The standard way to build a list is via a squeeze page. At its simplest, a squeeze page is just a web page with some text and a subscription form. The text entices visitors to enter their name and email address in order to gain access to a newsletter, course, or some other free offering.

Building a squeeze page is not hard for the typical geek, of course: it’s just HTML, after all, and there’s no fancy coding required — and the geek literally just paste sin the subscription form provided by the mailing list provider (geeks may be tempted to manage mailing lists on their own, but it’s not a wise use of their time). No, creating the page isn’t the hard part, it’s what’s on the page that’s hard.

Imagine someone approaching you on the street and asking for your name and phone number. Would you give it to them? Unlikely unless they do something to build some trust and you feel you’re going to benefit from revealing your personal information to a third party. And yet, that’s exactly what a squeeze page is doing — asking someone for personal information (be sure to have an explicit privacy policy, by the way) in exchange for…

For what, exactly? No one’s going to sign up for your list unless they’re getting back in return. The geek knows this, of course, and so they’ll list all the benefits of joining the list right there on the squeeze page. “This course will teach you…“, “Learn about…“, “Become a better…” are typical ways of expressing how a visitor will benefit from joining the list. (The key word here being benefits, of course, and not features — something not all geeks realize.)

Here’s the real squeeze page secret, though. Forget about listing the benefits of joining your list, it’s almost irrelevant. Instead, offer a freebie download — an “ethical bribe” so to speak — and promote its benefits. Make joining your list (which still needs to be mentioned somewhere) a side benefit, but not the focus of the squeeze page. The squeeze page is all about the freebie.

Why a freebie? Because it’s immediate gratification. Because it feels like they get more from giving up precious personal information. Because it gives you opportunities for further selling (embedded links in documents, banners in software, etc.). Because it works.

As a geek you can easily create your own freebies, too. If you like to write, create a special report. Or a video. Or, and this is something that really only the geeks can do, write some software to give away.

That’s the squeeze page secret: give them a freebie. It’s amazing what people will do to get something for free — giving a name and email address doesn’t seem that hard when they’re getting an ebook or software in return. Professional Internet marketers know this — and now so do you.

Technorati Tags: Internet marketing, squeeze page, freebies, gifts, mailing list

A few weeks ago, a home-study course called The List FX by a guy named Keith Wellman was heavily promoted by a number of high-profile Internet marketers. What made it so interesting was the low price — $9.95 — and the potential for 100% commissions for anyone who joined the affiliate program. So let’s see what The List FX is really about and whether it’s worth the $9.95 it costs to purchase it.

Product: The List FX
Audience: List-building newbies
Price: $9.95
Rating: 7/10

Let’s face it, ten dollars is a small amount of money to pay for an Internet marketing course these days. Just the other week, for example, I got an email from someone insisting that I absolutely had to purchase AdSense Wealth Empire, which is a steal at only $2000…. me, the guy who obviously knows nothing about AdSense… So really, $10 compared to $2000 is nothing, is it not?

Here’s what The List FX squeeze page promises you for your $9.95:

• The List FX modules, a set of downloadable audio interviews with famous Internet marketers
• A bonus module (another interview) describing how Keith launched his “ViralFX” product
• Access to some teleseminars with Internet marketers
• The “100% commission” affiliate program
• Access to a private forum for people who’ve bought the program
• The opportunity to join (at a reduced cost) a monthly program run by Keith Wellman

So, let’s look at two aspects of this product: the content and the upsell.

The List FX Content

The course consists of these modules:

• How to Create Hyper Profitable Lists From Scratch — Keith interviews Ewen Chia of Secret Affiliate Weapon fame. Ewen talks about the fundamental principles of building lists, including his three factors for profitable lists: subscribers that are targeted (interested in the topic), qualified (able to spend money), and responsive (willing to listen to and trust you). Then he talks about getting the right mindset for building a profitable list (it’s OK to sell things to them — the OK-to-sell attitude is something I had to work on myself) and something he calls the Three C Strategy: congruence, consistency, commanding. Transcript length is 23 pages.

At this point I should interject something about the transcripts… the course is actually delivered as a set of audio files, but transcripts of the audios in PDF form are provided as well. However, the transcripts have mistakes in them and obviously haven’t been proofed very closely. For example, the transcript above refers to “viro marketing” instead of “viral marketing”. I’m disappointed that Keith didn’t take the time to go through the transcripts and fix the mistakes. Busy people like myself don’t really have the time to listen to the audios, it’s much faster to read the transcripts.

• Massive Profits From Tiny Lists — Keith interviews Stephen Pierce. I can’t say this interview did much for me, as it’s more inspirational than specific tips. Some decent advice about thinking in the long term, though, and keeping your list happy by sending them lots of free stuff with no strings attached. Transcript length is 28 pages.
• Responsive List Secrets — Keith interviews Alice Seba. In this interview, Alice talks about building relationships with the people on your lists. By writing your content (and she emphasizes that you want to send your own content to your list, not someone else’s) as if you were writing to a single person. By only sending the best-quality material to your list. By only recommending products that you’ve actually bought and used yourself. By being honest about a product’s flaws (see The Power of the Negative Review for my thoughts on this). Transcript length is 15 pages.
• Niche List Building Secrets — Keith interviews Mike Woo Ming. Mike, a medical doctor by training, talks about building very targeted niches. The first thing you need is a good autoresponder, like AWeber (that’s who I use for my lists — and yes, I can heartily recommend them). Then about building a name squeeze page, which is basically a short sales letter getting people to enter their name and email address to get them to the next page where they’ll actually get your offer. (Mike points out that his conversion rates for these squeeze pages are a lot higher when going after niche markets and not the Internet marketing crowd.) Good advice about using pay-per-click programs (like Google AdWords) to get targeted traffic — it costs, but the subscribers are very targeted and quite willing to be sold to — including advice on creating good AdWords ads and landing pages. (Aside: if you’re looking for a good source of information about AdWords, download Brad Callen’s free e-book Google AdWords Made Easy.) There’s even a good tip about using phrases like “Instant Access” instead of “Subscribe” on the opt-in form as a way to increase conversions. And discussions about other ways to build lists, including things to avoid (like buying leads). Transcript length is 28 pages.
• Email Deliverability Secrets — Keith interviews Gary Ambrose. Gary spends a lot of time explaining why mailing list services are needed to ensure your mails get out, which makes sense since that’s his main product. But he talks about things like using real language when composing your emails, pointing out that Fortune 500 companies don’t resort to using misspellings and bad grammar (think “f.re.e” instead of “free”) to get around spam filters and they still manage to get through. Transcript length is 32 pages.
• Secrets to Getting Your Emails Read — Keith interviews Jeff Levesque. Tips about formatting emails for maximum effect (we’re talking plain text emails here, not HTML). Then how you can make some easy money by getting a domain name that is almost the same as the domain name for a product you’d like to promote — for example, adding or dropping an “s” at the end, or using a domain with or without dashes compared to the main domain — and then getting people to subscribe via that as well as sending them to the product sales page. Tips about selling e-books you have resales rights to very cheaply on eBay and getting the people who buy from you to sign up for your lists. Transcript length is 22 pages.
• Massive List Building Secrets — Keith interviews Liz Tomey, the person behind a huge array of products including ViralEbookAds.com. A lot of more inspirational stuff at the beginning, then some tips like always include links to your signup/update pages in all your emails, send your customers free updates and try to sell them on related things, how many emails to send out to your list. Transcript length is 24 pages.
• Viral FX Beginnings — Russell Brunson interviews Keith about the launch of his Viral FX product (sometimes referred to incorrectly in the transcript as “Viral Effect”). Keith got started in Internet marketing by building his own product to sell, but he discovered that a product does not just sell itself, no matter how good it is. So he got into the mailing list side of things and decided to build a product that he could use to build a large mailing list. That product was Viral FX, which is essentially a set of long interviews with various Internet marketers (kind of like The List FX) about virual marketing. The calls were recorded using a teleconferencing service he found via Google, so they were very easy to create — and many marketers are happy to talk about themselves and their products/techniques for extra publicity. Then five-minute excerpts of the audios were given away for free to anyone who signed up for the Viral FX mailing list. Those people then had the opportunity to upgrade to a paid membership and get access to the full audios. The viral effect was that anyone who signed up for a free membership received an affiliate link that they could use to encourage others to sign up — and if any of those referrals upgraded their membership, they’d get a fee. (Many sites use this technique, for example Mr. OverDeliver.) Lots of discussion about how it pays to give away most (75%-100%) of the front-end commissions to joint venture partners and to make your money on the back-end and by being able to sell further products to the list later. Transcript length is 32 pages.

Total length of all the transcripts together is 204 pages.

There’s also a bonus video of Keith being interviewed and access to The List FX private forums. And later some free teleseminars.

The List FX Upsell

With Keith giving 100% of the commissions away to his affiliates, you must be wondering where he’s making his money. Well, it’s all in the upsell, as he describes himself in Viral FX Beginnings (see above). Besides garnering some extra publicity for his Viral FX product, he also sells The List FX Official Manual for $147. I have not bought the manual, so I can’t review it. Keith claims that it’s a “step by step manual on how to build a huge list in just 90 days”. It includes videos showing you how to do various things like setting up autoresponders, hosting accounts, creating graphics, etc. It seems to be a list-building course from the ground up, but again I can’t tell any more than what I see on the sales page.

The “viral” part of this whole strategy is the two-tier affiliate program, of course. As an affiliate, you get the full $9.95 for everyone who joins The List FX, plus $22.33 for any of your referrals who purchase the official manual upgrade.

Keith is also, of course, building himself a nice list of targeted customers interested in list building.

Is The List FX Worth It?

The List FX reminds me a lot of a book I read recently called The E-Code: 33 Internet Superstars Reveal 43 Ways to Make Money Online Almost Instantly — Using Only Email (now breathe). The advice in that book is very similar to what’s said in the teleconferences. Given that, I’d say The List FX (the $9.95 level) compares favorably to the list-building parts of the book. (Note that The E-Code also covers product creation and product sourcing. It’s amusing to note that one of the infoproduct creation methods described in The E-Code is exactly what Keith did: tape a bunch of interviews and sell them.)

If you’re new to list building, then, I’d say that The List FX makes for an interesting read, but don’t expect any detailed how-tos, just a lot of general advice, exactly like The E-Code. The specifics have been reserved for the “Official Manual”. You can find most of the information for free on the net, of course. Access to the private forums is one of the benefits, though I see a lot of Keith’s answers there are “read the Official Manual for the details”, so I think the value of the forums is more in finding a community of like-minded people interested in and new to list building.

The typos in the transcripts really turned me off, though, so even though it has a low price, I’ve decided this product only rates a 6 out of 10.

Technorati Tags: review, list building, Keith Wellman, The List FX, Viral FX, AWeber, autoresponder, teleconferencing, audio course, affiliate, The E-Code