Hi everyone!  This module, like the other modules, was excellent.  Dean does a great job with the instructional videos and again with the follow-up webinars.  Here’s the scoop for this module.

Module 4, List Lingo, consisted of 14 videos.  Seems like a lot, but they were all short and to the point.  The first video is worth mentioning as Dean Holland stated something that may come as a shock to some of you.  Have you ever heard the saying, “The money is in the list”?  Well, it’s not.  Dean mentioned that although it’s great to have a list of subscribers, you have to nurture a relationship with them.  Give them value (for FREE) and don’t just try to sell to them all the time.  The money; therefore, is in your relationship with your subscribers – HUGELY important.

Another video in this module taught us about the power of AWeber.  AWeber is an email auto responder that automates several tasks for you.  These automated tasks include, collecting names and email addresses for you, sending automated follow-up emails even while you sleep and AWeber also gives you the ability to send an email to your entire list of subscribers if you need to.  If you look to right of this post at the Blog Setup Guide and the form you fill out to get it, that’s AWeber in action.  Pretty cool, don’t you think?

Dean also surprised us all by giving us an ebook to offer our subscribers.  It’s the Dean Holland, WordPress 2.8 Blog Setup Guide.  This ebook will walk you through the whole process that will enable you to set up a blog like the one you’re looking at now.  We are now using this ebook to build up our subscriber list.

Dean Holland also showed us some technical things that we needed to know like, how to upload our new ebook to make it accessible to our subscribers and how to upload a squeeze page to drive traffic to.  For those of you that don’t know what a squeeze page is, it’s basically a form that you can direct people to where they enter their name and email address for something in return, like an ebook.  It does the same thing as the form in the sidebar to the right does, in that it gathers subscribers names and email addresses, but it takes you to a page with some information about the offer instead.  Here is a clickable example below.

Click the book image to see an example of a squeeze page.

In addition, Dean taught us how to put the AWeber opt-in form and image in our sidebar, like the one to the right, and how to edit the squeeze page and get it to actually work.  Very cool stuff.

Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, Dean Holland taught us his, “Fail Proof List Building System”.  The same system that he used to build his own list and start making money on line for the first time.  The Dean Holland system is broken down into 2 stages.  The goal of the first stage is to start building your list and get it up to the 200 – 400 subscriber range.  In the second stage stage you’re aiming to build your list up to 400 + subscribers.

Stage one involves participating in “Giveaway Events”.  In these Giveaway Events you enter a gift that you are willing to giveaway for free, in exchange for a persons name and email address.  Once they have “opted in” with their name and email address they are then part of your subscriber list.  I ‘m glad I waited a little while to post this, because I can now tell you from experience that this does work, as I have done a few giveaways already, and as of today I have about 65 subscribers to my list.  In addition to that, just today, I got one of my subscribers asking me for help with setting up their blog.  I am so excited about that.  Always remember, give your subscribers great value first!

Stage two of Dean Holland’s system, once you are in the 400 plus subscriber range, is using “Ad Swaps” to get more subscribers.  With this system you can add hundreds of subscribers at a time to your list.  With Ad Swaps you and another person with a subscriber list of approximately the same size, promote each others free gift to their list.  For instance, if you and I both had a list of around 4oo subscribers and we wanted to do an Ad Swap, you would promote my Dean Holland WordPress 2.8 Setup Guide to your 400 people, and I would promote your gift to my list of 400.  This process adds subscribers to your list fast.

This was the most exciting module yet.  We learned to do things like set up an opt-in form, edit and install squeeze pages and make the ebook that Dean Holland created for us accessible to our subscribers.  Most importantly, we learned that we must build our relationships with our subscribers, because the money is not in the list, but in the people that honor us by opting into our lists.  Plus, we learned about the power of AWeber and how to use it to automate our communication with our list – thank you AWeber.

Finally, list building, my list is growing thanks to Dean Holland’s, “Fail Proof List Building System”.  I decided to put my trust in Dean, and follow his instructions and now my list is started and growing everyday.  It’s such an awesome feeling, almost like a dream, because if you asked me three months ago how to do all these things, I would have just looked at you with a blank expression on my face.  This proves that having a mentor to guide you is so important.  I know what I know because of Dean, and for that I am grateful.