Does Viral List Building Work?

Some marketers are good at list building, but even some who use them, don't like viral list builders. I personally think they have their place, and I have used them successfully. They are not all created equal, however, and my suspicion is that many who don't like them, simply don't use them well.

What's a viral list builder? It's simply a way to leverage your list building efforts. Basically, it uses existing subscribers and visitors to get more subscribers and more visitors. These are true set and forget advertising techniques, and they're often zero cost.

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.

How does it work? Basically, your traffic is used to show several ezine subscription forms on your site. Somewhere else on the web, your ezine details are presented as well. You simply enter your ezine subscription details in the List Inferno list builder and copy their code into your web pages. The more times you show a page with the code, the more chances you have of getting another subscriber.

This means that for every visitor to your page, you get the opportunity to gain another subscriber. In my experience, the sign up rate with viral list builders is rather high. My list building efforts, once started with these viral tools, just seem to spin off on their own without my having to actively do anything. I like that, and you will too. If they slow down for any reason, I simply ramp them up a bit with a few techniques and there they go again gathering subscribers.

In my course on beginning list building, I outline the basic elements that you need to properly build a list. One of those elements is, obviously, a way to reach potential subscribers.

One challenge, however, is that many people find it hard to drive traffic to their websites, or they don't want to spend the money on a website at all. While I highly recommend that you build a website and develop a number of ways to drive traffic, viral list builders like List Inferno can be used with free websites, and once you get a few visitors, the viral effect begins to build your list for you.

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.

You can drive traffic to those pages in the usual ways in order to generate the viral effect of the list builder. Then, during your auto responder sequence or broadcast emails to your subscribers, systematically send your visitors to those pages.

In this way, not only will you have natural traffic working for you, but each subscriber as well. In fact, if you do this right, each subscriber can be responsible for producing several opportunities for you to gain new subscribers. Using this type of system, you'll be a champion of viral list building in no time.

Article Source: http://www.myaddirectory.com

Kurt Schmitt has been testing list building solutions that work for 4 years. If you're interested in generating more traffic and more subscribers through leveraged list building pick up a copy of his ecourse.

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