It’s somewhat of an open secret these days with even the likes of Robert Kiyosaki and co making use of this information as their added value in exchange for your email to go onto their mailing list, but good old email list building and marketing is an approach to online business which can be very lucrative for you if deployed correctly. If you don’t have any other business model to work on, but you know that you need to be doing something to try and generate some money for yourself, go with email list building and marketing.
The essence of list building
So what is list-building all about? Fundamentally it’s as simple as what the phrase suggests, which is to build email lists of people whom you periodically blast emails to, giving them some information which they’ll value so as to build up a relationship of trust. In this relationship of trust you are putting your hand up to become an authoritative figure, so in your capacity as an authoritative figure you are going to recommend products and services to members of your mailing list.
Naturally these recommendations are delivered as affiliate links which subsequently earn you commissions on each sale the mailing list members go on to complete via your affiliate link.
It’s as simple as that from a logistical point of view, but the true essence of what list-building is all about is that you have to focus on quality more than quantity. Most services which target people looking to build lists and market to them for sales will have you believing that it’s more about quantity, such as how you might come across traffic vendors who offer something like a million hits for a very low price.
When held up to the scrutiny of looking at the yielded results one very quickly realises that it is indeed more about quality than quantity. What’s the use of having a million hits to your sales page via your affiliate link if you don’t even go on to complete a single sale, whereas on the other hand you perhaps have a list of only 100 people, but that list coverts at 40% on high-ticket offers of up to $999 or more?
Which would you choose? You’d choose the quality over quantity, wouldn’t you?
Quality starts from within
Quality attracts quality in the list building and email marketing industry, so if you want a high-quality list then you need to focus on providing high-quality content and low-ticket offers. The channels through which you build your lists also need to be of high quality, for example you’d be building a very low quality list of prospects if you bought traffic or signups from something like a Paid-to-Click (PTC) site and these days safelists aren’t all that valuable in themselves anymore.
On the other hand, if you maybe placed an ad inside a discussion forum which is relevant to the specific topic at hand, then we’re starting to talk about high quality sources for email list opt-ins.