Opt In List Building For Affiliate Marketers

by James Schramko

The almighty list, as some are apt to describe it, can be an affiliate marketer's best friend. Why? Because it delivers a potential audience that has a higher probability of buying your products than the average person who comes across your website.

Here are a few tips on how to build your list and how to make it profitable:

* Fair Trade:

The act of somebody giving you their email address, and their permission for you to email them, is a valuable commodity to the affiliate marketer. Since nothing valuable ever comes free, you must give something back in return for that commodity.

The best way to do this is to offer a basic ebook, training video, etc., in return for the email address. This has benefits for both sides. First, your potential customer gets access to information that they desire, and second, you get their email address.

* Build Desire:

Once you give that person access to your basic information product, you are ideally suited to build desire for further product offerings. As your initial free offer should be something the prospect wants, they are likely to really pay attention.

As you craft this information, you need to make sure that it contains valuable information, and subtly enforces the idea that having more information about that topic is highly desirable to the reader. The information product should be a fully self-contained commodity.

Think of it like a movie trailer. A movie trailer tells you a small, self-contained story. Viewing it on its own is a full experience.

If the trailer is done right, it should entice the viewer to see the full movie.

* The Follow-Up:

The free information product you offer is important, but the follow-up is doubly so. Send out some initial messages via your autoresponder in the first week. Then adjust the schedule to just one message every 4-5 days.

The total length of this auto-responder campaign will vary depending upon how much work you want to put into it and the amount of related products and information you have ready for the campaign. It's a good idea to have 2-3 related products that will interest the customers of your primary campaign.

And just as the freebie information product swapped value for value, so should your follow up messages. Yes, pitch new products, but first and foremost you must provide solid information that will keep interest.