Where To start Online… The Money Is STILL In The List, FACT!! $172,000 in 12 months isn’t bad!

It’s something that we have all been faced with at some point, and for many, you have been asking yourself this question for years!

How do I make money online?

If you are fed up of all of the shit that you here about making money online then get it all out of your head and let’s start again, because I know first hand that there is a lot of crap that pushes you in the wrong direction!

I also know first hand how to make a lot of money online, and Im going to reveal how, and where you should start!

 

 

 

 

What worked 5 years ago won’t work now!!… I say Bollox to that

What I started doing 11 years ago works just as well today as it it did then…. If not better!!

Since I started online when I was 17, I have easily cleared a 6 figure sum in terms of earnings! and I’m going to show you exactly how to do it right here.

I understand that most people fail to make anything online, and to be honest, it’s not getting any easier!

 

Making money online is not easy – very true

For some reason, many people seem to think that making money online is easy! maybe they are trying to sell you their latest get rich quick guide, or their latest online money maker.

They always make out that it’s easy and with a few clicks of the mouse, you’ll be making online just like them!

 

 

 

The fact of the matter is, building an online income requires hard work and discipline, just like any other kind of business.

As the internet grows, so does the number of people trying to my an income from it. Not only that, but the big companies keep getting bigger and they are pushing the little guys out!

Similar to the real world where we see big supermarket chains taking over and the small businesses can’t compete and have to close down.

The same thing will happen online! Amazon and Ebay will take up most of the top listings for products, making affiliate marketing even harder!

Social media sites will dominate online advertising and if Google keeps changing their algorithm’s then people will become disheartened when they see their sites suddenly wiped off the face of the planet!

Too many people really on Google, and it’s a very dangerous predicament to be in, because the fate of your business lies in the hands of Matt Cutts and his crew!

Anyway, enough of the bad stuff, lets get onto what actually makes money and what you can do today to start your online business.

 

Your online dreams went tits up

You maybe able to relate to this as i’ve seen it too many times…

You decide you want to make money online, so you do a search and you come across some schemes that look really simple! ‘click these ads and make $$$’ or ‘fill out surveys all day for cash’, or earn $2 for every person you get to sign up to this program’.

You quickly realise that it’s all a load of shit and you are never going to make any serious money from doing this rubbish!

 

So what now?

You dive a little deeper and discover ‘affiliate’ marketing. Now affiliate marketing is not a bad thing, as you can see here how I describe how I made +3,546 a month from affiliate marketing.

The problem is, 99% of people who try affiliate marketing don’t fully understand all of the aspects required to make it successful.

Not only do you need to be good at finding the right products to market, you need evaluate your chances of ranking your new site, oh and you’ve got to build a site that looks good and converts well.

You also need great content and an in depth knowledge of the products you are promoting!

You then have to find a way to out do your competition!! You need a way to get traffic to your site. You need to apply the right SEO tactics, and even after all of this….

Google might decide they don’t like something you have done, or change their policies or most likely, you will get bullied out of the market by Amazon!

Now I’m not saying that affiliate marketing is not good, because it still remains one of the best ways for people to make money online! The amount of money made from affiliate sales is billions of dollars each year!

so there is definitely scope there, but unless you are experienced and understand all aspects of online marketing then you are going to struggle!

You put in the effort and your site flops!

You feel a bit pissed off and then you come up with another ‘brilliant’ idea and move on to something else!

 

Stick at it until you succeed

This is the biggest problem for online marketers. It’s so easy for people to move on to something else before actually making a success of their first project. You have probably done it before, because I certainly have.

You have a great idea and start to work on it, you then come across another great idea, so you move onto that. This becomes a cycle that you keep repeating and after a while you realise that you have still not made any money!

So my best advise is to stick at something until you have given it your best shot. The first 90% of any project is easy, it’s the final 10% that is the most challenging!

 

Lets start again… This is how you make money online

As I said at the start, I have been making money online since I was 17, and here’s how to do it.

You have probably heard it before but not really followed through with it……

– Start with something that you have a passion for

Trust me, you will have a much better chance of succeeding online if you start out with something you enjoy doing and something that you already know a lot about, whether it be skiing, making cakes, reading novels or growing potatoes!

Whatever it is, that is your starting point!!!

The 2 main reason you should choose something you are passionate about is:

1) You already have knowledge and you will be able to create great content yourself, offer a valuable service and help out others! If you already have a wealth of knowledge on a particular subject, then use it!

2) If you are passionate about the topic then you are much more likely to stick at it. It’s important to have drive and determination to succeed. If your heart is not in it then you will not succeed.

Choosing a subject that you actually like will keep you interested for longer!

 

Get involved, fish out your market!

When planning a new site it’s important that you get a feel for your marketing and target audience. This is one thing that most people completely ignore,

but you should pay attention because this can save you a lot of time and help your business succeed!

Get involved on forums and chat boards for your particular niche. You want to get involved and answer peoples questions.

Spend time seeing what is popular and try to break your niche down into areas that you can target. Matthew Woodward wrote this post on finding and engaging with your target audience

 

Here is an example:

One of my passions is golf. Now if I was to make a website about the golf swing in general I would probably fail miserably!

Having subscribed to golf sites and blogs in the past, I understand what it takes to succeed in that field.

For starters, I quickly realised that Videos were an absolute must. The successful golf instruction sites use Video instruction to get the message across.

I also realised that most ‘golfers’ were interested in certain aspects of instruction.

The most popular being,

‘how to bomb your drivers further’

‘How to swing the club on plane’

‘How to create lag in the downswing’

There are actually some very good sites that are based solely around ‘lag in the golf swing’.

Now if you have no interest in golf then you have probably never even heard of the term ‘lag’.

So do you understand why I say that it’s good to start off with something you know about?

With a bit of knowledge and a bit of fishing around, you can quickly come up with some ideas for your niche site!

 

Oh look! Here’s my optin box, please join my list 🙂

 

 

The money is in the list

When I first started out, one of the first pieces of advice I heard was ‘The money in is in the list’

This turned out to be the best piece of advice I had ever heard! and I’ll show you why…..

To this day I have worked at building a solid list of subscribers to my sites. It is by far the best thing I can tell you if you want to make ‘serious’ money online!

Build a god damn list!!

From day 1 I decided to start building a list, and here are some figures for you from my Aweber account:

 

 

 

As you can see, a grand total of 36,271 people have subscribed to one of my lists!!

Now I have calculated that each new subscriber to my list is worth around £14-£16 to me!

Now you do the math!!!!!

We are talking BIG 6 figure sums here.

Over the years I have continued to promote new products to this list of people, and to this day it still makes huge profits!!

In 2013 alone, this 1 list generated over £108,000 profit!!! that’s $172,000

 

Here’s why you need to build a list

If the above sums hadn’t already convinced you that building a subscriber list is the way to go, then here are some advantages:

• You have a customer base that you can promote to anytime you want
• If your site suddenly stops getting traffic, you will still make money from your list
• Having a large list like this gives you online security!
• Don’t have to rely on Google rankings
• Your list becomes an asset, which means your business becomes valuable $$$
• You can create a passive income from your list

 

How to build your list

It may come to a surprise to you that my list was not built on the back of Number 1 rankings in Google, in fact my site doesn’t really pick up a great deal of organic traffic.

It’s in an ultra competitive niche and I simply didn’t want to focus all my effort on SEO when I new that my main concern was building the list and making more money!!

Don’t get me wrong, number 1 rankings would have worked wonders for my subscriber numbers, but it simply wasn’t achievable.

 

So here’s how I built over 36,000 subscribers:

1) In the very early days I paid other site owners in my niche to send out emails to their own lists, promoting my site. This got me started!! I don’t think that would be possible these days though!

2) Next was list swaps! I still do this today and it works great. If somebody in your niche has a similar size list, you simply promote their site and they will promote yours. The result is that you both grow your lists 🙂

3) Pay for them!… Quite a few years ago I created a new landing page and I set up some Google adwords. At the time I was getting around 30-40 new members per day at a cost of around 0.50p per member. This went on for about 1 and a half years.

Then Google decided to change it’s policy and banned my ads! They can be a real pain in the arse with their policy and guidelines, which was a shame because I could have built my list even bigger!!

4) Offer something of value to your subscribers in return for a referral! Basically, you ask your list to refer a friend in return for something.

This helps to boost your subscriber numbers. There are plugins that can help you set this up.

5) Facebook ads. Something that I have only just dabbled in but at the minute I am getting around 15-30 new members per day from Facebook at around £1 – £1.20 per member, which may seem a lot to you.

But remember, each new subscriber is worth around £14-£16 to me, so well woth the investment.

6) Social presence – Again this has been quite new but building a social presence will help your list grow, be sure to set up facebook and twitter and add regular content!

This is what I did to build my list, but there are tons of other ways in which you can build yours.

As you can see from this blog, I use opt in forms at the end of each post, I have a side bar optin and I also give visitors a chance to follow me on Google+ and Twitter 

I also came across this post from NicheHacks that shows you 34 ways to build your list:

http://www.nichehacks.com/increase-email-list/

 

“If you’re not building an email list, Your an idiot”

Those are the words of Derek Helpern, and he is spot on!!

 

 

How to convert visitors into subscribers

1) You need a good landing page that converts well!

2) You need to offer your visitor something of value, and give it to them for free in return for their email address.

If you followed my advice at the beginning and got involved in forums and discussions and got an idea of your target audience, you will be able to base your site design around your audience.

For example…. The type of people into gardening are probably going be different to the kind of people into roller blading!

Therefore you have to incorporate this into your site.

 

Here is a cool InfoGraphic from Neil Patel

 

Build trust and respect

Building your list is one thing, maintaining your list is another!!

Once you have subscriber on your list, you should have 2 goals in mind:

1) Keep that subscriber for as long as possible

2) Gain trust with that subscriber

 

If you don’t provide your subscribers with anything valuable or you spam the shit out of them every time, they will simply hit the ‘unsubscribe’ link and say goodbye to your ass!

It’s important that you keep your subscribers happy and send them fresh new content that will interest them. You have no excuse, because you have done your research and you have an interest in the niche also!

Be totally honest with them!

If you failed to send something out because you got stuck in a traffic jam and then your car blew up, tell them about it!!

If you come across a product or blog that is shit, inform them about it.

If you come across something great, share it with them!

This will build trust with your membership base and then in the future when you come to promote a new product or affiliate product, they will have trust in you and are much more likely to purchase!

DO NOT try to sell them something straight away!

This is a big turn off for new members. The first few emails should helpful and meaningful!

Now it’s ok to sometimes re-direct them to a sales page after they sign up, but refrain from emailing them sales copy for a couple of weeks!

 

Automate the whole process – Get an AWEBER account

There is 1 program I have used since the start, and that is Aweber.

They offer a great auto-responder service so you can manage your lists. You can set up your emails to automatically send out to your subscribers, scheduled over a certain period of time!

Aweber is about $15 a month – Check it out here for 1$

It’s really simple to set up your Auto-responder series.

The great thing I like about Aweber is that you only need 1 account to manage all of your lists!!

Try AWeber’s Autoresponders for $1

 

How To Make Money From Your List

Once you have started to build your list it’s time to start making some cash!

There are a number of ways of doing this and it depends on your niche as to which approach you take. The reason I made so much money from my list is because I created and marketed my own products to my subscribers.

This means I get to keep all of the profits!

If you don’t feel comfortable producing your own products just yet then you can promote affiliate products!

Now this is where affiliate marketing gets interesting, because you are targeting a group of people that you know are interested in what you have to offer, and they already have your trust!

Unlike new visitors to an affiliate site where you have just 1 shot at converting them into a sale, with your list, you can email them a number of times!

Not only that, but you can promote a different product every few weeks!

Another method I have used is offering your subscribers the opportunity to join a ‘paid’ section of your site!

This is where your really good stuff is, and you can make a nice passive, monthly income from this type of marketing.

The powers of an email list are never ending!!

 

To finish off, I will show you some screen shots of my Paypal account…. Just so you don’t think Im some kind of nut case throwing out extortionate claims!!!

These are just 2 random days I selected…..

 

 

 

Summary

I could go on forever writing this post as there are so many aspects to discuss, but I’ll save it for future posts. There is already a lot to take in here and I hope that it has opened your eyes to the power of building email lists!

Checklist:

Start with a niche you are interested in yourself

– Build a list

– Build a relationship with your subscribers

– Promote products and services

– Keep building your list and keep making $$$

 

Esential Tools

  Aweber – $1 trial