List Building 102 - What to Do Once You Have Your Squeeze Page Set Up

So in List Building 101, you learned about how to start a list, and the basic steps necessary to make that happen.

So what do you need to do now that you have your squeeze page up and an opt in form on that page?

One of the most important things is getting traffic to your squeeze page. If there is no traffic, no matter how well you have set up your squeeze page, you are not going to build your list.

Now, I am a proponent of building quality traffic, even if it takes a little longer to build, rather than buying junk traffic or doing free advertising. Now, don't get me wrong, I use free traffic sources, I just don't do free advertising.

There are two primary, free, high quality traffic sources that I believe in very strongly.

1) Natural search engine results. There are many things that you can do to get high natural search engine results. The first step is to minimally optimize your web page for the keywords for which you want to get to a top ten results ranking. Now, if your keyword is real general and there are 10 million competing web sites, you are probably not going to get a top ten result. But, if you narrow down your keyword choice, and make it more specific, for example, going from fishing to deep sea fishing, where there are far fewer web sites competing for number one, then you have a much greater chance of making something great happen.

The second step is to submit your web site url to at least 100 web directories. You may think that is over kill, but let me ask you this - would you rather do half the work and get to #11, or do all the work and get to #1 or #3?

The third step is to write an article using your keyword and send it to at least one hundred article directories, with a text anchor link back to your web site.

3) Article marketing. Now this varies from step three of number 1, in that you are going to write multiple articles and submit them only to the top 5 or 6 article directories online, and only article directories that have pageranks of at least 6 or 7. This will create massive pre-sold traffic to your web site, from direct web visitors who come to your web site after reading the article online.

PayPal's Return Policy and Its Significance to Digital Product Merchants

One of the only concerns I had in dealing with DigiResults was that I would be in charge of granting refunds (DigiResults themselves will issue the refund to the customer if you give them the greenlight to do so) to any customers who are dissatisfied with the quality of my product. That means more freedom but more work for me as I had to play judge with every new requested refund.

I mention this because I recently came across something interesting which relates to any digital product merchants (like me) who use an affiliate network like DigiResults or any instance where PayPal is involved for transferring money in part; something which all merchants should be aware of. I'm referring to PayPal's dispute policy as it pertains to digital products.

In their "what items are not covered under buyer protection section", they make it clear that "there are some payments that we do not cover including... most intangible items". Intangible items refers to a number of things which includes digital products and services.

What this means is that you (the merchant) are not liable or obligated to offer a refund on your digital product because digital products are not covered by PayPal's refund policy.

This also means that disreputable merchants could use this in their favor to give disgruntled customers the cold shoulder time and time again without repercussion.

This is just something for you to be aware of. That being said, the best thing to do is to establish a return policy which you can mention on your sales page to help encourage sales and stick to and follow it by the letter through all complaints whether that means approving or denying a refund.

And remember that while you're not liable or obligated to grant refunds in that scenario, people can still write nasty and discrediting things about you and your product online which can have an adverse affect on future sales/customers, so it's just something to keep in mind that it's in your best interest to again be as fair and just as possible when it comes to refunds.

Lastly, remember that the one caveat of this is that the customer can still file a credit card dispute if they used that card for the purchase. These disputes can be investigated like any other, and if you have evidence that the customer broke the terms of your refund policy (hence having your refund policy written specifically in a special section), then the customer won't have a leg to stand on, let alone a case against you.