Today’s blog post is for LeadsLeap members. If you are not a member, you can sign up here.

In this post, I’m going to bring you to our back-office and show you some stats about the traffic that we send to you.

Some background

Early this week, we added an extra fraud prevention system that tracks the userid, IP address and number of clicks. This system will tell us which IP address is viewing our members’ ads and whether the visitor is a member or non-member.

When we launched the system, I was excited to see what it will return.

I was surprised!

Take a look at the screenshot of the database that recorded the click-through in the first 10 minutes after we launch.

The userid column is blank, meaning none of the clicks is from our own members!

This means our members are getting traffic from non-members, people who happen to come to our website via non-referred links such as the search engine. Frankly, I was pretty excited when I saw this.

This is just the first 10 minutes. After 24 hours, I exported the 24-hour record and separate them into member and non-member clicks.

The result is 64% are member clicks and 36% are non-member clicks. In total, we recorded 4763 clicks on that day.

Why am I showing you all these?

First reason, I’m excited. I can’t wait to share this info with you.

Another reason is I want to show you that LeadsLeap is more than just a traffic exchange system. Our members are getting traffic from non-members. 36% is not a small percentage.

How can you channel our traffic to your website?

One way is to become our PRO member. Your PRO ad will be shown in our network all the time 24/7.

Another way is to make sure that you have enough credits in your account so that you FREE ad can be shown in our network. If you are a member, you should have learnt the different ways to earn credits. One smart way is to refer 20 people to join you in LeadsLeap. This will earn you 500 credits every month.

20 people one time = 500 credits every month = endless traffic months after months.

Do the math. It’s a good deal.

Monthly bonus credits will be added on the 1st of each month. If you want to quality for the bonus on the 1st of August, you still have about 5 days to reach your 20 referrals. Go for it!

In today’s blog, I’m going to share with you how to get good response from safelist advertising.

Many gurus will tell you that safelist is a complete waste of time and to certain extend, I agree. But if you know the tricks, it can be a good source of traffic for you.

Without further ado, here are the tricks to get good response from safelist advertising.

1) Don’t sell. Build list!

Safelist traffic seldom buy stuff on the spot. Don’t advertise your business opportunity directly or sell your product upfront. It won’t work.

Instead, your main job is to give. Give away free gifts, free info and/or arouse their curiosity so that they opt-in to your list.

After they opt-in to your list, you can lead them to a one-time offer using the strategy I shared with you earlier on. If the offer is good, they will bite.

To illustrate, when I advertise LeadsLeap program, the sales page I use is this. (You can use the same page to build your leadsleap team by simply adding your referid at the end of the url).

As you can see, I’m giving away more than 1000 minutes of internet marketing videos. The opt-in conversion is good. After prospects opt-in, they will see my one-time offer. About 5% will take up the offer, but bear in mind that it’s not the end.

Safelist traffic are usually newbies of the newbies. Once they opt-in to your list, if you can feed them with great information and show them the way to make money online, they can be your best long term customers.

2) It all started with a catchy email subject.

Safelist members receive tons of emails a day. Wanting them to read your email is very tough and that’s why most people fail to get much traffic.

(Usually, when you join an individual safelist program, the response is so low that it can be a waste of your time. For better response, it is wiser to use a safelist submitter that allows you to submit your ad to thousands of safelists at one time.)

As I’ve said, safelist members receive tons of emails everyday. When they browse through their list of emails, the only thing they see is your email subject. Therefore the only way to capture their attention is through your email subject.

There are 2 important tips on writing email subject:

i) When writing your email subject, focus on giving and don’t try to sell or hype.

Email subjects such as “Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot” will not work because people know you are trying to sell something.

Instead, email subject like “Free Report: How I Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot” will get some traffic to your squeeze page.

ii) To further increase the response, you MUST make your subject stand out VISUALLY.

This is the main secret, so pay special attention to this.

What I’m saying is you should add some special characters that can make your ad quickly recognizable from the list of email subjects.

To illustrate what I mean, look at the list of email subjects below and tell me which one captures your attention.

Still Reading Commercial Emails For Free?
Start to Increase Your ClickBank Sales Today!
The Gas Alternatives Report : Up To $2000 Monthly!
### Free Report ### How I Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot
You won’t believe this is free
THE LIGHTNING RESULT SAFELIST - FREE TO JOIN - FREE TO EARN!!
3 Reasons You Should Consider

If you browse through the subjects above, you should see that “### Free Report ### How I Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot” stands out from the rest.

The trick is to use some special characters to increase your chance of having your email subject being read.

Some tricks you can use include:

### Free Report ###
**** Urgent !!! ****
[Unadvertised Bonus]
FW:
RE:

I’ve also seen people starting an email subject with characters like these:

(¯`*
L@@K HERE >>

Be creative and think out of the box when using characters to capture attention.

But remember, this trick can ONLY capture people’s attention. Eventually, it’s the words that determine if they want to read your ad. Remember to give rather than to sell or hype in your email subject.

Email subjects like this

**** Urgent !!! **** Start to Increase Your ClickBank Sales Today!

will not get you much traffic, but email subjects like this

**** Urgent !!! **** 6000 Free Leads For You At $0 Cost

will.

To sum up, effective safelist advertising begins with 1) a VISUALLY powerful email subject, 2) an irresistible email subject that offers something that one would be crazy to reject and 3) a squeeze page that can get people to opt-in to get the offer, and finally 4) a good follow-up system that lives on the principle of “give and thou shall receive”.

Last but not least, remember that the success of any advertising campaign does not lie in the source of your traffic (so long as the traffic is targeted). More importantly, it lies in the amount of charcoal you have set up.

Helping you to increase your web site traffic has always been my top priority and today, I’m going to share with you my best kept secrets to increase web site traffic from scratch.

Like many of you, I started my career in internet marketing with little knowledge, no JV partner, no internet marketing friend and I didn’t pay thousands of dollars to attend any seminar on internet marketing. I started from scratch, learning the ropes by reading tons of ebooks and email newsletters (blog wasn’t popular when I started online).

So I believe whatever web site traffic strategy that works for me will work for you.

My Most Important Web Site Traffic Strategy

My most important web site traffic strategy is viral marketing.

Viral marketing is a huge topic by itself and it encompasses many different strategies, including viral ebook, viral software, affiliate program, tell-a-friend system and even list building.

Before I even start thinking about the details of any new web site, the first question I will ask myself is “How can I multiply my initial traffic into more traffic?” If I can’t get a good answer to this question, I will not build the web site at all. (Clarification: I’m referring to mega web sites like LeadsLeap, not those little Adsense or affiliate web sites that rely on search engine traffic.)

The whole idea of viral marketing is that you want people to tell other people about your website.

You may think all you need is an affiliate program. If you do, you are dead wrong! Just because you are having an affiliate program doesn’t mean that people will start spreading the words. In most cases, they won’t!

The key in viral marketing is to create a buzz in the community. You need to position your new web site in such a way that there is some novelty in it, something that will make people say “Hey, it sounds interesting” or “Hey, this is something new”. If you can do that, together with a good supporting system such as an affiliate program, your web site will spread like wild fire.

Next, You Need Web Site Traffic Starter

I derive the term Traffic Starter from Fire Starter. When you set up a fire, you need fire starters. Similarly, if you want  your website to spread like wild fire, you need a traffic starter, which is the initial traffic to your website.

Can you imagine what will happen if you burn lots of fire starters but you fail to put some charcoal around them? Yes, you get some initial fire but it soon dies.

In the case of web site traffic, the charcoal is the viral marketing components. That’s why I say viral marketing is the most important web site traffic strategy. You MUST have that in place before even thinking about where to get your initial traffic.

Am I clear on this point?

Ok next, where do you get the initial traffic?

Frankly, it really doesn’t matter where you get the initial traffic, as long as the traffic you receive are targeted.

When finding the initial web site traffic, an important question to ask yourself is “Where can I find people who are interested in my web site?” Whatever answer you get, go there and find ways to channel the traffic to your website.

It could mean you have to pay some money to advertise. It could also mean you have to write to some website owners and strike out some JV deals.

When I first started, I had no JV contact and I got all my initial traffic from advertising. I spent quite a bit on advertising (5 figures to be exact), but I soon earned back the money because I put a lot of “charcoal” around my traffic starter. Get the idea?

That’s really my main secret to increase web site traffic and I hope you get the gist of it.

Recently, Ewen Chia advertised with us again in one of our advertising channels. He was trying to promote one of his offline seminars in Singapore.

Whenever Ewen advertises, there is something we can learn.

In Singapore, most seminar organizers sell their seminars via free previews. I believe this method of selling was copied from the US. The idea is to give you a 1-2 hour free seminar which will then upsell you with a $1000+ full seminar. This method works.

Of all the seminar organizers who advertise with us, almost all of them advertise their free seminars directly. That means they advertise a sales page that tells you about their free seminar, how you can benefit and how you can register for free.

This method of advertising is direct and you get attendance to your free seminar immediately. But it’s a short term strategy.

Guess what’s the long term strategy?

It is to put list building as the first priority.

Here is what Ewen did - Instead of advertising a free seminar, he advertised to give away an ebook that he is currently selling in the market for $19.90. It’s a no brainer, even I opt-in to download the ebook!

And here is the smart trick - As a ‘bonus’, those who opt-in are entitled to attend a free seminar by him!

Can you see how powerful this strategy is?

If you simply promote a free seminar, people will check their schedule and if they can’t make it on that day, they will not sign up. On the contrary, if you give away an ebook that you are currently selling in the market, many people will opt in to your list to download the ebook. At the same time, they know that they have the privilege to attend your seminar for free. If they can’t make it this time, you can always follow up with them for your next seminar.

Building a list is no longer a secret. But when it comes to paid advertising, most people still tend to sell the actual product directly instead of giving away something of value to build a list. I believe that’s because most people have the mentality of “if I pay to advertise, I want to make sure that I earn back the fee.”

This mentality is not wrong. But there are smarter ways to do it.

Like what Ewen has done, instead of selling the product directly, you can give an irresistible offer to entice people to opt-in. Once they opt-in, I rephrase, immediately after they opt-in, you can show them whatever offer that you want to sell to them. This way, you can build a list and make sales at the same time.

An important thing to note in this strategy is that you must present your offer immediately after your prospects opt-in, not via autoresponder or after a day or two. This is because if people bother to opt-in, you have already gotten their full attention. You want to continue showing them your offer when they are still with you. Once they divert their attention to some other things, it will be harder to sell to them again.

To make sure that you grab the concept behind this strategy, here’s the flowchart:

Give an irresistible offer > Opt-in > Once prospects opt-in, show them your offer (it can be an affiliate product you’re selling, a network marketing opportunity, a seminar you’re promoting or your own product) > Follow up

If you put list building as your first priority whenever you advertise, your list will eventually grow and when that happens, you can do traffic exchange with other list owners and grow your list even bigger.

Look at your advertising campaigns today and ask yourself if you are putting list building as the first priority. If you are not, you may want to re-think your strategy.