It’s been a while since I posted here on my blog.. tut tut! The truth is that I have been pretty busy with a number of things both on and offline.

We had a pretty good training meeting up in Northampton on Sunday just gone, this was a training to support those people that have downloaded and have put to use the ebook authored by David Butler, Gordon Bunker and yours truly (The PIE System). It was really intended to help people out with the setting up of the various programs and systems once you dig in to IMSP and PIPS and then also how to get the best out of some of those programs. So, I spent a fair while preparing and getting materials together for that. It seemed like a good idea to put together video’s that could be shown at the training which show step by step how to perform various activities and actions.

It has become apparent that for the new net marketer things can be pretty darn daunting, not to mention highly confusing and overwhelming! As I cast my mind back to when I first set out on this amazing journey it was a mad time for me too, incredibly exciting, but downright crazy!

Like anything worthwhile, there’s quite a learning curve to deal with, and, to be honest, that learning curve doesn’t seem to stop, there’s always something new to learn about and lots of ways to fine tune and improve results. That’s really what I wanted to focus on in this post.

We’re in the business of building lists, opt in email lists… We hear it all the time “Build your list” and “The money is in the list”. What I have been taught, and what I teach others is rather than sending your traffic directly to your affiliate sign up page, where ever that may be, capture the name and email address of that person first with a ’squeeze’ or ‘data capture’ page so that they can be added to your auto responder list such as those provided by Aweber or Get Response. That’s all very well, but, the question has always been “How do I get someone to part with their name and email address on a capture page and end up on my opt in list?”. There’s lots of ways of doing this, but what’s worked really well for me is to use proven systems that are known to convert traffic into subscribers and subscribers into buyers. A great example of this is James Grandstaff’s Instant MLM Squeeze Pages, my favourite squeeze page of the lot is this one: http://www.theeasyprofitgenerator.com
I have spent many hours studying James’ system and techniques, and, through this I managed to put my own little squeeze page together which captures subscribers for my e-lottery business: http://stacktheodds.net

Having these great systems and capture pages is great, but it’s completely pointless if we don’t have traffic! So, I suppose that’s the next big question: “How do I get traffic to my squeeze pages?” This, for me, is where the fun really begins! So, what follows in this post is a few methods of creating traffic at low cost or for free and also what I’ve done to measure the ‘responsiveness’ of that traffic.

Talking to any good net marketer, they will always say ‘Track your results’. Simple web stats can tell you about where that traffic came from and what may have been searched for etc, but it won’t tell you what ‘actions’ occured on your page and it certainly won’t tell you what traffic turned into a ’sale’ or ’subscriber’.

Why Track?
If we’re going to spend time and money on developing a traffic stream to our squeeze page, we want to know which traffic sources are providing results. A really good service that was recommended to me is ProTrackerPlus. It’s a great service because it not only allows you to track all sorts of links and sources, it also teaches you how to track, or as the boys over there (Dam and Mark) put it… All you want in a tracker.. with the Training You Deserve!

Setting up a free account over at ProtrackerPlus allows you to set up 5 trackers. So, I deceided a while ago to track some of my pages to see what happened.. The results were surprising (at least to me!).

Heres my results from tracking my pages on 4 manual traffic exchanges over 5 days (in no particular order):

1. Dragon Surf
Clicks: 893     Actions: 15     Sales: 2     Conversions: 0.22%

2. Traffic Splash
Clicks: 498     Actions: 14     Sales: 1     Conversions: 0.20%

3. Traffic Gold Rush
Clicks: 127     Actions: 1     Sales: 0     Conversions: 0.00%

4. Hit Safari
Clicks: 509     Actions: 5     Sales: 2     Conversions: 0.39%

This test has been a real eye opener for me. Generating traffic for free in a Manual Traffic Exchange is not really my favourite pass time, and, to accrue the amount of traffic you see in the figures above for free takes a little while.

What have I learned?

In the last 5 days, Hit Safari out performed the other 3 exchanges with a conversion rate of 0.39% (for every 509 clicks I have got 2 subscribers to my list) It’s worth me spending a bit more time at Hit Safari or even worth buying some traffic

Traffic Goldrush has a bunch of traffic still left to deliver (something like 700 hits) but has not managed to deliver me that traffic over the last 5 days.

Dragon Surf is a steady 0.22% conversion and delivers the traffic at a good rate

Traffic Splash also steady 0.20% and delivers traffic at a good rate

The surprise here for me has been Hit Safari. While surfing I always pick up loads of free prize credits which always made me a little suspicious. Turns out my suspicions were unfounded and that this Traffic Exchange not only delivers traffic it also provides responsive traffic!

List Builders

Another good source of responsive traffic for me has been list builders. As part of the training we did on Sunday I produced a few videos, I’ll post two of them here.

The first one is based on List Joe. List Joe is a credit based list builder. This effectively means that if I read other List Joe members emails, I will earn credits, which in turn will enable me to email ListJoe members. The video is based on using a free account which allows you to deliver 2500 emails to ListJoe emails every 7 days.

My List Joe results have been to land 3 subscribers for every 2500 emails sent (which resulted in 120 visits) That’s a pretty good conversion rate of 2.5%

Finally, There’s Downline Builder Direct.
Downline Builder Direct is more of a ‘Safe List’. This means that I agree to receive other DBD emails in return for the ability to email DBD members in return. This is not credit based, so it means that we have to concentrate a little harder on writing a good email that encourages people to open it and read it. (There’s a great free course just come out by Michael Rasmussen called ‘Email Promo’s Exposed’ I would strongly recommend checking this out if you are interested in sending out promotional emails!)

That’s it for this post, I hope this has been useful to you in some way. Do comment, even if it bored your socks off I really enjoy any feedback…

Cheers!

Ian

There are many downline building systems to choose from out there. I have used several, and, I’ll be perfectly frank and honest with you, they are NOT all the same thing.

You see, when building any MLM business, the most important asset you have, apart from an upline who believes in you, is your list. In today’s ‘new age’ of MLM that list is actually your optin list, that’s your list of subscribers who optin to get information from you about opportunities and systems to help them build their MLM business. These optin’s, leads, people, individuals, however you like to refer to them have joined your list and probably your MLM downline system through using that MLM downline system.

So how do you choose which MLM Downline System to use?

Here are some very important questions you should ask yourself before you make that decision:

1. Do your optins actually join YOUR list?

OK, so you found an amazing, 100% Free MLM downline building system that produces leads and downlines for you. Did those leads actually join your list? I’ve seen this, you spend hours of hardwork in the Traffic Exchanges and List-Builders promoting this system that supposedly has evrything… It’s free, it provides lead capture pages, video, personalised to you, follow-up messages to send, everything, and great, you have leads appearing in your back office. Now all you want to do is broadcast a message to them. Can you do it? Actually in some scenario’s, No, you can’t, but guess what, the system owners can and, they do!

2. Who controls the messages sent out to your leads?

You really ought to be using one of the auto responders like aweber or get response to manage your list optins and control what messages are sent out to them. I have seen, and worked with, some MLM downline systems which purport to have those leads available to you, which they are, but they are not in your auto responder, they’re in someone elses and you have no control over what opportunities, offers and, importantly, links that are sent out to those individuals.

Successful New Age MLM downline builders all agree, have your own auto responder, have your own optin list, write your own series of follow up emails that you can control.

3. Can you obtain support and training from your upline?

In order to be successful in MLM, you are going to need training and support, period! It’s just the way it is. With some of the mlm downline systems out there, which I have worked with, I contacted my sponsor by email, the email that he joined with. It took me three weeks to get even a reply and for him to say, actually I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m new and No, I don’t know anything about all those emails I’ve been sending you about ‘our fantastic team’. Now this one is the straw tht broke the camels back for me, I’m a bit old school, I KNOW that you need to have the help and support of an upline team to be successful in MLM. If that downline building system does not encourage communication and training for it’s team members, it has a hole in it.

4. Are you put under undue pressure to part with your money?

Some free mlm downline systems suggest they can deliver 10’s and even 20’s of streams of ‘passive income’, great! Some of those streams of income are expensive to get started and, in fact, they maybe prohibitively expensive, particularly for the newcomer. The newcomer has put in lots of work and is seeing some success with his downline growing, a new stream of income is announced and unless the newcomer signs up within a very short timescale it’s going to be hard luck, your downline will join around you.

5. You want to stop using that system, what happens to your leads?

I built a list in a system I shouldn’t have done, other people were contacting my leads with their own offers and programs, this is just plain wrong! There is only one thing to do when this happens, quit that system and start to build your own list with an mlm downline system that builds YOUR list, not someone elses.

So, to conclude, I know how exciting it can be to discover a 100% Free MLM downline building system, I really do! But, before you go ahead and take out your wallet and credit card, consider your options very carefully. If the answer to some of the questions I have raised above is less than positive or they ring a bell, be very careful.

http://www.theeasyprofitgenerator.com/