We all know an email list is one of the most valuable monetary generating channels you can implement for your blog or website, and no matter how new your site is you should setup a list from day one.

But once you have a list how can you quickly build your list to start reaping its rewards sooner?

Below are a few of my favourite list building methods that together have seen some most of my lists grow beyond the 10,000 mark.

If you have just read this and you have a blog or website but no list then head over the the industry's leading mail list provider Aweber and sign up for a list.

On site promotion

In terms of cost and effort promoting your list on your own site is very low, and should be the first place you start promoting a list from. If done correctly you should see a fairly high opt-in rate, but there are guidelines you should follow:

•  Position your opt-in form to the right or left side column above the fold, also invite readers to join your email list at the end of each post or article.

• Don’t just invite your readers to join give them real and compelling reasons to join. Such as how your list will make their life better.

• Giveaways Everyone loves a freebie and offering someone new to your niche something for free might be just prompts them to opt-in. See my example below (click image to visit page)

Use Pop-up and slide down op-in forms with caution, there are some niches in which they work incredibly well and others which you will rarely get a sign up. I am not saying don’t use them, in fact the opposite as with anything to do with blogging, websites and make money online test, test and when you have finish testing test again to ensure the highest possible conversion rate.

Complication: Medium Complexity

Cost: Low

Impact: High but depends on number of visitors to your site

Paid Advertising

Advertising weather it be Adsense, Text links, or any other form of paid advertising in my opinion the most effective but also the most cost.

The method is simple create a dedicated opt-in page and point your Advertising campaign to that page.  This method has the potential to very rapidly grow your list. However some thought needs to be put into your keywords, ad copy, and opt-in page so to get the highest possible opt-in rate, and most importantly with the type of subscribers (or buyers) you want.

Complexity: Medium

Cost: High

Impact: very High

Ezine List Promotion

Ezine article promotion is perhaps one of the most under utilized method,  which is surprising as opt-ins can be particularly high especially when your site is just starting out, and you are able to write a compelling article.

This method is simple write an niche related article for one or many Ezine article directories and in return you are allowed to place a link to site or opt-in page in the signature or bio section of your article.

Now there are rules that need to followed before your article will be published, and you need to take the time to write a unique article, however the effort can be well worth the time invested, and best of all its free.

Below are the Ezine article sites I recommend, you should also look at an automated way to upload your Ezine article to multiple Ezine article directories  

Complexity: Low but some additional work required to write additional articles

Cost: Low

Impact: Medium to high especially if your list and/or site is new

Twitter List Promotion

If you are involved with any type of internet venture, you need to be on twitter period, put simply if promoted correctly Twitter can contribute to growing your list at an extremely accelerated rate.

Some of the techniques I use to promote my list via Twitter include :

Tweeting blog posts Just by regularly tweeting blog posts and your list promoted through out your site (as in section On site promotion above), twitter will contribute to building your list.

Twitter Profile Your Twitter profile should include the URL for your website and therefore will naturally assist in your list building efforts

List Promotion tweets Every once and a while (no more than once per week) tweet a post promoting your email list, choose your words carefully, make your tweet comical yet unique. So it does not feel like a promotion.

I send List promotion tweets to an email opt-in page, try your opt-in page next to a YouTube video with compelling reasons for visitors to sign up, and you will. Also why not add some comedy to the video.

If you are tweeting on a regular basis why not occasionally slip your opt-in URL, again if you have an entertaining video to accompany your opt-in box visitors are going,

The best thing is you don’t need to create the video yourself, find something on YouTube and put a comment next the video that relates your list to the video an example might be Only If this person had just signed up to our list.

Complexity: Low

Cost: Low

Impact: Medium to high especially if you are creative

Well that was my list of some kick ass list building techniques, not all techniques are listed, I can think of a handful more, how about you? Give us your most successful listing building techniques in the comments section below.

This was my first article in the List building 101 series check next week for the next part  How to setup an Aweber auto responder Series. 

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