Build Your List From the Very Beginning

Building a list simply means getting permissions to contact people when you want. There are quite a few types of lists out there.

RSS Subscribers

This is a list. It’s people who have given you permission to notify them each time you post something new to your blog. They have given permission by subscribing to your RSS feed. There’s nothing to do with this list, as your RSS feed will notify them for you.

While this is a list of sorts ~ it has its limitations. You can not just reach out to them whenever you want. (They only get notified when new blog posts are published) You also can’t send them emails. You can’t talk to them really in any other way than letting them know you’ve posted again.

Another limitation of RSS is depending on your niche they may have no idea how to use RSS or why they would want to.  I think having RSS subscribers is great, but it’s NOT the very best list you could build.

RSS Email Subscribers

This list is exactly the same as your RSS feed list, however, they have chosen to be notified of new posts via their email instead of via a feed reader or (in my case) the Google Ipage.

Even though you are sending updates to their email address you don’t have access to use their email for any other purpose.

Twitter/Facebook

Now some may not consider this a list ~ but I beg to differ. In fact, I think this is one of the most important lists you can build.

Every twitter follower you have has given you permission to contact (tweet) them. The super cool thing is they expect you to contact them ~ not once a week, but probably multiple times a day. You have the ability to quickly build rapport as well as relationship with your twitter followers.

You can tweet new posts, new product ideas, do a survey and have your followers help you, as well as just plain old good stuff you find along the way. Twitter is one of the best ways to grow your list ~ your mailing list that is!

Email Opt in List

This is the big daddy of the lists. If you’re going to build a list I suggest you start building your opt in list. This is the best kind of list you can have. You have permission to send emails right to the person’s in box. You can send emails about new posts, about new products, great things you find online. It’s very similar to a twitter list ~ but you get to send it directly to them and not get lost in a twitter stream.

Why do I want to build a list at all?

It’s been shown time and time again that you rarely if ever make a sale on the first interaction. In fact, it can take someone seeing your name and your message at least 7 times before they trust you enough to make a purchase from you.

If someone comes to your website and then leaves ~ you have no way to get those other 6 or 7 interactions in before they buy.

However, if you capture their information you now have the ability to put yourself, your name, your product in front of them as many times as it takes. You also have the opportunity to not only sell the original product they may have come looking for, but many other products and services as well.

They say the money is in the list… and I’ have to agree.

I still remember the day I realized how important a list is.  I was at the point where I had about 500 people on my list. I was talking to my husband (our desks are right next to each other) and sending out an email to my list. I remember that amazing feeling when as we were talking sales came in. Sales, from sending an email. I jumped up and did a happy dance. My husband looked at me like I was nuts.

But in that moment ~ I KNEW I was an internet marketer, and it felt really good.

There’s is no other asset that can assist you in making money online better than your email list. So let’s start building one.

What’s your going to need:

1. An autoresponder

This is the service that takes and stores all the email addresses and names of your list subscribers. You will log in to this service to send out your emails to your subscribers.

There are two main autoresponder companies. Aweber and Get Response. I personally use Get Response. I like it, it does have some glitches once in a while, but the price is the most reasonable. I chose not to use Aweber because I don’t like their pricing structure. They are a great company and have many amazing features, but I can’t settle within myself the payment structure. But that’s just me. Take a look at both and see which one will serve your purposes and business best.

2. A free gift for subscribing (an ethical bribe)

This is a free report or a little something you give to your subscribers for them giving you their name and email address. What you give them will completely depend on your niche. There are tons of options and we’ll be touching on them in the next post so stay tuned.

3. An opt in box

This is the space where people put their email address and name. When they click subscribe your autoresponder will automatically add them to your mailing list and send out a confirmation email to them. They will have to click the confirmation email to get any further emails from you.

An opt in box is a great thing to have on your website or blog ~ and if it still works there’s  a way to get them on your Squidoo lenses as well. This gives people  the place to sign up to hear more from you.

4. Squeeze page

A squeeze page is a whole page devoted to getting people to subscribe to your list. Unlike the opt in box, which is in a sidebar and surrounded by many other things they COULD do, the squeeze page has two options.

Subscribe
or
Back button

5. A series of emails to send out

This is called an autoresponder series. It’s one of the easiest ways to make your business “set and forget”. As you create your series you upload it to your autoresponder. You can set the frequency of the messages and now each time someone subscribes to your list they will get those messages delivered automatically without you lifting a finger.

If you do a good job of product placement ~ or leading them to blog posts/articles with product placement you’ll continue to make money as people subscribe without having to do anything else.

It’s really quite nice.

So those are the basic things you’ll need. The last thing you’ll need to make this work is traffic. You’ll need people to subscribe to your list, so they can go through your series and you can keep in touch with them and build a relationship with them. As they get to know you, and trust you they will take your recommendations to heart. This is especially true if you don’t peddle junk ~ and save product mailings for things that are fantastic quality and will really make a difference in your reader/subscriber’s life.

If you send out mailings for every product you see, or every big launch you hear about your subscribers will come to a point where they don’t open your email ~ heck maybe they even create a file and a rule to have your emails bypass their in box all together ~ or worse yet, they will opt out.

It’s every person’s right to opt out of your list. There’s a little unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email that makes it very easy to do so.

You must treat your list as good as, if not better than you treat your family and friends. If you are good to your list they will be very good to you.

This is really important!!

With that said, please don’t think you have to have ALL of those things in place BEFORE you get started. That’s not true. You can get started with only an autoresponder. You can set your service to send out blog updates ~ have people subscribe to stay up to date and build from there.

The key is to get started. It’s such a bummer when sometime down the road you look back and realize what you could have had if only you’d started earlier.

If you have content on your blog ~ get started building your list.

So there’s the basics on list building. I hope you can see why it’s important to build your list from the very beginning. The sooner you can start building this asset the better off you’ll be. We’ll be going over all the pieces I mentioned in this post in future posts so stick around and if you have any questions feel free to ask in the comments section.