Okay, so as you can see from the title of this post and screen shot below, I have managed to build my list from 50 to 2000 subscribers in around 15 weeks, which means that I managed to hit my target goal of 2000 by 1st APRIL. (See My Goals For 2010 for more information)

And as I said in my previous post, I’m going to share with you what I did to build my list to that figure in that space of time.

My very first subscribers came in September from me tweeting about my various free offers on Twitter, I had been building my Twitter following since April 2009, and had built up around 4000 followers, mostly targeted to the Internet marketing and make money online niches. So I was lucky that I’d done that.

Twitter proved to be a very slow way of getting subscribers though, and they would often unsubscribe after they got the download. Those that did stay were very unresponsive because I hardly emailed them. The ones that did open my emails, when I finally emailed them that is, they would unsubscribe because they probably didn’t remember how they got on my list.

At the beginning of October of finally got over my fear of entering JV Giveaway Events, yeah I know it sounds funny but i was actually worried about entering these things. It was the fact that it says that you MUST promote the giveaway event to your list, and I barely had one!.. For some strange reason I also had it in my head that I might get banned from entering other JV Giveaway Events if I was caught not promoting (which was not the case at all.)

I really wish I’d started doing the Giveaway Events right from the start like I was told to by, Alex Jeffreys my mentor, because once I found a decent gift and entered as many as I could, slowly but surely my list would grow each week, and this time as the new subscribers came in, I made sure to email them at least one a week with something free and of value with no opt-in required.

I simply used Twitter to promote the JV Giveaway Events as best I could, and this helped keep me from getting my gift removed from a lot of them. However it was nothing like I thought and was no big deal if I didn’t manage to get enough hits to my link, as I’d still get some subscribers from the first few days which is when all the traffic is being driven to them anyway.

I also started using some Safelists to help get more people on my list faster, the main one I used was ListJoe, it allowed me to mail out to about 3000 I think as soon as I joined, and it got me a few subscribers. You then have to earn more credits to be able to send again, by clicking links in emails, that got pretty tedious though and I soon stopped wasting time clicking links in emails, so I didn’t mail out with them again and just did the same thing with a few others instead.

Don’t get me wrong the Safelist sites are ok, but only if you take the discounted one time offers for upgrades when you join, otherwise it is a lot more expensive later, but I didn’t have the cash to do that. I will probably look at joining one of the better Safelists and upgrading soon, as I know people who have done this and it helps them level out the unsubscribes they get. I will blog about it when the time comes, and let my readers of this blog know my recommendation of the Safelist I end up upgrading to.

October and November I spent writing my Traffic ebook, a long process but well worth it. I also attended Lee McIntyre’s Live Workshop in Manchester at the end of October, and this gave me a lot of ideas for list building, and I found out that Jit Uppal who was a speaker at the event built his list and made thousands of dollars, using adswaps.

I finally released my ebook on 23rd November and started entering it in as many JV Giveaway Events as possible.

By December I had built my list to around 50 subscribers using the above methods, which could easily have been a much higher figure but I just hadn’t been giving list building enough focus, I was far too wrapped up in my blog and driving traffic to it, in the hope that they would signup to my list through the free offers I had in my blogs sidebar. However that didn’t really work out, and it only got me a handful.

I decided it was time to start taking this listbuilding more seriously, as I could see my peers boasting mailing lists of up to 2000, and there I was at 50, and I started at the same time as them too… Anyway I think it was about the  first week in December that I started to getting interested Adswaps, after I had spoken to some of my friends that I had made along my journey, namely Paul Wilson, and James Howard, who told me how well adswapping was going for them.

So knowing that I needed to get some more people on my list before starting adswaps, I decided to pay for an upgrade in one of the big JV Giveaway Events, and I managed to add 30 subscribers in just a few days.

So I was now up to 80 subscribers, I knew this still wasn’t anywhere near enough to start adswapping, but I went out looking to try and get my first one set up anyway, and I was lucky enough to find someone with a list much bigger than mine, who offered to send out for me even though he knew I only had 80 subscribers… Very nice of him huh, and you will generally find there are quite a few nice people out there who will help the little guys out if you look hard enough.

I really couldn’t believe my luck, and it really was a case of being in the right place at the right time, as it just happened this person had decided to break his list down, and had some adswaps with a few smaller lists this particular weekend to help the little guys like me out.

I ended up adding 50 people with that adswap in the space of 48hrs, and I had about 120 clicks to my squeeze page. This left me with a total of 130 subscribers, still not really enough (recommended is 250-500 to start adswaps) but I had been bitten by the bug and did everything I could to seek out people with small lists like mine, and offer to send twice for lists twice my size, all the time being honest about my list size, which is very important.

So apart from carrying on joining all the latest JV Giveaway Events, Adswapping is all I have been doing between now and December, and that is what has seen my list grow from 50 – 2000 in 15 weeks. counting all the unsubscribes that I’ve had, and people not clicking on the confirmation link in the emails, I think I must of had about 4000 submissions to my opt-in forms all together… but i make a habit of deleting unsubscribers each week, or you end up paying more for subscribers that are no longer receiving your emails.

I’ve also seen my first sales as a result of the adswaps that I’ve been doing, and I’ve been seeing some consistent small sales each week over the last month, so all the effort I’ve put in to this is really starting to pay off.

If you’ve made it this far down the page, well done. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my little story, I know it’s a long piece of writing that I could of explained in fewer words, but once I started typing the words just started to flow, and before I knew it I’d wrote over 1000 words! (Pitty I wasn’t doing it for an exam, eh!)

I’ve really enjoyed writing this, and it brought back the memories of how frustrated I felt when I had such a small list, that was growing at such a slow rate, and which was all fault of my own. I really hope anyone who may be just starting to build a list will learn from my mistakes by reading this post.

And just to make sure you start off on completely the right track, I’m going to write a short and to the point, step-by-step report for you all, on the exact steps you need to take, to get get your first subscribers and build your list to 2000 and beyond in as little time as possible.

I have only just started writing the report today, and I really want to make sure I include everything you need to get going. I’m going to try my best to include all the resource links and tools, and exact steps needed so that you can get your list off to a flying start.

You can expect that to be released sometime in the next 2-3 weeks…

In the meantime I would love to hear what you think of this post, did you like my little story and the way I told it?… Or did it send you to sleep it was that long?… Either way I want to know.

Until next time…

Sionara,

Paul

(Please note, if you purchase by going through the links in this post I will receive a commission)

As promised, I’m going to walk you through setting up your first list in Aweber. This guide is assuming you have already created your account, so if you haven’t already done so Click Here to sign up. The sign up process is pretty straight forward, & you get a 30 day money back guarantee. I will also add that the if the small monthly fee bothers you, once you’ve got a couple of hundred people on your list, it has the potential to pay for its self. I will go into some of the things you can do to get people on your list in future posts, but for now let’s just concentrate on setting your opt-in form up.

1) Login to your Aweber account, then from the menu at the top of the screen, left click on ‘My Lists‘

2) Left click on ‘+ Create a New List‘

3,a) List Settings: Fill in the following details: Choose a unique name for your new list, this need to be 15 characters or less, Aweber will indicate if the name you choose is available or not. You will also need to give a short description to tell your subscribers what the list/campaign is about. And then in the ‘From Address’ field, enter your full name & email address which you want your emails to appear sent from. This should be an email address you check regularly. Unless you want to recieve an email each time someone subcribes, leave the ‘Subcriber Alerts’ field blank.

3,b) Company Branding: This isn’t essential, but I usually fill it in, see the screenshot below & fill the section in if you want to. If you haven’t got a company logo, then leave that section empty, then click save settings:

4) Back to the top menu now, Left click on ‘Web Forms‘

5) Left click on the ‘+ Create Web Form‘ tab. Then fill in the form name (this name only appears to you). Now look at the screenshot below, these are the settings I use. When you’re done here click ‘Next’ at the bottom right of the screen.

6) Web Form Edit: The form that you see on this page should be fine as it is for your first web form. But if you would like to add a header or footer, or change the text on the submit button, simply hover over them & click to edit. After you’re done here click ‘Save’

7) Now we need to go back to the ‘My Lists’ tab on the top menu, & click on ‘Confirmed Opt-In’

8.) Go to the bottom of the page, Now this is optional, but creating a success page with a download link, using a HTML editor, is something I would suggest doing. You’ll need to find a good ebook or report that has giveaway rights, you then use this as a incentive for people to sign up to your list. So when you’ve chosen your gift, upload it to your webspace using the file manger option in your cPanel.  Then all you need to do is add the URL to to the .html page that you’ created with the download link on. Once you’ve done that click on the ‘Save Confirmation Success Page’ tab.

9) Now go back & click on the ‘Web Forms‘ Tab, Now click on ‘Get HTML’

10) Now select all the text, as shown in the screenshot below, & copy it (Crtl+C)

11) Now for this example I’m going to show you how to add the Opt-In form to your blogs sidebar. So login to your WordPress Dashboard, now goto Appearance > Widgets:

12) Locate the Text widget, then drag & drop it into one of your sidebars, which you’ll find to the right of the screen you are on.

13) Paste in the script code you copied from the Get HTML section on Aweber, give it a title, click ‘Save‘ & that’s it. Now visit your site & you should see the Opt-In form in your blogs sidebar, this will be viewable no matter what page someone is browsing on your blog.

Congratulations, you’ve set up your first Opt-In form, you will now want to start adding some follow up emails to the list you’ve just created. Be sure to give value to your subcribers, & don’t send any promotional emails to them right away. Instead give them more free stuff, & start to build a good relationship with them, tell them about yourself, let them know who you are & encourage interaction from them, do this & you won’t go far wrong.

Stay tuned, I’ll be making another ‘how to’ type post soon.

Thanks for reading,

Paul.

Before I go through setting up your autoresponder I’m going to talk a bit about what exactly an autoresponder is. & why you should use a paid subscription service like Aweber, which is a thirdparty autoresponder service, it’s also the service that I personally use.

Firstly, What is an Autoresponder?

An autoresponder is a basically a piece of software that allows you to collect & store peoples email addresses, when they opt-in through a form, such as the one in the top right sidebar of this blog. It also allows you to set up a series of pre-written emails to go out at specified regular intervals. This means you can send out emails without the need to be at your computer, you could just set whatever emails you wanted to go out over a weeks period, then come back a week later & all those email will have been sent without you having to lift a finger.

Why you should NOT host your own autoresponder!

Some people don’t like the idea of having to pay a monthly fee to an autoresponder company, so they choose to host their own mailing list on their server. This could be more trouble than it’s worth, you see ISP’s are so fed up of spammers they will shut you down & ask questions later, & needles to say this could cost you a lot more in damaged reputation, not to mention you could even end up losing your hosting account & domain name. There’s also software out there that you can run from your desktop, but the minute you start sending mass emails from your home computer you risk having your home internet cut off, my advice, just don’t do it.

The benefits of an autoresponder service

With an autoresponder service like Aweber, which is who I use for my mailing list, you irradicate all those above risks & problems. If anyone does complain you spammed them, as long as you have the confirmed opt-in turned on, Aweber will have proof that everyone on your list has confirmed they want to receive information from you, & you should be safe. Aweber also has many advanced features like, track who opens your messages, track who clicks your links, See which ad campaigns or signup forms bring you the most subscribers, & excellent email deliverability + too much more to mention. Of course they are other autoresponder services out there, but in these uncertain times I prefer to keep my list of prospects safe with Aweber, the biggest company of them all, & recommend you do too. At least we know they aren’t going to disappear, along with our lists.

In my next post I will go through setting up your first list in Aweber.

Thanks for reading,

Paul.

PS

If you’d like to learn about how you can start building YOUR list, & how profitable it can be? Then you might want to download my free report.

FREE LIST BUILDING REPORT!!