List Building Tips for Coaches, Personal Development Gurus (& Affiliate Marketers Too)

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Are you having trouble building a list?  Not sure what to offer to entice folks to sign up for your stuff?

Let’s take a quick look at a pretty common question, and see if we can’t find some simple ways to high step the hurdles, and overcome the obstacles that are holding some of you back.

This question (and answer) is kind of tailored to coaches and personal development types, who interestingly, based on the feedback I’ve been getting, occupy a pretty sizable chunk of my readership…and my list.

The good news is this…..

Personal development, empowerment niches and as an extension, coaching – are all super easy niches to monetize. They also cut across just about every online demographic as just about everyone, regardless of how financially successful, or not…...wants to improve themselves in some pretty universally pedestrian ways.

Everyone wants more time.

Everyone wants more rewarding relationships.

Everyone wants more acknowledgement, more appreciation and a better topspin forehand.

So while this quick question (which I paraphrased per the multiple permutations in which it was asked) really is applicable in just about every niche online, as I tried to cover below a little bit.

I can speak to the process as it applies to the personal development niches, simply because that’s one of my primary interests, and one of the areas I’m most focused on growing, going forward in my own business.

The very same approach I outline below I USE in attacking these very same markets…and will work equally as well for you.

Q:" I have no product. I have no giveaway. I have a small coaching practice and need clients. What can I offer people to build my list if I have nothing to giveaway?"

A: Find free stuff.

Public domain. Project Gutenberg and similar resources are rife with GREAT, seminal works on the power of positive thinking, simple success principles, timeless techniques for getting ahead in business and in life, and all sorts of "law of attraction" works as well.

You can offer these, for FREE, to your list as an enticement to signing up.

They have a high perceived value, are often truly helpful and valuable sets of strategies that many people charge for, and your list will love you for them.

Hint: Take one of these free books and make an audio book that you give away as a coach reading the chapters and offering advice or embellishments of current applications of some of these timeless techniques.

Offer other free ebooks on attraction, success , motivation, that are written by and distributed at no cost by other authors.

Grab a list of great blog posts and turn them into a short ebook with a link back to the original author.

It really doesn’t matter – just build your list.

Then - just automate your sequence so your ONLY responsibility is driving traffic to the opt in page.

If you can afford PPC – use it. If you can’t – use article marketing, press releases, social networking strategies, PDF repositories, automated blog building technologies, etc – the very same stuff we do everyday in other niches, to get traffic to your opt in page.

• Day 1 – offer ebook. and a welcome email.
• Day 2 – offer another ebook along the same theme.
• Day 3 either offer an affiliate product – or drive to your blog where you have a great post – and recommend an affiliate product that’s complimentary to your stuff.
• Day 4 Grab a Great Video – post it on your blog and drive to your blog where you give something else away
• Day 5 – Send to another affiliate product – use testimonials in your email from THEIR product – or on your blog
• And Beyond – Offer your own services as a bonus for buying affiliate products – it’s a great win/win value add for your readers and clients – if you recommend value and double up with your own personalized attention – you can build a loyal legion of fabulous fans in a hurry.

(I like the blog building approach – but lots of people find it to be more work – just do what you are most comfortable with – there is NO perfect pitch – no frictionless funnel - no smooth sweet segue to simple sales - just test, tweak, play and participate in the process of promoting stuff and you WILL start to make progress – I promise!)

The big secret is that all you have to do is create value.

Deliver value. Improve peoples lives.

Inspire them to want to be better, to take action, to think a wee bit bigger.

Stronger.

Higher and harder about what they want – and light up a bit more of the landscape to help them find their way.

You DON’T have to have your own stuff to do it.

Leverage the work of others – and share the aggregated intellect of the ideaosphere to help you add value. It’s really that simple.

If you are an affiliate marketer?

It’s actually equally as easy.

Just get free ebooks. (here is a list of 126 of them you can download for free.)

The "catch" is that they are branded with Abhi’s affiliate links. (so HE makes money if the people on YOUR list buy the recommended products in the package)

But who cares – you are offering value and your focus is simply in building your list…and these style offering work like magic for just that….especially if you have nothing of your own to entice them with.

Or you can purchase the individual branding rights per book for 5 bucks and re-brand them yourself – OR – just buy the source files to all 126 and have a big ass informational business from jump)

They look great – and with a nice opt in template you should be able to get 30-40% of your visitors to opt in.

Follow up similarly as above – AND – if you’ve branded with your own links, simply encourage your visitors to GIVE your stuff away for free the same way. (as this is a great way to spread your affiliate links virally throughout your niche or industry)

It’s all about the power of "how".

How do I get my stuff in as many hands as possible? How can I think just a little bit bigger?

How can I work a wee bit smarter, with less bangs, bumps and bruises…..to my time, energy or income?

Don’t over think it.

There are a million "business in a box" approaches to building your online empire – all you need to do is plug in the traffic and let the system automate the rest.

If you can control some traffic, which we all know we can - all you have to do is give stuff away, to be successful.

And the outrageously easy truth is – it doesn’t even need to be YOUR stuff..:-)

How do you scale this stuff?

If you are generating free traffic with the above, scale it up with social strategies….or super segmented pay per click campaigns.

Take some of the affiliate commissions, use a service like Ispionage, find EVERY one of the competitors who are operating in your space, and just leverage the keyword research of other people to send traffic to your pages instead. 

Just do it better than they do. And more often than not….this ain’t too tough to accomplish.

Follow the exact same funnel.

Build a list.

Offer value.

Give away free stuff.

Be aggressive about offering value – but be EQUALLY as aggressive about  valuing your own intellectual time, energy and investment by SELLING stuff to your list.

Why use tools like Ispionage?

Because why would you want to waste time building a big fat keyword pay per click marketing keyword list – when other people have already done the heavy lifting for you, and you can copy, steal emulate the entire campaign in one short afternoon…..with REAL time keyword counts. (all with enough time left over to watch judge joe brown re-runs)

Your time is valuable. Take the time that you would do keyword research and do better stuff with it.

• Do 8 or 9 pushups like me.
• create a wikipedia entry for yourself
• think deeply about universal problems like the melting ice caps.
• learn the violin. Chicks dig guys who play the violin. Trust me – it’s surprising, unexpected, and shows culture – and if you’ve got a whole bunch of cool tattoos it just sort of adds a whole layer of mystery, intrigue and depth to your persona. Good violin playing emanates from this sort of endless abyss of emotional emptiness that lives within each of us – you, me, everybody. It’s the sweet but subtle sounds of sensitive sorrow which you simply can’t express if you’re spending of your free time doing keyword research.

Which is why I recommend Ispionage if you want to be a more well rounded person.

I pay for it myself – and I do very little PPC these days. It just makes me feel good to know I have that sort of competive advantage at my finger tips whenever I need it, AND a muscial genius lurking somewhere under the surface just begging to come out.

The key is simply leverage.

Just "borrow" as many great things as you can to get started.

Ethically leverage the stuff that’s out there, that adds value – and that will impress your readers, or entice them to engage with your process.

Then use time saving tools to scale the whole thing up as quickly and easily as possible. Remember, even if you CAN’T find good freebies like above to offer your list (which is near impossible….but I know I’ll get emails saying it’s true..:-) you can literally go out into ANY niche, right now – and find 10 super solid posts on any topic, that would be of great value to your readers.

You can send those resources out everyday – use it to entice folks to sign up for your list – and then simply directing them each and every day to one of these great resources to deepen their education, enjoyment or entertainment value.

You’re establishing yourself as an expert – or as an authority site – while building good will in your niche or industry – (as everyone loves free traffic and their ego stroked) and you are making the process of establishing TRUST, when you have a product to recommend, that much more entrenched in the psyche of your subscribers to boot.

For example – if you wanted to sell article marketing affiliate products – keyword research tools, auto responders, wordpress templates, etc – you don’t need to be an expert article marketer to do it.

You just need to be more resourceful than those of us who are busting our asses writing articles all day.

Get folks on your list – and send them to blogs like mine where I’ve done all the heavy lifting for you….where the 2000 word posts are already done, baked, boiled and blogged – and YOU look like a magnanimous marketer for sharing them with freely with your group.  

You look like a champ for sharing good stuff with your list, I’m appreciative because your sending me traffic, and when you want to recommend an affiliate product the next day, your recommendation has a bit more gravitas after each new resource you share that informs, entertains and educates your list.

Find 7 or 8 killer different resources that will benefit your list and you’ll be amazed at how appreciative they’ll be.

It really is that simple – and it works equally and universally well in each and every niche under the sun…..& it WILL work for you as well. 

That’s it for today…..hopefully this helped a few of you, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments section below!