Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Does Viral List Building Work?

Does Viral List Building Work?
by Kurt Schmitt
Free Copy Of Viral List Building Marathon Call

For beginning list building, I often recommend viral list builders, and I still use them successfully myself. Some marketers, even ones who are good at viral list building, don't like viral list builders. Not all these tools are created equal, however, and I suspect that some who don't like them, simply don't put them to good use.

A viral list builder maximizes your ability to reach potential subscribers by using other websites to promote your ezine subscription or autoresponder ecourse. It allows you to use existing subscribers to create new subscribers. These are advertising techniques that, once set up, continue to work without additional input on your part.

Some marketers are masters at making every visitor count. If you want to make every visitor count, these tools can help you do that at no cost. While some viral list builders work right on page, others only work as popups. Some work as both, and still others replace a page entirely, such as your thank you page. I want you to understand that zero cost refers to money only.

While these tools can be free, or free with an upgrade option, there are other costs involved. The fact that you're often building someone else's list or traffic as well as your own is a trade off I'm willing to make. I suspect most people don't use these tools to full advantage, and so they feel the trade offs are not worth it.

I like the simplicity of List Inferno, so we'll use that as an example. There are only three steps in the sign up process, and the code works with or without popups. Unlike some list builders, you can promote ezines on topics other than Internet Marketing, which I think is a plus.

Here's how it works. You enter your ezine details in List Inferno and place some code on your web pages. Each time you show a web page with that code on it, it will display a selection of ezines to which your visitor can subscribe. In turn, your newsletter subscription information will appear on someone else's site, giving you more chances to gain subscribers.

So, for each visitor to your page, you get the opportunity to gain another subscriber. I have found the sign up rate to be particularly high with viral list builders. Once this process is started, your list building will begin to take on a life of its own with no effort on your part. After a while, things usually slow down a bit. What I do is simply use a few techniques to get things going again, and soon I have more and more subscribers. Try this once, and I think you'll be hooked.

I offer an ecourse on beginning list building in which I cover the basic elements that you need to properly build a list. One element that most list building courses tend to gloss over, is a way to reach potential subscribers.

A big challenge, however, is that many people find it a big task to drive traffic to their websites. Even worse, new marketers often don't want to invest money in a website at all. The good news is that viral list builders like List Inferno can be used with free websites, and once you get it going with a few visitors and subscribers, the viral effect takes over. The bad news is that you really should get yourself a top level domain name and real website.

One rather simple technique you can use to enhance the viral effect is to create several pages on your site, all of which have good information and proper keyword density. Place the list building code on each of those pages.

Next, begin driving traffic to those pages through all of the means in your marketing arsenal. During your auto responder sequence or broadcast emails, send your visitors to those pages that offer more information on the topic at hand.

The ideal scenario is to not only have organic traffic working for you, but each subscriber as well. When this method is properly executed, each subscriber triggers new opportunities to aquire additional subscribers. By modeling this type of system, you'll be an expert viral list builder in record time.

Kurt Schmitt works with and teaches list building solutions that work. If you're interested in generating more traffic and more subscribers through viral list building pick up a copy of his ecourse.

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