Is having "list" only way to make money?

It's a great way but not the only way. But yes, if you're building any type of authority site, you'll want to build a list. If it's a review sit for an amazon product, don't mess with a list. But even then sometimes it's a good idea depending on the product.

Lists are GREAT!!! With that being said, if you don't want to build a list then don't do it. It isn't a requirement to make money with internet marketing.

I have a tons of affiliate sites that make a lot of money without building a list in them. You can make a very nice full time living online without building a list.

BUT . . .

Eventually, I can almost promise you will sooner or later start building a list. If nothing else for the challenge to see if you can do it.

Later,
Jason

Let me start at the top.

1. If you do not have the money today, then get busy and earn without an autoresponder, BUT...As soon as you can afford a quality autoresponder get one. If you spend $228 per year and it earns your $2280 per year would you do it? How many times?

2. Information is the NUMBER ONE giveaway. Think about that for a long minute. It does not cost anything, only your time. (Yes, time has a cost.) Choose a market, create a free ebook, report, or even a simple tutorial series using your own mind. Once again, would you invest a couple days of time to research and write a short report if you knew your investment in time increased your income 10 times?

3. Hmmmm, Don't give away stuff, give away information which leads to valuable purchasable stuff. Try to find a few highly successful marketers in your niche and sign up to their lists. Watch their techniques. Make notes on every message what it is about, the offer, the timing, etc. Learn as much from their "testing" as you can, before you create your own. It will reduce your amount of research time.

4. You can automate the majority of this process having people moved between lists based upon actions they take.

5. Yes, it does take time and work to build a big list. It takes even more time and work to find new customers every day of the week. Do not take the idea of "list building" as saying "do not make money today". It appears you are under the assumption people who build lists are not selling anything today. Once again, sign up for lists of top marketers in your niche, or similar niches. Watch what they offer TODAY, in 3 days, in 1 week, in 2 weeks, in 4 weeks, etc.

You can continue to fly "under the radar" just use a pen name.

List building is about relationships, but the relationship does not have to be based upon "friendship". It can be based solely upon you providing them with information which helps them learn about the niche and choose products to solve their needs or desires.

It is your choice whether you want a list or not, but just remember.....all of those people who say "money is in the list" once thought the same thing as you. If you don't believe me, ask them.

Na man there are hundreds of ways

jus off th top of my head

sell webspace (adsense)
sell products
get signups (cpa)
write content
sell your own product (wso's for example0
sell PVA's
sell proxies
perform some service such as backlinking

thats for starters

but basically you WILL sell something . . its just up to you to figure out what and how to do it without it costing you more than it is worth to you in time or money

The problem is that if you don't build a list, your overall sales will be much lower (with the same amount of traffic). Many people are not going to buy your product when they first visit your website, and you'll end losing them forever if you don't capture their contact information.

Industry statistics have shown that many prospects need to be contacted via email at least 7 times before they buy, so you're leaving a lot of money on the table if you neglect to build a list via your website.

Paul

Well I'm not expert but I'll give a go on answering your questions:
Yes Aweber is the most popular but there are also free autoresponders which have their pros and cons too. It's all about price and getting what you pay for. If you're not paying anything for an autoresponder then expect some kind of advertising from them to your potential clients. Basically they will also be marketing to YOUR clients that YOU'VE work hard to get.
You are actually always enticing people, or visitors to your site, to do something. That's where the "Call To Action" always comes in. If you are putting all this work in to get traffic to your site, you have to have some kind of reason and if that reason is selling, then you're going to be doing a lot of enticing, convincing, sale pitching, etc.
If your list isn't targeted then that means your keywords are not right. If you did the normal routine, which is your niche research, then keyword research, then you should be having targeted traffic to your site and your giveaway should also be targeted to that same traffic.
You don't actually weed them out. You have different list targeted to different types, or niches, of people. Any course, or good ebook on list building would cover this for you without me going further into it here.
Everything in IM takes time, trust, and patience if you expect to succeed in this industry. That is why I prefer to teach my students to email a sales pitch 1 in every 10 emails you send out. All the other emails can be jokes, site of the day or week, industry news links, etc.

I hope this have given you something to think about. And this is only one set of answers each question can really be answered in a number of different ways if we were sitting at a coffee shop talking internet marketing.

Let's face it, you need some capital when going into any business.

If you are worried about the costs of building a list, why not work on some other things that do not need such outlay in capital to get started? An example would be running gigs on Fiverr that will only cost you your time.

Run a few gigs every month to fund your list building. Remember, your IM career should be self sustaining.

List building is not the only way to make money online but it is the best way. Here is why:

Imagine you have 10,000 subscribers in your list. And you create a product every quarter. Essentially, you can sell 4 products to the same group of subscribers without spending any money promoting your offers. You just need to write a couple of words and click the sent button.

If you do not have a list, then you will have to depend alot on SEO (and Google's mercy) and your copywriting skills. People are not stupid, most won't buy when they see your product for the first time. They want trust you first and you can't build the trust without a list. Simple as that.

There are lots of ways to make money especially online. Having a list is just one way.

Try and make sure you've got a buyer's list rather than too much of a prospect list as sometimes the vast majority of those prospects simply won't ever buy anything off you.

ANyone here have a good recommendation for an autoresponder?

THe thing is that with a list you can increase your conversion rate dramatically.

If you only have a product to sell, you might convert 1-2% of your visitors if you are good. But...if you manage to get 10 % of your visitors on a list, you might increase that overall conversion to 3-4% instead of 1-2%.

I read that people only buy on average after 7 times of being exposed to an idea or product.

So yeah, build a list if you can!

Online or off... you are still dealing with real people.

Only a dumb-ass will ignore he need to build relationships. Building a list is the easy part. Building trust and marketing to them is the hard part.

As for the freebie seekers?

There are 2 ways of looking at this...

Firstly, it's a numbers game. Even if only 1% of your subscribers buy from you, the bigger your list, the more you will sell. If they don't buy your stuff, sell them someone else's. See the part above re building a relationship.

Secondly, after they opt in, you can offer a product for under $10... this is a great way to qualify them. Put them on a separate list.

Too easy!

Well having a list is one of the simplest ways and is just one of the ways. You can also sell products and make money by creating a nice and good looking website and working to make it rank at the top of google search results for the key words related to what you are selling so that those coming to your site are actually looking for what you have .

I guess you already know that but I just wanted to say it again hahahaha

Not the only way but should be collecting from day 1.

I believe that if you have a business where you are really proud of and love, list building will become your asset online.

Wealthy people have assets.

So look for things online that will be your asset. Collecting 1 lead is going to be worth more in the long run because you can market to them over and over, as oppose to getting that 1 sale and collecting cash.

A few comments touched on building assets. I think assets are critical in the long term success of a business.

Just imagine this, if all you did was affiliate marketing or CPA, then what will happen to your income if those two are suddenly gone one of this days?

I am not saying that affiliate marketing and CPA is bad, far from it, I'm just trying to say that we should always diversify, and build assets (lists, websites etc) so that we are ready for the long run.

Here's your model.

You have a website. Someone comes up and buys something, then leaves.

Here's the listbuilding model.

You have a website. Someone comes up and joins your list. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something. You send them email. They buy something.

Do you see what you're missing yet?

Building a list isn't required by the official internet marketer standards committee, but as other warriors have pointed out it's extremely useful. Once you've taken the time to build up a relationship with your list, and delivered quality to them. The rewards financially, and emotionally are really well worth the pain of building it up.

Also despite how scary CDarklock's avatar is, the man has never written a wasted word anywhere that I can see. If he speaks, you should listen.

Or, you could always use ListWire.com's free autoresponder service, for free... from what it sounds like, you're the exact type of person we designed this system for. If you can't afford the $250 or so a year, and need a quality autoresponder with all the bells and whistles... we're here for you.

-Gary Ambrose

I'm of the opinion that the real money in IM-to-IM is made by people who have a list of people who have lists (aka affiliates, aka JV).

Outside of selling to the IM crowd, email lists can be quite useful when you're selling your own products, especially physical products and more pricey, non-impulse buy, products.

Now, if your model is primarily CPA or affiliate or Adsense then building a list will probably get in the way of your objective, getting paid for providing solid traffic to your real customer, the advertiser.

Some people outside of IM do affiliate marketing via email lists but most I've encountered have been right on the edge of spammy. They consisted of emailing offer and offer and very little in the way of providing useful content. I suspect they have a churn and burn strategy.

If you are into affiliate marketing, making a list is a must. It all depends on how you handle everything but it is true that getting started is really expensive. You can opt to stay away from marketing for the mean time while you dont have the deep pockets by freelancing or blogging.


Andrea

List building is not the only way to make money. But if you want to have a long lasting business it's best that you step up your list building efforts. This is how all these big name Internet Marketers make MOST of their income.

very interesting thought and ways on email lists and their value, but no one has touched the importance of email list segmentation (KYS - know your subscriber, from the banking terms KYC = know your client) and surveys

by doing list segmentation and surveys you have more chances of "bonding" with users and be able to sell them exactly what they are looking for and that list becomes more and more targeted.

ex. we have an email list of 850.000 wealth builders but as a term wealth building can be anything.

if you create a survey that asks your list a variety of questions then you can do a better segmentation (find their real needs) and propose the right solution/service to their unique needs.