You should be aware that building a list is an essential to any business. Whether it’s a list of leads, prospects, clients, customers…they are part of the equation. If you haven’t started building a list, get going! Give your list tender loving care and you’ll be rewarded.

Tip 1:  Offer Free VALUABLE content, constantly. There’s a difference between offering a free eBook download and continually giving free advice, tips and ideas.

Tip 2:  Create capture or squeeze pages. One of the easiest ways to get someone’s information (name and email) is by offering something free if they just submit their information. The capture page should be related to what you’re giving away. If you’re page targets people who are looking for a work-at-home business then your free offer should be content about work-at-home subject matter.

Tip 3:  Use MANY different advertising channels. There are a vast number of ways to advertise directly and indirectly that you could do it 24/7, no joke. Some ideas are PPC, Website banner ads, Traffic Exchanges, List Builders, Forums, Classifieds, Article Submission sites and social networks.

Tip 4:  Purchase qualified leads. Of course this is an easy way but if you have a budget to spend on QUALITY leads, this may be a way to go. And, don’t just buy any leads. You could get 100 leads a day for $10 but I will bet you those leads will be garbage.

Tip 5:  Share your story. People want to follow genuine, experienced individuals. If you’ve been in internet or network marketing for 6 months, you absolutely have a story. It could be as simple as “When I started ____ and now ____.” …of course with some depth. You have to give people a reason to listen to you, and a story is a necessity to being a marketer.
I’ve kept these tips pretty generic. Have no fear, I DO plan to go into detail on these tips in coming posts so stay tuned. Better yet, subscribe via RSS or join my newsletter so you’ll find out when I make an update.

Have a wonderful day!

It’s probably safe to say that 95% of people have a grasp on life but just how many people work to progress? There’s a fine line between making things happen and progress. I continue to read on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and other sites where people write status updates/messages. These messages are of a variety that has no end – from “eating dinner” to “Just read a book” to “Have you seen this video?”. I’m a little baffled how people really get things done towards their goals when they are doing a dozen things within the same hour.

Some time ago I watched a video by Eben Pagan and he talked about productivity a bit. Now this information wasn’t a “never before seen” discovery (although I believe he did some testing on this claim) but his point was that to be truly productive it was best to do things in time blocks. Basically, instead of spreading yourself between 4 things in a given two hours, focus on JUST 1 thing before moving to the next. He claimed it takes 20 minutes to really get into something with deep thought. If you break away from copy-writing and then try to go back, it will take 20 minutes to get into your thought process and frame of mind. If this is accurate then most people are much less productive than they could be…

Eben’s information ties directly into my “Progressive Marketing” course. Generally we all have several things going on in our lives such as family, friends, running a business, creating websites, cooking, school, work, etc.. The concept behind Progressive Marketing is to help you become more productive immediately. There are dozens of things you simply don’t need to spend as much time doing as you probably are currently.

There is a big huff in the Internet marketing world as people struggle to make their first $1000 or even $100 but it’s simply not hard to do if you’ve got the right skills, tools, resources and drive. I’m going to help you get away from that struggle – you’re going to want me to help you.

So where do you get this Progressive Marketing course? When it’s ready, you’ll find it on The Progressive Marketing website. Oh, and you’ll get Free stuff right away – it’s pretty awesome.

Talk to you soon.

~Matt

Previously I wrote about the importance in building an email list so this post is about the ‘how’ part of the equation. I’d like to first mention that there are dozens of ways to effectively build an email list of your own that I simply will not cover in this post since there are so many possibilities.

There are thousands of people on the Internet every day who are searching for an answer. Generally that answer will solve some kind of problem they are facing or resolve an issue. sorry, but you need to read between the lines a little bit in order to understand what I mean. The answers people search for aren’t necessarily based on factual questions but rather on ‘how to’ or some kind of help to make their lives better. It can be in the form of a book, a product to help in the kitchen, cooking instructions, medical “cures” for a sickness…the list goes on.

What does this have to do with “how” to build a list? Something that you may or may not know already is that you can build a list in virtually any market/niche that you desire. Marketers already have wide variety of email lists from bowling to cooking to musical instrument instructions to the most obvious, how to make money on the Internet. One of the strategies to list building is targeting a niche of some kind. You want to focus your attention to a specific market in order to appeal to a audience you know would be interested in your product/service. In most cases the people in markets outside the “how to make money online” niche are going to be easier to sell as they have not been hammered or saturated with product offerings around their interests. By targeting these less saturated niches you open plenty of opportunity to grow your business and get plenty of untouched leads.

In order to build a list the easiest way is providing content for free. This content needs to be valuable, interesting, and unique/different than the average content you would find on almost any related website. By providing valuable, free content, people will want to come back for more. If you offer a bunch of stuff for free (and it’s valuable with good info) the visitor/prospect will be more willing to buy from you – that’s simply how it is.

You can offer free content such as videos and eBooks via an auto-responder. The visitor goes to your website, they read some copy for the freebie (and the copy shouldn’t be long by the way because you’re giving something away), the visitor fills out a short form which automatically subscribes them to your auto-responder system, and then they get the freebie emailed to them automatically. Now you have that visitors information and they have the freebie you promised. it’s really that simple, honestly.

Have questions? leave a comment or contact me though my form. I’ll usually respond within a business day. If I don’t, try write a comment instead.

Several minutes ago I finished listening and watching a recorded webinar between two networkers. One of the messages has really stuck as it’s probably quite accurate regarding how people use networking in their business and even their lives. Unfortunately by human nature we’re greedy – we put ourselves first.

Networking on the internet has become a career for many people. Additionally, even more people dream in becoming financially successful through network marketing. There’s a fundamental issue staring those people right in the face and the majority of them probably don’t even realize.

While I was listening to the webinar, one of the marketers said that you need to be willing to invest in someone else. How many times have you heard that? Personally I thought the saying was “You need to be willing to invest in yourself”…not “…invest in someone else”!! This CAN’T be right…

To my surprise this concept is way more powerful than I would have ever thought. Chances are I wouldn’t have thought like that anyway but it makes a lot of sense. In theory you’re not just investing in someone else but also yourself, at the same time. Now, we’re not talking about money necessarily so don’t freak out too much on me.

One of the great powers of networking is the blossom and even viral effect it can create for you. To do so you can start by asking people how you can help them. I know, it sounds pretty basic…and it is. Providing people with a value that they need is THE item of importance. Again, providing someone else with something they feel is valuable can drastically improve your networking success. Yes, it’s a very simply concept but makes perfect sense.

Let’s take an example of the above and put it into context.

You know John who is an internet marketer. John already makes $40,000 a year in his online business. Great! Just because he makes more money than you do (and in this example we’ll pretend it’s true) doesn’t mean anything. You contact John and simply ask if their is anything you can do to help him. Of course, that is done with a slight introduction of yourself. John gets back to you and says he needs help designing a better website and you reply back saying you can help him get a great new design for his site.

At this point John has already welcomed you to help as well as told you what he needs. Now you can do one of two things; give him that value he’s looking for or not, it’s that simple.

You then contact a couple web designers after taking a look at their samples and connect John with one of the designers. You’ve now provided John with value, not trying to sell him something without knowing him. Do you think John is going to stay connected with you? Chances are he will as you did something FOR him at no cost on his end.

This type of networking can get even better. Imagine applying similar principles to marketers who are more successful than John. Don’t think it could happen? Think again.

As a networker you want to connect with people by earning their trust and providing value to them. This can be done several ways but the above is a powerful idea that I’ve just learned about. Put other people’s needs ahead of yours like the example explains. It’s easy to say “What do I get out of it?” and if you think about the example, you’ll understand how quickly you can connect with very successful people for almost nothing.