A Few Important Pointers To List Building Success In Internet Marketing

Why Build Your Own List?

The phrase “The Money Is In The List” has become somewhat of a cliché, but it is true. However, it does need qualification:

The money is in your very own list of targeted subscribers and how well you take care of the people on your list

With that being said, the question still remains: “But why a list, why not free or paid traffic to my websites?”

And the answer to this is that unless you have your own list of subscribers you have to rely on other non-stop forms advertising to drive potential customers to your websites. By having to do this, you are at the mercy of other companies (your advertising resources) as to how far your customer reach is. What’s more, by merely driving visitors to your offers without capturing their contact details, you have lost those customers and potential customers forever and you have to keep on driving new potential customers to your offers just for them to disappear into thin air after they have visited your site and even after they have purchased from you! It is simply the ultimate of  lost opportunities and flushing customers away in Internet marketing!

When you have your own list you don’t have to worry so much about pay per click advertising campaigns and SEO (search engine optimization), because you own your own list full of targeted buyers!

[Side Note: If you are promoting a program or product as an affiliate of another company without that company passing on to you the email addresses of the people you have recruited for that company,you are not building your list and your business. You are promoting another program's owner without promoting you and building your business. For more information about this, see Creating Your Own Sales Funnel]

Build Your List In A Niche

What is your niche? Can you answer that? It is a fundamental decision you have to make before you start building your list otherwise you you will be like a cat on a hot tin roof jumping from the one product and program to the next. Having absolute clarity on your niche will give you focus and prevent confusion which is so common amongst people starting out marketing online. Drawing your marketing boundaries by clearly defining your niche will also prevent you from suffering information overload and analysis paralysis.

Naturally, you would want a hot niche with a hungry and passionate market and there are thousands to choose from. You need to make sure you have something to offer a group of people. You also want to make sure the customer base will be large enough to make your efforts worth your while.

If you cannot think of a niche, you just need to brainstorm and work your way from there. You can go to Amazon.com, magazines.com, 43things.com, Yahoo Answers, and many other sites to get some good ideas.

Of course, as an Internet marketer you are not limited to choosing just one niche. After you have built up a profitable relationships with members of one niche, you can add another to your business. That way, you are not dependent on a certain group of people for your income. Spreading assets out this way is an excellent way to make sure your business always stays afloat.

You Need Email Marketing Software (An Autoresponder Service) To Build Your List

This might sound harsh, but unless you are prepared to make use of an autoresponder service for your list building, building your list would not quite be possible. With an autoresponder you can set up your email messages in a sequence and as new members join your list, the series of emails from message one are automatically sent to each individual subscriber as they join your list.

When I first started building my list I tried to send out emails manually to my subscribers from my Gmail account and realized it was a disaster before I reached 10 subscribers. It is just not practically possible to keep track and having to send the same sequence of messages over and over, one by one, as each new subscriber joins. If it is not possible with 10 people how on earth would you manage with hundreds and then thousands of subscribers? And that is what you
should aim for, thousands of subscribers to your list.

[Side Note: Top Internet marketers agree that one subscriber on your list equals $1 in income per month. 100 subscribers = $100 per month etc.]

A good auto responder service also allows you unlimited auto responders with unlimited messages for each auto responder. For example, if your niche is body building you will capture subscribers for exercise regimes, dieting, competitive body building etc. You will have a different autoresponder with your sequence of emails set up for each one of these to ensure you meet your subscribers’ specific needs and meet them at the point from where they subscribed to your list.

When I say a good auto responder service actually builds your list for you, I mean it. It is just so much more than an automated sender of a series of emails.

Here are a just a few of the additional benefits:

• It can re-direct your subscribers to thank you pages, bonus pages, download pages or whatever sites you choose to send your subscribers to.

• It creates opt-in forms from your websites and blogs to capture names and email addresses of subscribers

• It generates a code that allows you to sync your existing lead capture/squeeze pages with your autoresponder   series

• It can automatically sends out a broadcast directly from your blog every time and immediately as you update your blog

• It tracks the opening of each and every email right to the exact time of day

• It tracks the clicks on every link in every email delivered

• It allows messages in html and/or text with a wide selection of templates for newsletters, blog broadcasts           etc.

• It tests your messages for spam to ensure a high delivery rate of your emails

• It can track visits to your websites and blogs

• It reports any spam complaints

• It lets you design different opt-in forms for the same site for split testing purposes

• It allows you split testing of your emails once you have a list of 100 or more subscribers

• It offers extensive tutorials on how to use every function and feature of your autoresponder service and             live online support

This list is not an exhaustive one, but should be sufficient as an illustration of how your autoresponder service plays a crucial role in building and maintaining your list. It is simply indispensible.

There are also autoresponder scripts you can set up on your own host. Many people are attracted to these because there is no monthly fee and they feel like they will have more power over their messages and settings. However, you should probably stay away from these scripts as they’re usually more trouble than they’re worth!

For one thing, there is the technical hassle of setting them up in the first place. Beyond that, some of the scripts are unreliable, which can really harm your business. You should also be aware that the autoresponder companies usually have relationships with the e-mail providers to ensure the delivery of your emails.

These scripts can have a higher chance of getting caught in the spam filters — which can destroy
your business before you even get started.

Going with a reliable auto responder company is one of the best things you can do as an Internet marketer and if you are serious about building your own list.

There are many good auto responder services available, but I prefer a service offering a range of important Internet marketing tools and resources with the auto responder service and facility being one of them. This way you have all your essential marketing tools in one place and integrated with one another. It also makes much more sense economically to have these tools and services bundled together, rather than to have to pay several membership fees to have access to all your important marketing resources.

In this respect, Global Virtual Opportunities (GVO) offers a “marketing home” to a whole army of distinguished Internet marketers with all the top-notch resources it offers in one place. Together with the auto responder service, it offers unlimited domain and web site hosting, lead capture and prospecting systems, video producing and hosting facilities, your own web conferencing facility plus excellent training in Internet marketing and video tutorials on the use of all the services it offers.

In Conclusion

Once you have clearly comprehended why it is important to build your own list of subscribers, what niche you will build your list in and why you need an autoresponder to build your list, you are pretty much ready to kick off with at least one good list building guide that will cover the specific process and finer details required to build your list as quickly and as effectively as possible.

There are hundreds of list building guides, but if you want to get it right from the start, select something from an independent and honest review site on the most sought after list building guides available.

If you feel you are not yet ready to purchase a list building guide, get yourself going with a free 7day e-course on list building success. With my compliments!

To your list building success!

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