Using Ad Swaps are a free but very effective way to build your list each week, with minimum of effort and maximum quality of traffic. It solves a big mystery of online business, that is how to add many targeted subscribers to your list at will.

It’s one of the most important techniques in opt in marketing.

Ad swaps are one of my personal favorite ways for listbuilding, and I think you will find it is a very effective means to start building or increase the list you have now. What you need to begin is a small list (maybe build up the first 200-300 by participating in JV giveaway events or with some paid traffic), and a free item that is relevant to your niche and that you have the rights to give away in your opt-in email marketing.

What you’ll need to do is set that gift up on a simple squeeze page one where you place the gift, its benefits, its image, and the form to have them go into your list. The form is given to you by your autoresponder.

So, even starting from 200-300 will be able to get good result from ad swapping.

What are Ad Swaps?

Some of you may be wondering what ad swapping is in the first place. Let me explain as best as I can. The way it works is you get in touch with other people who also have lists about the same size your list is. (Network with them online in forums, or Internet marketing social sites.)

Meet people and select them based on if they are matching up with what you need for your audience. Try out their gift and make sure it’s the quality you’re looking for. Then you setup the swap.

An ad swap works like this, they will send a message to their list letting their subscribers know what giveaways you have on your squeeze page. After that you do the same for their squeeze page on your list. You provide each other the mails to send, with your link in there, already to go.

You should have 200-300 people on your list before you start looking for people to ad swap with. Some people prefer to swap with people with similar list sizes, but you can do deals based on the number of clicks generated, or you can say for someone who has a list 2x the size of yours, that you’ll send the ad 2x for their one sending. It’s really up to you, if you track your results of the clicks you’re receiving from their sending (most autoresponders have this built in), it will make it very easy to equalize things out as required.

Now, some of you are probably wondering why have them promote your squeeze page instead of promoting your product directly. Well, the fact is you are much better off getting more people to your squeeze page and signing them up as subscribers than making a onetime sale.

The Best Places to Find Ad Swap Partners

Some of the best places to find ad swap partners in the IM niches are the Joint Ventures section of the Warrior Forums and IMAdswaps.com. Also, if you are in a niche outside of IM, you can find ad swaps by searching around your niche’s top forums. If you are on a list that you really like, you can email the owner of the list and see if he would be interested in doing an ad swap with you.

If you follow this tactic, you should be able to double your list size at a pretty incredible rate. As you build a bigger list, you will be able to ad swap with other people who have bigger lists. You’ll start to have people approaching you too, as things grow for you and you do a good job on the ad swaps you do. Remember, just always do what you say, and don’t forget to queue up other people’s mails!

The Process of Joint Ventures with E-mail Opt in Lists

People you approach to ad swap with will assume you have a promo email for them to use on their list and will most likely provide you with one also. So you should have one or two of these written before approaching anyone for ad swapping.

This way you have more control over your promotion. When you receive the promo email from them, it should be almost ready for your list. Just a little tweaking and adding your personality to it, and it is ready for swapping.            

If you do decide to use this technique, you will see promising results. Since you are marketing to another audience who already has a trusting relationship with the list owner, you will gain some of that trust from the subscribers. Think about it; someone that they trust advises them to check you out. This is one of the best examples of how social proof works in email marketing opt in campaigns.