Who gets more profit, the relaxed businessman or the aggressive one? Obviously, the aggressive one gets more dough. This is because in the world of business, you always have to be on the lookout for more ways of getting more customers to come to you and motivating them enough to make them come back. A good businessperson can make the past customers come back with more potential customers with them. Likewise, you cannot just hang along and wait for people to subscribe to what you have to offer when they feel like it. You must give them the reason why they should. If you know how to build your list, your business will surely prosper. Hence, it is vital to understand and apply the effective ways of obtaining more email addresses for your list. Here are five steps you can follow:
1.) Construct a website or blog of your own.
Your site or blog need not be sophisticated. A simple yet professional-looking one will be do. In fact, this could look even more credible than other sites which are too complex-looking. A site or blog with pictures are always best. Furthermore, you must make available to visitors some written materials of quality content related to your business or products. Examples are articles about relevant topics, newsletters or even e-books. Do not forget to include the right keywords so that the search engines will easily locate your articles when people search for content related to them. This would drive more traffic to your site, meaning more visitors will check it out. This could mean more names for you. Also, one of the best ways of getting your articles to the public is by having them included in article directories. Many directories allow free submissions so use these to your advantage. When people see that you can provide valuable information regarding certain topics, they are more likely to trust you and your products as well. More customers imply more email addresses.
2.) Offer something useful.
Offer giveaways for visitors. Examples are free subscription to e-zines, freebies to be included in product purchases, free download of e-books, free emails regarding updates on your products, and such. Provide signup forms where the visitors will be asked to enter their names and email addresses. This would supply you with more names to build your list with.
3.) Use backlinks.
A website with higher traffic equally implies a list with more names. By leaving links to your site on places where visitors can come across them and check them out, you increase the number of visitors you get and so are the chances of having them sign up for something you are offering.
4.) Include forms for referral on your site.
Include referral forms that could be something like “Tell Your Friends About This Site” or “Invite More People”. This way, when the visitor enters the email addresses of his or her friends, the amount of names for list magnifies substantially.
5.) Join forum discussions
Offer advice, ask questions, entertain inquiries, and share useful information in online forums and blog discussions. This is a chance of establishing yourself as an expert on a certain field and building immediately the trust of other people. Also, by sharing something valuable during the discussions, you will be allowed to leave a link to your site which visitors and forum members alike can check out. More clicks on the link mean more traffic. More traffic means more chances of getting subscriptions. And finally, more subscriptions mean more email addresses.
You should look at installing commentluv or disqus on your blog. This will make it dofollow and hence you will gain more traffic.
@Barry Green: I specifically do not ‘follow’ comments because they are so often spam, or else lead to sites I have no interest in linking to, Thanks for the ‘your should’ advice but I’ll leave things just the way they are, thank you very much.