3 Give-Aways That Get People to Join Your List

Once you’ve driven traffic to your listbuilding opt-in page via paid advertising, forum marketing, or whatever you choose, you need to give people a good reason to join your list.

Of course you list itself should be reason enough to join, but most people need a little extra push. Well, freebies give you that push. And they’re such a common list building tactic today that you’re really leaving yourself behind if you don’t have one.

Here are three of the most popular freebies:

1. Reports. Reports are the #1 most common listbuilding freebie in use by internet marketers today. Why? Because they are inexpensive to produce, don’t eat up a lot of bandwidth or disk space, and most importantly, they are effective.

It goes without saying that your report should be about your niche. Quite often, these reports should be how-to reports, wherein the reader learns something valuable.

After all, if they feel like your report was a waste of their time, what’s going to get them reading your emails? Nothing. So make sure that whether you write it yourself, or pay to have it written, your free report is something that’s more than just a collection of words.

2. Software. Free software downloads aren’t extremely common among most affiliate marketing listbuilding tactics, but you will see software as a giveaway every now and then. What should you give away, and where can you find it?

You can find tons of freeware all over the internet–there should be at least one kind of software appropriate to your niche. Promise it in return for their membership in your list (which should have other sellable advantages as well).

For a nominal fee, you may be able to brand it with your own name if you can contact the original designer. Some of these programs were created by multiple people, though, so this may not always be an option.

What is always an option, however, is Rentacoder.com. You can go there any day of the week and find hungry, inexpensive coders who are either in college or else live in a nation where the U.S. dollar is very strong.

What should you give away? It depends on your niche. If you’re in the weight loss niche, a calendar with fields for each day’s meals might be appropriate.

A calendar would be a good idea for a business niche as well–but this one might include reminders at different times of the day and a built-in address book.

One idea is to give away a WordPress theme, if you think your niche might use it.

3. E-course. This is a course that teaches people how to do something, anything. I like e-courses because it gets people in the habit of opening your emails. If your ecourse is good, it also gets them excited to open your mails as well!

Keep in mind however that people also want instant gratification. You’ll usually have better success when you offer a free download such as one mentioned above, in addition to the ecourse.

(Of course very few things in this industry are 100%true –that’s why we test!)