Email marketing is bar-none the cheapest way to strengthen your brand, promote products, and keep in touch with your customers and potential leads.

However, getting people to sign up to your list can be difficult in this day and age. After all, would you give your personal email address to just anyone?

Still, it’s worth the challenge, to build a large list of email addresses that belong to real people that are interested in you, and what you have to sell.   This is why I have created this list of best practices, which other people have used successfully to snag those all-important personal email addresses!

#1 Make the Process Easy and Enticing!

If you expect to get someone’s personal contact information, you’ll need to provide a tasty carrot to dangle in front of their noses.

The value of the carrot you dangle, will define the value of the people willing to sign up to your list. Your squeeze page is your carrot’s packaging, so consider how it effects the perceived value of your temptation!

The carrot is the incentive that starts the ball rolling, but the process is what makes or breaks the deal.

Your opt-in needs to be utterly painless, quick, smooth, and hassle free, anything less and your prospect will bailout before completing the opt-in form.

This is true almost always, regardless of the value of the carrot you are dangling. Continue reading

Your online business reputation is the most important thing you can develop to insure the success of your e-business. Make no mistake, Credibility in your field is very important.

One of the best ways to develop a viable internet presence is to provide useful, appealing and money making information, to people who are interested in your field.

You can become an expert by providing good information that teaches readers how to profit and save money in the e-business arena. This will build your business reputation and the reputation of your company. As your expertise develops, more people will be interested in buying your products and services. Your recommendations will carry a lot of weight too. We all buy from people we trust, don’t we?

One of the best and easiest ways to develop your reputation as an expert, is the use of articles for promotion. This enables you to get your name and your company name out to the masses. Once you begin writing articles for ezines, you’ll have an easy and cost free way to make yourself known.

If your articles are interesting and informative, ezine publishers will be very interested in them. Your articles could be published in a lot of ezines because publishers are always interested in valuable content. Unlike advertising, articles remain in public view for a long time. Continue reading

Let’s face it, some things seem to good to be true.

For instance, I like cookies … A LOT!

I like to dip cookies in milk and when the milk is gone I like taping the cup so the wet crumbs sorta fall into to my mouth.

I’m not ashamed of that.

Most people who know me know that I’m a bit of a cookie monster and that if I had my way I’d probably eat cookies 3 meals a day.   I’ve never tried to keep it a secret.   My friends give me cookies as gifts and they always know I’ll appreciate them.

However….. even I get suspicious sometimes!

You can’t blame me for getting suspicious, knowing my weakness, when a little girl who I have never seen before, comes to my door with box after box of these delicious delights, out of the blue!

If you were me, wouldn’t you think that was just a little to good to be true? Continue reading