Listbuilding Success: A Practical and Profitable Guide to Getting Started

One key component of all good businesses is that they are always selling, cross-selling, up-selling and even down-selling. The key point being that if a potential buyer doesn’t buy something soon after visiting your virtual or real store, blog or traditional website, then the chances are that you will never see that person again nor his money.

There are no second chances to improve upon the first impression unless…you build a list of virtual/real visitors. As is often said in the online marketing and direct sales worlds:

“The money is in the list.”

However, that is not entirely true. The money is in the quality and quantity of the list. You can acquire a number of opt-ins by offering a free report on dog training. But if your real niche is in travel tours, your opt-ins will not appreciate emails about dog training and will (over time) unsubscribe to your list because you have become a spammer.

In order to grow your list and make it more responsive, you must know who your target market is and market to them what they want, what they like and what they need. By more responsive I mean to turn your freebie crowds into buyers and your buyers into better-paying or more frequent customers.

I know a foreigner in Japan who claims that he has over a million visitors to his websites every month. Sounds great, right?

But then I asked him about the percentage of those visitors leaving revenue in his bank account. He said that the revenue barely pays for the administrative costs. At that point, I couldn’t help asking: “Why don’t you redesign your marketing system or abandon these busy sites of non-buyers?” He then proceeded to defend his two-year losing strategy and turned away from me in discomfort.

There are volumes of online, free training content on list building from some very talented and often rich Internet marketing gurus. In these messages, I hope to introduce you to the people who are great list-builders and trainers of the skill. To name a few of them: Tellman Knudson, Gary Ambrose, Mike Filsaime, Willie Crawford and David Riklan.

Many traditional list-building gurus have taken their connectiveness to warp speed through online social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

At the end of the day, the key element in building lists is to find any online marketer who is mega-successful, study what they do, buy their training material/coaching programs(if you can afford to invest in them), and then clone their efforts, as much as humanly possible. Success does leave traces.

Smoothe talking and slick websites do not (necessarily) a great guru make.

Some bombard you with free content.  Others bombard you with their marketing spiels or sales letters.

Still others throw philosophy and morals at us.

Some send us to videos as often as the sun rises.

Some are teachers.

Some are slicker than a proverbial used-car-salesmen and shamelessly hype launches only because the commission payout is substantial.

Some play the number on subscribers and spam us relentlessly until we unsubscribe or fall into line.  Others contact us irregularly.

Some are Internet savvy, while others couldn’t install a Windows update without an able-body assistant or outsourcer.  Some are obnoxious and extremely conceited.  Others are very soulful.

Many posture and exaggerate for the sale.

Some are very discriminate in what they offer.

A group of  Internet winners scoff at disagreeing forum postings and more than a few will not even post a well-written alternative postulation to what they are preaching or philosophizing.  Others are provocative and love civil, mannered discourse with their subscribers and customers.

A majority of leaders exclusively joint venture or deal with other Caucasians – though they may not be conscious of this implicit racism nor proscribe to it when cornered about the topic.

When all is said, not every maestro is for you.  There are those of us who value honesty over anything else.

There are others of us who value teaching skills in their maestros.

Still others love a maestro with an entertaining yet educational style.  Others have written upon their soul:  “I’m a mercenary.  Just give me the keys to the cash box.  I’ll sell my spouse and children for a chance to rule the roost!”

Wherever you are in this mindset on marketing, you must discriminate if you hope to keep your eye on the ball and develop a modicum of success online or off from the teachings of the so-called gurus.

Quite frankly, I believe success is not in systems or even maestros.  It is in having or developing a mind at peace with oneself.  Some of us were almost born with resiliency and an open, vital mind.  Others of us must choose our teachers carefully to have even a remote chance of financial success and spiritual equanimity.

One idea is all you need.  You do not need one hundred conductors sending you delectable marketing tidbits and deals each day to reach your financial and spiritual objectives.

Laser focus and a principled belief system will get you to the top of your game.

When I was a young boy growing up in affluent suburb of Great Neck with middle-class parents, one of my friends lived in a gorgeous home with a football-size playing field lined with trees.  I was in awe of this opulent lifestyle and once asked my friend what his father did for a living.  He responded – like many children would – that he didn’t exactly know but that it had something to do with coat hangers.  A few years later I was able to discern that his father provided clothes hangers for most of the dry cleaners in three counties.  A simple clothes hanger bought this rich man and his family everything they (as a family) wanted or needed.  No rocket science was at play in this man’s mercurial rise to the good life.

In the same light, though there are many shiny objects in the form of emails from maestros, you should choose at most eight of them to follow.  Meet the others at seminars, workshops and conferences after you have built your successful marketing system and have a mailing list and credibility which will attract these other gurus attention.

My firm belief is that two or three high-value mentors will help you create your coat-hanger millions.  All others will only distract you and take you off course at the start.

Let’s meet these warriors from the next posting.

Ineffective people live day after day with potential untapped.  They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives.

Yet creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost on a daily basis in people’s lives.  It requires self-confidence, trust in your own intuition, and a spirit of adventure.

These are the words of renowned coach, author and millionaire, Stephen Covey, and the message should be taken to heart:  “  Becoming the person you always secretly yearned to be will require some major paradigm shifts in your thinking and your actions.”

Just having the best website, the best materials and the best hope for the future will not assure you of success.  When we know all we can hopefully know without having achieved the level of success we desire, it is time to find yourself a mentor.  The lone wolf seldom reaches his or her stride without some counseling from those who have walked the path.

In truth, very very few people who have had continuing marketing success online haven’t received coaching – sometimes very costly coaching – from those in the know.  Many of the famous people who you should know and learn from are pricing their apprenticeship programs and private consultation fees way beyond the financial means of a newcomer (often called a newbie).  Maestros offer a cheaper alternative through ebooks, mini-courses through email, video How To’s, webinars, and audio programs.

In the last few years there have been great advances in such indirect learning and people who have struggled for years without making a penny have turned their fortunes around in weeks to months by following a precise blueprint to success.

But let me forewarn you that success is not for sale to the highest bidder.  I’ve said several times that success leaves a trail, yet it is up to each of us to ask questions and fill in the missing puzzle pieces.

Can you reach a high level of success?  I am absolutely certain of it…if you can humble yourself and admit  that you don’t have all the answers and that creating products or a lifestyle without a system or plan will doom you to failure.

You do not want to become a high-priced wage slave, grinding away 60 hours a week until you drop dead of a heart attack, do you?

From this point forward in this blog, I  will introduce or reintroduce to you to the minds and actions of some of the legends of Internet marketing and some of the Johnny-come-latelys who – against all odds – achieved mercuric success in short order.  They – the veterans and the mercurial risers – can assist you  in moving from a wage slave to an administrator of a cash machine, occasionally in a dramatic fashion.

Each of these mentors has had his or her failures and traumas before their great success.  What they did do – which is different from the majority of us – is to cut all the lifelines to retreat and determine clearly in their mind that success was not an option.

The Vikings, those ruthless warriors who roamed the seas some one thousand years ago, always traveled with all their family and belongings.   There was NO turning back, so the focus was always forward.  Their history is chiseled in our collective minds because of that fearsome spirit.

Let the guru catwalk commence…

Everyday each of us is bombarded with thousands of advertisements, commercials, slogans and innuendos.  Trying to weed through this great pile of psycho babble and find the life-affirming gems is a daunting task.

In these pages I hope that you have found thus far some useful information which can help you in developing and implementing a strong Internet strategy.

In my email box I receive close to 500 letters per day, and about 350 are blatant spam.  Everyone has the hottest deal and the once-in-a lifetime offer which you will regret not taking action on.  Everyone has a secret and a revelation which is supposed to make you instantly rich.

Most of the guru wannabes actually have nothing.  They are marketing for an associate they call “My Friend XXX” but whom they have never met nor even corresponded with.

They want to have verbal sex with you without even a hint of foreplay.  They throw themselves at you and you are reviled.  You change email accounts, but these uncouth bloodsuckers somehow find you again.  You stop opening your mail.  You become cynical and skeptical of the ulterior motives of everyone everywhere.

From the bottom of my heart, I hear you.  I promise to provide each person with a summary of what the crap and the gems hidden in the crap is about.  I’ll read through what you hate to and find the people, the systems and the software which you should know about if you want to earn money online or change your mindset for the better.

I hope that anyone who reads what I write will feel that I am doing my best to cut through the hype and provide caveats when I am not sure what to believe.

Everyone who has a web presence online wants to sell something.  Hopefully they provide offers to you which have been carefully screened as a target customer, but many marketers have absolutely no scruples -  profit, money, money, profit…the hell with you.

Rest assured I will never take that attitude towards you.  If you come to trust me, I will be true and frank with you.  I want you to be on my team for as long as I can switch on my computer and make a blog entry.

Work with me, and the only demons which could impede your online growth will be those not endorsed in my blog.

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Throwing good money after bad is common in business. Most people are either embarrassed or mortify to put a fair price on their product or service, thus accustom potential customers to freebie-ville. No money tree in that philosophy.

Money is either a power for good or for bad.  You are the determiner of which way it is used.

Money can buy freedom from wage slavery or cause you to chase it like a dog trying to catch its tail.  It can make you appear to be great, even though deep inside you may feel unhappy, insecure and empty.

It all starts by finding a market or creating one.  Then you must develop a campaign to let your target market know that you exist and can help them solve an urgent need or desire.  And then…bingo, the money starts to flow in torrents, right?  Nope!

The majority of Mom and Pop stores do not work very well offline or online.  Mom and Pop may have some regulars dropping by, but most of them only want to shoot the breeze rather than buy a product or service.  Mom and Pop stay open to accommodate their friends and fellow travelers, but they often just eek out a living.  Their store or site concept is DOA (Dead On Arrival) in the Internet Age.

The maestros can’t emphasize to us enough that we need to scientifically market, promote to a target market using the combined power of free and pay-per-click search engines, news releases, listings in search directories, development of friendly websites and through blogs and social networks.

If all these elements of marketing are orchestrated properly, the maestro – if he is worth his weight in gold – can help you to generate a strong and highly profitable business online which could generate hundreds’ of thousands a dollars a year or more.

This video revealing billionaire Bill Bartmann's Business "secret" blew me away. What do you think?

This guy went from bankrupt-to-billionaire and 25th wealthiest American.