Step #1: Funnel Creation

The first step before you can start building an email list is that you will need to create a few web pages in order to send traffic to, which then allows the visitors to actually sign up to your list. There are a few pages that you will need; you first need a squeeze page, then a one-time offer page, as well as a down-sell page for that one-time offer. Let me quickly explain what each of those pages are and why you need them. The squeeze page is the email capture page, where you will need to put your autoresponder opt-in form code on so that visitors can sign up to your list. 

This is the most important page that you will need. All other pages are optional, but still highly recommended. The one-time offer page is the page that viewers will see and be redirected to as soon as they fill in your opt-in form. This page hosts a low priced offer, usually within the $10- $20 range, which helps you to recoup costs that you might incur when purchasing traffic. Then the down-sell offer page is similar to the one-time offer, but instead, it is a very low cost offer which visitors will see if they do not purchase the one-time offer. 

If you want to get really complicated, but at the same time make a lot more money, you can keep adding offer pages to your funnel. For example, you could have an upsell page for a mid-high ticket product, then also backend offers as well. But for starters I would recommend at least having those three pages, the squeeze page, one-time offer, and a down-sell page.


Squeeze Page:

Let’s get into the very important squeeze page. I’m sure you are familiar with internet marketing related squeeze pages, they generally all look the same, and that’s not a good thing. Internet marketers tend to copy one another quite regularly. They see a page which they think is working well, then they copy it, then someone else does the same thing. Before you know it, that page is no longer converting well anymore because too many people are promoting the same page, everyone is seeing the same pages over and over again. 

When creating your squeeze page, make it as unique as you can. The more it’s different from other pages and the more it stands out, the better it will convert for you. When creating a squeeze page I have found that very simple pages work the best, pages which have a big headline, a short sub-headline, and the opt-in form, nothing much else on the page. Keeping it simple and to the point helps to boost conversion rates. You will also want to only have an email address field for visitors to fill in. By default most opt-in forms have a name and email field, but requiring a name only lowers conversion rates. That’s not to say that you can’t use the name field, but just be aware that your conversions will be lower with it. So what is a good conversion rate for a squeeze page? 

The higher you can have it, the better it is. But overall, I aim for at least 40% conversions. That means that if I had 100 visitors to the squeeze page, 40 of them will subscribe to my list. I’ve had higher than that, over 50%, but I start out aiming for 40%. Then I keep testing and tweaking the page until I get the highest conversions that I can. To create a squeeze page (or any of the other pages as well), you can use a variety of programs to help you do it. If you are comfortable creating a web page from scratch, then by all means do that. But if you are not familiar with how to do that then I would suggest using a combination of WordPress and Optimize Press. 

WordPress in general helps to create web pages very quickly, but it is limited in how much you can easily customize a page. Optimize Press is a plug-in for WordPress which makes creating squeeze pages and offer pages very easy. It allows you to quickly create and then edit pages at any time, you can easily add-in your autoresponder form code into a page.


Free Gift:

One thing that you will need in conjunction with your squeeze page is some kind of free gift or free offer to entice visitors to sign up to your list. This can be a simple PDF report, a few videos, or anything that is on a hot topic within your niche. Once you know what your free offer is, you can then write your squeeze page headline to tell your visitors what it is that they will be receiving once they fill in the opt-in form. Once they do join your list you can then deliver the free gift to them though your autoresponder follow-up email series which I will explain about in the next chapter. 

One important note about this free gift is that it should be of good quality. Don’t use a report that was written five years ago with content which isn’t relevant anymore. Also don’t use a gift which is already been given away by hundreds of other people. You will want it to be as unique as possible so that your subscribers will enjoy it and be able to use the information is provides. This is important if you want to build up trust with your subscribers.


One-Time Offer Page:

Now that you have a squeeze page with a free offer, it’s time to consider what your onetime offer (OTO) will be. Remember, this is a paid product, usually within the $10 - $20 range, but that price point can be different depending on your niche and the product. The product should be related to your free offer, so it should be either on the same topic or a similar topic, something which your subscribers will be interested in. 

If your subscribers sign-up to receive your free gift on a particular topic, then it would only make sense to offer them more information in the form of a paid product on that same topic since you already know they are interested in it. Again, this product should be high quality, something which the buyers of will be thankful for purchasing. You can use private label rights (PLR) material to help create this product, but make sure that your OTO contains useful information that the buyers can put to use, otherwise you may run the risk of disappointing your buyers and being forced to refund many of them.

You will need to create a sales page to offer this OTO along with a download page, both of which can be created using Optimize Press with WordPress. 

Within your autoresponder account, which we will talk about later in this report, you will want to set the opt-in form redirect option to automatically send subscribers to this OTO as soon as they submit the sign-up form. When a visitor comes to your squeeze page, if they sign up to your list, they will then be immediately taken to view your onetime offer.


Down-Sell Offer:

The down-sell offer can either be on a slightly different topic as your OTO, or it could be a smaller version of your OTO, either way it should be cheaper in price than your OTO. This offer is to capture more buyers who did not purchase your OTO but who still want to purchase something from you. Without this down-sell page you will lose out on a lot of sales. 

This offer will also need a sales page and a download page. When visitors are viewing your one-time offer but decide to pass it up, you will want to capture their attention using an exit pop script which displays when they try to close the page to tell them about your down-sell offer. 

If they decide to stay on the page to view the offer they will be redirected to your down-sell sales page. At this point you now have all of the web pages needed to start building your list and making money from new subscribers. The next step is to set-up your autoresponder in order to properly capture and keep those subscribers.


Step #2: Autoresponder Set-Up

In order to actually build an email list properly you will need an autoresponder account, and I would suggest one of two autoresponder services to use, Aweber or GetResponse. Those are both professional autoresponder services which I have used and would recommend. Once you have account and have created your first list within the account, there are a few things which you will need to set-up in order to make the most out of your new list. 

The first would be to make sure that within your list settings you set the opt-in settings to “single opt-in”, not double opt-in. Single opt-in will allow visitors to enter their email address and become subscribed to your list immediately, while double opt-in will force your visitors to have to check their email inbox to confirm signing up to your list, which will dramatically lower the number of subscribers that you will receive. The second task to do within your new list is to create at least 5 follow-up emails which will start being send automatically to new subscribers as soon as they subscribe. 

The first email should be a welcome email, thanking the person for subscribing and containing a link to your free gift. You may also want to promote your one-time offer within this email as well, to remind them about it. The second – fifth emails should be a combination of quality content as well as promotions for your OTO and possibly other products of yours or affiliate products. The follow-up emails should be set-up to be sent almost every day, with a missed day every 2-3 days. The point of these follow-up emails is to maintain regular contact with your subscribers and to keep building up trust with them, offering them great free content with a few promotions in between. The more that your subscribers like and trust you, the more likely they will feel comfortable buying from you in the future. 

Once your list settings and follow-up emails are in place, you can then create an opt-in form and place it on your squeeze page. Make sure to set it to only have an email field and to redirect subscribers to your one-time offer page.