Okay, so I spoke in an earlier article on the importance of having a list. Not that it’s good to have, but that you MUST have a list if you want to achieve long term success online.

I’ve noticed the thing that really stymies a lot of would-be marketers is how to set up this whole funnel thing that gets you the list. Because it has to be really elaborate and it takes a lot of time and work to get it all set up, right?

Wrong. Too many people are over complicating it. Here’s what you’re going to do, and hang with me so you don’t get lost…

First, you’re going to create a squeeze page.

Second, you’re going to grab your autoresponder code and add it to your squeeze page.

That’s it.

Seriously. Building your list really is this easy.

“But I don’t know what to put on the squeeze page!”

That’s easy – a great headline and 3 to five short, snappy bullet points.

“But I don’t have a free gift to give them for subscribing.”

Seriously? There are PLR products all over the Internet, any one of which you can adapt into your own product in about 30 minutes.

Or you can create your own report – simply find the burning questions people ask the most in your niche and answer them.

OR, forget giving away a freebie. Instead send them to your sales page.

“I don’t have a sales page!”

Then send them to the sales page of an affiliate product you’re promoting.

Seriously, so many marketers make this so darn difficult when it should be the easiest thing in the world.

Your highest priority right now is getting your squeeze page up and running. NOW. Later you can create your own super-duper extra special freebie to give away if you like, but in the meantime you can be collecting names.

Think about this – you decide to create the ultimate free gift. It takes you a month to create that gift. Sure, you thought it would take 3 days, but darned if the project didn’t stretch out for the entire month.

Had you set up your squeeze page right away, you might have captured 10, 20 or more names a day while you were creating that ultimate freebie. But you didn’t create the squeeze page.

Result? You lost 300 to 600 or more subscribers that should have been yours.

See what I mean? Just put up the squeeze page, and then no matter what you’re doing online, be sure you’re sending people to that page. Send out tweets, advertise it on your Twitter profile, place it in your signature file on forums and in emails, advertise it (paid and unpaid) on Facebook, etc.

And once you get started building your list, you’re going to find that it’s easy. It’s not the big deal you thought it was. And even better, it’s addictive because as you see more and more subscribers coming in, you’ll be looking for more ways to drive targeted traffic to your squeeze page just so you can watch those numbers increase daily.

The important thing – the really important thing, is to target your list. That is, if your niche is on hot rod cars, be sure that your squeeze page is geared towards people who love hot rods.

For example, if you’re sending them to a sales page after the squeeze page, then the sales page should be promoting an excellent product specifically on hot rods. You want the people who opt into your list to be heavily into your niche, whatever that might be.

And everyone always thinks they’ve got to give away the farm to get someone on their mailing list, but think about this – if you’re sending them to a sales page after they opt in, some of those people will buy. Not a huge percentage, but if it’s a good offer for a good product, you’ll get sales. And the money you’re making from those sales can actually PAY to send traffic to your squeeze page.

Now you can advertise on Facebook in solo ads or whereever you want, and the more you advertise, the more sales you make, the more you can advertise. It’s all self funded so you’ve got your list building system on autopilot, and it took you 30 minutes to set up, plus the time it takes you to set up your advertising.

What about shortcuts? You know, like co-reg lists, safe lists, harvesting, renting lists – aren’t those easier ways to build your list? And the answer is no, absolutely not, because they don’t work. Not only are they unresponsive, but in many cases you’re spamming and you just don’t want to do that.

That’s why you want to build your own list of people who get to know you and who open your emails just because they see your name and they want to know what you have to say today. Build this and you’ll have a real asset. In fact, in online marketing I don’t know if I can think of a better asset than a responsive list, because you can go to that list anytime you want and send them an offer or even ask for their help on something and they will respond.

And if you’re just starting and you don’t know where to go to get traffic to send to your squeeze page, start with the forums. Google your keyword along with the word ‘forum,’ and find all the forums in your niche that allow you to have a signature line. Don’t blast out your squeeze page info; that’s not what you want to do. Instead, enter conversations and help people and become the go-to person in that niche. If you’re on these forums every day for a week, you can become an instant authority.

Just be real, help people, don’t hype anything, and let them click on your signature line in their own time and they will. Because you’re helping, because they see you as someone who really knows something about what they want to know, they’re going to want to know more about you and they’re going to want to get your updates.

These will be some of the most responsive leads you get – they’re absolutely golden – so treat them well and they will stick with you for years to come. And then once you’re good at forum posting, add something else to your traffic driving arsenal to get even more traffic to your squeeze page, like social media or advertising.

Find what works for you, get good at it, and then add something else. Do you see how easy this is? We try to make everything so hard and it’s really not. Just get started, get going and you’ll find out for yourself just how easy it is to build a list.