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I have never built an email list!

by EnglishMike
16 replies
Hello, my name is Michael, I'm from England and I've been involved in IM since 2003 when I left University. I worked for a marketing agency for a couple of years as an affiliate manager. In 2005 I was made redundant and decided to try affiliate marketing myself. This was prompted by affiliates I used to manage constantly telling me how much money they were earning for almost no work, and I was extremely jealous!

To cut a long story short being laid off was the best thing that happened to me - I've had 8 years of very good income, but the most important thing to me has been the free time I've had to watch my kids grow up. My workload fluctuates but I'm never usually working more than a few hours a day and I can take days off when I want to.

This all sounds great but it's not been all plain sailing - due to the lack of distraction in my life, lack of motivation and the boredom/insular nature of working from home (it's not all it's cracked up to be believe me), I have struggled badly with anxiety issues in the past. In particular health anxiety, which really spiralled at a time when I was earning more money than ever ironically. Thankfully I have managed to overcome this but the lows were pretty low.

Here's the thing: I have NEVER built an email list. I've lurked on here a while and all I hear is how important the list is - my experience does not back this up! I make my money using PPC. I have done content blogs too but the main income-generator has been, and continues to be, Adwords/Bing. I sell leads, and I do not do anything with the email addresses of the leads I sell.

Maybe I'm missing a huge opportunity? I've done well but I'm no Richard Branson. I just find that generating leads and selling them for a profit works for me.

I'm not out to sell anything here, just wanted to introduce myself after a long time lurking and hopefully spark an interesting discussion on how important (or not) having an email list is!

Thanks for reading,

Mike
#built #email #list
  • Profile picture of the author GeorgiaB
    You must start building your list. Also you need to manage it right. (I have a free report about it). I'm sure you will find great resource about list building here on WF.
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    • Profile picture of the author DezertDawg
      Can you tell me more about your system?
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    • Profile picture of the author anla88
      I am just starting out making a list right now and i found it is very tough like you said if you do not manage it. If you manage your list right it is a lot easier and a lot more organized which helps you out and saves you money in the end.
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  • Profile picture of the author Will Edwards
    Hi Mike

    Welcome! An interesting first post. But, of course, you are building lists - other people's admittedly, but really your post shows exactly how valuable a lead is to your clients.

    Anyway, I do understand your point and it is always interesting to hear about business models.

    Will
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  • Profile picture of the author twister85
    My first curiosity is, what Type of warrior member Michael is?

    "EnglishMike
    Guest

    Posts: n/a"

    People with no warrior forum profile can create threads?

    And yes about list building, You only know something is great when it works for you. When I started ans had no results I thought List building is completely BS. But When I made the first sales which made me dance on the computer, I was motivated to make it more profitable and so I can proudly say that the money is really in the list.

    You should really build one if you want to see gold in your bank account.
    Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author Dann Vicker
    The best time to start building up one is now. Don't even think about it, but you're seriously dropping money on the floor if you're not building a list of your prospects. Even a small list of 500 can give you a comfortable income online depending on whether they are buyers or just freebie seekers.
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    • Profile picture of the author DezertDawg
      Hey Mike:

      In terms of our list building abilities, we both seem to be in the same boat; other than I have yet to make a penny. I even gave up on the idea of making money on the internet, until recently. I have accumulated names and emails over the years but never kept them in a format where I could stay in touch or email them worthwhile opps. I starting over, but this time, with the help of my unified wealth team, I going to let them start to build for me and then take over the reigns as I see success. We're building a worldwide to team very fast. Intially the team does all the work and I get to keep the money. It's always easier to learn something new when you see immediate reward.

      Good luck my friend
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  • Profile picture of the author pingsters
    Banned
    Originally Posted by EnglishMike View Post



    I'm not out to sell anything here, just wanted to introduce myself after a long time lurking and hopefully spark an interesting discussion on how important (or not) having an email list is!

    Thanks for reading,

    Mike
    well a lot of people want to pay good $ for an email list.

    If you're running an online business, brick-and-mortar small business, or ANY kind of business, you NEED a way to stay in touch with your prospects and customers.

    And since every single person in the world has an email address, building an email list is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective solution for doing that.
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  • Profile picture of the author fatafat
    Originally Posted by EnglishMike View Post

    Hello, my name is Michael, I'm from England and I've been involved in IM since 2003 when I left University. I worked for a marketing agency for a couple of years as an affiliate manager. In 2005 I was made redundant and decided to try affiliate marketing myself. This was prompted by affiliates I used to manage constantly telling me how much money they were earning for almost no work, and I was extremely jealous!

    To cut a long story short being laid off was the best thing that happened to me - I've had 8 years of very good income, but the most important thing to me has been the free time I've had to watch my kids grow up. My workload fluctuates but I'm never usually working more than a few hours a day and I can take days off when I want to.

    This all sounds great but it's not been all plain sailing - due to the lack of distraction in my life, lack of motivation and the boredom/insular nature of working from home (it's not all it's cracked up to be believe me), I have struggled badly with anxiety issues in the past. In particular health anxiety, which really spiralled at a time when I was earning more money than ever ironically. Thankfully I have managed to overcome this but the lows were pretty low.

    Here's the thing: I have NEVER built an email list. I've lurked on here a while and all I hear is how important the list is - my experience does not back this up! I make my money using PPC. I have done content blogs too but the main income-generator has been, and continues to be, Adwords/Bing. I sell leads, and I do not do anything with the email addresses of the leads I sell.

    Maybe I'm missing a huge opportunity? I've done well but I'm no Richard Branson. I just find that generating leads and selling them for a profit works for me.

    I'm not out to sell anything here, just wanted to introduce myself after a long time lurking and hopefully spark an interesting discussion on how important (or not) having an email list is!

    Thanks for reading,

    Mike
    Interesting post - List building is by far the first and the best way for long term success in IM...you need People as you do business with People
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  • Profile picture of the author flovin
    For me, it seems funny. How to sell things when you don't have a list.
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  • Profile picture of the author gcbmark20
    Hi Mike,

    Set up your first sales funnel, get a few emails set up to out as soon as
    you get new subscribers entering your sales funnel and then...

    TEST IT!

    Your sales funnel that is.

    Split test your squeeze pages

    Split test your sales pages

    Test your email messages against other ones (you can do this now
    in your autoresponder service)

    Test until you find a winning formula that you know you can run with.

    Use Solo Ads to quickly see what works, what needs tweaking and what
    needs to be scrapped.

    Once you know what works, scale up and buy bigger traffic packages and
    build your email list faster, build a strong buyers list and add more products
    to your sales funnel as you move along with your business.

    You'll need to learn some skills to achieve this but if you use your time
    wisely and get moving you will reach your goals sooner rather than later.

    Hope this helps and all the best with it.

    Regards
    Gavin
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  • Profile picture of the author JonP
    Hi Mike,

    Perhaps the biggest benefit of having a list that you have a good relationship with is that you don't have to keep buying traffic for products or services you promote. If you've done the work to get the list and built a great relationship with them so they trust you it is much easier to make a sale on good products you want to promote to the list. It also gives you more security against changes in PPC that might negatively affect your income because with a list you already have a source of traffic that trusts you and is open to the offers you provide.

    It never hurts to diversify your business if you have the time/desire so that a change in one aspect of your business doesn't negatively impact your entire income.

    Just my two cents.

    Jon.
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    http://www.jonpeckham.com/
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  • Profile picture of the author martbost
    I put off list building for several years as well. Sure there were several smaller lists but I didn't do anything to make them useful.

    I know it sounds contrary to what you read most of the time on list building, but make one of your key objectives to be getting people OFF your list that didn't really want to be there in the first place. The quality of those who are left will be much more responsive in the end.

    Spend the time to build the trust and authority for those in your list. Treat your list like gold and focus more on the value of your contribution than what you can monetize and you will do fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author thedark
    Having a list is not a "business", it is just a medium to offer your content, advices, experience to your readers. You can have both a blog and a list, where you can send the same content, maybe differently crafted to match the audience, but you business is not "list building", your business is the product that you are giving to the audience and where you get your money from ( selling your products, others products, getting paid to promote things, etc ).

    Email marketing is just a method to spread your expertise. If you just want to start builfing a list just to make money you got it wrong. If you want to build a list so you can be closer from your audience, or to provide something valuable in a better way, then you should go for it.

    For internet marketers, what can you say about the recent Gmail changes ? They affected you ?
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  • Profile picture of the author jonzathe
    Email list building can be EXTREMELY profitable. What is more important to you? Building a long term residual income from the list that you build and continue to milk them for profit over the course of the rest of your life?...or just making a quick buck? I know which one is easier and faster, but list building is about the future, not just now.
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  • Profile picture of the author shane_k
    The only thing I have to say in favor of building a list is this

    Now i don't know what your stats are with PPC, but think about all those people who have clicked on your ad, saw your landing page, but then decided to NOT buy.

    If you could apply a strategy that gives you a second chance to sell to those people what could that potentially be worth to you?

    Imagine if out of all those people who didn't buy you were able to pitch them again, and get just 10-15 of those people per month to change their minds, what would an extra 10-15 sales per month be worth to you?

    That's 120 - 180 extra sales per year. What would that be worth to you?

    What about if you were to spread that over all the years you have been in IM but haven't had a list?

    That is what having a list can potentially be worth.

    EDIT: and we haven't even started talking about the other streams you can make by promoting an affiliate offer to that list, or the power of having a list of buyers, people who have already decided to trust you. Nor have I even mentioned the potential money you could save by pitching an offer through email versus PPC
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