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

Hey there people,

As you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been by here recently, it’s been quite a while since I last blogged, in fact it’s the first time since I started this blog, that I’ve let a month go by without blogging!

I’ve just been really concentrating on building my list this past 30 days, because I’m doing everything I can to try and make 2000 subscribers by April 1st… That was part of my first goal on my last post My Goals For 2010.

So far so good, I’ve gone from 345 to just over 900 subscribers since I last blogged, so I’m certainly getting there.

I’m treating it as a bit of a game where 2000 is the number of points I need to get to “the next level”, and I must say I’m quite enjoying the challenge, and watching the numbers grow each day.

Of course we all know it’s not a game, and what this is actually doing is building the foundations of my business, and as any Internet Marketer will tell you, their subscriber list is the main part of their business, which doubles up as a push button traffic solution… You can’t get much better than that, FREE traffic at will.

Not only that, I’ve also made my first 4 sales, as an affiliate. Two of these were signups for 14 day trial offers that didn’t stick, but there’s still another ongoing that may stay on for the first months training.

The other sale was a one time offer sale from someone who signed up through me on a JV Giveaway Event, and the best part was i got 100% commission on it.

Those sales were the proof I’ve been waiting for, the small amount the sales were worth is irrelevant to me, it’s enough for me to truly see the massive potential and power of Internet Marketing and Listbuilding combined, and things can only get bigger and better… And now I’ve seen for myself that this stuff really does work if you stick at it.

Also in the month of January I got my first product on Clickbank, I’ve not really done much to promote it yet, and it’s not getting as much traffic from the Clickbank Market Place as I would like, but it’s a start and another big chunk of progress for me to look at and feel proud of.

It’s a very good traffic related product that I bought private rights to, I’ll probably blog about it soon once I’ve seeked some professional advice on what I should be doing next with it. I already have a pretty good idea of what I should be doing with it, I’ve just not had the time, so I may end up outsourcing to help get the word out.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress with that too.

I’m also pleased to announce that my Traffic Guide For Newbies eBook, has now had well over 1000 downloads, so I can safely say that writing your own eBook/Report is definitely worth the time and effort, especailly when you consider that each subscriber on your list, is worth $1 per month on average over time.

If you’d like to hear more about the steps I’ve taken to get my list to where it is now, please leave a comment below, and I’ll put something together on it for my next post.

If you have any other questions just let me know.

Paul

This post is a little overdue, but first I don’t want you to think I started the year off slacking… Far from it!

I have been very busy behind the scenes concentrating on setting things up to build my list, and I’ve also been working on a few things that will hopefully help bring some extra money in to fund things like Aweber, hostsing, etc…

I will most likely blog about my other projects when I’ve had time to see if they bring in the desired results, and what ever happens I will more than likely create a product for you to benefit from, be it about my success or otherwise… And of course I will make it free of charge to my subscribers!

I’ve also spent a good amount of that time planning for the weeks and months ahead, so I’ll move on now and state my goals for 2010 to the world, something which I’ve never done before might I add…

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My Goals For 2010

These are the things I am going to achieve by the end of 2010:

Business Goals

• Build my list to 10,000  (current total stands at 345 so I have a looong way to go, I think it’s achievable though)

For the first quarter of the year my goal is 2000 by April 1st (I will update this every quarter)

• To be Consistently making between $2,000 – 3,000 per week
• Get my Alexa traffic rank inside the top 100,000 (currently stands at 211,236)
• Create a successful Membership Site of some kind
• Create and release at least 2 products based on my results with things I’m doing to build my business
• Help as many newbies as possible get started with their online endeavours, and give them my full support
• Make a blog post every 1-2 weeks
• Do a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on the Warrior Forum in February
• Create videos for my blog and subscribers every month (currently in the process of learning more about creating screen capture presentations)
• Make easy to follow action plans for each part of my business
• Do more keyword research and Search Engine Optimise this blog and rank on the first page for all my chosen keywords and key-phrases
• Add some sales funnels into the mix
• Surround myself with like minded positive people and keep in contact on a daily/weekly basis (already in process)
• Test and track everything that I do, and work on ways to improve the results
• Give myself a set start and finish time for working on my business each day, and use the time wisely. (Any internet usage after that is my leisure time.)
• Work to a countdown timer on each task to get the best use of my time, and increase my productivity
• Treat this as proper business, if YOU don’t work hard enough YOU get fired! ( this is to give me some motivation when I read this back each week.)
• Make a new pledge to myself and read it each day before I start working on my business
• Look back at these goals every day to remind me why I’m doing this, and what I want to achieve by the end of the year ( This is written in my pledge)
• Stick to a strict plan of action at all times
• Have a set routine to motivate myself before I start working each day
• Keep a Journal documenting everything that I do each day, and make it a part of my daily tasks to write it.

Entrepreneurial Goals

• Create a system that brings me a consistant flow of leads into my business
• Refer back to the MWA coaching and listen to it all again, check my notes from the first time and see what I missed.
• Work harder at branding myself
• Learn more about making video screen presentations
• Study copy-writing
• Study sales funnels
• Study SEO
• Study product creation
• Get into the habit of focusing on the positives, and irradiate the negatives
• Study motivational material

Personal Goals

• Make enough money so my dad can take a well deserved early retirement. (This means so much to me, and is the main reason I’m doing this. My dad has barely taken a day off work in 10 years, probably longer.)
• Make enough money to put towards buying a detached house for my parents, and me while I still live with them (I still live with my parents in a small semi-detached house right now, so we all need somewhere bigger now)
• Make enough money to be able to afford my own place and all the bills that go with it
• Treat my mum and dad to an all expenses paid holiday
• Do more exercise and get out of the house more
• Keep things neat and tidy and have a clean up each month (right now I’ve got papers everywhere, my desk is dusty, and I keep losing things)
• Book myself a holiday
• Book myself and some friends on a driving experience weekend at Silverstone Race Track
• Treat myself to a 50″ widescreen TV (or maybe slightly smaller if I’m still in this small house..lol)
• Purchase a PS3 once I’ve acheived some of my big monetary goals (I could afford one of these now, but I don’t want to distract myself from my business, so this will be a treat)

I’m off to start breaking this down into monthly and weekly plans now, I hope you have enjoyed this insight into my business and what I have planned for the future.

Now go and create your own plan of action, feel free to use mine for ideas… But remember that your goals and plan will be different than mine, and it is important to include things in your personal plan that will motivate you and drive you to succeed, no matter what it takes.

Also you may wonder why I haven’t really added that many expensive treats for myself in my personal goals, well for me it is making other people happy and seeing their reactions that gives me a buzz… And doing things for the people I care about is more than enough motivation for me, so the most expensive of my personal goals are actually for other people as crazy as that sounds.

It’s also so I can tell my Dad ” I told you so”… He doesn’t believe that it’s possible to make money doing what I’m doing, which only pushes me harder to make it happen… So thanks Dad.

Paul

PS- Making your goals public like I have here is the best way to accomplish them, you see holding myself accountable to you all, and displaying my goals here for all to see, is going to make me work my butt off to achieve them. Because I will be writing another post at the end of the year, like I did with  2009, The Year It All Began…., and while it won’t be the end of the world if I don’t achieve everything I set out to do, it won’t make me feel to good having to say I didn’t manage to achieve this , this and this.

Also feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think of my goals, and if you don’t have a blog of your own yet (highly recommended) then you can simply hold yourself accountable to me and the readers of my blog by replying to this post with your goals.

Don’t be shy, give it a try!

So here we are coming towards the end of 2009, and it has been a great year for me…

It was this time last year that I properly got interested in the whole make money online concept, but unlike in the past, this time I decided to take the plunge and get my very own website online.

Having my own website was something that I had been worried about doing in the past, it was the thought of all the technical stuff involved. But now that I’ve taken action and done it, using all the guides that are available these days, I found it was actually quite simple, and I now realise I should of done it sooner instead of putting it off.

My very first website was www.Online-Auction-Success.com , which I didn’t mention in my recent eBook Traffic Guide For Newbies because it wasn’t a very successful site, it was a project that I started with little knowledge or planning, and was somewhere that I was sending my eBay customers to at the time.

I worked on Online-Auction-Success.com right up to May/June, which was when I came across Mr Alex Jeffreys and his brand new coaching program, which after some thought I signed up for. It was at that point, following Alex’s advice, that I wound everything up that wasn’t making me any money in order to give all my concentration to the coaching. A few weeks later the coaching started and this blog, Paul-Lear.com was born.

Although Online-Auction-Success.com wasn’t a successful site, I believe that I wouldn’t have even considered signing up for a coaching program, had I not made that first step earlier in the year, and got a bit of experience with the technical side of things.

So if you are interested in making money on the internet, the best thing you can do, if you haven’t already, is dive in head first and get your own personal blog online, like I have here at Paul-Lear.com . Don’t waste time taking the route I took, with my unsuccessful niche blog. When you are starting out, personal blogs are the best way to go.

Referrring back to when I joined the Alex Jeffreys coaching program. Advised by Alex I started my own personal blog on a new domain name, and I can honestly say that my decision to have Alex as my mentor is the best decision I have made this year.

Here is what I have achieved since I joined Alex’s coaching program:

1. I started this blog, which as been reasonably successful.
2. I have met lots of great like minded people, and made many good friends through visiting peoples blogs regularly.
3. I have learned a great deal about how to drive traffic to a website, and I am still learning more about this each day.
4. I have learnt the importance of building a list of prospects and buyers.
5. I signed up to Aweber and I am now building an email list of willing subscribers. (which was another thing I had once put off doing)
6. I have built my email list to 215 subscribers, (bare in mind that I was neglecting my list building efforts until November)
7. I now have 4 websites online, and I’m about to purchase another new domain for a new project in January.
8. I made my first video and overcame my fear of speaking in front of the camera.
9. I made my first tutorial video using the screen capture software, Camtasia Studio.
10. I wrote my first eBook Traffic Guide For Newbies, and released it on 23rd November. It has now had 76 downloads on it’s own, and I also added it to a download package which has had 80 downloads.
11. I attended my first Live Workshop which was hosted by Lee McIntyre, and I met some great people including Alex Jeffreys, John Thornhill, and of course Lee McIntyre himself. I also met some of my fellow Marketing With Alex students there too which was cool.
12. I have started to develop a good marketing mindset, which makes it easier when it comes to creating squeeze pages and writing email copy for adswaps, and writing sales pages.
13. I have developed a love of blogging and writing, which at the start of this year I never thought I would even begin to enjoy those things!
14. I have driven many thousands of visitors  to my websites.
15. I’m now focused, dedicated and determined to succeed at Internet Marketing, and most importantly I’m enjoying it! 

I’m sure you can see from all that I have listed, that compared to where I as at the start of the year, which was pretty much a newbie, that I’ve achieved quite a lot in the last six months, and it all stems back to that one simple action I took at the beginning of the year, to get a website online. That was what started me on this whole journey, and I am looking forward to next year, where in 2010 I am certain I will achieve much more!

So if there is something you have been thinking about doing, that you’ve been putting off, just take action NOW, stop thinking about doing it and just get it done!.. You never know what it might lead to, and if you aren’t prepared to take a little risk now and then, you will never achieve very much, and you will remain at the same stage you are at now.

If I hadn’t of made the decision to finally start a website this time last year, I would most likely still be doing the same thing I had been doing for the past couple of years, which was very little other than playing computer games and wasting time watching far too much television. Now don’t get me wrong, I still make sure I take time out to relax and do those things today, I just plan my time better to fit everything in that I want to do.

I hope you have got something out of this post, and I will be following on from this in my next post, with my plans for 2010.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers and everyone who has supported me throughout 2009, a very Happy & Profitable New Year!

Best Wishes For 2010

Paul

Images courtesy of Francesco Marino and Dan

I’ve decided it’s about time I posted an update of my progress, and what I have been doing recently. This is actually an idea I came up with after visiting Jacinta Dean’s blog. Jacinta has been doing weekly posts of her daily tasks, and I’ve been meaning to do something similar for a few weeks now.

I’ve decided not to do a list of my daily tasks for the week, as I doubt I would keep up with it. So instead I will try and do one of these posts, once a month, as I think this will be less of a chore for me!

I wasn’t really writing things down much back in August, so I’ll start in September.

Now I can see how important it is to keep a journal of your daily tasks, this is something that Alex Jeffreys talks a lot about in the coaching. So if you haven’t started to keep a journal yet, then I recommend you to start one today!

September

• Contributed in a Giveaway event for the first time, and unbeknown to me, I went and chose the only event with different rules from the average giveaway. The rules in this giveaway were that instead of all gifts being shown at the start, you had to earn points by referring people to get your gift shown! I don’t think my gift ever shown because I found it hard going to get referrals. So that put me off giveaways a little, as I thought they were all like that.

• Caught up on some coaching modules that I had fallen behind on.

• Ended up not being very well throughout September, and it made me lose focus a bit. I also let my birthday pass by without mentioning it here. It was on 17th September, and I turned 28! I had a few beers with my cousin, and despite being ill I still managed to have a decent time.

• Installed the Alexa Toolbar which sparked a string of posts about it – Improve Your Alexa Rank Challenge (Part 1), Alexa Rank Challenge (Week 1 Update), and Top 10 Tips To Increase Alexa Rank

• Started trying out different things with MyBlogLog to see if I could get some extra traffic from there.

• Started enjoying blog commenting more, and made some good friends in the process.

• Had an idea for my first ebook/report, and started to plan and write it.

• Purchased one of John Thornhill’s latest and greatest products – Profit From PLR . I’ve had a quick look at the videos and this is top quality information, and I’m pretty sure that once I put this into action (which will be as soon as I’ve finished working on my free ebook) I’m sure I will be able to make some good monthly income from this business model. I can also see this building me some big targeted lists in various niches too.

October …so far

• Made a blog post about what I had learnt from experimenting with MyBlogLog to drive traffic – How I Use MyBlogLog To Drive Targeted Traffic.

• Continued writing ebook, but started to struggle with it a bit. I’ve heard it called writers block, and I know exactly what they mean now. I have been writing pages, then having a break. When I come back and read what I wrote in the last session, I decide it’s a load of rubbish and delete it. But I’m getting on with it a bit better now and not reading it back so much. It’s also turning out to be a longer book than I planned.

• Found what I think it a decent package to use for the Giveaway events. I’ve submitted it to 2 events so far, which haven’t yet launched. I’m going to set a page up showing all the current giveway events soon, as this might help with referrals? I’ve seen a lot of others doing this so I think it must help a bit?

• I set up a second Twitter account based on one of my profit pulling platforms, and to help build my list. Currently I’ve grown it to 2,600 followers in 3 weeks. I’m not sure whether or not you are supposed to have more than 1 account? But I noticed one of my friends on the coaching has set up another account, and he doesn’t seem to have had any problems. And I’ve not had any issues either.

• Secured my place for Lee Mcintyre’s live workshop in Manchester, which is perfect for me because I live in Manchester! But this has also been a huge step for me, because as you may have read in my 25 Things You Should Know post, I have a bit of a problem with unwanted anxiety. Just a few short months ago I would have done anything possible to avoid going to an event like this. But ever since I started on Alex Jeffreys coaching program my self confidence has been rising at a fast rate, and instead of dreading the event I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be making a post or three about it afterwards, but it’s not for another week yet!

• Started keeping a journal of my daily tasks rather than just writing the odd thing down, which I was doing before.

• I seem to have been focusing too much on my blog recently, and not spending enough time on my list building. So I’ve changed my focus back to list building, which is where it should be.

• Installed some  more plugins on my blog, and updated my Blog Plugins page. One of the plugins I wouldn’t have found, if I hadn’t of paid Norene Broyton’s blog a visit. Norene made a post titled – Hear Ye, Hear Ye — A Unique Blogging Tool , which is about a plugin that you will see at the top of each of my posts. It gives you the choice to listen to the blog post, rather than read it. I find it quite fun to listen to. You can also download the audio as an MP3 or Podcast.

And finally that’s about it. Phew!!.. That was a lot of typing, and yet another long post from me. I do hope I’m not boring anyone with these long posts? And try to keep them as short as I can, while fitting everything in. But it can be hard as you can see.

Right now I’m going to have a well earned rest, and then I’ll get back to joining a few more giveaways. And continue writing my ebook of course, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will have at least finished writing it by the end of next week. Then I will need to look at getting some graphics.

So until next time…

Paul.

As I’ve not made an update on where the coaching is up to since the first module, I’m going to give a quick summary of the ALL the modules right up to date. This is going to be the first of 2 posts.

Module #1

This module was all about goals & planning ahead. Here are a few of things we learnt:

• To start small, but think big. This basically means although we are just starting out, there is no harm in thinking about the big things we will be able to achieve in the future. By thinking about the things we want to achieve, we can then start to plan backwards from that end goal, to find out all the things we need to do, learn or outsource in order to achieve it.

• That we need to have personal goals as well as business & entrepreneurial goals. It’s important that you have personal goals, as they will help you to remain focused, and determined to not give up when the going gets a little tough. I find that having my goals stuck on the wall near my desk is good for motivation. It helps me to not lose track & stick to my plan at all times.

• Scrutinize your day by logging everything you do, and how long you spent doing it, Alex calls these ‘daily did sheets’. Then at the end of the day you will see exactly how much time you’ve wasted, and you can then try and cut out the things that wasted your time the next day, and onwards.

• Plan the day ahead, the night before, prioritize your tasks. For instance you would make an ,A, B, and C list. Your A list would be high priority tasks that need doing first, and so on.

Module #2

This module was all about getting a Profit Pulling Platform set up. A Profit Pulling Platform is basically a series of web pages that will become your sales funnel. You can then channel traffic from the internet through that sales funnel, and start to pull profits.

Here’s some key points that we learnt here:

• Our main focus with our Profit Pulling Platform is to get people to sign up to our list.

• Treat your list as real people, not as numbers.

• To keep an eye on our conversion rates, and do split testing (I’ll explain split testing at a later date.)

• You will need to outsource certain tasks like graphics for instance, various other things that would take you to long to learn.

• To track our traffic using Google Analytics. (I’ll be making a post explaining about this soon)

We are actually up to Module #4 now, I will continue this coaching update in the next post, which will be tomorrow.

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!!