The best part? You can sell to your list over and over..and over again. Its usually pretty tough to gain new customers, but it is absolutely golden once you have a loyal list of buyers who are interested in what you are selling. Unfortunately the importance of maintaining your list is underestimated by many marketers. The last thing you want to do is spam interested buyers with unwanted information.

Once you have sold a valuable high quality product to someone, chances are high that this person will buy from you again. Its a fact that pre-existing relationships will close the sale a whole lot easier. Just remember to focus on building a solid strong relationship with your list subscribers. Not only will you be retaining a long term customer, but you’ll also be securing long term profits.

You probably have seen the phrase “make money on autopilot” quite often. Some may find that it seems nearly impossible to make money completely on autopilot, but I will say that it CAN be done. Selling to your list is a form of making money on autopilot. Not everyone who has a list will use their list effectively. This is where you can cash in. If you simply offer nothing but high quality information, you WILL make money from your list.

You won’t grow a highly profitable list overnight, as it takes a bit of time. But once you have a list of interested buyers, money will roll in. Always remember to stay on topic and give your subscribers what they want… VALUE.

Below you will find 4 simple ways to start building a list.

1. Create a Free Viral Report

Offering a free viral report is a quick way to start building a list.  Internet marketers use this method repeatedly.  Why?  Because it’s highly effective.  It’s as simple as creating a short high quality report and submitting it to various directories and other fellow marketers.  Simply asking other internet marketers if they’d be interested in offering your free report to their list is a HUGE opportunity.  Make sure you include a link to a your squeeze page in your report.  Your squeeze page is where you’ll obtain the visitors name and email address while offering them more valuable information for free. Once your report spreads like wildfire, you’ll see clicks to your squeeze page in no time.

2. Adswaps

Adswaps have the ability to be quite effective.  If you aren’t familiar with this, it’s simply the process of one internet marketer advertising their offer on a fellow marketer’s list, and vice versa.  Create an adswap which sends people to the squeeze page which I talked about a few moments ago.  This method will only work if you already have some type of list in place.  But once you have a list, this is a fantastic and profitable way to continuously build it bigger.

3. Offer a Free WSO

Offering a free WSO is an extremely effective way to build a mailing list you can send offers to.  WSO is the short title of a Warrior Special Offer, part of the online internet marketing community Warrior Forum.  If you haven’t spent time hanging around and learning at the Warrior Forum, now is the time to do so.  Once you become familiar with how the forum works, register an account and become part of the community.

Create a high quality product and offer it as a freebie in exchange for their email address.  You can even create an additional profit stream by offering a special one time offer on the back end of your squeeze page.  Now you will have offered a high quality product for free, obtained an email address to add to your mailing list, and have the potential of making some money from the one time offer at the same time.

4. Solo Ads

The last method I’m going to mention is solo ads.  I personally don’t use this method often, but I am aware of its effectiveness.  A solo ad is simply a paid ad on a fellow internet marketers list.  Again, you’ll be using your squeeze page as part of the ad so that you can obtain an email address to build your list.  If you do choose this method, remember to advertise to a list which is related to the niche your marketing in.

Here are 5 article writing tips to help get you started:

1. Ask yourself a question.

I’ve found it very helpful to start writing my article with a question.  Once I have a question related to the topic of my article, I find it easier to expand on the topic and provide an in depth answer to that particular question.  For example, we could be writing an article about Wordpress blogs.  I would then begin my article with the question “What is a Wordpress blog?”.  This will help focus all my thoughts on the topic.

2. Brainstorm, create bullet points.

Once I have created a question for the topic, I will then brainstorm ideas and answers.  Instead of writing answers in a paragraph form, I list answers as bullet points.  This gives me an opportunity to expand on each bullet point and add more relevant information step by step.  I have always found this helpful for creating more content in the article.

3. Write down your thoughts as they come.

You can reduce the amount of time it takes to create an article by simply writing down every thought that comes through your mind while thinking about the topic.  Most people are faced with writers block and will simply stare at a blank page.  Why not write it all down?  Just translate your thoughts as simple as you can.  Once you have everything down, go through it all.  Piece together all relevant information.  You’ll probably be surprised when you discover how much content you have just created within a short period of time.

4. Set a timer.

I will almost always time myself when writing articles.  If you can determine the amount of time it’s taking you to write articles, you can then set a goal and set out to accomplish your tasks a bit better.  Allow yourself enough time to write thorough and high quality articles.  The reader of your article will easily be able to tell if you rushed through your writing.  So simply remember to set a timer to set a goal.

5. Brainstorming

The process of organizing your thoughts is one of the most helpful aspects of article writing.  Before writing your articles, brainstorm thoughts on your topic.  Simply write down a list of bullet points which you can eventually incorporate into your article.  You’ll find it much easier to expand on each bullet point as you set out to write each paragraph.

Larger business will usually have a web designer within their IT department who can build a website from the bottom up.  Having someone who has the technical knowledge to do this is beneficial.  For smaller to medium sized companies, having a web designer in house will not always be an option.  This will leave the company having to search for and hire a web designer.  Outsourcing this project will not be a difficult task, but always remember to do some research and make sure that the designer you hire is knowledgeable and efficient for the job.

You should have a specific set of guidelines you want your web designer to follow.  After all, this is a website about your business, and nobody knows your business better than yourself.  You’ll want to form an identity for your business so that your web designer can incorporate the image into the website.  Having your website in sync with the your companys’ image is extremely important.  This will allow your customers to easily relate to what your business is all about.

Make sure the information your website provides is current, reliable, and credible.  This way you’ll be able to answer any inquiries your customer may have after visiting your site.  This will ultimately help you build trust between you and your customers.

Also remember the importance of providing current information.  Current and relevant information always seems to be something lacking from many business sites.  Yes, this means always having your web designer tweak your site, but providing current information just might give you an edge over your competitors who fail to do so.  And remember to build a website which is visually appealing to your visitors.  This will be an easy task for your web designer, as most experienced designers take pride in their web creations.

You should be well on your way to building a good website if you follow these simple guidelines.  They don’t take much time, but they have the potential of leaving an everlasting image on your customers.

Blog Commenting

If you are familiar with the general layout of a blog, chances are pretty good you’ve seen a place where you can actively participate and share your comments on the topic being discussed.  Each individual blog has it’s own style of displaying comments, but the whole idea is pretty much the same.  It is most common to see a link at the end of each blog post, giving you the opportunity to leave your opinion.  There are some who just enjoy participating in the discussion, but the main reason people participate is to leave a link to their own website with hopes of getting some traffic.

Now before going you go wild and start leaving comments on a bunch of blogs, you should learn the right way to do it.  I can’t tell you how many times I see people go about this all wrong.  Commenting the wrong way will just be a waste of your time and energy.  Remember, you are trying to build traffic and make some money during the whole process.

Begin the process by doing a little research.  Search for active, current, and popular blog posts that are related to your own niche.  You want to find posts where you can provide at least some intelligent feedback.  One line comments that aren’t very informative will simply be overlooked.  Comments such as “nice post” or “thanks for sharing” really don’t add much to your credibility.  You don’t have to write an essay either.  A brief informative comment on a relevant topic can drive significant traffic to your website.  The blog post you are commenting on should be on a high traffic website.  Leaving a comment on a website with little to no traffic won’t produce results.

Engaging in the conversation with a helpful comment will spark interest in who you are and what you have to say.  It even works great if you sometimes question the original authors perspective on the topic.  Adding a little fuel to the fire and starting a little debate can also put you in the spotlight.  Just always remember to be professional, polite, and informative.  This will help you come across as someone who has a good degree of knowledge on the topic being discussed.

It is important to stay on topic and follow through with this process.  This method of driving traffic has proven to be highly effective, over and over again.  It is very simple to do, takes very little time, and once again…it’s free!

Here are 4 extremely simple ways to do this:

1. Create Your Own Interview Product

An interview product is one of the fastest and easiest types of products you can create.  You can virtually go out and start this product in an instant.  All you have to do is find someone in your niche that is willing to answer some of your questions.  You might be thinking that it’s hard to find someone to interview.  To be honest, most will be willing to share their knowledge with you.  The one who is being interviewed will obtain free publicity and exposure during the process.  Interviews are very popular amongst internet marketers.  You can easily conduct your interview on Skype and have a completed product in no time.  Don’t forget to transcribe the interview and turn it into a report as well.

2. Use PLR (Private Label Rights)

There is an endless amount of PLR material available to internet marketers.  It may take some time, but allow yourself to search through and find good quality private label rights reports.  Once you find a decent report in your particular niche, change it up a bit.  Finding reports with PLR will allow you to do almost whatever you want to the material.  Be a little creative and add some ideas of your own to the report.  Remove any parts of the report you don’t like.  You can also add some nice looking graphics to the report, give it a new name, and write a sales letter to go along with.  This process can sometimes be a little time consuming, but it is highly effective.

3. Use a Ghostwriter

If you have no interest in creating a product yourself, you just might find it useful to find a ghostwriter.  Ghostwriters are used by internet marketers each and every single day.  In fact, you probably would be surprised to find out how easy it is to hire a ghostwriter to create a product.  Just remember that there are as many bad ghostwriters as good ones.  You’ll have to do some research and find someone who puts out high quality material.  The last thing you want is a ghostwriter who charges you money for poorly written work.  And the worst thing is having to rewrite content that you paid for.

4. Use Articles

The fourth simple way to create your own product is by using articles.  If you follow my suggestion of using PLR material, chances are pretty good you will have a large amount of private label rights articles available for use.  Once you have accumulated 15 to 20 PLR articles related to your niche, combine all the good aspects of each article and form them all into one single report.  This is very easy, effective, and can be done within a reasonable amount of time.

Those frustrated with osCommerce will usually turn to the osCommerce Community Support Forums for answers, but answers are not always available to the problems they face. In all honesty, there are some pretty decent online stores utilizing osCommerce. After all, it’s open source, and a free e-commerce solution. And for many, free is the only way to go.

There have been several alternatives to osCommerce, such as ZenCart, CRE Loaded, PrestaShop, and Pinnacle Cart. One alternative which many may not be familiar with is Magento. Magento is an open source eCommerce platform developed by Varien, a Los Angeles company founded in 2001. The flexible platform offers up features that store operators require for their business. And the interest in Magento is growing steadily, with over 525,000 downloads.

If you’re looking for an osCommerce alternative, download Magento and give it a whirl. The platform has the ability to attract the attention of the marketing world, offering up essential SEO and product management tools.

Identification…

Remember to get your name of your business out to everyone. It’s important you include your business name in emails, business cards, brochures, receipts, voice messages, etc. It’s a bit difficult for others to spread the word about your business if they can’t identify who you are.

Expecting the Unexpected…

One of the most effective ways to get people talking is to offer the unexpected to your visitors. If you have the ability to offer something for free, go for it! Just make sure that what you are offering is valuable. Everyone loves free stuff, but not everyone loves free junk. If you’re offering something of value for free, your visitors will more than likely spread the word to others. You want to build interest and get people talking.

Spark Interest…

Communicate with your customers. While you’re hoping for others to spread the word about your business, why not start spreading the word yourself? Encourage others to spread the word about what you are offering. It doesn’t hurt to ask others to tell a friend about your business.

Start getting the word out today!

Some of these methods may seem repetitive, but they work! If you are already implementing them, GREAT! If you haven’t used these methods and techniques yet, now is the time to learn how and why you should be using them.

Blog All About It…

Blog it! It’s as simple as that. Take a few moments to create a free blog on either Wordpress or Blogger. Once you have your free blog set up, link back to your product site. You’ll be amazed how much free laser targeted traffic you can obtain through free blogs. Just be sure that your blog is relevant to your product site. Splash your blog with some high quality content such as articles, related industry news, etc. Remember that you want to be using certain keywords and keyword phrases while creating this content.

Participate in Related Communities, Forums, Groups, and Message Boards…

There’s nothing like becoming part of groups and forums that bring people together interested in the same topics as yourself. Just remember not to spam these sites with your business information. If you interact with others in communities, provide useful information and build a bit of reputation for you and your business. You just may be surprised at how much good and quality traffic you can obtain.

Write Articles…

I’ve mentioned this a billion times before. Writing articles can drive massive amounts of laser targeted traffic to your web sites. Check out ways you can outsource article writing if you are not interested in writing articles yourself.

Don’t Forget The Basics…

Forgetting the basic ways to drive traffic to your site is easy to do. I shared some traffic increasing tips a little while back, so feel free to review some of the basic effective methods.

Pay Per Click Advertising…

If you have a little money you can spend on advertising, PPC advertising through Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing can bring a significant of laser targeted traffic to your site. Just be cautious so you don’t go broke in the process. PPC is awesome when it works, but if you’re not careful you can go through a lot of money with little results. Take the time to research specific keywords and phrases, and learn a little bit about your competition.

I have had much success using Google AdSense, but I am very careful when choosing which sites I want to display ads on. Below you will find 5 reasons why you should not use AdSense on certain websites.

1. Google AdSense Can Be Bad For Business

Did you know that you could be severely harming your business by choosing to display Google AdSense on your website? I know, you’ve probably read countless articles and e-books claiming you can become a millionaire through AdSense. I am not here to say this can’t be done, but at what cost to your business?

I’m quite confident in saying that Google AdSense can be bad for your business.

I’ll set up a little scenario to help you understand how Google Ads can be bad. Let’s say you own John’s Used Cars, a used car business. And let’s say that you have one of the nicest looking used car lots in town. Your car lot is set up better than the rest of the ones in town.

Now picture all your cars lined up nicely on the lot, all waiting to be sold. Except there is one thing different about your car lot. Next to each car you are selling is a billboard, or a sign with an advertisement on it if you will. Each advertising sign that is next to the cars you are selling is telling your potential customer to check out another used car lot down the street. Sounds a bit silly doesn’t it? Here you are displaying your cars for sale, surrounded by signs advertising sales at other used car lots down the block.

Now apply this scenario to your online business. If you have a nice looking website created for your business, full of high quality content, why do you want your content surrounded by advertising links to other relevant websites? You are literally telling your customers to go somewhere else and shop. And what’s in it for you? A few pennies here and there when the visitor to your website clicks a Google AdSense ad.

What you just did is sent your customer away from your site, a really big mistake. This is bad for your business, because you set yourself up to lose potentials customers, sales, and leads. All the time you have spent trying to drive traffic to your site goes down the drain.

2. Google AdSense Unprofessional?

I’m willing to say that if you have Google AdSense ads plastered across your site, your site falls into the unprofessional category. I know many will argue about this, but in my view it’s true. People who use AdSense will go hog wild and begin placing ads carelessly throughout their website. This is usually done because others say earning money through your ads is all about placement. This is true, however your nice looking website has now become a huge bulletin board of advertisements.

Google AdSense does allow you to customize the look of the ads you place on your website, but only to a certain extent. Let’s go back to the used car lot business that I mentioned a few moments ago. Let’s say there are two sales people working at this used car lot business. Both sales people are dressed very professional, however one is wearing 25 buttons advertising other businesses. Which sales person would you be more comfortable with? Without being too judgmental or bias, it’s pretty safe to say that you’d rather be approached by the sales person who is dressed professionally, without all the buttons.

3. Google AdSense Creates a Distraction to Your Visitors

How many times have you visited a site about a certain topic, only to be bombarded by ads for another topic? It happens all the time. If you have a website about video games, why have a bunch of advertisements for wedding dresses? There is usually some sense of control, but there are times when the ads just don’t match up to the content. I think this is a HUGE problem, and creates an unnecessary distraction to your site’s visitors.

It’s crucial that you grab the attention of your visitors within the first few seconds, otherwise you just may lose a customer. If you focus on creating a web site with less distractions, you will more than likely have better results in the long run.

4. Google AdSense Can Cost You Advertising Money

Using Google AdSense can end up costing you more than you think. This applies to many web site owners who use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic to their site. PPC can be a highly effective form of advertising, but you just might be throwing everything out the window when you use PPC advertising and AdSense at the same time. Imagine you are spending a specific dollar amount on PPC advertising each day, yet the majority of your traffic that comes through PPC ends up clicking on the AdSense links on your site. Where’s the benefit here?

You just spent advertising money to bring a visitor to your site and immediately send them somewhere else. You didn’t capture any leads, make any sales, and just drove the customer away from your business. NOT good! Yes, you can earn money from the AdSense ads that are being clicked, but they aren’t worth nearly the same amount value as a good lead you might have captured during this process.

5. Google AdSense Can Cause Lack of Focus

This one is important to you as a web site owner. It’s very easy to lose focus while creating a decent quality web site. Many will lose focus on creating good content, and will constantly be looking for ways to increase revenue through their AdSense ads.

This is fine if you have a website with a sole purpose of earning money through AdSense ads alone, but if you have a website for your business, you’ll begin to lose focus on creating content that can increase the revenue for your business. And the whole point of creating a website for your business is to build your business, build a customer database, and earn money.

So there you have it, some of my reasons to think twice before adding Google AdSense to your business site. I am not here to tell you that you should never use Google AdSense to earn money. You just should be cautious when it comes to using this method to make money.