List Building For Profit In The New Economy

July 18, 2014

The Secret Of List Building For Profit

List building for profit is probably the best known success strategy for online commerce. If you’ve ever built up a database with a CRM system say or even just a spreadsheet then you have already touched on this. The big difference is that in the online world list building for profit is a far more powerful science. The profits are very much quicker. The money is in the list as they say.

With your old style customer database you have a system that stores contact information, records of calls etc specific to one purpose. You probably use it as a way to organise clients and prospects so that you can schedule phone calls or emails related to one business.

List building for profit in the online world has deeper goals. It’s also a lot more flexible than the old style database set up. For years I used a variety of database systems quite successfully but it was very much a time consuming, manual process.

I would manually enter information gathered from network meetings, research or by cold calling and collecting business cards. I would then do follow-up calls and emails and update the database with notes. This allowed to me categorize all my contacts as: Not interested, Call in one month, send info … etc. I could then trawl through the system by searching on these categories – A bit like painting the Forth road bridge – start at one end, work through and then start again.

List Building for Profit – The Process

With list building and a couple of business systems, it works very differently. Here’s the basic process. I first use Aweber to set up a series of automated emails providing information on whatever I’m promoting. These contain information, giveaways and calls to action.

I then drive traffic to landing pages that gather the names and email addresses of anyone who is interested. These details are then stored in Aweber and I can start to build relationships with those people via regular broadcasts. These can be links to blogs, videos or webinars that offer further value.

The List building for profit bit comes in as trust is built with that growing list. In affiliate marketing you will normally be promoting a variety of things. Having a list of people who have got to know, like and trust you means that over time, you create a pool of customers who will buy from you again.

If you are spending money to send traffic to offers without collecting customer details as you go you are just leaving future profits on the table. People take time to come to a buying decision. List building for profit turns those details into a long term resource.

If they were interested in your offer but not ready to buy at that precise moment then if they are not on your list they are gone. If they at least become a subscriber and you keep in touch, your chances of catching them when they are ready to buy is vastly better. Even if they don’t but the initial product, they might be interested in something else you promote.

There are good ways and bad ways to do list building for profit. The old way – and a way still used by the “churn and burn” brigade is to constantly batter the list with sales messages. The new way is to take the longer-term view. The relationship building approach where you concentrate on providing value. That can be in the form of free information, entertainment or just plain old getting to know me stuff.

List Building For Profit – Stuart Ross

This is the list building for profit approach that has allowed Stuart Ross to build multiple 7 an 8 figure online businesses. With a carefully built and nurtured list he and sophisticated marketers like him have a push button income.

What? With hundreds of thousands of subscribers who love him for the value he has provided them over the years he can quickly send a promotional offer he knows they will love. Using the business systems and process I described earlier this can be the work of minutes – particularly with an affiliate offer where all of the copy, graphics etc has already been created for him.

I’d like to offer you Stuart Ross’s book on the subject – the self-titled List Building For Profit. To give you a further example of how to provide value you will also get a 7-day complimentary video series describing how you can use list building for profit to live life in an entirely different way. Just click on banner below to get all this free.