Let me start this article with a few ideas for growing mailing lists to market your own products and others you promote as an affiliate. 

As you’d expect I normally research other people’s articles for subjects for which I intend to grow a mailing list, in my case usually about eBay or Internet marketing, canine health and making money from writing.  But I have also grown mailing lists for subjects I’ve never considered before purely to share heavy traffic going to other writers at major online article directories.  Recently, for instance, I noticed huge numbers of people reading articles about tattoos, in response to which I created a site about tattoos and grew a mailing list of people to contact every time I added new articles to the site.  My intention, which proved very effective, was to generate commissions from visitors clicking on AdSense promotions at my site or buying ClickBank eBooks about tattoos. 

*  Another personal favourite list building technique is based on creating eBooks by writing them from scratch, or developing them from private label rights articles on subjects as wide ranging as making money from AdWords to prevent children being bullied at school.  I add half the text to an eBook and the other half I rewrite as articles to generate traffic to my squeeze pages.  Those articles go onto article directories as well as sites such as Squidoo and other social networking sites which are popular with search engines and help grow traffic to my squeeze pages (name for web sites containing sign up boxes).  Then I take the first chapter from the eBook which I save as text and chop it into six to ten parts to use as an email course for people who join my list.  Each email ends with an invitation to purchase the full version of the book which I normally promote through ClickBank.

As a side issue, I’ve learned that emails designed to promote a specific book prove more profitable with the book mentioned at the very top of the email as well as at the end, and not listed solely at the end where it looks more like an afterthought than a genuine attempt to sell to your readers. 

*  Another of my favourite ways to grow a list – or even sell directly off the page – and thereby collect names of enquirers as well as buyers, is to choose ClickBank vendors offering promotional email articles or letters for their affiliates, as well as product illustrations.  I add text and illustrations to a simple one page web site with an order button containing my affiliate link featured several times down the page. 

Once a visitor sees the link three or four times, he has usually made a definite decision to buy or not to buy on this occasion.  People who don’t buy right away I get to join my list for more information by adding my sign up box to the very bottom of my one page web site. 

Once people order they are sometimes added manually to my mailing list (by sending just one email asking them to sign up for valuable free reports).  Those who don’t buy on their first visit usually sign up to my list and subsequently receive seven or more emails giving information about the product along with an invitation to buy which many list members eventually do.

It’s actually very easy indeed to create a short report including links to your own sites or with your affiliate details embedded to ensure you get paid for all orders generated through your free report.  What you might not realise is your free report can be just a few pages long and need not be downloadable by people who join your list.