By Tellman H. Knudson
So, you're building a list, right? And in return for people's names and addresses, you want to give something away.
OK...
If you can write and you know your topic very well, then you can write a short report, an email series to put into your autoresponder, or even a short ebook. But how do you go about that, if you hate to or can't write?
Well, you can buy Private Label Rights (PLR) articles or ebooks and adapt them to suit the topic of your list. Let's talk about those for a moment.
Private Label Rights articles and ebooks are popular because they help you to save time. With PLR materials, the writer or owner of the material gives you the "rights" to sell or giveaway pre-written material. You can use it as if your own company or you personally wrote the information and you have the right to adapt the material in any manner you see fit.
Rather than gathering research and writing the material you'd like to give to your list yourself, you can simply take the articles and change some of the words, rearrange paragraphs, and give the articles new titles. This is a good idea. You definitely don't want to offer the same things going around to the people who are signing up for your list. If they saw the same exact thing before on some other list or another giveaway deal, they'll feel cheated and won't trust you. Plus, they'll probably unsubscribe from your list, to boot. That's not good. The people on your list need to trust you.
You can buy article "spinning" software, but as far as that goes... just finding synonyms for words and plugging them into the article text won't cut it, either. People aren't that stupid, and you certainly never want to insult the intelligence of the people on your list. You want them to like you, too.
Writing articles or short reports isn't that hard if you know your subject. Come up with a great title, something that people will really take notice of. If you're on my list, you've seen some of my email titles, like: "Crusty Old Norwegian," or "ADD Superman Bends Time." Great titles will definitely get people to read your stuff.
Then, tell them something about your topic. Focus on one facet of it, and don't try to tell the whole story in one article. You'll fail. Here's an example:
If I were to write about Internet Marketing, that would be a very broad topic. I could never cover it all in one short article. Right? But what if I narrowed that down to list building? Then, what if I narrowed it even more to how to set up an autoresponder? But even more than that, what if I wrote step-by-step instructions on plugging the autoresponder opt-in box into your web site? You see? Get your topic down to a chewable size and BANG!
If you're still stumped, hire somebody to write these messages or reports for you. You can find people very reasonably at http://eLance.com or you can hire someone who's professional and pay more.
The question is how much of an impact do you want to make and how much money do you have to spend?
If you have more time than money, study about writing articles, until you get really, really good at it. Buy a home study course, or an ebook about writing articles and study those. If you really hone in on what it is you're trying to accomplish, just focus on that one thing... you'll be an article-writing ninja before you even know it.
And think of how this will impact your relationship with your list. If you send them crappy looking articles, they won't respect you. Give them something you can be proud of, even if you have to pay for it. For the respect it will give you with your list, the money will be well worth it.
About the Author: Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. You can find more information about building an awesome opt-in list at MyFirstList.
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