Pearls from Ewen Chia: 

A mailing list is a list of people who signed up to receive your mailings, such as newsletters, ecourses, ebooks, and other emails. There are many benefits to having a huge mailing list. Here are a few reasons why you will want to start building one today.

There is an old saying that says, “The money is in the follow up”, and that holds true for your list. Your mailing list provides you a way of staying in touch with people who have visited your website. Maybe they didn’t buy anything the first time they visited your site. However, if you stay in touch with them on a regular basis, they may turn into a loyal customer.

There are several types of mailing list formats to choose from. You may want to include each kind on your website. You can offer a general newsletter that people can subscribe to. This is a great way to keep people informed on the updates you have made to your site. You can include excerpts from any articles you recently added with links to the full text. If you offer podcasts, you can include information about upcoming information you will be featuring, etc.

You can also choose to have a tips list or ecourse. People love numbers and are eager to sign up for a tips list, such as “15 ways to get organized today” or “50 ways to work from home”, etc. These tips can be small emails that are delivered daily to your mailing list. An ecourse is a great way to promote your information products. You can include a tiny bit of information and deliver a daily or weekly lesson to your mailing list.

The best way to manage a mailing list is through an autoresponder service. When you sign up for such a service, you can create a list and load email messages into it. When someone signs up for your list, they will automatically start to receive the messages you have already written. Each person will receive message 1, and the autoresponder will continue to send the messages in the order you selected.

While the main purpose of having a mailing list is to promote products, your visitors will be eager to sign up for them if you provide helpful information. With your mailing lists, you will want to include a “p.s” after the body of the message. These will grab your readers’ attention. You can use this space to include your affiliate links for other products you are promoting. Your mailing list will allow you to cross promote your products and services and turn “fence sitters” into customers.

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Pearls from Ewen Chia: 

A hot topic among Internet marketers is the debate over mini sites versus big sites. A mini site is a small website consisting of two to five pages which is devoted to one subject. These are also called niche sites. A big site is a website that has hundreds or thousands of pages devoted to several subjects on a given topic.

When you create a mini site, your goal is for the visitor to take action. You don’t have to put up any fancy graphics or outgoing links. You want your visitor to stay focused on your message.

When you have a large website, you can take the time to add banners, outgoing links, and even flash plug-ins. You can have various sections that focus on different subjects, all relating to the same topic.

Some people may say that a mini site will increase your sales. Your visitors won’t be distracted by other things and they won’t click away as easily. Plus, you don’t have to worry about technical problems as much. If you have one large site, and it crashes, your business stops. On the other hand, if you have several mini sites, you don’t have to worry about your business completely stopping. Your other sites can still function and you can continue to earn money while your troubled site gets repaired.

Other people think that mini sites may repel some of your business. If your business consists of too many niches, you may lose out on repeat business from the same customers. For instance, if you have a mini site devoted to poodle shampoo, you will find some customers willing to buy information products on that subject.

However, if you had a larger site devoted to a larger subject, and poodle shampoo was just one of the topics, you could offer your customers complementary products. As you know, once someone is your customer, it will be easier to sell them other items.

There are benefits and pitfalls when it comes to organizing these two types of sites as well. With a mini site, there is not much content. You do not have to worry about subfolders and subdomains. However, maintaining 100 small sites can certainly take up a large chunk of time.

When you have a large site, you will have to worry about subfolders. But if you organize your site well in the beginning, finding content and links shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

When you decide between a large site and several mini sites, there are pros and cons for both ways. The choice really comes down to the way you want to run your business, and which you feel would be the better choice for you.

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