List Building Question

Identify a common problem in that niche, come up with a solution or alternative and offer it as your product. Make more money as a vendor.

Why not it be you who offers value? If your niche is viable (hungry crowd) then you should create the value by creating your own content and products. Why leave it to someone else.

That being said you really haven't given much to go on here. I mean, I can give you advice but I don't know if your niche has enough people looking for what you are wanting to offer them or if you are not seeing the products that are available in your niche.

The only common sense way you're going to know is by doing some market research to start with.

It sounds like you are assuming that just because there are not many products already on the market for this niche, that you cannot offer value.

This is not true, you can offer value yourself by finding needs in the market that the existing products don't address and then creating your own products.

It is hard to get any more specific than that with the info you have provided, but if you are already making sales in this niche then it is probably worth building a list in.

smok3yjk, I am an affiliate manager to over 500 affiliates promoting a model train how-to product. About 12 of those affiliates make an average of 4 sales/day while the other 488 affiliates make an average of 1 sale every 2 weeks...

...The difference is the 12 affiliates build a list and email market to them. The others build blogs, write posts, submit articles in the hope they will rank in the search engines and get some free traffic. You can probably guess how quickly they lose interest!

With a list you have an asset and a 60 year old male who wants to build a model railroad will want the ebook to get started. But then there is all the stuff on eBay you can offer them as an affiliate, or the Amazon books for further information, and they will happily click on your Adsense ads.

Without a list you only have the one chance to make a sale and then they are gone... This is a massive waste of your time and energy.

If you want a solid business, focus on 1 niche, build a list, build the relationship with that list and offer them affiliate products based on your recommendations.

Once you have that stage working well you can then consider creating your own product... But, that's another can of worms...

You can do ad swaps with other members on here. hope it helps.

Just because there aren't a TON of products in you niche, it doesn't mean that you can't make very good money. Lets say that the first product has 4 main benefits that people get by purchasing. For your follow ups, you would have one email that tells a story, offers advice, and shows how benefit #1 for this product can help.. Then you go to benefit #2 and then so on. Make sense? Building a list doesn't mean that you get people on it, and then send them a new product to purchase every single day. Obviously like others have said, you can then produce your own products to fill the voids in your niche.

The structure may differ slightly depending on your niche but that's a great way to model your funnel. If you need any help setting it up feel free to send me a PM

There are three ways I've discovered that can fasttrack your listbuilding campaigns. The bigger your list, the more money you'll make, eventually. Incorporate these methods and you're good.

Soloads: A soload is simply an endorsement of your product by someone else who already owns a big list, in exchange for a fee. Some of them can actually send you up to 3000 targeted people, and if your offer is great, you can easily get a list of 1200 - 1500 people overnight. And if you've added one-time offers, you'll recover some of your costs instantly. I highly recommend this for everyone wishing to fasttrack his success.

Adswap: having built a list with your soloads, you should now exchange email endorsements with other marketers looking to build their lists. This way, you could send 100 - 200 people to his free offer, while he does the same for you. This way, you can potentially increase your list by 2000 subscribers in a month.

Launching a 100% commission product: Creating a product, and finding affiliates who will promote for you can potentially help you build a massive list very fast, especially if you have an exit offer that redirects to your squeeze page. You can launch your product as a wso on the warriorforum, or on clickbank both of which have a great deal of affiliates.

If you want to make money from your list, then you must build a cordial relationship between you and your subscribers.

Keep your promotional materials light, creative and original. Many people are stressed out as it is. Getting a stuffy business proposal rather than a light hearted e-mail may just agitate them more. A warm friendly smile or banter is always more welcome than a serious business meeting or proposal. While you do want your customers to take you and your products and services seriously, you also want to show them that you know how to have fun.

Dann

Thanks everyone for the tips. I think the problem for me is I chose a Niche that I do not partake in and will never partake in. The niche is providing training for a certain type of physical activity. Kinda hard to make a product if its something that I do not partake in myself. My main keyword gets around 6600 searches a month. I'd love to create my own product but I feel this is something that is out of my ability within this niche.

Maybe I am picking the wrong niche for myself. Since I'm still a newbie at this I am just grabbing onto the first thing that is making me money And that happens to be this niche. The keywords I have are solid buyer keyword as well which makes it a bonus for product creation. But there is few info products because this is a specialized type of niche that only certain people can cover. It's not as simple as reading a few books/articles and becoming a self made expert in the field.

By finding another niche, myself.

"Somewhat related" isn't good enough for me, because my long-term income is always proportional to how well targeted the traffic is to what I'm going to recommend them after building relationships with them. I'm not willing to do all that work for things that are going to be only "somewhat related", when I could - instead - do it for something precisely targeted.

Yes; I think this is right.

If you are having major doubts about this niche already then it may not be worth you getting into it, if you know what I mean.

However, just because there aren't many products in a niche doesn't mean it can't make you lots of money. You say there are only 4 products, well, if there is lots of traffic and you can get those 4 products to convert at a high rate, you'll make plenty of money.

Also, this could be an opportunity for you to out out some of your own products in this niche. You can make tons of money as a vendor and if nobody else is producing stuff in that niche you will position yourself as an authority figure which can make you money for a long time to come.

Hi smok3yjk

I think from the sound of things you may have chosen the wrong niche to start with. You don't have to abandon the work you've done already - you can still leave stuff running, but I'd be tempted to look into other niches.

If you're going to be successful, you need to be able to find a hungry crowd of buyers, in a niche where there are multiple products to sell that convert well and pay well.

And yes, absolutely you should be building a list. Driving traffic and not capturing those people's details when they come and visit you is a recipe for disaster. Every time you capture someone's details it gives you the chance to promote to them time and again, sell multiple products to them and vastly increases your chances of making sales.

The only list that matters is your customer list.

Who cares about promoting other people's products? The only thing that matters is who is promoting YOUR products.

Your customers and your products have to be the focus of your business.

You have 3 choices...

1. GET interested in this niche, at least enough to understand your market at a deeper level and give them interesting information, experiences

2. Hire someone to write content for you who DOES have experience in this niche - you can start them off as guest posters/writers first, and then go from there if they work out.

3. Pick another niche.

You should not continue in a niche where you are unable to communicate with your market with content they know is real...that's a recipe for failure.

There are many examples of people I've worked with though that have started in a niche just from interest and shared as they learned...but you have to be willing to do that.

Jeff

One of my biggest mistakes in IM was that I did not start to build a list till much later on in life...

I have been at this for over 10 years and its only been in the last few years that I started building a list...

Congratulations on your first few sales :-)

Danny

I also am pretty late on the list building train.
I have now started building one after realising all the missed potential by reading threads on here.

Trouble is I use to sell a list building service to my offline clients...lol

Do as I say not as I do....lol

My excuse is that I ran forums so I kinder already had a list....lol

Blast the crap out of them with products in the first 30 days, then leave em alone or offer an occasional webinar.

Most subscribers buy or GTFO in 30 days or less.

If this is a niche that interests you the don't be put off by the paucity of available of offers to promote. That is not what providing value is all about.

Instead, ask yourself if you can provide some value for people who choose to subscribe to your niche-related ezine. If so then it is worthwhile both for you and your subscribers.

As you move forward, you can fill the void and create products that your target audience will want to buy.

A good way to look at this is from a strategic stand point. First identify who your audience is (sounds like you may have done that already), then identify what you want to accomplish. Secondly, I would do more research in finding products to promote or seriously think about creating your own product line. Let me ask you, where have you looked for new products? How many affiliate networks did you check? I'm asking because there are hundreds of them.

There are a lot of different schools of thought when it comes to list-building. Some people have a short-term, myopic view when it comes to list-building, whereby they will build a list rapidly, churn and burn it and then leave them hanging. Others provide long-term value by giving usuable content mixed in with offers, and everything else inbetween, while others focus more on educating their readership and selling them high-end, high-ticket items.

In some cases, your list can be as much as 90% of your profits (depending on how you obtain traffic, use free publicity, etc.), so building a list is crucial to establishing a growing business. Once I identify a profitable market, I make sure that my visitors receive no less than one year's worth of autoresponder messages spaced out at once or twice a week, depending on the niche, price point, USP, etc.

It sounds to me that you need to perform more indepth market research in order to identify more opportunities in this niche, otherwise create your own products or find another market to offer value to. Though I haven't come across many markets that only offer 4 or 5 products, so I suspect you need to do more due diligence.

RoD

Do not spend time building list on a micro niche...

Hi

I think you need to focus in on a subject that you're passionate about and build a list in this area. Start off by blogging, but set up the blog with the aim of listbuilding and being seen as an authority in the area.

The most common mistake people make is trying to sell money making when they haven't made any money themselves. Go read Gary Vaynerchuck's Crush It, and you can turn the best blog posts into a product.

You will need to have passion as it will take hard work to get started with listbuilding, and remember that you can easily find people to do the technical stuff, don't use it as an excuse.

Didn't want to start a new thread because I feel my question may contribute.

I'm in a golf niche reviewing physical products. I also have general golf articles to compliment site.

If I were to build a list, can my one time offer be for a product to help people learn how to golf?

Is that related enough for my niche or should I randomly send info on physical products that are on sale?

You're on the right path of thinking that you need to have value to offer in order to build a list and make it be profitable to you. There's too much advice out there that says you have to build a list first and think next. I've actually had to delete 30k leads recently because I didn't think it through.

And as far as value goes, it has to translate into products or services. Think of it as a list of customers rather than a list of people who gave you their email address in exchange for free milk and cookies (or whatever). Storing leads actually costs money so you have to maximize the value per customer first and the quantity of leads later. That's hard to do if you don't have products to offer, and that's the point.

You don't actually need to build a list for every niche and website you create. In most cases it doesn't even make sense.

Just make a small video about your product or service then post it to youtube.

youtube videos usually work good when building a list. just put a link in the video description to your offer this usually work well and its a set and forget method which keep bringing in new subs.



best regards

List building and e-mail marketing is the most efficient way to contact and communicate with potential clients and hopefully make them customers. It is a staple in my business model. It does not make sense to let someone visit my sites, make a sale or not, then they leave and never return. A great amount of time and money goes into getting them there.

Conducting effective market research will make or break your list building efforts. Have you determined if this niche is a short term or long term niche?

I'm referring to niche longevity. How long will the problem be around, or how long will the person will be interested in a certain topic or product? Is this a niche where you can make one sale, or a niche where you can build a relationship with your customer and make sales for years to come?

To me there is money in the short term niches, and I do have sites that build lists from them, Hey every penny counts, but the problem is the person tends to buy the product and then leave. I would recommend if you want to get serious about making money that you concentrate on the long term. Long term niches, and long term list building.

I tend to spend more time on long term niches because of the spending power that comes with it. I have lists where the customer joins my list and then disappears in a month. I also have some lists where the customer joins and has stayed for years. It takes more traffic, which means more work, to build and sustain a short term list.

Frank Johnson

List building is at the top of the list (no pun intended). Create several products that provide answers to high profile problems in your niche. Then use them as bait to get people to join your list.

Before even thinking about building the list, ask yourself these two questions:

1. Who is my customer?
2. What is his problem/frustration?

If you don't understand these questions first, you'll have a hard time to monetize your list.

If you already know this, create a squeeze page (add what you found in 1 and 2 as title and bullet points), and start building your list with solo ads.

Once you have people in your list, promote something valuable for them (you found that in #2 above). Once they buy, make sure you remove them from the prospect list and add them to the buyer list. Then, don't leave them go after they purchased something from you because they are your most valuable customers. Ask them what they want, and sell them (yours, aff product) something that match what they told you. They will buy.

Concrete Example (IM niche):

What works best for me: Building a list (this is my PRIORITY FOCUS for any business - online or offline ), and then selling them what they want (think curriculum). So if someone want to start an IM business, instead of selling him an affiliate system, then a list building system, then a flipping system, etc... (no value for my subscriber), I'll start with on model (affiliate for example), and then, I promote everything related to affiliate marketing. Things that actually help him.

I found this to be a good long term model. Plus your subscriber/customer doesn't want to unsubscribe because instead of being a marketer trying to push product after products, you become a trusted advisor.

I don't really know why, buy people feel/know what are your intention behind your emails.

What doesn't work (for me): promoting anything IM related (this worked well for me 2 years ago, but I prefer long term business) without helping my subscribers.

Take care,
Franck

One of the things I have been exploring is list management and don'ts with a list. I've noticed a lot of the list building courses and gurus have a ton of great advice and resources for setting up and managing and getting traffic etc., but seem to not offer a lot when it comes to how to break lists up into different groups and why. Like buyers vs non buyers and then whom, when, and how you use the different groups for solos,swaps and other actions.

Probably no 'best' way and everything is variable. Just interesting that I haven't found it covered much. Seems to be a trend in a lot of IM - when you find solid products - there is still much to be answered and explained

hey smokey

what ever niche you go into make sure there are plenty of buyers

a niche with no competition is a terrible niche so dont fall for that one

also you should be creating your own products to sell to your list. Affiliate products and promotions are ok but initially you should be focusing on creating your own low priced products so you can build your buyers list

rather than repeat myself again, i did a post the other day about list building

theres plenty of tips you can take away from this post

you can get it here
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...your-list.html

hope this helps

paul