Affiliate Marketing Business Blog

Lately I’ve been talking about some important aspects to product creation. I think the most important aspect to product creation is surveying your list (or prospects) to find out what they want. But how can I build a list without a product. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg.

This paradox that we need a chicken to create an egg but an egg to create the chicken is often applied to product creation and list building. If I need to know what my list needs to create a product, but I need a product to build a list, it seems impossible to even get started. The truth of the matter is, it doesn’t really matter whether the chicken, egg, product, or list came first. Some people start with a product, and others start with a list. But I will tell you which one I think is best to start with.

One of the things people, that are starting an online business, don’t consider is where their customers are coming from. They think they have a great idea for a product, but in reality, they have no idea if anyone wants it. So, it is essential to always survey your prospects to find out what they want. I’d recommend to start building a list before you have a product. How can I do that without a product? Well, the possibilities are too many to name them all here, but I’ll give you a few innovative ideas to building a list without creating a product:

1. Create Videos Based on Top Adword Campaigns in your Niche and put them up on youtube and other video sites with a link to a squeezepage.

2. Be active on a forum in your niche and find out what people need and are searching for. Then tell them you are writing an ebook about that topic and you’ll give them a copy of your ebook for free as soon as it’s done if they go to your squeeze and fill out a form that tells you their most pressing questions on the subject.

3. Create An Adwords Campaign that sends them to a squeezepage and sells affiliate products. Even if you just break even, you now have a list of people who are looking for products in your niche.

4. Buy PLR (Private Lable Rights) information and offer it for free on a squeezepage. Better yet, recreate the PLR or some other information into a video and offer access to your video if they sign up. Then go to any of the above mentioned places and drive people to the site

There are literally tons of ways to build a list before you have a product but the basic idea is to find a way to get in front of a lot of people. Look for people in the niche you want to be in and make them an offer. The offer matters less than the traffic. Whether you go to Youtube, or a forum, or Google, or ebay, or an association, it doesn’t matter. You just want to be in front of people in your niche. You can create the best product in the world, but the guy with traffic will outsell you every time. So find more traffic, build a list, create a product, and repeat.

Now I’m sure there is a difference in opinion on this subject. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.

Matthew Glanfield

I hear all sorts of nonsense about the use of squeeze pages, and the inconsistent training that is out there has actually decreased their overall effectiveness.

In fact, most people are wasting their time with squeeze pages, simply because they don’t use them properly.

I have access to a lot of statistics because we run our YSP service, so now it is time to set the record straight.

Watch this video to see what I mean:

Matthew Glanfield

This morning my Manager of Member Services came in, quite disgusted at something that I had done.

The night before I had sent out an email with a link to a squeeze page that I had created, and she was completely repulsed by how ugly it was!

(Want to see it? Then click here)

She told me that with the fabulous graphic designer that we have available in-house, I could have had a much better looking squeeze page created for the campaign I was doing.

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