We have been focusing on the squeeze page as a single page, but it really is a complete system with several components that are related.

Each component within that system stands alone, but is critically focused on making you money.

Remembering that although every component in your squeeze page system is designed to grab that email address, your system could include an OTO, or a “One-Time Offer.”

If you’ve bought anything from an Internet marketer, you probably were shown an OTO while waiting to receive a download link or confirmation.

So the process goes like this – you sign up for the free ebook or video, then you’re taken to a thank you page which also has a One Time Offer – something that you won’t see again and is presented as a great deal.

Some marketers suggest it’s also an early way of telling your new subscriber that you’re going to try to sell to them from time to time, and they should get used to it !

This page should have a separate offer that your new subscriber will see only once and be priced so reasonably they will have a difficult time refusing to buy it. Most marketers provide several free bonuses to go along with the OTO. The only purpose for this page in your system is to add extra income to your original offer and it has proven to be very successful.

Once you get the subscription or sale, your Squeeze page system should re-route them to a thank you page, giving you an opportunity for an up sell. Since they have already followed your call to action by either subscribing or buying your product, you can add a few related graphics advertising your affiliate products or with links to your own products. Some include another OTO on this page, but that is your decision.

Let’s take a look at some of the physical characteristics of successful squeeze pages, along with several useful guidelines that will keep you from making costly mistakes. Your purpose is to create a squeeze page that converts a high number of visitors into subscribers or buyers.

Your #1 Concern: You have to make sure there is a real market for your products or services in your target niche. That means you have to identify what your market wants to know and is willing to pay to get it. Selling products or services that no one wants is a waste of time and money.

You have to know WHO will buy your products.

• What the members of your niche want
• How you will reach them with your offers (market to them)
• If they will buy what you offer or even like what that is
• The size of the membership
• What marketing methods will get a response
• How much they will pay for your products

You can find out WHAT your market wants and is looking for with any of several keyword search engines or tools. A keyword is the term being entered in the search engines to help your potential customers find the sites they want to find. A Google search for keyword tools will point you toward quite a few. A simple search on “keyword search” (no quotes) turned up pages and pages of hits.

Write down the keywords that you think your customers might be using to find sites or products like yours and enter them in the keyword tool. Use several of these suggestion tools and keep track of your choices, which should be based on relevancy to your niche. If you are running a sports site and focusing on golf, “putting” or “improving your swing” might be good keywords, while “”making more free throws” or “after the game snacks” will do absolutely nothing to increase your traffic.

While that process will tell you what people are looking for, it only gives you your first insight about your market. Now you have to determine what the people in your specific niche want and if they will pay for it.

It is much easier to find your best market if you narrow down your target to the segment of your niche that needs the most help or could use the most information. For example, trying to market to people who like to bake, using the keyword “recipes” will return well over 160,000,000 potential customers, including those looking for chili recipes or East Indian recipes.

Instead, using the keywords “peanut butter cookies” drops that 160,000,000 to 552,000, a more tightly focused audience. This is where you think outside the box to narrow down an even more tightly focused group for your market.

“Cookie failures” has a following of 585,000 searchers looking for ways to avoid cookie failures. There’s your market! People who have trouble making good cookies have a need for solutions and no-fail recipes. Batches of tasty cookies are universally used for several reasons, family treats, school lunch boxes, house parties, brand new neighbors moving in next door and holiday gift boxes, to name a few. There’s a few other niche markets in that lists.

Don’t sell the cookies! Sell the solutions and sell no-fail, easy recipes.

After that, you can sell an ebook titled, “Melt In Your Mouth Cookies” or “Cookies To Die For.” Those examples should give you a good look at the marketing technique usually referred to as “The Art Of Selling Shovels.”

If you belong to forums based on your specific niche, read the posts when members describe a problem they are having and read the solutions provided by other members. Ask questions to get ideas about what the niche members need to know. Provide personal experience with problems you’ve had and the solution, if you have one. Forums, if used correctly, are goldmines for ideas.

Regardless of where you are in developing your specific squeeze page system, you have to develop a razor-sharp focus and learn to think like a shark. There are untouched markets all around you. Learn to look for them and recognize them when you see them. This will require effort, strong discipline, planning and confidence in your own instincts.

In short – it takes practise, but after a while you’ll see a markets everywhere!

Once you’ve identified your target market and what drives them to look for information, your next task is physically designing your squeeze page.

The first thing any visitor to your page sees is your headline. A blah, boring headline stirs nothing with your customer and gets the same response, nothing. A bold, strongly stated headline starts the desire in the customer to follow your call to action.

Make your headline a provocative question or statement that arouses curiosity and  makes your viewer want to read on. Most marketers use a bright red font and at least an 18-point font. Your headline has to stand out in two ways; your message and your color/font choice. If it doesn’t grab both their mind and their eyeballs, they will click off your page.

One way to get their immediate attention is to use proven attention attracting words, like “Secret,” “Free,” or “Never Before Seen…” or “New.”

Questions are another good way to attract attention and make the viewer read on down your page. You want to use questions that makes the reader think a little or one that surprises them.

Which headline would make you continue reading?

“Do Ants Annoy You?
or 
“Do You Know What’s Living In Your Walls?”

(Don’t you think that second headline is great!)

Giveaways are standard practice in exchange for email addresses on most squeeze pages. That gift can be an ebook, piece of useful software, short report on a topic of interest or membership in a forum.

It should also be related to your niche to have any real value. Don’t make the mistake of just listing a rehashed piece of PLR and expect subscribers to fall over themselves to get it. There has to be real value in your free bonus for signing up, and your subscriber has to know that value or they will not buy it. Make the benefits of owning your bonus visible.

It is important to remember that you don’t want to give away the ranch on your squeeze page. Provide enough information to keep them interested and curious. Too much information will make your product or bonus useless. Walk a tight balance here…create curiosity and tell them where to get the rest of the information on your sales page.

Some marketers think long squeeze pages are the best format to use to get sign ups. Others believe they should be short and to the point, with no distractions other than your call to action. Apparently the short version is the most popular and has forced the creation of hundreds of graphic, Web 2.0 versions for sale all over the Internet.

The benefit of a short squeeze page, besides maintaining reader interest, is that all of it can be centered “above the fold” or on the browser page without requiring scrolling down.

Other techniques used create a sense of urgency when your message tells your visitors that your offer might be taken offline at any time and you cannot guarantee how long it will be available.

Limited time offers fall into this category and can generate a lot of signups if your call to action is powerful enough.

Free bonuses normally increase signups if they are valuable enough to draw subscriptions or sales on their own merits. The trend with free bonuses has changed some with page after page of free bonuses, sometimes as many as 50 bonuses for a purchase. That word, FREE, is very seductive and can be a powerful tool in your squeeze page system.

Don’t forget that your goal is to drive a continuous stream of targeted traffic to your squeeze page and to convert a large number of that traffic to subscribers or paying customers.