Creating A Newsletter List From Scratch

22 Aug

Posted by: Ben in: Email Marketing, List Building, Newsletters and Ezines

Before you even think about the different ways to create a responsive, loyal list of customers, you have to select your niche, or the specific subject matter for your list-building focus.

When I first started I thought that the wider the niche, the easier it would be to build a list. Not so. In fact, the smaller the niche the easier it is to target your potential audience.

How do you select a niche? You could start by identifying your personal passions…what turns you on? What do you like to do? If your subject matter is something that excites you, it will excite those interested in the niche you select. Do not be afraid to let your excitement and passion for your subject shine through any of the promoting processes you use. It will give you credibility and increase your conversion rate.

It’s an awful lot easier to start with a niche that you already know, although not necessary - I’ve plunged into niches I haven’t had a clue about and done pretty well. The main thing is of course to act on it, rather than sit and think about it.

Since keywords are one of the basic foundations of your marketing plan, we are going to spend a little time on them so you will have some resources you can use for your own purposes. Let’s start.

First, list the keywords that are related to your topic and research them to make sure your niche is popular. “Popular” would be at least 10,000 searches in a month. A simple search using the phrase, “keyword search tool” will return a long list of search services you can use. Some will be free and some will not be. Others will require registration before you can use their keyword tool (they’re building their own list).

Here are some keyword search engines and keyword suggestion tools to start you off:

Google Adwords: Keyword Search Tool … (See more detail below)

Nichebot … Keyword Research that gives you access to over 295 billion keywords in 41 languages spanning 243 countries using multiple keyword sources like Google, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery

A free trial…Keyword Discovery

There are a few other keyword services that would help you stay current on rising trends and popular search topics.

Every day, people all over the world are conducting millions of searches for information they want or need. It would be very useful for marketers like you to know what those people are looking for, particularly if you are trying to figure out what product to create next.

Peeking into the Web’s stream of searches will let you discover the most popular topics and keywords being searched all over the world. Wouldn’t that be handy?

Here are a few resources to keep in mind:

Ask.com:

To see the top 10 searches at Ask.com in four categories from last week:

Top Searches
Top Advancing Searches
Top News Searches
Top News

Dogpile:

Using the Search Spy at Dogpile, lets you view a scrolling list in real time of either filtered or non-filtered search terms (family friendly or “anything goes”) being used on their search engine.

Google:

There are three valuable resources at Google, the Godmother of search engines that can help you figure out what might become the next hot number on the Web.

Google Trends:

Google Trends lets you see what’s popular on Google’s database of searches. You can view the large volume of queries by time, city, regions, languages, etc. You can also compare multiple terms.

Google Zeitgeist:

This resource, Google Zeitgeist, let’s you see the various categories that people are searching on Google. The results displayed are for last year after comparing the billions of searches made on Google for the entire year.

Google Adwords Search Tool:

This valuable Adwords Search Tool from Google, works best with short and specific keywords, usually one or two words in length. For example, “vegetable gardening” will be more successful than “tasteful vegetables to grow in the home garden.”

This keyword tool will help you the most when you are creating new ad campaigns, need to improve the performance of your current set of keywords or when you want to find other keywords like a hot-performing one you already use.

One more way to use keyword search engines is to create your own Killer Keyword Lists. It is time-consuming, but the results will have long-reaching benefits for your marketing campaigns and one surprising income stream.

Once you’ve selected your niche and the product you want to promote to that niche, start a list of every keyword you can think of that is related to your product or sales page. Use different spellings…deliberately using common misspellings…and different capitalization…making the first letter of each word capitalized and the entire word, too.

What you have to do is recognize the way the general public might be searching for your keywords. Some will be misspelled, some will be capitalized and some will just have keyboarding errors, like a space in the middle of the word, etc.

Create some long-tail keywords on your list. Long-tail keywords are a 3-4 word phrase entered as one keyword in the keyword search tools.

Go to several keyword tools and enter each of your words, including your long-tail keywords, one at a time. Write down or print the lists that get returned for each keyword you enter. Repeat this process until you have several hundred keywords for your particular niche. Pay particular attention to the top 5-10 keywords in each list returned by your search.

I told you that it would be time-consuming. But if you want a solid marketing plan to promote you and your products, including building a loyal, targeted list that you can market to frequently, you just have to put in the time to get the resources and background you need BEFORE you go online with your product. Marketing plans that try to appeal to everyone do not always work very well. Focus does!

What you are making here is your very own Killer Keyword List to use, test and exploit as you wish. The “surprising income stream” I mentioned a few paragraphs back is generated by your new list of several hundred keywords. You can sell the list of Killer Keywords on eBay or on your sales page. You can make more lists on other popular niches as time permits and create a new income stream saving other marketers the time it takes to do it themselves.

A monthly or even weekly keyword report could be the basis of a very profitable membership site. And if you’ve already done the research, why not sell it to the huge pile of marketers who can’t be bothered to do it themselves?

Your next task is to find a big pile of interested people.

While the entire world might be your market, your subscribers will only be the ones who actually want your information. That will be a much smaller number, but a very profitable one. It is easier to convert interested browsers to actual customers if they find you and have an existing interest in your subject.

Get the people who already have an interest rather than find people in general and try to make them interested in what you have to say.

So, your task is to find them and make your offer so attractive that a large number of that worldwide market of potential customers makes the trip to your Capture Page, also known as a Landing Page or opt-in page.

How do you find customers interested in your products?

One of the most successful list building techniques used by online marketers is with articles submitted to directories. Newsletter publishers, for one, download these articles to use on their publications and you’ll find them on blogs, content sites, in ezines, as forum content and on info sites.

Other places to find people interested in your area are: