Is List Building The "Holy Grail" of Internet Marketing?

You're right. Clients and repeat business are the real key to success.

Having your own mailing list would be nice! one of the best resources you could always use to try and squeeze money out of people for new products you develop or recommend. But, the list and its power to make money is solely dependent on the quality of that list.

"And by list building, I mean not only getting subscribers, but building a relationship with them and THEN promoting your sales letter or whatever. "

That's exactly how you need to approach it! Give them not only a good relationship, but value! Toss them some free stuff.. Probono!!!

Im thinking the new google SEO updates got ya!? that's no good if so, Must do white hat seo!

I would continue pursueing SEO, Lead generation through articles, videos, social media ect.. and do some PPC when you have enough profit to sustain a 2-4 week campaign.

PPC can be really good, but you need to be able to throw some money at it to optimize it correctly. Don't forget about negative keywords and organizing your campaigns! You want to improve your ad's quality scores to drive CPC down. You could be #1 or #2 position paying $1.50 per click.. while some competitors will be #3 or #4 paying $3 per click.

One of my recent clients was paying around $5 Per click.. at #3 & #4 and I got him to #1 paying now $2.30 average per click.

I've made the most money through list building more than any other method I've tried.

Although I'm trying to find ways to drive more residual traffic to my squeeze pages.

Apologies good sir, I just started another thread on List Building without even seeing you had started one too. Just wanted you to know it wasn't my intention to steal any of your posts

I'm not a fan of email marketing but isn't twitter/facebook/google+ just a more modern version of email marketing.

I think the answer to your question is yes... you should be forming a network of customers around your website using every method you can. Social media being the obvious way. When I see ads for Pepsi or Lays Potato Chips they always have their facebook or twitter pages now. I rarely see them say check out our website anymore.

It's better to have them follow you on facebook because then you can push content to them. If they come to your site then leave... you may never connect with them again.

Hi All

In my view list building is the best as you are building up an asset which is really worth more and more as it grows and you develope a great relationship with your list

However I personally am not just leaving the list to be the only form of IM income and its good not to have all your worth in one pot

cheers

list building is certainly very powerful

its "repeat customers" that is the lifeblood of your business

a good example is:

wallmart dont keep heavily advertising every day because they want more new customers

they rely on a lot of returning customers

if they had to attract mostly new customers every week they would be out of business very quickly

its the same principle as having your own list. Treat your customers right and once you have gained there trust you will have customers for a very long time

paul

Absolutely. I never made any REAL money online until I setup some residual cash cows. The best way I found to do this was to set up membership sites and then send people who trust you, your recommendations for these sites. It took a good few weeks though of relationship building, before any money marketing was applied.

peace.

The thing is, list-building can't be compared to SEO.

Email marketing is about building relationships so that you can more effectively sell what you have to offer. It's a means of promotion, whereas SEO is a means of generating traffic, which you need to build your mailing list in the first place.

That said, SEO isn't the be-all and end-all by any means. There are countless other ways of harnessing targeted traffic. But however you do it, list-building is essential if you're to have a hope in hell of maximising revenues and the number of visitors that ultimately become paying customers. To do without, without good reason, would be a waste of monolithic proportions.

Yes, List building is the "Holy Grail" of Internet Marketing.
They keep saying "the money is in the list"
But, I prefer to say it this way "the money is in the relationship between your list"
You can't expect your list to buy from you when all you do is spam them with affiliate products.

Holy Grail is something that everybody dreams on but nobody can get (even kings)



I have seen information here only one - warnings before of that huge cataclysm in Indian ocean years ago

I have had some good times with my list. And i recommend it to everyone today.

It's not holy grail - it's just smart to be able to contact your customers and potential buyers any time you want/need to.

The list that you build usually is quality traffic which they might be your lifetime customers and give you a repeat sale.
But most of people have problem to build a quality list, if you got it then smart use of it while that will be your money generator.

I really do not think there is any holy grail to marketing....

I do however think with testing and time you will work out some great ways to make money.

I realised later on (silly me) that email marketing works great, and I should not have listend to people that kept telling me it was just like sending people spam, it has nothing to do with that.

Even now that mobiles are so big and eveyone is constantly checking their email, it is working better than ever, i would say.

But if you have a good sized list and spend time nuturing and building a relationship with that list you CANNOT LOSE in my eyes.

I have a client who brings in a full time income with just 900 people on his list. BUt he bends over backwards for them, and helps them and he can send one email and make 4 - 5k .....so its not your list size, but your relationship you have with them. That means everything.

Personally, I don't go to war with google. I don't care much about endless backlinking, and trying to get the top spot for current keywords. I have great respect for people who can do that sort of thing, but it's just not for me.

I focus on list building as my main source of traffic to my offers because as long as people are using email, list building will work. I try to stay away from methods that can easily change month to month. It's hard to keep up with everything. I like to work in evergreen markets, so I prefer if my business methods are also somewhat evergreen.

Just my two cents.

Wow, great responses for sure.

I'm just curious if many of you setup simple squeeze pages only, or do you create some sort of site with content plus the optin.

And secondly, when you send your readers free stuff like articles, are you posting it directly into the email or linking it to a page on your site?

I'm doing a bit of both at the moment...

I can't think of a better way. I do quite a lot of one-to-one businesss networking which goes through a similar process of building relationships with Prospects. With some high-value products, it's the only way to market because 'trust' is the prime consideration. However, it's a very slow process and you do have to be extremely patient!

Building your list is just a staple part of internet marketing. Why do you ever want to let your customers go away without maximizing your revenue?

Creating email lists was the best thing move I made in years. Before I got into to IM, I had some small businesses. Creating a marketing email list for these businesses really paid off.

List building may be the holy grail for all small businesses!

So far list building still work best for me :-)

The single most expensive part of any business is getting new customers. It takes more time and money than pretty much anything else you will do.

Meanwhile, the single most PROFITABLE part of any business is repeat customers. It will generate more revenue than anything else.

So the single smartest thing any business can do is invest more effort in retaining the customers it has (listbuilding), while reducing or even eliminating its investment in getting new ones (advertising).

This has been general business wisdom since the 18th century.

That said, certain businesses rely almost entirely on a constant stream of new customers by definition. If you sell the cure for a medical condition that is readily avoided, for example, your customers will buy your cure once and then probably never have it again.