several Viral Mailers, Credit Based Safelists and Manual Traffic Exchanges. You can build up a huge traffic network with these programs. How you ask? It’s simple: Most of these programs have a Downline Builder included. You’ll see that many programs are kind of interlinked with each other through their Downline Builders (that’s one form of Joint Venture that we program owners do). So… all you need to do is to use these Downline Builders in the traffic programs to interlink all programs. You’ll get referrals this way into many programs as people often join the other programs through the Downline Builders. Your traffic will increase as you get more and more referrals into the different programs.

Now, you need an Entry Point, otherwise you won’t get any referrals at all. There can be many entry points… you can start with a post on your blog… kind of like I did it in my first “13 Ways to Get Free Website Traffic” post. Your blog post will stay online and you can get new referrals through it every day. Your next entry point can be your mailing list… you can promote your blog post to your list and you can promote the programs one by one which is often more effective than promoting all at the same time. There are many more possible entry points… just think about how big such a traffic network can grow.

3.) Article Marketing

There are many article marketing strategies out there. Some people say duplicate content is not good, others say it doesn’t matter. Some people say you need to submit your article to as many article directories as possible, others say you just need to submit it to the Top 5 article directories. If you ask me these things I’ll tell you that I don’t know what’s best. Personally I don’t get very good results directly for my internet marketing websites… that means my internet marketing articles have a very low clickthrough rate. With other niches it’s totally different… for example my fitness articles get a real high clickthrough rate. But… article marketing is not only about getting the traffic directly from the article directories… a big part of article marketing is the search engine optimization strategie behind it.

Here is one way that works well:

You search for a good keyword that you want to rank for. Then you write a 1000+ words article with the keyword in the title, the best is you have the keyword as the first word in the title. Also use the keyword throughout the article a couple times as well as variations or related keywords. Then you post this 1000+ words article on your blog. Next you write a 500+ words article for the same keyword. You post this 500+ words article on article directories and link it to your blog post. It’s even better if you write multiple 500+ words articles and submit a unique version to different article directories. You can also post the articles on Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo or Hubpages. Finally you can bookmark your articles and your blog post with multiple bookmarking services.

This alone can make your blog post rank first position in the search engines if you use long-tailed keywords with low competition.

4.) Video Marketing

There are 2 ways to do Video Marketing. You can either go for alot of low-quality videos for search engine optimization purpose or you can create a few videos with very good content that people will share with friends.

The second version is very hard to do but it’s possible if you take time to research and study a topic before you create the video. Such a video must be well done otherwise nobody will want to share it with their friends. It’s kind of the same as with blog posts… if a blog post is good you might bookmark it and share it with others… if a blog post is not interesting then you will leave the blog very fast and won’t recommend it to anybody. The same applies for videos and about any other content that you can publish on the internet.

The first version is easy to do… creating some 5 minutes video with your webcam or simply with screenshots or a power point presentation can be done in 30 minutes or less. If you distribute these videos with a link in the video description you can build up some valuable links for search engine optimization. One easy strategy is to create a short video about your blog posts and to link to these blog posts. For example I would create a video about Ways To Get Free Website Traffic and then link to this blog post here in the video description.

5.) The Traffic Empire

If you have implemented all of the strategies that you have learned so far, then you have already a good flow of traffic. Your Blog and Your Mailing List are the 2 most important instruments to further build up your Traffic Empire.

Your first step is to get into new launches of Viral Mailers, Credit Based Safelists, Manual Traffic Exchanges and related programs. If you become a JV Partner for the launch you often get a free upgrade or bonus credits. You also have first mover advantage when promoting these new programs, that means it’s easy to get signups. Promote the new launches through your list and through blog posts. With each traffic program you get more traffic to your website and this way it’s free.

You can also search for more traffic programs through search engines or simply join them through the downline builders in your current programs. Integrate all new programs into your Traffic Network and soon you’ll have literally hundreds of programs that send a never ending stream of traffic to your websites.

6.) Testimonials

You can write testimonials for new product launches to get free website traffic. There are many websites that announce the new product launches. Find one, write a testimonial for the product and include a photo of you and your website URL. If the product owner uses your testimonial on the sales page you can get some free traffic with very low effort.

7.) Viral Ebooks

This strategy is really easy to do and can provide you with tons of free website traffic. All you need to do is find a Private Label Rights Ebook and re-write the ebook a bit. Include links to your website inside the ebook. Alternatively you can write a complete new ebook from scratch… it doesn’t have to be a 50 pages ebook, 15 or 20 pages are enough for this strategy. Once your ebook is done you give it away for free through Private Label Rights websites, through Giveaway Events and Download Directories. Include a license in your ebook that allowes the reader to give the ebook away for free to others as well. This way your free ebook spreads all across the internet and links to your website are inside of it.

Alright, I hope you have learned something new from this blog post. If you did, take action now and integrate these techniques into your business.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Happy Holidays to you and your family!

Guido Nussbaum

Hey Guys,

it has been a while since I wrote on this blog. Today I want to show you 13 ways to get free website traffic.

The strategies below can be done by anybody, there are no special skills involved. These techniques have been proven to work and I use them personally all the time to get free website traffic (or I outsource them).

1.) Viral Mailers

There are many Viral Mailers out there and you can get incredible results if you promote Free To Signup offers. Personally I use all of the Viral Mailers below… the more you use, the better your results will be.

- Instant List Empire
- Viral Traffic Bar
- Quick List Profits
- Viral URL
- List Effects
- Viral Ad Store
- Instant Profit List
- Downline Builder Direct
- Viral List Generator
- Viral Traffic Seeds
- Viral Traffic List
- Traffic Power Control
- Epic Traffic Boss
- Traffic List Control

You’ll get most out of these Viral Mailers if you upgrade your account. Often they offer a Lifetime Upgrade for a one-time payment… these are deals that you should take because you can promote multiple programs on these Viral Mailers and you can promote for years to come.

Again, don’t try to sell stuff through emails on these Viral Mailers… promote free to signup offers. The best strategy is to build your own email list by posting free offers to these Viral Mailers.

2.) Credit Based Safelists

There are hundreds of Safelists out there that you can use to get free website traffic but in my opinion you should only use the Credit Based Safelists. The reason is simple: Most people do not use their main email address on safelists… they don’t even read the emails they get. With Credit Based Safelists people need to click the links in the emails to get credits for sending out emails to the safelist.

Now I hear many people saying that the safelists members just click to get credits, so the traffic might be useless. Well, it might be true that they just click to get credits… but if they click they will see your website and if you provide a great free to signup offer then a certain percentage of the visitors will convert into signups.

Below are the Credit Based Safelists that I use to get free web traffic.

- Got Safelist
- Free Safelist Mailer
- Global Safelist
- Ad Tactics
- Ad Solution Online
- Syncronize Ads
- Newage Marketing
- The Traffic Secret

3.) Manual Traffic Exchanges

Many people think that traffic exchanges do not work… that’s because they don’t know how to use these programs the right way. What you need to do is to promote either a Splash Page or a Squeeze Page in these traffic exchanges. You must try to get people on your own email list by offering them something for free in return for the signup. If you use manual traffic exchanges this way then you’ll get tons of new signups to your mailing list.

Below are just some of the manual traffic exchanges that I use to get free website traffic.

- Traffic Witch
- Traffic Splash
- Hit 2 Hit
- Blue Surf
- Royal Surf
- Tezak Traffic Power
- StartxChange
- Dragon Surf
- Sweeva
- Hits Booster Pro
- Hit Safari
- Traffic Taxis
- Soaring4Traffic
- I Love Hits
- Traffic G
- Bootscoot In Traffic
- Max Traffic Pro
- Webbiz Insider
- High Hits
- Advertising Knowhow
- List Surfing
- Swat Traffic
- Major League Hits
- Traffic Muscles

4.) Giveaway Events

There are many ways to get signups to your list but the easiest and fastest one must be to join Giveaway Events as a contributor. You can add hundreds, sometimes thousands of new subscribers to your list through these events and even get extra free website traffic. All you have to do is adding your gift(s) to the event and promoting the event.

As an upgraded contributor you can often also add Banners, Paid Offers and your Profile with links to your website, blog, twitter profile and facebook profile.

Here is a List of Giveaway Events

5.) Ad Swaps

Once you have a couple hundred subscribers on your mailing list you can start to do Ad Swaps. Go to popular forums like the Warrior Forum or other forums that are related to the internet marketing industry. You’ll often find offers for Ad Swaps in the JV Section of the forum… if not, post your own ad swap offer there.

When you do an Ad Swap, you send out the promotion email of your Ad Swap Partner to your mailing list and your Ad Swap Partner will send out your promotion email to his list.

Ad Swaps are free and you can get tons of free traffic and hundreds of new mailing list subscribers every week just by doing ad swaps on a regular basis.

6.) Blogging

One of the best ways to get a steady stream of free web traffic from the search engines is by running your own Blog. You’ll have to get your own domain name and hosting for installing the free Wordpress blogging system. For branding pupose your domain should be Your Name .com just like my blog url is guidonussbaum.com

I won’t go into detail here on how to setup your blog, there are free videos out there that show you exactly how to install and setup Wordpress. Important is the actual blogging procedure and the promotion of your blog and blog posts.

If you want to get free website traffic from search engines, then you’ll have to do some keyword research. Find keywords that people actually search for by using keyword tools like Keyword Spy or the Google Keyword Tool. Make sure that the competition for your keywords is not too high.

When posting a new entry on your blog you include one or two keywords into each post. Enter your keywords into your post title and use them a couple times throughout the body of your blog post. This will make it possible for search engines to associate your blog post with the keywords.

To get listed in the search engines you’ll have to create back-links to your blog posts.

7.) Bookmarking

Bookmarking is one of the easiest ways to get one-way links to your websites and blogs. You can use a tool like SocialPoster.com to bookmark your site with 50 or more bookmarking services. Don’t forget to bookmark your blog posts after publishing them to get even more free traffic.

8.) Link Wheels

With Link Wheels you build up hundreds of strong backlinks to your websites to get a higher listing in the search engines. Usually you optimize each Link Wheel for one keyword.

The exact procedure is not that hard to do but there is not enough space here in this blog post to explain it. Please use a search engine to find the procedure for creating Link Wheels.

9.) Banner Ads

Don’t forget the good old Banner Ads. Banner Ad spots are everywhere… you find them in Traffic Exchanges, Viral Mailers, Safelists, on Web 2.0 sites, on Social Sites etc.

Many people don’t use the Banner Spots and miss out on alot of targeted traffic by doing that. Use every opportunity for free banner ad spots that you come across.

10.) Forums

Become active in Forums that are related to your website’s topic. Being active in forums means that you answer people’s questions, ask your own questions… it means that you provide useful content… don’t try to spam forums with your marketing messages.

The marketing part of forums comes with the Signature that you can setup in most forums. In this signature you should promote a free offer to get people on your own mailing list. A great way to get free website traffic.

11.) Error Pages

This is a huge traffic source once your website is established and receives some traffic every day. Most people don’t use error pages and they miss out on a huge amount of website traffic.

All you need to do is to setup a .htaccess file in the root folder of your domain. In this .htaccess file you can have different error handling entries. They look like this:

ErrorDocument 401 http://www.yourdomain.com
ErrorDocument 402 http://www.yourdomain.com
ErrorDocument 403 http://www.yourdomain.com
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com

These entries mean that if these certain errors (401, 402 etc.) appear, then your .htaccess file redirects the visitor to the domain that is entered behind the error number (http://www.yourdomain.com). So, you can for example re-direct them to your Home Page… personally I redirect them to a simple error page that is filled with Free To Signup Affiliate Offers Banners.

There are more than just the 4 error numbers above that exist. Use the search engines to find the error numbers that you want to handle or look into your server data to find out what errors appear on your site and handle these errors in the .htaccess file.

12.) Twitter Web 2.0 Integration

I’m not that much into Twitter but when I post an update on Twitter, then this update automatically goes out to several Web 2.0 sites and Social Sites like Facebook and MySpace.

On many Social Sites and Web 2.0 sites you can integrate Twitter so that your Twitter posts appear on your Update List of these Social Sites.
There are also services out there that allow you to post on hundreds of micro-blogging sites automatically… personally I concentrate on a few popular ones.

13.) Facebook Groups

You don’t have your own Facebook Group yet? Probably because you don’t know that your own Facebook Group is almost like having your own mailing liist. As the owner of a Facebook Group you can message all members of your group at once… this can be a huge source of traffic!

Alright, that’s it for today. There are definately alot more techniques out there to get free website traffic. Maybe I’ll make another list in the future if you like this one… leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Hey Guys,

it’s Listbuilding time…

… we have just started the Pre-Launch of the famous Halloween Giveaway and you can be part of it to add a couple hundred new subscribers to your list.

In 2007 we’ve started the first Halloween JV and since then we have held this huge listbuilding event every year. Now it’s the fourth time that this popular event is going into Pre-Launch.

You can join us, click here

If you’ve never been involved in a Giveaway Event, then do yourself a favour and check it out. Giveaway Events are the easiest way to build your own list, especially if you are just starting out with internet marketing. And… it’s not only about listbuilding… a Giveaway Event is nowadays a huge advertising platform for your business.

This year we are having a Huge Referral Contest again… there are $1000 in prizes that we give away to our top referrers, next to the huge commissions that you earn from upgrades and special offer sales… and promoting such an event is not hard… it’s free to signup… so, you don’t really promote… you show others how they can build their lists… you help them!

Join us today, click here

I’ll see you inside!

Guido Nussbaum

Hey Guys,

I just came back from my 2 weeks vaccation in Bodrum, Turkey. It have been
2 weeks full of sun, fun and party. I’ve been traveling with my best friend,
Sebastian (whom I know since I’ve been not a month old), and we met alot of
nice people in these 2 weeks. So, today I want to share some impressions and
finish this blog post with some thoughts about business (a vaccation can be
very inspiring).

Let’s start with the day we left good old Germany…. we left the bad weather
behind and arrived savely in Turkey being welcomed by sunshine, blue sky and
a nice hotel crew. Our rooms were small and simple but clean and included airconditioning.
The hotel was pretty cool, it included a private beach, beach-bar pool, pool-bar,
2 restaurants, a 24h lobby-bar etc. etc. We booked all-inclusive, so we could
eat and drink as much as we want.

The days were pretty much the same… hanging out at the beach during the day
and party at night. We were not really interested in visiting castles as they
are around every corner here in Germany… so visiting “tourist attractions”
wasn’t on our plan for this holiday. The first 3 days we checked out the party-life
in Bodrum and Gümbet which is located right next to Bodrum. We had some
fun but soon realized that the party in Gümbet was “too much”
for us (great for 18 to 25 year olds) and the big parties in Bodrum were just
too expensive.  So we ended up
having parties in our all-inclusive hotel which turned out to be alot more fun.

We already met several really cool people in the first night at the “disco”
and on the “lobby party” which happened to be celebrated after all
bars but the lobby-bar had closed. Before the holidays were over we’ve become
friends with half of the people in the hotel including the hotel crew. Many
have become very close friends that we’ll meet back soon.

I won’t go into detail here about people, stories etc. … instead I’ll share
some pictures that I’ve taken.

In these 2 weeks I also had some time to read while getting some teint at the
beach. My book of choice was “Think And Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.
I think most of you know this book, for those who don’t, it’s a Must Read if
you are in business. This book has inspired me alot, especially in regards on
business organazation and master mind groups. I came back from holidays whith
lots of new ideas and strategies that I’ll implement into my business. Here
I want to share a simple procedure that anybody can do to get started in business
or to improve the current business. It’s just a short list but if you take your
time to fully understand it, then you’ve understood the business basics.

So here is the strategy / plan:

1.) Come up with an idea that will definately work (can be a new idea or an
improvement for something that already exists)

2.) Write down a definate plan how you turn your idea into reality

3.) Break your definate plan down into detailed step by step procedures

4.) Hire people (specialists) who go through your step by step procedures and
turn them into reality

5.) Create step by step work plans to maintain and grow your businesss

6.) Hire people (specialists) who maintain and grow your business by going
through the step by step work plans

This simple plan includes 2 major “strategies”, the first one is
to break down your ideas and plans into step by step procedures. If you do this,
then your workers will be replaceable… you can hire new people who will know
exactly what to do due to your step by step procedures. The second “strategy”
is to hire people and not to do it yourself. This is the most important business
principle to understand in today’s internet business world. Most people start
out doing everything on their own. This is in my opinion the No. 1 reason why
so many people fail online.

Alright, enough said… here is a smalll selection of the pictures taken.

Me (on the left) and Sebastian (on the right), first day in Bodrum.	A nice view on Bodrum from our hotel.	Close up of Bodrum with the castle in front, from our hotel.
Sebastian and me coming back from shopping in Bodrum.	Nice dinner at the fish restaurant with Liz, Ellen and Sebastian.	Sebastian and the swordfish.
Me with the swordfish (actually we all had swordfish for dinner).	Party at the beach bar in our hotel.	Liz and me at the beach bar.
Ellen and Sebastian at the beach bar.	Ellen, Annemarie, Jacob and Sebastian at the beach bar.	Liz, Annemarie, Ellen, Jacob and Sebastian at the beach bar.
The whole party crowd at the beach bar.	Jacob, Franky, Sebastian, Annemarie and Claire at the beach bar.	“Stairs Party” late night at the lobby of our hotel.

Hey Guys,

just 21 months ago we started the Traffic Witch traffic exchange and by now we have over 50,000 members onboard.

These members will visit your website if you use Traffic Witch

Don’t let anybody tell you that traffic exchanges don’t work… all you need to do is promote a Squeeze Page or a Splash Page that is related to Internet Marketing.

A Splash Page is a very simple website… hard to explain, so let me give you 2 examples:

1.) One of the Traffic Witch Splash Pages: Splash Page 1

2.) One of the Viral Traffic Bar Splash Pages: Splash Page 2

As you can see, both pages don’t require the visitor to scroll in order to take action. They can click on the Ad / Link and a new window opens in a new browser tab. That new window is the main website where they can join the program.

So, in most cases you would use a Splash Page if you are promoting a Membershipsite.

If you are “just” building your list, then you can use a Squeeze Page in traffic exchanges. You don’t need a long text on your website to get a signup to your list. Your Squeeze Page should be about the same size as the Splash Pages above.

A Squeeze Page is the website that has your autoresponder signup form on it. To get the free signup to your list, you need to create some kind of free offer. You can give away an ebook in return for the signup to your list… or you can give away free software, graphics, templates, services etc. … everything that can benefit a Traffic Exchange Surfer.

It’s important that you understand the audience that is using traffic exchanges. That not only goes for traffic exchanges, it works with every source of advertising!

In case of traffic exchanges, the users primarely want to get traffic to their websites. If you understant this little but most important fact, then you’ll know what kind of offers you have to promote on traffic exchanges.

Yes, offers that promise the user more free traffic to his/her website work very well in traffic exchanges… I’d say these offers work best. But there are also other type of offers that work well in traffic exchanges… things like free ebooks about getting traffic, free ebooks about Hot Topics like Squidoo, Web 2.0, SEO etc. but also all things that have to do with How To Make Money Online.

A Big “Secret” Technique: Surf the traffic exchanges for a while… and you’ll see that certain websites appear again and again. You can be sure that if these websites are shown that often, then the owner will know that it converts well. They won’t keep promoting their site in the traffic exchange if it doesn’t produce results. If you keep your eyes open for a while when surfing the traffic exchanges, then you’ll quickly find out what kind of offers work best.

Traffic Exchange advertising is a big part of my business… thousands of my subscribers came from traffic exchange advertising. If you don’t use traffic exchanges, then you are missing out on tons of subscribers for your list or membershipsites.

Here you can find a list of Manual Traffic Exchanges.

Hey Guys,

the last couple of weeks have been amazing… we’ve been testing the Giveaway Manager 3 software on several events.

There has been: Sunny’s JV, The Worldcup JV, The Instant Underground Gifts JV, The IM JV Gifts and currently running are the Social Marketing JV and the Gentle Mentor JV.

All events have been a success and left the competition standing in the dust. Go to Alexa.com and compare the Giveaway Manager 3 events with events that ran on other software… you’ll see what I mean by saying “we left the competition standing in the dust”.

Much of this success is due to the software but also due to “How we run our events”. Every Giveaway Manager 3 owner has been mentored by me personally and I allowed them to copy my style that I used to run huge events for the last 2 years.

Now it’s your turn!

The Giveaway Manager 3 is now available in combination with personal coaching from me. Work with me through Skype and our Members Only Forum to make your own giveaway event a huge success. Inside our members area you’ll find The Live Recording of the Social Marketing JV. I show you onscreen how to install the software, how to setup and prepare the event for maximum success, how to start the pre-launch of your event, how and where to promote your event, how to launch the event and all my secret tricks and strategies that I use to add thousands of subscribers to my list.

There will be only 100 Spots available!

You can get access to our Giveaway Owner Community starting today… until the 100 spots are gone… Giveaway Manager 3 – Click Here

Hey Guys,

if you’ve been following my last blog posts, then you know that I had a bit of trouble with my autoresponder and that I’ve finally moved my lists to 2 new autoresponders, one is GVO and the other one is Traffic Wave. I’m not sure why but I got the feeling that I should go deeper into the topic “autoresponders” and therefore I write this blog post today.

I can still remember how it was when I first started out trying to make money online. There were all these new tools and new terms of language… and one of these was the autoresponder. First I thought an autoresponder is a very simple tool that just answers your emails automatically with a standard reply… but then I found out it’s alot more than just that.

First of all, an autoresponder is also the host of your list. Your list is basically just data consisting of the names, email addresses and maybe additional data of all the people who have signed up on your list. Yes, people need to sign up, you can’t just enter them on your list… that would be considered “spamming”.

Alright, so the process that we have so far is that people signup on your list… and they do that in most cases by entering their name and email address into a signup form on your website. They hit the submit button and then the signup form processes their data (name and email) to your autoresponder into your list.

There are basically 3 forms of autoresponders that you could use: Desktop Based Autoresponder, Self-Hosted Autoresponder, Hosted Autoresponder.

Here we only want to talk about the Hosted Autoresponder because the other two are not an option for beginners.

Hosted Autoresponders are programs that a company hosts on their servers. These companies (the good ones) have not just 1 server, they have huge server-clusters so that they are able to send out millions of emails per day (as they have many customers). These companies also have people who take care of the delivery rate of the emails. They do this by keeping their server ip’s off from the spam-blacklists, by switching ip’s and with some other methods. They do this for their customers, so you don’t have to take care of that.

The Hosted Autoresponders have a monthly membership fee. Some have a Flat Fee… for example at Traffic Wave you always pay $17,95 monthly no matter how many autoresponders you setup in your acccount and no matter how many subscribers you have. Other Hosted Autoresponders like Aweber or GetResponse will increase your monthly fee depending on how many subscribers you have in your autoresponders. Personally I had to pay over $400 monthly at Aweber… so if you plan to build big lists, then consider that this increasing membership fee can grow to a significant price factor in your business. You’ll be forced to promote stuff to “finance” your autoresponder costs.  Is that the reason why some “Gurus” send out so much crap?

All Hosted Autoresponders have 2 ways of sending out emails. You can use the Follow-Up feature and the Broadcast feature.

The Follow Up emails are the emails that get delivered automatically. You set them up once and then every new subscriber will receive your Follow Up Email. You can time those emails, for example you can send out the first email instantly as a person subscribes to your list. Then you can send out the second email a day later… or two days later if you like. Some marketers setup 50 or more Follow Up emails to automate their email marketing.

The Broadcast emails are the emails that you send out manually, in most cases just once on a certain date. For example, you want to announce the opening of your new membershipsite to your list, then you would send out a Broadcast email to your subscribers.

The Follow Up vs. Broadcast features is something that is not really easy to setup properly. For example: Will you send out your Broadcast to your whole list, even to the people who have just signed up 10 minutes ago? I mean, they signup and get the welcome email and then 10 minutes later they get your Broadcast email which might be a promotional email… not good if you ask me.

What if you have setup 10 Follow Up emails all going out one day after the other… wouldn’t it then be wise to send out the Broadcasts only to the people who are already on your autoresponder for 11 days or longer?

There are several things that you need to think about when setting up your autoresponders. The Broadcast and Follow Up Emails are just one part… but in fact a very important one!

That’s because the whole power of a good email marketing campaign comes from the Follow Up and Broadcast emails. Your success basically depends on what you send out and when you send it out. For example: When you setup 10 Follow Up emails… will you try to sell something already in the second email or will you give only free information and tips in the first couple of emails and start selling in the fifth email?

Personally I think your email marketing strategy must fit to the Offer that gets people on your list.

People don’t just signup for your list because you are a nice person… they signup because you offer them something in return for signing up to your list.

And right there in this Offer is the key for your email marketing strategy!

Let me give you 2 examples:

1.) When people signup for a Free Membershipsite… like a Traffic Exchange or a Safelist or a Free Download Site… then the email marketing strategy should be targeted towards building up trust and a community within the membershipsite. All you need to do to make sales is to get people logging in to your membershipsite. There you can have Login Offers, Special Offers and Backend Offers.

2.) You have a very simple Free To Signup Page where people signup to get a free ebook… then the email marketing strategy can be very different… you could do hard-selling by pushing a product that is related to the first product that you gave away for free. I mean… people signup to get the free ebook, not to join a community. They want to download their ebook and then they want to either read it or download more ebooks from somewhere else. Isn’t that what most of us do?
So in this case I personally think it would be better to hit them right then when they care about the topic… if they just downloaded a free ebook about “How to use Twitter”… then they might be interested in buying an ebook about “How to make money with Twitter”… am I right?

No matter what strategy you think is better… best is always if you test and track different strategies. Try different things and see what works best… if you keep doing this for a while you’ll end up with the best possible conversions.

Alright… this is already a very long blog post… so I must come to an end. I could keep writing about this topic. The thing is, that setting up an autoresponder… the technical part… that’s easy if you take some time to learn how to do it. The hard part is the email marketing itself and that is setting up a good Offer that people will signup for and having good Follow Up and Broadcast emails that lead people towards taking certain actions.

OK, let me guess… now you want to know how you can setup a Killer Email Marketing Campaign… correct?

Believe me, if I’d know a formula that works everytime, then I would show it to you right here on the blog. Fact is that there are certain marketing strategies and techniques that can do wonders… if used properly and if used in the right situation and content. I would recommend you study successful marketers. Signup to their lists and analyse what they do… what do they offer for the free signup… what do they offer after the free signup… what kind of emails do they send you… etc.

Also, I think you should start small. For example, if you are just starting out with internet marketing, then don’t try to open up a huge membershipsite or starting a huge product launch. These things require skills, good contacts and a couple thousand dollars to start. You need a big server, referral contest prizes, a support team, programmers or technical people for bug fixes, big jv partners who promote etc. Way too much for a total beginner!

If you are just starting out, then build up Simple Systems like a Squeeze Page (the signup page) with a free ebook offer. Learn how to get visitors to your Squeeze Page and how to increase the number of people who signup to your list (the conversion rate). Setup different offers… compare the conversion rates for different free products… test different One Time Offers that you show after the free signup to make your first money. Once you are able to get 10 and more signups per day and a couple of One Time Offer sales, then you can move on to the next bigger systems with alot of knowledge in your hands.

The next step could be starting your own Giveaway Event. Your own Giveaway Event is like a little test before starting your own Membershipsite. A Giveaway Event runs for about 4 weeks including the pre-launch. So, you can experience how it is to do Support, how to do proper email communications with your members and other things that you can later use for starting your own Membershipsite. Your own Membershipsite with a free to signup offer and monthly recurring upgrade options plus included affiliate program is the Pro Level of Listbuilding.

Alright, enough for now… Please let me know your questions and let me know what part of the whole Email Marketing and Listbuilding topic you want to know more about.

Post your comments below!

Thanks,

Guido Nussbaum

Hey Guys,

below is a video that shows what the Social Marketing JV is all about and why becoming a contributor to Giveaway Events is a great way to build your list.

Click  Here to signup as a contributor for the Social Marketing JV

Click Here for a list of more Giveaway Events

Let me know…. what do you think about Giveaway Events… are there too many currently?  What makes a Giveaway Event a High Quality one?  What holds you back from signing up as a contributor?

Post your questions and opionions below.

Thanks,

Guido Nussbaum