$500 List Building Budget - Now What?

[Ankesh]

Thanks Jessika.

Few questions:

1. What is your current industry?
1.a. Are people really searching for a solution in that industry?

2. How many products do you currently own?
2.a. What are their price ranges?
2.b. How well do they currently sell?
2.c. Are they better than other options in the industry?

3. How much money do you really want to make at the end of the month? The year?
3.a. How many products will you have to sell to reach that goal?
3.b. How many people will you have to add to your mailing list to sell that many products?

You don't need to answer these questions here - but to yourself. They'll allow you to see how much action is needed for the results you desire.

Depending on your industry and product - $500 could be very little or could go a long way. For eg: If you sell a diet ebook - it'll be very little.

Somethings you can do:

1. Find out what search terms do people use to search for your kind of solution
1.a. Get a domain name based on those key terms. Search engines give more weight to the domain name than anything else while ranking the websites.
Your cost - $9.20 (from godaddy.com)

2. Start a blog.
2.a. Start networking with other bloggers in your industry - interview them for your blog, write a guest post on their blogs, exchange blog links with them etc
2.b. Convert your better blog posts into articles and syndicate them
Your cost = $0

3. Collect people's email addresses (you already do that)
3.a. Be regular in sending the newsletters
3.b. Make sure you sell something in all the newsletters. A rule of thumb that works well for me: 80% good content / 20% selling.
Cost = Depends on your autoresponder. Aweber.com is $19.95 a month.

4. Find out what the conversion rate is like on the products you sell - before you start spending heavily on advertising.
4.a. Your conversion rate will tell you how much you can afford per click.
4.b. Then buy ads on google and msn and yahoo search engines. And various blogs and websites.
Cost = Variable. You will end up losing $200-300 or so while learning (if you are careful). But after that, you will know what to do and the amount you spend will be covered by your profits on sale.

5. Expand. Repeat the process. Buy more ads on more websites. Create more products. Etc.

6. Start an affiliate program.