How To Make A Squeeze Page

Everyone knows that "the money's in the list". If you build up a responsive list of buyers, and maintain a good relationship with them, they'll be the first place to turn when you want to release a new product or make a new offer.

But many people seem to struggle with the mechanics of building their first list. This lens will walk you through the process of setting up a squeeze page, and loading an autoresponder with a series of follow-up messages. It's easy (compared to working an 8-hour day in a bank, that is.) and you should be able to do it in an hour or less.

The first thing you'll need is a domain name and web hosting.

See these lenses:

How To Choose A Domain Name

How To Choose A Web Host

The next thing you're going to need is an autoresponder. I've tried one or two, and the only one I recommend is AWeber.An account will set you back $19 a month, for unlimited emails to a maximum of 500 subscribers. To my mind, they offer the best balance between deliverability, ease of use, features and cost. If you have a high enough budget, you could try InfusionSoft, starting at around $399.00 a month. InfusionSoft is a complete system for selling products on the net, and it is used by some of the top names in the Internet Marketing field.

You'll also need a web page editor. There's no sense in going out and buying DreamWeaver; there are free tools which are perfectly adequate. I like SeaMonkey; many people seem to like Nvu. In the video below, I've used Kompozer.

Finally, you'll need an FTP client. This is just a program which lets you copy files from your computer to your web host. It's basically similar to the Windows Explorer - you can move files in either direction, delete files and so on. I use Filezilla; you might prefer SmartFTP. With some web page editors, like DreamWeaver and Kompozer, you can upload the files to your hosting account directly, without an FTP client. This can be a pain to set up!

Another option is to use the HTML editor that comes with CPanel, assuming that it's provided by your web host. This also works quite well.

Here's a step-by-step procedure for setting up a simple squeeze page.

1. Create a new page in Kompozer.
2. Create a 1 column by 1 row table. Click on the table to select it.
3. Select Table|Table Properties. Change the table width to 600 pixels (or whatever you prefer).
4. Change the spacing to 0. Click 'Apply'.
5. Click the 'Center' icon to centre the table.
6. Type in a headline. Change the styling to suit your tastes.
7. Type in some bullet points.
8. Log in to your autoresponder account. I'll assume you're using AWeber; other autoresponders should be similar.
9. Create a new list. Give it a name that makes sense to you.
10. Create a new web form.
11. Edit the web form fields as needed - I usually add a 'Name' field and make it 'Required'.
12. Save the form.
13. Click on 'Get HTML'.
14. Copy the Javascript snippet ('Ctrl+C')
15. Go back to Kompozer. Click on the 'Source' tab at the bottom of the screen.
16. Paste the Javascript in after the bullet points.
17. Click on 'Publish'.
18. Enter your web hosting account details. If you haven't done this before, it's probably the trickiest part.
19. Open the newly published page in your web browser.
20. Tweak, correct, fix and improve.

. Click the 'Source' tab at the bottom of the page.