How to Build a Huge Opt-In List as an Affiliate

One of the biggest mistakes I see affiliates making everyday is that their building a short-term business where they just make a small sale - one sale at a time. If they stop running ads today, their business would shut down! The strategy we're going to discuss now will allow any affiliate to build a long-term business. This strategy will allow you to upsell your visitors for expensive services. Even more importantly, by using this strategy you'll soon become recognized as an expert in your field and making money will be all the easier!

So what is this strategy?

You guessed it, it's building an opt-in list - a newsletter/Ezine.

By having an opt-in list you're building a customer base instead of just small sales! You can sell the same customer over and over without having any more advertising costs. You build a trust with your readers that allows them to be loyal in doing business through you affiliate link!

So, as an affiliate, how do you build an opt-in list?

How to Build the List

The simplest way I have found is to start deferring all of my traffic that I pay for to an opt-in page. After the person opts-in, have them land on a thank you page where you pre-sell them for the affiliate product.

So, you're probably already building traffic to your site - now, instead of sending that traffic directly to your affiliate link, send it to a page that has an opt-in.

How Should My Opt-In Page Look?

The next most popular question is how to make the opt-in page look. Believe it or not, there actually IS a strategy behind this. Your page MUST be small, short and to the point. This means that you should NOT have a long sales letter type page to get them to opt-in.

Your entire opt-in page should fit in one screen with NO scroll down bar. Have a strong headline, 5-6 bulleted benefits and then a nice big opt-in. You'll be amazed at how high the results can be?

Quick Ways To Generate Traffic

The point of this article is not to teach you how to drive traffic to your website, but here are 5 really quick techniques to use so you can test what you just learned.

1. Article Submissions - Submit articles around the web regarding your niche and have your biography link go to a opt-in page. You'll be amazed at how well this technique works in building a list.

2. Pay Per Click - The easiest way to immediately begin getting traffic. Send all of your paid traffic directly to the opt-in page, then have the person land on a page that pre-sells the product they were looking for. Make sure to test this, sometimes your conversions on the front-end can fall, but they increase over the long-run.

3. Ezine Ads - I have found Ezine ads a great way to quickly and cost effectively boost my list. Write an ad promising a "fr^^ ee membership or information" and send the traffic to an opt-in page.

4. Viral Marketing - This form of marketing takes some time to kick in but can be extremely effective! Other people will spread your message and your message will have links to your opt-in page.

5. Linking strategy - This option is a bit more work, so only use it once you have tested and know that you have a winner. Start trading links with related websites and you will see a great boost in traffic.

Conclusion

In conclusion, make sure you understand that you should be building a long-term affiliate business and not just something that makes you a few dollars on one sale. If you ever stop advertising, you want to be in position to still have a powerful business. Building a large opt-in list will also position you as the expert in your niche.

Finally, remember to make sure that your opt-in page fits on one computer screen and is small. Always test the page by quickly driving some traffic.

Copyright 2005 Kurma Group

This article is written by Anik Singal, founder of AffiliateClassroom.com. Anik Singal has developed his own affiliate system that helped him earn well over $10,466 in just 60 days. Now, he's looking for a few students to train one step at a time.

Click the link below to get your FREE course: http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com/free-course.html

Affiliate marketing offers earning opportunities, making it as one of the fastest growing industry in the World Wide Web today. It produces billions of dollars worth of income yearly. That is why many people are getting involved in it.

However, most of them are just getting into the jive of earning money without a concrete plan. You will have no strategies to be implemented, no guidelines to be followed.

In case that you are planning to get yourself involved in affiliate marketing, bear in your mind that it is a serious work. Though it is one of the easier ways of earning additional income, it still requires effort, perseverance, and a clear plan of action from your starting point up to the finish line.

An affiliate site that I highly recommend, that trains you and helps you get a clear plan of action is SITE BUILD IT (SBI). Why?

Here's why.. Many major universities (ex., University of Arizona), and colleges and even MBA programs include SBI! in their curriculum. No other online busineness building program has gained acceptance by the educational sector like SBI!

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Only SBI! has garnered this type of support. Because only Site Build It! actually builds online success.

I speak from experience because I'm an owner of an SBI site myself and I can't believe how profitable this site can be. I love the traffic that I get from SBI. Everyone knows that traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. Only Site Build It! (SBI!) delivers the holy grail, traffic. Targeted traffic. Motivated, interested, warm, willing-to-buy visitors. That spells SUCCESS!!!