Why is it important for a newbie to "build a list?"

The first thing you should do is start building a list. Your list allows you to leverage your efforts through JV's and driven traffic to offers and promotions. It builds clients, fans and reputation as a expert as long as you don't abuse it.

Your list is your 87mm Howitzer

Hi ChickenMan

The main purpose of "building a list" is so that you can market to your subscribers over and over again...

However, this does not happen overnight... After you have collected a subscriber's first name and email address, you need to communicate with them consistently (such as sending them emails once or twice a week) where you can share with them information, or tips regarding the niche that you are in, and also take questions from your subscribers and answering them...

It takes time to build up trust between you and your subscribers (so be patient there) - And as long as you build up that trust (by showing to your subscribers that you are the one whom they can approach when they encounter problems in the niche) then they are likely to trust whatever you say (and that includes any product recommendations) and they will follow whatever you tell them to (and that includes buying any products/services you recommend).

This is how you can make money from your list...

However, like I say, it really takes time to build up your list (and the trust with your subscribers) so you need to be patient there...

As for writing emails to your subscribers, just be casual - Write to them in the same tone as you are writing to your friends... And keep your message paragraphs and sentences short (people hate to read super long and wordy emails).

Hope the above answers your question...


Cheers
Jun Yuan

Use Aweber, the costs to get started are very reasonable because of the way the pricing is structured. I would definitely get straight onto building a list no matter how much of a newbie you are.

It also gives you access to 'push button traffic'.

With a list you can instantly sending tens, hundreds or thousands of people to any given site with a simple email and push of a button.

That's real power in the internet world (and a lot of potential power as mentioned with JVs).

There are so many reasons List Building is important ... I still can't believe I left it so late to get onboard. Plus you'll actually feel like you have a real asset and business that's always on hand.

Hi Chickenman,

If you want to build a long term business, I would suggest you to seriously consider to build a list with a paid email marketing service such as aweber or getresponse as a start. I have used both, and so far they have good delivery rates of messages to get to your subscribers.

Once you have a list, you can promote either your own products or other affiliate offers to your list. Think of this way, if you do not have a list on hand, are you still able to market your product or offers as frequently as you want when you have a list?

Hope it helps...

Raymond

A mailing list is pretty much your customer or prospective customer base. If you don't have one, you don't have customers to contact and sell something to. You can't simply rely on a web site being out there waiting for people to come by and buy your product. First, if you're new, they don't know you and will be hesitant to buy from you. Second, if you have a web site, you still need a way to drive traffic to it, and without a list or some sort of contact database you have to rely on other means to do this. (Now if you somehow create an amazing product that isn't in the marketplace this would be a whole different scenario, but for most startupts everything begins with creating a list of prospective customers.)


JP

Building a list is what works...end of

Your list is like your regular customer in an offline business.

Once you have regular customers, you've got a steady income. As long as you treat them right.

You need to build a list if you are serious in making internet marketing your business.

The percentage of potential buyers coming to your website and purchasing your product straight away is very low. They may never visit your site again.

Therefore it is important to build a list to create relationship before potential buyers will have confidence to purchase from you.

By building a list you get the chance to build a relationship with people who are interested in the same subjects as you.

In the offline world when you get a special deal in-store they always try to get your home address so they can send you direct mail in the future about other special offers. The real advantage of online is that your message can get straight to people's inboxes and if you're into the same sort of things then you can a lot of cash through recommending affiliate programmes etc.

The sooner you get opt-in boxes on your sites the sooner you'll be able to drive traffic to anywhere you want, and then good things will happen.

As has been said...it is an essential part of being successful and I know I need to do more in regards to this part as well. You do not necessarily need to spend a lot of money in your list building but you will need to spend some. The list will repay you down the track and you are never to new to start.

If you don't want to leave money on the table, you will build a list. Getting only one sale vs. being able to get sales over and over again from the same customer will increase your income greatly.

In my opinion, list building isn't JUST for newbies. All successful marketers pretty much use their energy and time to building their list, day in and day out. It is an important and necessary ongoing thing, regardless of what else is going on in your business. It wasn't until I started building my list and marketing to them that I started to make money. Period.

If you don't have a list, who are you going to notify about your products and offers? If you have to rely on any other method like PPC or social marketing to get sales, you will get hit or misses but NEVER make enough money to survive unless you have unlimited funds to advertise.

So...focus on list building at all times, regardless of your stature. I know many successful marketers and they spend all their time and advertising getting people to subscribe to their lists. So good luck to you...

Sincerely,

Craig Raphael

If you really want to be successful online, you have to build a list, how then are you going to profit?

In fact there are a few ways to profit, but not consistentely, by building a list, you will be making money day in day out...

And again, not just any list, but there needs to be targeted prosepects in your list, people that already want to buy from you...

Louise Evans

Building a list isn't enough.

What you want to build is a relationship.

If you have 10,000 people on your list that you just send a bunch
of sales messages to, you aren't going to have much of a list.

A list of 100 people that you have built a relationship with will payoff
much greater than the list of 10,000 that you just send a bunch of
junk to.

IMO

Here is a unique formula i've used for years, works everytime in any business model online or offline. APPLY IT A STEP BY STEP.

1) Market Selection (niche or target Market)

2) Traffic ( PICK 3 WORKS BEST FOR YOU) seo,ppc, video,artilce,banners etc..

3) Conversion (example out of every 100 people two or 3 ++ buy is good rate)

4) Listbulding/relationships (don't just build a list -build a relationship list..

5) Follow Up. (money follows in when you follow up with autoresponder or other ways)

money forumla----

MS + T + C + LBR + F = PROFITS AND SALES $$$ IN ANY BUSINESS-


To the Top

Vic Shake

It's very rare that I read a thread at WF these days where I cannot disagree with at least one reply. This is that rare exception! This entire thread should be MANDATORY reading for anyone seriously looking into a career in IM.

John

I have to agree with John. Building a List is vital, and more people should read this thread!.

I can tell you this much, every time I launch a product, my sales are 5x as much, with a list then without. That just about says it.

Caleb

There are three main things you need to do...

1. Build A Mailing List
2. Sell A Full Line Of Products
3. Develop Mutually Beneficial Relationships With Related Businesses

Why build a mailing list? Firstly services like aweber make it so easy to capture and manage leads that you would be insane not to. All you do is throw up a squeeze page (a name asking for a name and email) in exchange for a free gift.


It allows you to follow up with your leads instead of them being gone for good.



Then you can develop a relationship with your subscribers and sell your products and related products to them.


Always get traffic to the squeeze page. Get people on your list so you can follow up with them. Building a mailing list is how you send a message and print money.



Not only that but you can use it to develop relationships with other marketers. This can help you by building mutually beneficial relationships that enhance both parties.


The truth is there are a lot of get rich quick scams out there. But there is no such thing as get rich quick... there is only get rich. The real way to make money online is to build a real business with these 3 steps.

Just my 10 cents..

If your just getting going then..wp blog is probably your best option..you can easily build a nice list if you can give quality and useful info to your readers..

You can kind of work on $1 per month per subscriber though, you can easily make much more with a small responsive list of 500+..

Good Luck,

Gordon.

List building is optional here in 2010.

Many prospective buyers have gotten to the point where any request for their email address is going to be read by them as "Give me your email so I can spam the crap out of you!" regardless of how genuine you are.

With this changing climate over the years has come other ways to retain contact - most commonly Twitter and blog posts.

At the risk of sounding like a troll, the reason why listing building is THE method here on WarriorForum is because most Warriors can't produce content on Twitter, blogs, YouTube, sites, etc... that is exciting enough to keep people coming back on their own. So the list is their only life line to potential buyers, and thus why lists are talked up so much here.

If you want to build a list but haven't got any subscribers yet / don't have a budget you could always subscribe to MailChimp. They're free up to 500 subscribers. Only thing is they don't allow affiliate marketing, so if you'll be doing a lot of that it's a no no. Having the odd affiliate link in there seems to be ok though...

I think what you need here is the word BIG. BIG money spent on an awesome Landing Page or Squeeze Page, BIG money spent advertising Pages, BIG purchased professionally written emails for autoresponder, create your funnel here, and finally a good autoresponder.

You need to spend BIG to make even BIGGER money.

Can anybody suggest a good free tutorial for building an opt in? I need to learn to make one for my own site with my own products (artist) as well as for my affiliate stuff. On my own site I don't want an obnoxious squeeze page just a small pop up box with the possibility of a free giveaway? pick a date for a drawing or something? Or should I make it a page of its own? I use Hostgator and wp and purchased a theme for my site. Is there a plug in I should use for an opt in? I'm lost. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, dubdubdubdot has a point. I was browsing an internet marketing book recently at a bookstore and I came across some pretty interesting statistics with email. I wish I could remember the specifics, but it essentially showed how the effectiveness of email marketing has been steadily declining for the past 10 years. The authors mentioned rampant email abuse as being the main cause, along with the general public becoming "immune" to email pitches, and an increasing lack of interest in even bothering to open the emails.

So, building a strong relationship with your list as others mentioned, is the only possible way I can see to counter the trend. As time goes on, email becomes less and less effective, therefore your relationship becomes more and more important.

I know exactly where you're coming from since I didn't start building a list until 2 years ago though I started internet marketing 11 years ago. As a newbie, it's hard to come up with free contents once or twice a week and not earning money, it feels like you're losing money spending on monthly fee for aweber or any kind of autoresponders.

But I suggest that you keep expanding your list and for the free content part, perhaps what you can do is reuse what you received from other gurus. But when you send them, you need to know your content because people might ask questions about what they received.

I know it's still tough to have satisfied subscribers in your list when you're not really an expert. So it's important to keep on studying and learning marketing online as you keep feeding your subscribers what you learn.

For me the best way to build a list is by creating your list and earn money. It is easy and can be done by giving free membershipsites, traffic building sites, JV programs and affiliates program. Another method is promoting PPL programs. My favourite is this program where you earn US$1.00 as referer and the referrel gor $1.00 too. Most important both of us got a chance to earn more by participating their program that is free. Click Here if you are interested.

If you want to make cash through a new product maybe, you will first market the product to your list. Building a relationship with your list results in trust. People easily buy from someone they trust as compared to a stranger.

Without a list your not going to get very far,this is the first place you should
start!