How to Build Your E-Mail Subscriber List Quickly and Easily

“You can establish a presence on the Internet. You can have just as much of a presence as a major company or anyone else.” -Lester Bowie

If you’re interested in making money on the Internet, there’s one simple skill you absolutely, positively must excel in …

Collecting lists of e-mail addresses for qualified prospects.

Once you can do that (and today I’m going to show you how), you immediately have an incredibly valuable asset: a database of potential customers you can market to, as often as you like, for almost zero cost.

Having an in-house e-mail subscriber list gives you access to an ongoing conversation with people who like and trust you. They have asked you (opted in) to send them specific information that will enhance their life or business in some way.

When someone asks you to send him information on a regular basis, he’s much more receptive to your sales pitch or marketing promotion.

Here Are the Top 10 Ways to Build an E-Mail Subscriber List:

1. Purchase advertising in e-mail newsletters, e-zines, discussion lists, and blogs that have a similar audience.

This is typically the last place entrepreneurs will go because of the expense. But you can reach tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, of targeted subscribers instantly for only a few hundred dollars. Publishers are often eager to work with people who pay in advance for advertising.

2. Write articles.

Writing articles that are published to a large targeted audience is a great way to obtain new subscribers. Simply include the URL to your sign-up page at the end of your articles. You can submit your articles to article directories, article announcement lists, and the GoogleBase. Publishers are always looking for articles to run in their e-zines, websites, and newsletters.

3. Submit your e-zine, discussion list, newsletter, or blog into the top search engines and directories.

If you don’t have a Web page devoted to your publication and the opt-in process, it won’t get crawled by the top engines.

4. Use e-zine announcement lists to promote your e-zine.

E-zine announcement lists give you an easy way to promote your e-zine on an ongoing basis. Most of them are free, but the best ones charge a small fee and reach a much larger, targeted audience. A couple of the better announcement lists are Ezine-Universe, SparkList, and List-A-Day (which is a review site). You can find hundreds of others by searching Google.

5. Swap ads with other e-zine and newsletter publishers.

This usually only works if you have something of value to share. If you have less than 1,000 subscribers on your list, ad swapping won’t appeal to most publishers. But you could provide articles, content, research, or some other needed service in exchange for promoting your publication and sign-up page to their audience.

6. Create an e-book and use it as a bonus for subscribing to your publication.

This is one of the most overlooked areas for building an e-mail list. An e-book can be a few pages or up to a couple of hundred pages (or more). But an e-book has a high perceived value – especially if it’s written “on demand” or addresses a hot current topic or idea. You can distribute your e-book free of charge across the Internet or on sites like ClickBank, with a view to increasing the size of your subscriber list. Be sure to include your opt-in page URL throughout the e-book.

7. Swap recommendations with other e-zine publishers.

Advertorials are hot! You could recommend another publisher’s e-zine in your own words to your subscriber base in exchange for them doing the same for you. This becomes an even greater tool when your subscriber lists are in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

8. Post a sample issue of your e-zine, newsletter, or discussion list on your site or with an autoresponder.

Sample issues are a great way to build subscriber lists. If people like what they see, they’ll usually subscribe. You can submit issues of your newsletter to the GoogleBase and other content libraries.

9. Use your signature file to promote your e-zine.

I don’t know how effective signature files really are, but almost every publisher uses them. A signature file simply promotes your e-zine on all of your outgoing e-mails. You can also add these files to your posts to discussion lists or online forums.

10. Place free ads in other e-zines.

Many e-zine publishers allow their subscribers to place free promotions in their publications that they feel are of value to other subscribers. Powerful ad copy is a must. Don’t waste words. A powerful promise and benefit with a link to your sign-up page usually works fine.

An Insider Secret for Building E-Mail Subscriber Lists Quickly and Easily

Launching a search engine or directory is one of the fastest, easiest, and simplest ways of building an e-mail subscriber list. It’s also one of the most closely guarded secrets.

Think about it.

People submit their websites, articles, images, videos, and other information into Internet search engines and directories without hesitation. What’s more, people are usually very receptive during the submission process to receive additional information if they think it will help their business or increase traffic to their website.

So it makes perfect sense to offer a newsletter, e-mail bulletin, update, or e-zine that meets this demand.

For example, MS developed a general-interest Internet search engine that excluded adult-oriented websites. He figured that when people submitted their URLs into a search engine, they might be responsive to other methods and tactics to promote their sites. So he launched an e-mail newsletter that’s built around search engine optimization, marketing, tactics, and promotion.

In order to submit your website URL into MS’s search engine, you have to agree to a strict privacy policy (which clearly states you will not send spam). Submitters also agree to receive a weekly e-mail newsletter on Internet marketing tactics. At last count, MS had more than 655,000 opt-in subscribers on his list!

Launching a search engine or directory is NOT as hard as it seems. A search engine is simply a website with a database, coupled with some type of searching technology (like Verity). If you research the topic on the Internet, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll find – and how easy it is.

The bottom line is that people are much more receptive to “opt in” to your newsletter or e-zine if you give them something of value – like enabling them to submit their URL or website information in a search engine or directory.

Another insider method for building an e-mail subscriber list is to launch an Internet search engine or directory and provide an opt-in subscription box during the submission process.

Finally, you can purchase opt-in subscriber lists from reputable, established publishers and Internet entrepreneurs. The keywords are “reputable and established.” If a publisher has been mailing an e-mail newsletter or e-zine to an opt-in subscriber list on a regular basis for more than two years – in the industry, that would be considered “established.”

But a word of warning with regards to buying opt-in subscriber lists: You might want to include an addendum that stipulates mailing to the list for three months before any agreement is final. This will protect you should the majority of the addresses be undeliverable and/or everyone decides to opt out.

There you have it – the best ways to build an e-mail subscriber list quickly and easily.

[Ed. Note: Join Patrick, Michael Masterson, and an elite team of the nation’s leading online marketing experts this October at ETR’s Info Marketing Bootcamp: Making a Fast Fortune on the Information Revolution . Come with an idea for your start-up business or existing business … and leave with a rock-solid marketing plan for transforming that idea into a lasting stream of income.]