Six Ways to Build Your Mailing List

A eBay seller with a list of over 100,000 opt-in members reveals the how he built a massive list that brings him ongoing profits and how you can do the same

This special guest article is by Jim Cockrum. Jim is a highly successful sellers on eBay and one of the most respected eBay gurus. His ebook, "The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay" is the all-time, top-selling book on making money on eBay.

Jim first revealed his strategies for building massive opt-in lists with his eBay auctions in Silent Sales Machine. He has since tested and perfected his strategies for making sales to people who visited his auctions, even if they never placed a bid. He laid out these strategies in a step-by-step guide on how you can use the same techniques to profit from your auction visitors, whether they bid on your auctions or not.

In this article, Jim reveals some of the secrets from that guide, "Turn Your Auction Traffic Into Cash," so you can get an idea of just how powerful and how simple this strategy can be for you. (Incidentally, at the time he wrote this article, he had "merely" 50,000 readers. Today, that total has grown well over 100,000. Once you get started, this strategy can really soar!

How I Grew My Mailing List to 50,000 Readers

by Jim Cockrum

=====================================

One of the "multiple streams of income" that I now enjoy is from my email mailing lists. The money I earn is crazy and it just keeps getting better. Advertisers, joint ventures, product sales and other creative strategies all produce a very nice income for relatively little effort. A big mailing list is truly a powerful thing! I started my first mailing list on eBay so I could inform my past customers when I put a new item of interest up for auction. Now I have several lists and my biggest list is over 50,000 members large.

Definition:

If you aren't sure what a "joint venture" is you should go back and read article 2 from this July 2003 newsletter: http://www.silentsalesmachine.com/newsletter/072803.html

I've been writing about the benefits of growing an email mailing list for a couple of years now. Many of the readers of this newsletter are having success with their mailing lists too. I love to hear the success stories!

One question I get quite frequently is "How did you grow your mailing list?"

Before I go any further with this article I have to make sure you understand that I am talking about OPTIN lists here -not "spam" lists. Stated simply, my mailing list is comprised 100% of people who requested to be on my mailing list and I can prove it. You must have that policy when growing your list.

Here's a summary of how I've grown my list:

When I first started growing my main mailing list the sign-ups came from:

• 60% My eBay Auction business
• 40% Joint Ventures

Now they come from:

• 10% Auctions
• 10% Ezine advertising
• 20% Pay Per click (i.e. overture.com)
• 30% Joint ventures
• 30% Quality original content

Here's each area explained further:

My eBay auction business

You ARE allowed to grow your mailing list using your eBay contacts. You have to know the rules, but it can be done and I've been doing it for years and I'm well within eBay's policies.

eBay's EXACT policy:

"Sellers are permitted to invite other users to join a mailing list (via emai) as long as the email (invitation) is related to the transaction and the mailing list invitation is not the primary purpose of the email."

Clear as mud right?

It's not hard to stay within eBay's policy and still grow your list. Here's how:

EVERY legitimate email I send to past customers or inquiring new customers ends with an invitation to join my mailing list.

I go into more detail on these concepts in my book "The Silent Sales Machine", but here is a condensed list of eBay ideas:

• Run auctions for 10 days (instead of 3 or 7). Maximum customer exposure leads to more sign ups
• Don't use the "Buy it now" option - it limits your exposure to new customers
• Start bidding low with no reserve. This encourages an early bidder. One bid leads to 500% more visitors than no bids.
• Ship internationally and get A LOT more hits on your auctions
• Use your eBay "about me" page to its full potential
• Encourage customers to "Please email me with questions" and leave your email address in the auction
• Use an autoresponder for all customer inquiries (and include an invite to your mailing list)
• Sell popular items that get a lot of traffic. Use tools like auctionkeyword.com for ideas.

I could go on, but you get the point. There are many ways to go about this!

I never "surf" eBay looking for new subscribers. That would be spamming. I let them come to me!

Ezine Advertising

Ezine is short for "email magazine". I call mine an email newsletter. Many would call what you are reading right now an "ezine" but I call it an email newsletter so I don't have to explain what an "ezine" is all the time. While I don't usually accept advertising in this newsletter, many ezines are open to advertising or JV's (joint ventures).

You can use OTHER PEOPLE'S ezines to grow your mailing list!

Here's the best way:

Whenever advertising ANYTHING in someone else's ezine use wording like this in your ad, "For more information email: yourname@yoursite.com".

This works better than simply advertising a specific website and it leads to a larger mailing list for you. If you get a lot of response from your ad consider using an autoresponder to answer the incoming mail. Invite ALL responders to join your list.

Looking for the BEST categorized directory of Ezines that accept advertising and joint venture offers?

Check out:

http://www.silentsalesmachine.com/doe.html

Also, I use getresponse.com as my email autoresponder and list management service. Here's my affiliate link if you'd like to check them out:

http://www.silentsalesmachine.com/grcom.html

Joint Ventures

My first JV was with a lady who had a mailing list of about 40,000 names. I offered her 50% of all sales and she sent her list an offer for one of my products. I sold about $1200 worth of product so I made about $600. I also gained about 800 subscribers to my newsletter! Since the product was an eBook that I had resell rights to there was NO expense for either of us and delivery was automatic! (more on that in article 3 below)

The nice thing about doing a joint venture with someone who has a large mailing list is that you can get several new subscribers as a result. Many people who are sent your offer will join your list.

Pay Per Click

I use pay per click traffic from overture.com to grow my mailing list as well.

To maximize the number of new sign-ups I get from this traffic I try to mention the "free newsletter" in the advertising listing. This sets the expectation in the customers mind when they visit my site. I also have a pop-up window that still gets good results from all that traffic.

Quality Content

I do my best to fill every newsletter I publish with quality content that keeps my readers coming back. The nice thing about happy customers is that they like to spread the word. To help them spread the word I encourage them to "pass this newsletter to a friend". I gain subscribers every time I publish a newsletter.

If you are afraid of writing a newsletter consider letting someone else do it! Check out the link I gave you above to my favorite ezine directory - they have a service available that will write your ezine for you!

How I lose subscribers

It's a fact that I lose 1-2% of my subscribers EVERY TIME I do a mailing.

The reason I lose 1-2% EVERY MAILING is simply explained. Every time I broadcast an email message to my list I automatically monitor "bounces" using my email list management service getresponse.com. Bounces are email addresses that are undeliverable for any number of reasons (i.e. mailbox full, account closed etc.). If a user sends me three bounces they are dropped from the list. This policy helps prevent my mailings from being perceived as spam by email servers that are bouncing all those emails back to me. People change email addresses all the time and they let their mailboxes get full as well. It's a reality that affects all of us with mailing lists. You have to purge your "bounces" and a good mailing list service will do that for you.

I was told by Terry Dean (who had a list of 80,000 at the time) that unless he aggressively grew his list his subscriber count was lower EVERY DAY. Your mailing list is a constantly fluctuating asset that needs care and attention to continue to grow.

To prove how valuable a large email list is just ask ANY Internet marketer what one business item they would save if their office was burning down. Without exception they will say "MY EMAIL MAILING LIST!"

I hope you'll use some of these ideas to grow your mailing list.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jim Cockrum
Author-"The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay" and "Turn Auction Traffic Into Cash" Click the links to discover even more about carrying out the powerful strategies described in this article.

Helping you become the successful business owner you want to be.

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