Viral List Building Series: Let’s Get Started…
So this is the start of my Viral List Building Series. Over the years, I have started a few projects with the objective of building my mailing list virally. I don’t consider myself an expert at this but I have been doing this for over three years and I make a living from it right now.
I guess my intention for starting these series is to get the new people and the beginners started with viral list building.
I don’t really have specific topics for these series. So I guess I will be just writing away, one series after the other.
And along the way, you are welcome to send comments and ask questions.
Today I am going to start with my story how I got started with list building. Let me tell you that I didn’t start building my list immediately. One reason was that I wasn’t very sure about writing emails to people that I don’t really know. And I don’t know how people would react when I send them those emails.
So to begin my Internet business career, I searched the Internet learning about affiliate marketing and search engine optimization. Well, this of course was about 6 years ago. And search engine optimization was not as complicated as it is today. One of the reasons was probably that there were not as many websites, and not as many abusers (SEO blackhats) as there are today, that search engine websites had to make their ranking algorithms smarter and smarter.
My first website is about computer cases and computer case modding. I still have this website and is still getting traffic. Maybe not as much as it used to. But I just hang on to it. After a few months I managed to get rankings in the search engines and was getting traffic. Those traffic converts to sales and I was happy.
And because of that little success, I built more sites. I built sites on airsoft guns, paintballs, swiss army products, and more. And I even keep myself up to date with all the happenings in the search engine world.
But somehow, along the way, as I lose my rankings one after the other, and search engine optimization is getting tougher and tougher, I felt like I have no control over my business. My websites’ rankings go up and down and gone. My Adsense earning is never consistent. You earn $3.00 per click today and $0.03 per click today – from the same website.
Alright, maybe some people managed to build a very successful business around all these SEO and the up and the downs of their rankings. But I wasn’t feel secured. Maybe the SEO business model is just not for me.
I thought that I had to do something, or look for something that I have more control over.
Actually, during the past few months I have been reading about list building. They all say, “The money is in the list.” If you have a list of 1000 subscribers, you can send an offer anytime of the week and make some instant cash.
But looking at building a list of at 1000 subscribers, boy… that’s going to take a while. I don’t know if I could do it.
But I always remember, “You’ve got to start somewhere.”
So I did. I built a site – MoneyClicking.net.
I am good at building websites. I even know programming. And I even picked up PHP, Perl, HTML all own my own. And I have a good flair with graphics. I know how to use Corel Draw and Adobe Photoshop.
So with MoneyClicking.net (the ezine then, not the blog yet), my aim was to help people who wants to earn online with their websites.
I was really working on it. Instead of the normal squeeze page (which we didn’t even call it that then), I put a full sales letter selling them the benefits of my free MoneyClicking.net ezine. And a long the way, I got a few subscribers. But I think I was building my list at the rate of about 50 – 100 subscribers per month or so.
Talk about slow…
I was new and naïve. I don’t know much about marketing. All that I did was participate in forums. And I will always have my signature in every replies I left in forums. So that’s where the few subscribers I have come from.
From the forums, I started to make friends. And I started getting really good advice about building your business on the Internet. And from the advice, seeing other promotions, reading books and articles online, I figured that I can build my list faster if my campaigns were to grow virally and takes off on its own.
After much consideration and planning, later I launched DIYMiniSite.com – my first viral list building project. It did well… OK, not Mike Filsaime well, but I broke my 1000 subscribers barrier in just four months.
Not bad for a newbie.
And later, I keep building new viral list building projects. And I keep getting better and better at it.
My latest is OptinDesign.com. It’s not a big launch. I only started with my blog, article marketing and a few friends as JV partners. But I still built a list of over 2,500 subscribers the first month. Let’s not even talk about the money I make.
So I guess that’s my story how I got into viral list building.
And I like to analyze the many models of Internet business and strategies. And with viral list building, there are few ways of doing it too. Let me continue that in next series, OK…
Stay tune for Viral List Building Models…
