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Are you looking to increase your list and are finding that your current methods just aren’t working? No worries, a little patience and hard work is all you need. There are many things you can do to boost the amount of subscribers you get to your list. Here are 5 email marketing tips you can use to explode your list.

Email Marketing Tip # 1

Create a squeeze page to capture subscribers: You need to make a separate page aside from your static website or blog to capture subscribers. This page should capture the readers attention by highlighting all of the benefits. Use bullet points to list what the reader will be gaining by entering their name and email. Also be sure to add a note at the bottom of the squeeze page that says something about the fact that their name and email will not be shared or sold and that you hate spam as much as they do.

Email Marketing Tip # 2

Market your squeeze page in traffic exchanges: This can be a very effective method, especially because traffic exchanges aren’t much good for anything else. Some traffic exchanges allow a certain number of ads unless you pay to have more. To be as effective as possible, place as many ads as you can, and have them all link back to your squeeze page. Try different ads and different squeeze pages to see what is most effective. And enroll in several different traffic exchange programs as well.

Email Marketing Tip # 3

Place the opt-in sign up box in the most optimal places: Mainly above the fold where it is visible to all. Having the opt-in below the fold will not be as effective because many people never scroll down to see it.

Email Marketing Tip # 4

Market the squeeze page using pay-per click advertising: The main search engines offer advertising programs called PPC or pay-per click advertising. It allows you to advertise whatever landing page you choose, even your squeeze pages. You must be very careful though when using PPC programs. If done the wrong way you can end up paying money for a lot of non targeted hits that will result in little or no results. Do some research before you delve into PPC advertising.

Email Marketing Tip # 5

Create an info product and give it away to boost your list: If you can create something of value, you can offer that product for free to boost your list. Tell people in forums about the product and you’ll get sign-ups.

What works best is to ask some big time joint venture partners to see if they would be so kind to offer it to their list as well. One way to approach a jv partner is to do a little research first, see if they have a product and if they do, buy it, make a blog post about it, and send a mail to your list promoting it. Then when you email them, let them know you have been promoting their products and that you would be thrilled if they could return the favor. It is a free product after all that would benefit their members as well.

Use all five of these email marketing tips religiously and I will guarantee you will see your list explode to enormous proportions.

Best,

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 11% [?]

Copyright © Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy
http://www.livelifetothefullest.biz/pips.html

GET MAD!

I mean it… Get *REALLY* mad!

Get MAD anytime you have to do something that you
don’t really want to do (like going to work FOR
SOMEBODY ELSE early in the morning)…

Get MAD for all the times you’ve wanted to buy
something nice for yourself, go on a vacation, take the
day off, or (insert your desires here) but couldn’t
afford it…

Get MAD if you’ve ever worried when the stock market
goes down…

Get MAD if there has ever been an opportunity to
improve your life or the life of people you love, but
you couldn’t take advantage of it because of time or
financial limitations…

Get MAD if what you *REALLY* wish you could do in this
life isn’t happening YET…

Why I’m a telling you to get mad? Don’t all the
self-help materials tell you to keep a positive
attitude… things will “work out”???

Guess what… THEY’RE WRONG!

*Before* you jump in and ride positive attitude parade,
you need to get red-hot, ***boiling*** MAD about the
way things are RIGHT NOW… It’s only when you GET
MAD, get fed up and get really pissed off with the way
things have been or the way things are now that you
will take the ACTION necessary to change your current
situation and make it into something better.

We are creatures driven by two desires only:

1) The desire to gain pleasure.

2) The desire to avoid pain.

And the latter is stronger than the former. We are much
more motivated to *avoid pain* than to gain pleasure.
Yes, we are all driven by the carrot and the stick, but
fear of the stick will get the average person moving a
lot faster than a salad at the end of a hard days
work…

Why do you *really* go to work every day? Is it because
your pursuing your passion and some grandiose goals? I
truly hope so! But most people get up and go to work
because they FEAR losing their job and ending up
homeless on the side of the streets begging for KFC
leftovers to get them through the night… The desire
to avoid this horrific pain is EXTREMELY motivational,
isn’t it?! USE IT!!!

Don’t fight against the forces that govern your very
existence… pleasure and pain. Use them wisely to your
benefit. If you know that pain motivates you, MAKE
YOURSELF FEEL PAIN so that you will TAKE ACTION and
change your current circumstances. It’s OK to use your
imagination here.

Think about what would happen if you got fired and
couldn’t find another job for the next 6 months… How
freaked out would you get then? Feel that.

Think about what would happen if you simply did nothing
different for the rest of your life and continued to
live the “status quo”, do-what’s-expected-of-you
lifestyle that’s got you this far, and left many of
your most sacred dreams and ambitions on the table. How
painful will it be to be on your deathbed knowing that
you never even tried to do what your heart was telling
you that you *really* wanted to do in this life? Feel
that.

Think about what not having enough time or money is NOT
ALLOWING you to do that you really, really, really,
really wish you could do (insert all the things that
are important to you but seem out of reach right now
here)… Feel that.

THEN GET MAD!

GET ANGRY!

GET FRICKIN’ PISSED OFF!

….. and then RIGHT NOW, before the feeling fades away
or is numbed out of existence by your favorite
television show or alcoholic beverage, MAKE A DECISION
to change. That’s all it takes. As soon as you decide
that you’ve HAD ENOUGH with the mediocrity you’ve
accepted up to this point, the world shifts on it’s
axis and will present you with new ways to think, new
ways to act, new ways to LIVE.

Big doors swing on small hinges and the hinges that
open the doors of opportunity are always the DECISIONS
we make about what we will and what we won’t settle
for in our life. If you allow yourself to get MAD
ENOUGH, the “settling point” for what you can and
will receive in your life will be raised and you will
experience a better future… a future more closely
aligned with WHAT YOU WERE BORN TO DO here on Earth.

So GET MAD, TAKE ACTION, and GET PREPARED to *be happy*
as you start creating your life on your terms the way
you always hoped it would be… and it can my friend -
it really, truly can!

When I *GOT MAD*, I decided to find better way to make
my living contrary to what my parents and society at
large told me was possible… I’m so glad I did
because now I’m living my dream life and helping
others live theirs. Read my story at:
http://www.livelifetothefullest.biz/pips.html

To Your Happiness!

Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy
http://www.livelifetothefullest.biz/pips.html

Popularity: 8% [?]

Ahhhh things are finally starting to get interesting as yesterday I spent the whole day setting up my new website/blog. Thats right, I’m now branching out to other markets to test the waters. I decided to go into the food/cooking niche because I felt that it may be an easy niche to get a good flow of traffic, and good flow of traffic means a good flow of money as well. I am still working on finding a good template but you can view it in the works at http://www.cookingwithease.com

The idea with this website is to offer great cooking advice and recipes that are easy, quick, efficient, and most of all enjoyable and delicious. I am going to write as though my website is the authority website for easy cooking and I hope to build a base of followers and repeat traffickers. I plan on monetizing by selling ad space, using adsense, and maybe a downloadable recipe book. Obviously I will be switching things up and doing more and more research as we move ahead but I am excited and can’t wait to show you all the results.

First of all, before we get into the current stats for this website, let me take you step by step as to how I started up the new website.

Step one is to register your domain name. I did that at NameCheap.com and it cost me $9.29 for one year.

The next step is to find a host to host your website. I use Host4Profit, it costs $24.95 a month but since I have this site hosted on the same server, it’s only an extra $5 a month.

After that I went to Wordpress.org and downloaded the new Wordpress blog to be used as my main site platform. Once the download was complete I extracted all the files and then uploaded them to my server. That’s it! My website was up and running in just a few hours. Of course the research took much longer than that.

I’ll be promoting that website much the same as this website and it will be real interesting to see how soon I start seeing some real traffic. I’ll keep you posted.

As far as what I am doing here… I had 2465 visitors the week before and last week I had 2459. Didn’t go up but still pretty consistent, averaging well over 300 a day.

My opt-in list last week had a total of 77 subscribers, I now have 92. I remember not too long ago where it took me a few months to get 15 people to opt-in to my list. This compounding viral internet effect is so apparent and so fun to watch too!

I think what I am going to do now with the Follow My Footsteps series is keep giving the weekly updates as far as what I am doing along with my traffic stats. That won’t change, but I will run down total costs and profits from the previous month at the beginning of each month. So stay tuned, things are starting to heat up.

Matt Helprey

Popularity: 9% [?]

It’s no secret that article marketing really works to increase the amount of traffic to your website. Well, you can also use article marketing to get traffic to your squeeze pages to boost your opt-in list.

If you followed the instructions from the last post, you should now have your own squeeze page set up promoting the free software Squeeze Buzz. Now that you have this squeeze page set up, you can really use this to your advantage by promoting it through article marketing.

All you have to do is write an article dealing with squeeze pages, opt-in lists, email marketing, or anything that would make the reader want to download the free software from you. Catch the readers attention, then offer them the freebie software in your resource box. Works every time.

What works better is to submit your article using keywords so you can catch even more viewers and visitors from the search engines. Then… rinse and repeat with another article making sure to submit that article to anywhere and everywhere you can.

This process does work and it works each and every time.

Think about this…Submitting just one article to one major article directory may bring you a handful of opt-ins after the first few weeks but… that article will continue to bring people to your opt-in list forever! Just think what submitting 10…20…50…or even 100 articles to 40 different directories can do!

How many articles can you write?

The more places you can put those articles the more people you are going to get into your opt-in list.

Imagine if you will tens of thousands of people in your list! That would be like having your own personal atm machine that you can tap into anytime you need money. It’s possible, you just gotta work hard now and reep the benefits later.

Here are a few links to help you out…

Use an article distribution service to save you massive amounts of submission time - I’m currently running a limited deal here so get in while you still can…
http://tinyurl.com/6ke6kc

Manually submit to the top 20 article directories…
http://tinyurl.com/4k5rqv

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 9% [?]

I wanted to make a post here to help you get the most out of your new SqueezeBuzz squeeze page generator. If you have not downloaded the free software, please do so now.

Free Squeeze Page Generator

If you are not aware, Squeeze Buzz’s landing page can be fully customized to boost your own opt-in list the same way it has mine. In fact you signed up for the software using the customized squeeze page that comes with the package. Here’s what you do…

Once you have unzipped the SqueezeBuzz.zip file, click on the Sales Website folder and open up the index.html. What you see here is the SqueezeBuzz squeeze page before any changes. Your next step will be to customize it by filling in the highlighted areas with your own info.

To do this, open up the view page source in your browser and copy all of the html code (select all or ctrl + a then copy ctrl + c) and paste the code into a text editor like Notepad or Wordpad.

Once you have it pasted into your text editor it is as simple as going through the code and filling in the areas where the orange highlights are. In the html, you’ll want look for and erase the areas where you see <span style=”background-color: #FF9900″></span> That code is for the orange highlights you see. Erasing it will get rid of it.

Once you have filled in all the needed areas, go ahead and save the file as a plain text file and open up your cPanel, ePanel or whatever you need to get to the back office of your website. You need to open up a new html file. Go ahead and name it squeezebuzz.html

Once you have the new file, you need to copy and paste the edited code from your text editor to your new squeezebuzz.html file and save it. Not done yet!

Here is the tricky part. Downloading the images. If you don’t already have a folder for your website entitled images, go ahead and create an “images” folder now. Once you have the “images” folder, you need to upload all of the images from the SqueezeBuzz software download.

The images you need to upload into the “images” folder are the background.gif, bluecheck.gif, box.gif, box.jpg, checkbox.gif, footer.gif, and header.gif.

Once you have successfully uploaded all of the image files, your last step is to create a download link for the people who sign up. Just upload the same squeezebuzz.zip file and you’re set.

Be looking for part 2 of this series to help you explode the amount of sign-ups you get to your opt-in list.

Stay tuned…

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 9% [?]

Welcome back to “Follow My Footsteps”, now 50 days deep into a more aggressive, more business minded promotional stage than the several months leading up to this series.

Consistent blogging, social bookmarking, forum posting, and article marketing has drastically increased the amount of visitors to my blog and website. In fact, up to this point I have had 4 back-to-back record traffic weeks resulting from this more concentrated and well documented effort.

Last week I submitted two articles to SubmitYourArticle for distribution. I made several posts in the Warrior Forum. I also made a total of 5 posts in my blogs and submitted all 5 posts to the social bookmarking sites.

There are may things that I am in the process of doing as well. Things like redoing my website, creating an info product (ebook), and writing a email series for my new opt in list. But it is the small busy work that I do every day that keeps the steady flow of increasing traffic to my website. This is what I hope to show you by documenting my steps here in this series.

By continuing to show you my ever increasing stats, I hope to prove to you that it is possible for anyone to run a successful business online regardless of how much money you have (I had none and was deep in debt), or how much experience you have (also had zero, zip, none!). After all of this, I hope to prove to you that all you need is a strong will and desire to succeed. And a computer and internet connection…duh.

Now on to the stats…

The first graph shows just how much my traffic has skyrocketed over the past twelve months. Is it going to peak soon? I don’t think so. The back links are really starting to add up and I am starting to receive a good amount of traffic from the search engines as a result and still growing.

This last week I had 2465 visitors. Just 69 shy of breaking the record again. I really thought I had it going into the weekend but for whatever reason, I only had 270 visitors on Sunday and ruined my shot of hitting 5 record traffic weeks in a row. Still though it was my 2nd highest ever and nothing to be ashamed of. Just makes me want to work harder.

Last week I had 64 total subscribers. As of today I now have 77 subscribers. Signed up 13 over the course of the week. Almost 2 a day. I remember just not too long ago where I would go a whole month without getting 2 opt-ins. Definitely showing marked improvement there. Most of my subscribers are coming from the search engines after writing only two blog posts targeting a few keywords and giving away the free squeeze page generator.

Alright, so there you have it. Traffic still on the rise and so is my opt-in list. Stay tuned…

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 10% [?]

I would guess that most of the people who are reading these posts most likely either have their own online business or are looking for ideas or inspiration to start their own online business. So what I hope to do with this article is provide those looking to start an online business with the information they need to finally get their own online business up and running.

If you have been pondering starting an online business and have ideas to do so but just have not put your ideas to work - stop procrastinating and get to work! You will never know how or if your ideas will succeed if you don’t first put your thoughts into action.

If you are just chalk full of ideas and are not sure which online business to start with, it would be wise to choose the idea that is least risky. Choose the one that you are most knowledgeable with and you can use your existing skills rather than having to do a lot of research with.

For those that are constantly buying and reading materials about the next big thing or the next greatest way to make money online…. stop it! Stop spending and wasting all of your time and money on products that are all pitching the same thing. I will admit though, it is the people like you that keep the money flowing in this industry, but really, if you want to make money by starting an online business…stop buying info products and reading about it and start applying what you have already learned.

What about those who want to start an online business but already have too many commitments or responsibilities? Well, my question to you would be how bad do you want to start an online business? Where there is a will there is a way. If you already have a job, find time to run an online business and work hard at both. The only thing you will need is to better manage your time.

Lets face it though, you are going to have to work hard and do things you don’t want if you want to get to a certain position in your life. Most successful business ventures whether online or off will require some sacrifices. If you don’t think you have time, you may have to sacrifice some sleep to start an online business.

The one point I want to make sure I get across is that if you want to be successful by starting an online business, it is imperative that you DO SOMETHING! Set long term goals and moving forwards towards those goals each and every day. All the knowledge and materials in the world are useless if you do not take action and move forward towards your goals.

Matt Helphrey

Starting an Online Business

Popularity: 10% [?]

With the way things are going these days it’s more than wise to have a supplemental income plan, just in case things don’t work out. Many times businesses and companies down size and you can find yourself without a job and without warning. In this case having another source of income through home based employment may save the day for you until you find yourself another job.

Many times what happens is that the part time home based employment income may equal or exceed what you make at your full time job. At this point you start feeling really good about what that home based business can provide and you may choose to work full time from home instead.

Home based employment opportunities are vast and plenty now due to the advent of the internet. You can work part time from home and earn a decent income by doing a few small tedious tasks a day. I personally think doing this sure beats looking for another part time job just to supplement a few hundred dollars a month.

Some home based employment opportunities that are available online include buying and selling products through eBay, promoting affiliate programs, starting your own blog, and taking paid surveys.

You can make a decent income by doing some garage sale shopping and selling the products you buy on eBay. Buy them cheap and mark them up. You’d be surprised how much junk you can sell when you have the whole world to market to.

Become an affiliate seller and promote other peoples products and services to earn a commission. This is a great home based employment opportunity because you don’t need anything to sell. Also, many affiliates pay on a monthly basis meaning you get paid over and over again for one sale.

Start up your own blog and post unique content. You should choose a blog that you are easily able to produce high quality content on. Something that you’re passionate about or knowledgeable on. Just by posting relevant information, you may be able to draw an audience and make money using Google Adsense.

Taking paid surveys is another great home based employment opportunity. Depending on how much time you have, you can take surveys to earn anywhere between $30 and $5000 a month.

Earning income from a home based employment opportunity is possible and should most definitely be considered if you are in need of another job. Real money though is only made through real work. Apply yourself appropriately and you can make money online.

Mat Helphrey

Home Based Employment

Popularity: 12% [?]

Certainly it would be everyones dream job to be able to make money doing nothing. Of course I don’t know how you would really even call it a job if you are doing nothing, right? Well, either way let me tell you how you can use internet marketing to make passive residual income and literally make money doing nothing.

The internet provides any diligent person the opportunity to make a full time income. And let me be clear here and define diligent. A diligent person is someone who works in constant effort to accomplish a specific task at hand. In this instance, to make money doing nothing.

Now you might be thinking that stating that might be contradictory in a way, borderline oxymoron. How can you work constantly and do nothing at the same time? Well, you cant so let me digress…

Is it possible to make money doing nothing?

Absolutely yes…but you have to work hard first.

Internet marketing works like a sort of exponential compounding effect. Depending on what niche you are marketing online, you can basically work on promoting your website for years without seeing any form of payback. However, after a few years off not seeing any return you will gradually begin to see the money rolling in. Eventually, and with enough work, you may be able to sit back and make money doing nothing!

This gradual building of money comes from the traffic you bring to your site. There is a universal law that all of us internet marketers live by and that is traffic = money. So, the more traffic you have, the more money you will be able to make.

What can internet marketing do for your life?

Let me weigh in on some of the pros and cons of internet marketing. First the cons…

If you are comfortable with or have to have a regular take home pay where the amount of time you put in equals the amount of money you receive, internet marketing is not for you. I know there are many, if not a majority of people who smartly set up a budget and have to have the secure pay in order to keep to that budget.

Many internet marketers including myself rely on Google to bring a certain amount of targeted daily visitors due to the placement of my website and blog for certain keywords. If at any time (and this has been known to happen before) Google decides to black hat your business or for some reason changes the algorithm for which they place websites, it may abruptly and without warning put you out of business. Now this has thankfully never happened to me before but it has happened to some pretty big time internet marketers and they say the best thing to do is just wait it out. It’s almost always temporary.

And the pros of internet marketing…

You get to be your own boss, and work for yourself. This may be a con for some folks that are not able to motivate themselves to do the necessary tasks to keep the income flowing. But on the other hand, I myself consider this to be a huge bonus. The possibility to answer to no one but yourself and to be able to work whenever and wherever you please is a great goal to shoot for.

Since your pay is not based on hourly or salary, there is no ceiling as to how much money you can make. There is no set wages only business decisions that can produce a desired amount of profit. For instance, I create an e book that took me roughly 40 hours to create. I decide to sell it for $25 and want to make $1000 profit after advertising. (advertising online can be done effectively for free as well) So now I know I need to sell 45 books to hit my goal.

A lot of the time what happens is that the 45 e books you set out to sell originally sells in a short amount of time, and then you will make sales on that same e book for years to come. Creating an e book can create you an income for life because there is no physical or tangible product. Just a link to a .pdf file that can create you income foe the life of the internet. Now that’s what I would call making money doing nothing. You are not going to get paid years later for the 40 hours you put in last week at your day job will you?

This is the passive residual income I was speaking of earlier and is one of the greatest benefits of internet marketing. Putting out a quality product once or twice a year will have a great impact on your income for the months or years you decide to take off. Again, thats what I would call making money doing nothing.

A step-by-step path to make money doing nothing.

Are you ready to change your life? Remember it won’t set in right away so you have to take action now! So for all of those diligent folks who have the desire to work for yourself, set your own hours, make an income where there is no ceiling, and those that desire to make money doing nothing… here’s your starting point.

Step #1 Sign up for The Plug-In Profit Site

This is the same system I started with and am still making money with today. In my opinion, it may be one of the best systems for the beginner internet marketer to start with. (It worked for me!) What you will get by signing up is your own website already equipped with six streams of income and all the training and support you need to succeed. All this for dirt cheap, $24.95 is the only fee you are required to pay besides registering your domain name ($15 one time fee), and all setup in under 24 hours…guaranteed. All you are required to do is promote your website…using the next step…

Step #2 Promoting Your New Website To Increase Traffic and Make Money

There are many things you need to do in order to promote your website. Not one of them will cost you a penny if you choose the free route. There are of course services and software to ease your work but will not hurt either way. Here’s a brief run through of the system that I use that is bringing me almost 400 visitors a day. Keep in mind though the exponential compound effect that will result from this process. What that means is when you first start you will see little in the way of return compared to what your return will be a few months down the road using the same traffic generating process…

1. Submit two articles a week to the article directories.
2. Set up a blog and post to your blog at least three times a week.
3. Sign up for several social and bookmarking sites and submit every blog post to that list of sites.
4. Sign up for and contribute in discussions in at least two different forums. At least 5 posts a day in each.
5. Submit your website to 15 online directories a day.
6. Find other like wise blog and make useful posts on the “do follow” blogs.
7. Create and release one or two info products a year to make money and to create an email list to market to.

Following these promotion steps will lead you towards the high traffic it takes to make money with your new PIPS Site. It will not fail you, I promise! All you have to do is keep up with it on a week to week basis by setting and hitting goals.

Step #3 Branch Off Of PIPS and Find Another Profitable Niche To Market To

Once you learn what it takes to succeed with PIPS (which you already know how now) which is in one of the most competitive markets online, the how to make money online niche, it only makes sense to find another niche that fits your interests, hobbies, and passions better.

All you would have to do is find something you are interested with, create the website or blog, add quality content, and then promote it using the same methods as above. Most of the time you will find that your website/blog will start getting traffic much easier than you were with PIPS because not everyone will know what you know about internet marketing. Use your new found knowledge to your advantage and blow your competition out of the water, claim your site as THE AUTHORITY site in that specific field, then sit back and watch the money roll in.

Thats it! The three step process to make money doing nothing. Of course it’s not at all as easy as it sounds but if you have the real desire, dedication, and determination to succeed no matter what, you can make it happen. Plenty of persistent action, preservation, and patience will lead you to the internet marketing promise land…I’ll see you there.

Matt Helphrey
Make Money Doing Nothing

Popularity: 14% [?]

Just a quick update today. I have a busy week planned and today is going to be a short day because my Denver Broncos are playing tonight! I don’t know how many of you are big NFL fans but I have a good feeling about my Broncos this year.

Anyways, moving right along here. Lets take a look at my traffic stats this week. Keep in mind, I have had back-to-back-to-back record traffic weeks. So if I did it again last week, that would be 4 consecutive record traffic weeks…

Last week I had 2437 unique visitors. This week I had 2533! A new record and 4th straight record traffic week! Wow, this stat in and of itself proves that my methods are working. If I keep getting record traffic weeks, just think what kind of stats I will be showing you just a few months down the road. I’m excited to see.

Moving on… Last week I had 56 total subscribers. At the time of this post I now have 64 subscribers. I signed up 8 this past week.

More traffic means more sign ups and sales and that’s exactly what I am seeing. Nowhere near quitting my day job yet but definitely making progress and progress is precisely what I want to document here.

Stay tuned…

Matt Helphrey

Popularity: 7% [?]