You know the formula: step 1: create something valuable; step 2: give it away as an incentive to join your mailing list; step 3: ...; step 4: make money.

But what should you create in step 1?

You might think that a 100-page eBook, packed with everything you know, would be the killer freebie, and...
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Today, let's learn from each other's mistakes. The Monday Question for this week: what are the 3 worst mistakes you've made in your internet marketing efforts?

I'll go first. The 3 worst internet marketing mistakes I've made are (in no particular order):

1. Waiting to build a mailing list. When I started off, I gave...
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There's no shortage to internet markets who'll teach you ways to build traffic, get followers, or build a mailing list. Not as many teach how to build influence. But without influence, traffic and subscribers aren't worth much.

For mass influence, the "A-List" dominates. If you can get "anointed" by them, and don't botch the opportunity,...
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Last month, I interviewed marketing coach Terry Dean. I went in with 6 questions, expecting to come out with a nice little blog post. What I got was amazing. Terry gave the kind of in-depth answers that a lot of gurus would package up and sell you as MP3s with an upsell to get the...
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My house turns 100 years old next year. With the weather turning cold again, the annual draft hunt is back in session.

Some of the draft sources drive me absolutely crazy -- like a storm window in the basement that had probably been left open for several years. Last winter, I taped over the edges...
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There are two types of messages you can send to your list: "follow-ups" that are sent to each subscriber in a scheduled sequence, and "broadcasts" that go to the entire list at once. Each type has its strengths and weaknesses.

Follow-Up Messages

Follow-ups are ideal for sending a coordinated sequence of messages designed to turn...
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There are four ways to make more money from your website:

Increase the amount of targeted traffic coming to your site.

Convert more of your traffic to paying customers.

Increase your revenue per paying customer.

Decrease your costs.

Let's work through the list backwards.

Decrease your costs

In some ways, this is the least i...
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One of the worst mistakes I ever made in my online business was waiting too long to start building a mailing list. My next biggest mistake was waiting too long to start using it right.

For several years, I gave away a free version of one of my products without capturing email addresses. Thousands of...
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One of Dr. Robert Cialdini's six principles of persuasion is reciprocity -- when you do someone a favor, they tend to feel obliged to return the favor. I've heard this plenty of times before, but I recently read an article that got me thinking about it again.

A few days ago, Dr. Cialdini tweeted a...
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Offering freebies as incentives to join an email list is standard practice in internet marketing. Most marketers focus on getting as many signups as possible by focusing on the freebie and downplaying the email subscription. But is that the best approach?

Amanda Gagnon wrote:

Mentioning email first weeds out people who are only interested in...
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