If you haven’t heard the saying “the money is in the list” you are either not trying to make money online, or you just started today. Building a list is the easiest way to increase your online income, and most beginners fail to start a list. If they do start building a list they just pop the opt in box in the sidebar of a blog and that’s a huge mistake.

Only having your opt in box in your sidebar is a huge mistake because there is just too much going on and too many choices a reader can make once they hit your site. They can read articles, click affiliate links, or even click the back button. Too many options leads to confusion and a confused mind never does what you want it to do. If you are trying to build a list you don’t want confusion you want the only option to be to sign up to your list.

What is an opt in page?

An opt in page aka squeeze page is a page you set up with one intention, and one intention only ~ to get someone to sign up to your list. That’s the only thing you want them to do, that’s the only choice you make available. They either sign up or they click the back button. It is a short page, with just enough information to get them to enter their information.

If you create an opt in page you will increase your opt in rate in a huge way. We mentioned how many options there are on a regular page and a person with too many choices generally makes no choice at all. Your opt in page only gives them one choice, sign up or click the back button. If you have an interesting incentive for them to sign up they will.

What are the pieces of an opt in page?

Being such a simple page the opt in page does not have many elements. The first must have element is a freebie to give to your subscribers. This is a free report or an ecourse you create or have created for you. This will be given to the subscriber in exchange for their email address and name. This does not have to be a huge ebook, but it does have to have some perceived value.

The next element on your opt in page is the headline. You can use large red font, just like you would on a sales page. You want to highlight the benefits and let them know what they can expect from subscribing to your list in this headline. Here’s a headline we use for one of our best converting squeeze pages. “How to Finally Puzzle Together a Money-Bringing Internet Marketing Strategy that Works for You” The free gift on this particular list is ongoing internet marketing tutorials.

You want to tell people how they are going to benefit from getting your information and being on your list. If you’ve created an ecourse you can go through each lesson and pull out the biggest benefit. This can be a short bullet point list. You want to show benefits, but you don’t want to make this a sales page. If you can keep all this information above the fold of your page, all the better.

The final piece of the opt in page is the opt in box. This is the space where people actually enter their information. You get this part from your autoresponder service. You want to include the name of your freebie, and encourage them to fill in their name and BEST email address. After the code is created you can just copy it and then paste it right where you want it on your opt in page.

Once you’ve finished this simple page the key is to send all your traffic through this page first. That way you can get people on your list and have the opportunity to talk to them more than once. The more times you can put your product or service in front of someone the more likely they are to buy from you in the end.