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The inconvenience of building an opt-in mailing list using PPC (pay per click) search engines, is the cost connected to it. The following technique can reduce and even neutralize these costs and at the same time quickly build an email list for your chosen niche market.

Many internet marketers stress the importance of having your own mailing list, as this is where a more important stream of income may come from, within your online business. However, when entering a new niche market the challenge is often to build the new list quickly from start.

Getting free search engine traffic may take months and a lot of optimization & link building work, before seeing any results. One solution is to use PPC search engines which delivers instant traffic to your website and opt-in form. But how do we get rid of some of the costs a pay per click solution involves?

First, an opt-in mailing list is an email list a visitor choose to sign up to when visiting a web page, to get information delivered to their email box. They also usually have to confirm this subscription by doing a one-click confirmation in the sign-up email sent to them, before the information is delivered. This is to protect the visitor from getting unwanted information. At this point they have approved the subscription and is on the opt-in mailing list.

In this technique i'm going to show you, one has to think long term ROI (return of investment) as this method is just meant to reduce or erase the inital cost of getting a subscriber to your list. The real, long term value after that, is the opportunity to follow up your subscribers with useful, free information and at times offering them products, services, reviews etc., which he or she may be interested in.

If you do it right, you can end up with total sales income from your list, greater than the total subscriber cost, thus getting you on the profitable side. As the targeted subscriber list grows, the more income you can expect from it.

A subscriber which is given valuable free information over time, will be far more open to trust and buy from you, when offered products and services as well. An example is one of my niche websites, targeted to the stock market, which as of this writing has grown to 1100 opt-in subscribers and is a consistent source of income through affiliate links integrated into free stock market market updates, delivered via email. The value of these free market updates also ensure low unsubscription rates.

Just one simple day trading software banner, which shows up at the end of every update, has alone generated enough income to more than cover my monthly electricity expenses. In addition comes ebook sales and more. It's not a huge revenue but is just one income stream among several others, which added together gives good extra income besides a regular day job. If a regular guy like me (educated as a car mechanic) can build an online income, so can you. The key is to continue building websites and opt-in lists in profitable niche markets, until a full income goal is reached.

This PPC cost reducing method may help to increase profit margins even more:

On your domain, create a simple "landing page" with an opt-in form, which is presented to the targeted visitor when they click on a PPC ad. Focus on the benefits of subscribing to your free email list, what's in it for them. By offering them bonuses like a free report, ebook, ecourse, tool, etc., a higher subscription rate could be the result.

At the top, center of the page, code in a Google Adsense ad in the 728x90 format. For more information on how Adsense can generate an income for you, do a Google search for "Adsense" and you will find plenty of suggestions and tutorials.

Remove any Adsense ad border, change general ad colors to blend in with the color of your page. Black ad text against a white background page is the best. Change URL colors within the ad to the blue URL color you often see on many web pages. An example of this preferrable ad format and configuration, is available on the niche stock market website i mentioned above: http://oextradingresources.com

Now, to the main point, what this Adsense ad will do for you is to put money in your Adsense account, whenever a visitor clicks on one of the ads. The same visitor may also sign up for your opt-in newsletter. On the other hand, a visitor may click on an ad but leave your website without signing up to your newsletter. Of course, a visitor may also leave without any actions at all.

In the list building process, this combination of Adsense income and an opt-in form on the same page, can overall help reduce or even neutralize the cost of getting targeted visitors from pay per click search engines, into your newsletter.

Income from Adsense can vary from a few cents up to dollars per click, depending on your target market. To give a clue and a perspective on how valuable Adsense can be for you, there are many people out there making a good living from Adsense based websites alone, even without running any newsletters. But in my opinion, having a mailing list to promote to, is after all a reliable way compared to any unpredictable changes in external programs.