“How to build a list of people, if I do not have the funds to do this? I have tried some free advertising companies but nothing yet.” - Jay Rossi

If you are in the same situation as Jay, I hope this article can help you.

First thing first, stop dreaming!

Many marketers promote internet marketing as a lazy way to make money. To a certain extent, it is. But if you talk about list building, it’s definitely not a lazy way to make money.

If you think all you need is an opt-in form and people will flood into your list, you’ll be wondering why your list building effort is in vain.

First of all, you got to ask yourself the following questions:

- Is your sales letter powerful enough to get people’s attention?
- Is your offer appealing enough such that people bother to opt-in to get it?
- Is your sales letter convincing enough to get people to take immediate action?

If your answer is ‘no’ to any of the 3 questions, you should first brush up your copywriting and marketing skills, before even talking about where to get the traffic.

I hope I’m clear on this point.

Why free advertising doesn’t work?

I probably say this hundreds of times. The key in advertising is finding targeted traffic. So long as the traffic is targeted, it doesn’t matter whether the advertising is free or paid.

So instead of questioning yourself whether free advertising works, you should ask yourself whether the advertising traffic is targeted to your niche. If it is, the problem is not with the advertising media but with your skills in converting the traffic into your list.

So, how to build a list, if you do not have the funds to do it?

Well, there are many ways to build a list without having to spend a dime in advertising.

These ways include exchanging traffic with other marketers (provided that you have an initial list), building a list through your blog (provided that your blog is getting free traffic from the search engine), starting your own affiliate program (provided that you have access to a list of affiliates), as well as other standard free traffic strategies such as forum marketing, article marketing, traffic exchange networks, list building networks and social networking.

But instead of limiting your option to free traffic strategies, why not think of how you can earn back your advertising cost?

My preferred way, of course, is to use the MYOB list builder script that I’ve developed for my own use and given free to our LeadsLeap members. If you do not know what this script can do for you, you better check it out. At least you know what are the options available to you.

Don’t keep thinking of how to build a list for free or how you can get free traffic. Instead, think of how to design a good sales letter and a good marketing system, so that you can profit from your advertising effort. This was what I did when I first started marketing online without any resources (read the full story at My Best Kept Secrets To Increase Web Site Traffic From Scratch).

If you are serious about doing business online, it’s important to learn how to do online business advertising. Whether the traffic source is free or paid, if you do not understand the basics of doing online advertising, the traffic you’ve generated will be wasted.

Recently a ‘rich’ surveying company advertised with us. When I looked at the ad, I almost fainted. It was a simple sign up form, expecting people to sign up without telling them anything about the company or the offer. Isn’t it common sense to ask oneself “will I act on this ad?” before one spend money advertising the ad?

In today’s discussion on how to do online business advertising, I’m going to share with you 3 “MUST-HAVE” elements in your ad before you even start thinking where to advertise it.

Hope that helps.

1. WIIFM “in 5 seconds”

WIIFM stands for “what’s in it for me”.

If you don’t tell people what’s in it for them, they are not going to be interested in your ad, not to mention taking action.

The problem with many advertisers is that their WIIFM is scattered all over the sales copy. One has to seriously read through the sales copy to identify them. Unfortunately, most sales copies are not read and thus the WIIFM message is not delivered.

For effective online business advertising, your ad must address the question of WIIFM within 5 seconds after a prospect first look at your ad. If not, you are losing them, period.

This means your headline, subheadline and the first paragraph of your sales copy play an important role in deciding whether a prospect will continue reading your ad or simply leave the page.

2. Become their friends “in 10 seconds”

Once you successfully capture their attention with WIIFM, you next objective is to gain their confidence in you and/or your offer.

Common ways to achieve this include the follow tricks:

- adding testimonials, especially ones with photographs;
- showing your own photograph and disclosing your name, email address and even contact number;
- showing other proofs such as earning screenshots, samples of completed work etc.

3. “Impossible-to-miss” call for action

Lastly, you must tell your prospect what to do next.

The problem with many advertisers is that their call for action is hidden somewhere in the sales letter. If it takes even 10 seconds for the prospects to search for the call for action, most of them would rather click the close window button.

The 3 elements above are the bare minimum that you must have in your ad if you want to do any online business advertising.

In additional to these 3, try to build a list regardless of what online business you’re advertising. The main advantage of online advertising vs offline advertising is that it’s easy to capture clients’ database. In the world of business, winners are those who own the customers. Think Walmart vs wholesaler. Think Ebay vs its sellers. The ones with huge customer base win. Regardless of what business you’re in, you are in the business of building customers.

In response to our discussion last Tuesday, one of our members, Reveuberg, posted a follow-up question.

Here’s his email to us:

Hi Kenneth,

It’s always wonderful to read every one of your blog post. Each of them has a great content rich in values. I truly enjoy reading it.

In the most recent post on April 14, 2009, in response to Ms. Jane you wrote:

“From the look of your website, it seems that you are not too competent in web programming. It’s okay, but you must keep in mind that if you want to grow, you must take one of the 2 paths:
- Master web programming yourself
- Outsource web programming and learn how to manage programmers
That is something you need to keep in mind and work on consistently.”

Even though it’s well said, It cannot be well done by a debutant…

Would you please elaborate more in providing free or paid reputable resources that you could recommend to the reader to learn it online? We may have tons of them on line, but to know what’s good or not require not only your take but your expertise.

Also when it comes to outsourcing that web programming job could you recommend some reputable free or paid sites online that are useful for achieving growth or success in web programming?

I’ll answer his question in 2 parts:

1) How to start learning web programming from scratch

For beginners, it can be pretty boring to learn web programming. I believe no one enjoys reading programming books or tutorials.

My way of learning web programming, such as html, is “purposeful learning”. The idea of “purposeful learning” is to set a goal to create a particular website and then simply ‘learn ENOUGH’ to serve that purpose.

It will be more fun if you do so.

For example, if you have not created any website before, you set a goal to create your first content website with an aim to make money from Google Adsense.

With this goal in mind, your next job is to start asking questions.

After all these years, I slowly believe that Google has all the answers, as long as you know how to ask the right question.

Some of the question you may start asking may include:

- step by step website building guide
- how to build a content website
- html tutorial for beginners

As you start learning and building your first website bit by bit, your question will become more specific and technical. Soon, you will be asking more technical question such as:

- how to add an opt-in form
- how to create dynamic navigation
- how to add a hyperlink

“Purposeful learning” can be fun, challenging and addictive! The more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know. The more you learn, the more you need to learn.

Besides googling for an answer, if your question is too specific, you may also get help from other programmers. One website where I frequently post question to is stackoverflow.com.

2) Where to outsource web programming

There are several freelancing websites where you can engage programmers to work for you. Some of them are guru.com, elance.com, scriptlance.com and getafreelancer.com (my preferred site, no particular reason, just get used to it).

Engaging web programmers is easy, so long as you have money. The tough part is in managing them.

That’s why I said you need to learn how to manage programmers.

Most freelance programmers are “GIGA” programmers. GIGA stands for Garbage In Garbage Out.

What I mean is if you are not specific in the result that you expect to see, you’ll end up getting garbage from them.

Many marketers are disappointed by freelance programmers because these marketers have a vague idea of the final product that they want and they expect the programmers to think for them and magically create something that they desire.

Here are some tips you can use to better manage freelance programmers:

- Learn programming yourself!

This is how you can speak their language and communicate your needs effectively. You may ask “why outsource when you already know how to do it?” My answer is “because you can use your time to do other more profitable tasks or tasks that cannot be easily outsourced.”

- Use existing website as an example and for comparison

You can say “I would like to create the same effect as blar blar blar website, except that ….”

- Be specific and avoid creative work

Remember, don’t expect magic. Your instruction to programmers should be as specific as possible. You should leave as little room as possible for their creativity. Most programmers are poor marketers. If you give them too much room for creativity, your end product may not be marketable.

- Frequently ask for progress report

Programmers like to show you the product ONLY when it’s completed. It’s dangerous because they may misunderstand your requirement. In order to save everyone’s time, do your best to pester your programmer to show you any thing he has completed so far. This is especially important for big projects.

One of my websites went from PR 3 to PR 0 overnight! Read on to find out what’s the reason and some interesting discovery I’ve found.

In early March, this website of concern suddenly went from PR 3 to PR 0. Surprised, I investigated into the reason.

The only possibility I can think of is that I sold text link on this website. It was a PR 3 website and selling text link on this site can earn me about $20 every month. (I shared with you about this link selling service before.)

I know that Google will penalize websites that sell links. That’s why I only sell text links on websites with high PR but low traffic, in order to squeeze some extra money out of these websites.

But over the years, the traffic to this website have grown and it’s fetching $100-$200 Adsense income every month. With such income, I should have stopped selling links, but I didn’t (blame on my laziness to monitor).

Ok, serve me right!

But here’s something interesting that I discover……

Although the PR has been penalized, the traffic from Google is still steady. And I’ve been monitoring for more than a month.

So Google is not that mean afterall.

While it penalized the website by dropping its PR to 0, it didn’t blacklist the website from its search result.

It’s fair if you ask me. The website does serve unique and quality contents for the benefit of the surfers. So it deserves the search engine ranking. It also deserves to have its PR dropped, since it violated their T&C.

Well, one month may not be long enough to see the full impact of having the PR penalized. I’ll continue to monitor the performance of this website and continue to promote it. Let’s see if the PR can be revived and the traffic can sustain.

I’ll keep you updated on anything interesting. Stay tuned!

This is another episode of Tuesday With Kenneth where I help our members with their challenges. Today we have Jane, who shared with us her interesting business idea.

We are living in an economy right now where we are all short of money. I started a site where you can get books for $1.00 and I will buy them back for $.25 and pay the media postage. The site is http://janes-dollar.com. Please let me know what you think? - Jane

Hi Jane,

It’s an interesting concept, though I’m not too sure how profitable it will be.

From the look of your website, it seems that you are not too competent in web programming. It’s okay, but you must keep in mind that if you want to grow, you must take one of the 2 paths:

- Master web programming yourself
- Outsource web programming and learn how to manage programmers

That is something you need to keep in mind and work on consistently. For now, you just need to promote your website and measure the response.

Promoting your website is pretty straight forward. You can go to various book forums to spread the words out. At this stage, you need to know what is the market response to your service.

Bear in mind that market response depends on 3 factors:

- The effectiveness of your sales letter (in this case, your homepage)
- The source of your traffic (whether it’s targeted)
- The business model

If you are not getting response from your promotion effort, it must be due to one of these 3.

About your sales letter / homepage

My assessment is that your homepage is weak and it needs some major improvement.

You need to ask yourself an important question, “What do you expect your visitor to do when they visit your website?”

If you want them “to buy a book from you for $1″, then you need to show them what book you’re selling.

If your objective is to get them to sign up your newsletter, you should include the signup form on the same page and give them a good reason why they should opt-in.

Remember, when people visit your website, it’s your job to arouse their interest and give them a clear instruction on what to do next. If not, they will just do one thing - leave!

About your business model

As I said in my earlier post on How To Start An Online Business, never reinvent the wheel.

Your business is actually buying and selling cheap books. A simple search for “buy cheap books” and “sell books” returns several established websites that are already doing that.

As an entrepreneur, your job is to think of how to make your service better and different from other competitors.

For now, it’s apparent that you can’t win them in terms of popularity. You also can’t beat them in terms of website features and design. But there is one thing you can be better now - you can have a better business model, since you have the advantage of evaluating and improving their business models.

Do not be intimidated by these established sites. Start with whatever resources you have now. As long as you keep upgrading your skills and keep moving towards the vision of a better business model, your business must grow and prosper.

Do you have a huge online business but have no idea how to make your BIG online business idea work? This is the problem that one of our members, Ken, is facing.

Here’s the gist of his long question to me:

“I always felt it was best to market a store-front (that has within it all the “items” I want to sell/offer/promote) versus trying to (futilely) promote a multitude of sites individually. That’s a noble idea, perhaps. How do I make it work?” Ken

I shook my head when I read Ken’s problem.

If you try to create a website that sells everything, as what Ken is doing, you are not likely to succeed. (Ken, I hope you’re reading this.)

No, it’s not another “niche marketing” theory, where you are told to create tons of sites for different niche. Niche marketing works and it’s what I’m doing. But our discussion today is how to make your BIG online business work.

The problem with BIG online business idea is that it’s too big for a new website that has no traffic and no content.

It’s like trying to build a mega shopping mall with only 2-3 tenants selling things.

The best way to show you how to make your big online business idea work is to share with you a couple of case studies.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Amazon.com. It sells many things from laptops to shoes. But when Amazon first started, it simply focused on selling one thing: Books!

There is nothing wrong with having a vision that one day your website will sell everything. But when you first started, you must focus on one niche and that niche is your knife!

Let me repeat. Your first niche to building a BIG website is your knife. It needs to be sharp enough for you to cut through a cake and get your first pie from the market.

I hope you get the analogy.

When your traffic grows, you can then diversity into other things.

Let’s look at another example, Ebay.com.

When Ebay first started, it focused a lot on auctioning collectibles. Why? Because at that time, people were not used to buying and selling anything online. But there was a growing trend that people were trading collectibles online.

Ebay was smart enough to capture this trend and grew its popularity and member base from there.

Focus and then diversify. That’s the simple strategy to make your big online business idea work.

Recently I’m getting more friends and relatives asking me how to start an online business. It’s not rocket science, but it’s not easy maths too.

Starting an online business is pretty much the same as starting a brick and mortar business, except that the cost is much lower and so is the risk.

When I say it’s pretty much the same as a brick and mortar business, I also mean that you need to be entrepreneurial, to be able to ’smell’ the needs in a market and to have a vision. Are entrepreneurs born or breed? I don’t know. What I believe is, if you think you are, you are.

So, if you are entrepreneurial and want to learn how to start an online business, read on……

Step 1: Never reinvent the wheel

Believe me. Almost all the smart and innovative ideas you can think of are already done by someone else online, in one way or another. If you think you’ve a unique online business idea, it just means that you’ve not done enough research.

So, if you have any online business idea, the first thing you need to do is head over to Google and type in some keywords related to your business idea. Thoroughly check out all the top websites that provide similar product or service. This means you may have to try out their products/services and find out their pros and cons.

Next, you have to evaluate those pros and cons and come out with a BETTER idea.

Remember, the job of an entrepreneur is not to invent things. His job is to seek proven business ideas, improve on those ideas and get a piece of the pie out of the market, preferably a bigger piece.

Step 2: Think of the marketing system

Most newbie entrepreneurs have one problem. They spend too much time trying to perfect their products.

Having a good product is important. But what’s more important is the marketing system.

Without a good marketing system, no matter how good your product is, it’s going to be hard for your online business to grow.

Regardless of what you sell, your marketing system should answer 3 important questions:

- How can the system attract and capture a list of potential users and/or customers?
- How can you make the system viral, such that users will refer more users?
- How to convert prospects into customers?

For example, recently I developed a great online tool (I think) that can help me to manage all my stocks (I’m talking about the stock market). I believe if I roll this service out to the market, someone will be willing to pay for it. But before I even think of developing the tool for the multiple users, I first have to think of the 3 questions above.

Here’s my thinking process:

I probably have to develop an online system where stock traders can subscribe for free and manage limited number of stocks. This will answer question #1. If they find the service useful and want to manage more stocks, they will upgrade their account for a monthly fee. That will answer question #3. The tough part is question #2 - how to make it viral. I’m thinking of developing a system where users can allow the public to view their portfolios or their watch list and sign up followers to their watch list. It’s something like the Twitter effect. This will make the website viral.

That’s how I apply my theory in practice.

Step 3: Work

Once the idea is formed and the marketing system is well thought out, the last step to start an online business is to work.

This is the overwhelming part because there are so many things to be done, yet you can only move one step at a time.

First you have to build the website. You can buy a ready script if it’s available, use the free MYOB script that I’ve developed for our members or get a freelancer to develop the website for you, either from scratch or by modifying existing scripts.

When the website is ready, you have to promote it and keep promoting it. And that’s only the beginning……

That’s how to start an online business. After it’s started, to maintain it is another challenge. But if you start off on the right foot, things will be a lot simpler in the future.

By the way, I recently came across a good article on getting clients for your business. It’s worth reading. You may get a few ideas for your business.