Copyright (c) 2010 Titus Hoskins

If you’re into affiliate marketing you will probably already know how important list building is to your overall success. However, I sometimes get the feeling from close examination of my competitor’s sites that list building takes a back seat in their site layout and design. One also gets the general feeling that list building is not as important as it once was, especially in the early days of online marketing before the advent of so many social media/networking sites.

Granted for the ordinary webmaster, in the age of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, building your own personal autoresponder lists have taken a backseat to these social networking sites which obviously builds your subscriber list for you. But these are third-party sites controlling your subscribers and while they more or less eliminates the whole notion of unwanted spam, they do present issues regarding the use of these lists.

Coming from the old school of marketing, I realized the importance of my lists from the start. I also realized the most difficult part of building a list was not getting the subscribers, but connecting in some way with them and building trusting relationships with lists in the tens of thousands is not an easy thing to accomplish.

List building in regards to affiliate marketing is of special interest to me since I am a full-time affiliate marketer and anything which makes my job easier I will try. Like most affiliate marketers, I have created niche sites dealing with the products and services which I promote. One major component of these sites is the list building element. On almost all my sites I try to capture my visitor’s contact information to give follow-up information which lets me market to these subscribers in a very subtle way.

The important thing here is to offer free ebooks, guides or e-courses in order to capture this contact information before these customers are sent along to the merchant’s site. This is the “old squeeze page” which many online marketers use in order to build their own list of potential prospects for their offers.

This must be a “win-win” situation for everyone involved so I like connecting these lists to special sales, coupons and deals which are offered by the merchants. These customers can get $100′s off the price of the products featured so that they end up with a good deal and you end up with a sale.

All this couldn’t be possible if you didn’t build your list of targeted clients or customers looking for the products you’re promoting. List building in this area has proven very effective for my affiliate marketing, so effective I try to put my subscriber form or box on all my webpages. So if you’re an affiliate marketer who is sending your visitors directly to your merchant’s site, think again, and see if building or capturing your visitor’s contact information is worth your while? If done properly, this can be an excellent way of increasing your sales and commissions.

Another form of list building which I believe too many affiliate marketers take for granted is the powerful little “cookie”. For those not in the business, a cookie is simply a piece of code which identifies your referrals as belonging to you or your affiliate ID, if a sale is made immediately or for any time in the future you will get credit for the sale because you referred the customer or client.

Now, the trick here is to pick affiliate products and programs which have a 90 Day Cookie or more; if a sale is made in those 90 days you get credit for the sale. The longer the length the better, there are even some products and companies which give life-time cookies.

Why is this so important you ask?

Well, if you have a popular site you can quickly build up a long list of potential customers cookied with your affiliate IDs. The larger the list, the more sales you will make. Affiliate marketing is a numbers game, the more numbers you have, the easier it is to succeed. I have found this so profitable that I try to “cookie” all the lists I build in the process mentioned above, so that all these potential customers have my affiliate IDs attached.

So it doesn’t take a genius to realize, used in combination, this can be an extremely profitable form of list building which every affiliate marketer should be doing if they haven’t already figured out this simple marketing strategy. Build your lists, cookie your lists, and then sit back and reap the rewards.

I was recently surprised when someone who was new to affiliate marketing asked me. . .”Why do you need a list anyway?”

That’s a good question. And many newcomers are probably asking themselves the same thing. When we first start out, we aren’t really thinking in terms of long-term profit and we don’t really have the statistics ingrained in our brains. We’re just trying to figure out how to make money .. .so the list-building concept may not be all that intuitive.

This article is the first in a series of list building tips. Here I’m going to focus on why everyone (yes, everyone) in business benefits from growing a list.

But first, what is a list anyway? It’s basically just a series of people who have (hopefully) given you their contact information. These contacts are considered leads and the quality of these leads can vary greatly. For example, if you have a list of people who have specifically requested that you send them information about a product that you promote or the business you are involved in, that list is extremely targeted and qualified. If you have a list of contacts who are interested in your industry in general but haven’t shown any interest in your particular product or business, that too is a fairly targeted list.

Buying leads is another (not recommended by me) way to build a list. That would be considered pretty low on the list quality totem pole.

Remember that you might also have several different lists that each represent a certain niche or target market or quality level. You will want to market differently to each of these lists but that is another topic for a future article.

So, on to the real list building tips article number 1: five reasons you want to start building your list now if you haven’t done so already.

1. Increase your earnings, even from the people who don’t buy your product. Anyone who has already learned the lesson will gladly tell you. . .not having a list means not earning up to your potential. Look at it this way. You advertise a product for a month and you get a certain amount of sales from this. If you don’t have the contact details of the people who bought this product, you have made just one sale per person. If you do have the contact details, you can offer these people more similar products, or upgraded products of the ones they have purchased.

Or. . .look at it this way. Someone is interested in your product but they don’t purchase it right now. If you can get them on your list, you can send them reminders about this product or others they may be interested. If not. . .oh well, off they go to your competitors.

It’s important to point out here that the buyers are the ones who will continue to buy. If you’ve sold a product to someone, you can be assured that this person is much more likely to buy that same product again or the next product you offer than someone who hasn’t bought from you. That’s just one more reason to build a list.

2. You don’t need your own product or business yet. . .and you can make money while building. Many people get started with marketing online and they don’t really have a clear idea about what they want to do. Or maybe they are trying lots of different things. As far as list-building goes, that’s perfectly fine! You can start out promoting someone else’s product as an affiliate and build your list that way. As you start to learn more about online marketing and get a clearer picture of where you want to go, you are actually building up one of your biggest assets that will serve you in the future.

3. You can do market research for free. Building a list means having access to feedback and ideas. This goes hand in hand with number 2. Once you can maintain contact with people, you’re able to ask them what they are looking for and in turn, you can develop your marketing strategies accordingly.

4. Building your own list means building your brand/image. The Internet is an amazing power. But you can get lost in a sea of cold websites and hypey sales pages. Building a list puts you on a more personal level with your customer and allows you to establish a rapport. Who do you think people are more likely to buy from. . .the person they’ve never seen before of the guy/gal who sends them those really cool emails about something they are interested in. . .?

5. Your own lists represent multiple sources of income. The ideas you get from your list and from what actually compelled them to join your list allows you to create your own products/services or seek out others that you can offer them.

List building can be creative – the more you put yourself and your personality into the mix, the more successful you’ll be with it.

Keep in mind that your goal is not just to obtain a bunch of email addresses or phone numbers. The real point of list building is to provide value and to maintain relationships with the people who land on your list.

If you’re wondering how it is that you actually get people on your list(s), stay tuned for the next article.

Copyright (c) 2010 Titus Hoskins

Years ago, when I first started in online marketing, all the rage was something called “list building”. I immediately jumped on this subject and started gathering every list building technique one could possibly imagine. It very quickly became one of my most favorite areas of Internet marketing to explore; so much so, that when I reached my first goal of getting 1000 subscribers, I was so pleased with myself, I even wrote an ebook on list building.

But that was then, this is now.

Since that time, online marketing and even the web itself, has changed tremendously. And we are not talking about small changes or minor adjustments here – the web has fundamentally changed from the core up. People simply use the web in a different way than they used it 10 years ago. It has become so much more of a user-friendly place, so much so, that marketing on this friendlier web has become a whole new ballgame.

The question remains: is list building still relevant on today’s web?

The answer is still a solid “YES”, but the “WAY” lists are built have almost changed completely. Not too long ago, traditional list building meant you slapped some sign-ups forms (provided by your webhost or an autoresponder service) onto your web pages and you were in business. Subscribers who signed up to your list or newsletter, would receive follow-up emails from you or your site.

Anyone could do it since it was so straightforward and so simple, almost to the point of being idiot-proof. However, the underlying key to building a successful list was gaining loyalty and forming a lasting relationship with your subscriber. Successful online marketers and list builders will tell you, this was really the hardest part. Communicating effectively with your subscribers over a long period of time is extremely difficult to do and does require gaining some skills, especially in the copy writing area.

So what has changed the list building process?

In a couple of words, three to be precise: social networking sites. These social networking programs and sites have completely changed how lists are built on the web. Actually, these social network sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube… have made list building as easy as taking your next breath. List building is integrated into these programs so seamlessly, many users are unaware they are actually building a list.

Simply by using these social networking sites any webmaster or marketer can build a list of contacts or subscribers. Call them friends, fans or followers – they are your subscribers and you can easily reach them with your next posting, tweet or video. There are countless teenagers on many of these social networks who have subscribers that number in the 100′s of thousands, even in the millions. And the rate at which they build their list of subscribers, would put many a seasoned marketer to shame.

There are several reasons why this new way of list building is much more effective than traditional list building methods. First, building your list of contacts is fully integrated into these network programs, often it is the main goal or purpose of the program. Seeing how many followers you can get on Twitter has become a world-wide sport – just go ask Ashton Kutcher!

However, from a marketing perspective, using these programs eliminates one of the major drawbacks of marketing on the web – spam. Actually, contacting your list by email is becoming troublesome, even with double opt-in, many of your emails never get through to your legit subscribers because they are blocked by spam-filters and Internet service providers. Using these social programs is a way of contacting your subscribers without the whole issue of spam being considered at all.

Perhaps, an even more important reason to use these social media sites to build your list, has to do with the tricky problem of establishing relationships with your subscribers. These sites make it much more easier to build that long-lasting relationship with your contacts. In the case of YouTube, it can simply mean making a video and talking directly to your subscribers. Communication is direct and immediate. In most cases, there’s no need to acquire additional skills or techniques. Besides, in most of these social network sites, the communication is often more effective because it’s just not one-way, your subscribers can easily communicate back with you.

Same goes for Twitter, which has become the list building tool of choice for many webmasters and online marketers. Twitter is an excellent medium for building your list. It can be used effectively to get your message out to thousands of like-minded followers and have that message spread rapidly around the web. Marketers are now taking advantage of such a system to market online, but be aware abusing this program will get you banned especially if you just use it to send spam. Like any type of marketing on the web, you shouldn’t have any problems if you keep all your communications/interactions real and human.

Another element of these programs which can’t be denied, they are all free. Anyone can use these social network sites to quickly build their list or lists without having to worry about paying for it. Actually, in the case of YouTube, you can become a partner and earn revenue from Google Adsense while building your list.

There’s also no denying these social network sites have changed not only list building, but how we use the web. These programs have a “pooling effect” on all web activity, gathering like-minded individuals into or around certain “pools” on the Internet. These concentrated pools of people can be formed around a certain topic or even around a certain person. These are excellent areas in which to carry out your list-building activities and your online marketing efforts since they provide very targeted prospects. Ones you can easily contact and communicate with by using these social networking sites.

While the old traditional email list should not be forgotten, list building, as we know it, has been changed forever by the introduction of these social networking programs. And as these network sites become more and more popular, they will play an even greater role in all your list building efforts. A role that can’t be ignored or dismissed, especially if you want your list building to be truly effective.