Ask any experienced online marketer, and they will tell you that the most important thing you can ever do when you are building an online business is to create lists that you are able to send out content to. It doesn’t matter what niche you are targeting, you need to have a list of people that content to.

Build a list, build a list…the money is in the list…you need to have a list of hungry buyers.

But WHY?

Today I am starting a series of posts on list building. In the coming posts I will be covering topics such as WHY you need to build a list, a few of the different methods HOW you can go about this and then into some of the various techniques you can use to be successful in your list building efforts.

So, let’s dig in:

In the beginning, every name on any list you build will be a potential customer. Once you know how to ‘work’ that mailing list properly, you will quickly start to turn some of those potentials into customers.

No matter what kind of online business you are running, it is important to understand that there is a huge difference between making money online and building your business.

For example, there are thousands of people who decide that they want to make some money online. They begin their ‘Internet Marketing’ journey without a product, without software, or without some sort of service of their own to offer to potential customers.

Consequently, they start their business doing something like promoting products as an affiliate marketer or by featuring paid advertising on a webpage.

In both of these situations, this person might be making some money but they are not building their business. At the very heart of the business building concept is the ability to coerce information from the people who visit your website.

In this case, the specific action that you need to ask them to take is to provide their email address and their name. You in turn need to provide something of value to them in exchange for this, whether it be an ebook or a piece of software or a collection of graphics. Whatever that ‘ethical bribe’ is, having them take this action and confirming their email address will add them to that particular mailing list.

Doing this gives you permission to send them additional information in the future.

When people chose to subscribe to your list, they make a small commitment to your business. However, at this point, they have not made the most important commitment, spending money with you.

By using the tactics and strategies that you’ll read in ‘List Building From Scratch’ and by coming back here and reading the content that I provide in these posts, you will be able to convince some of your prospects to spend money with you, and when they do so, they become your customer.

Isn’t that what we all really want?

The commitment that they have now shown to your business is far greater and more important, for several reasons.

Firstly, they have demonstrated that they trust you and are happy to do business with you. This is important because every business person (whether operating online or offline) wants to build a list of loyal customers to whom they can sell products and services on a regular basis.

By becoming a customer, that person has indicated that they are willing to pay you for more valuable content. That content is either offered through your messages that are loaded into your autoresponder and trickled to them at specific intervals or through blog posts like this.

Alright, so we have some basics of ‘why’ you need to not only have a list of people that you can mail out to, next time  I will ‘how’ you are going to start getting these people on to your list.

Til then, check out ‘List Building From Scratch’, you’ll have a better handle on what I will be covering…

Welcome to the second part of my 3 part series on ‘common knowledge’.

For the most part the ability of newbies to grasp the common knowledge and techniques of seasoned marketers is lacking. When you’re new, sometimes it feels like you’ve jumped into the middle of something and you feel stupid if you don’t know what others are talking about.

Like you are drowning in information overload.

In this segment I am going to cover 3 more topics of Information Marketing that are vitally important to your success. All of these topics important pieces to your online success so be sure to read Part 1 and Part 3 as well.

Topic 1. You need to sell something.

That seems like a no-brainer, but you can’t make any money without selling something.

Your own product.

There are definite advantages to creating your own product; you have complete control over the product and you can create lots of value. You stand to make more money from each sale if you’re the only one selling it, and it’s your property to do what you want with. But consider this: letting others promote it as affiliates will allow them to become your traffic-driving sales team. They make their cut of the profits, but you will probably sell a boat load more of your product this way. Need some direction on creating your own product? My friend Paula Brett has some great information, check it out here

Someone else’s product (an affiliate product).

It takes less work to sell a product that you didn’t have to create yourself.  They’ve done all the hard work and they probably even have some affiliate tools, such as emails, forum signature files, and possibly some small 125×125 images for you to use on your own website. You should capture some of the people yourself, too, by offering a freebie to create your own list.

Ads. Some sites don’t sell anything but they have constant fresh content and maybe do some article marketing to bring people to their site. The people read what’s on the site and maybe click on a targeted ad or two. Every time someone clicks on these ads it puts money in your pocket. Usually the more traffic you get, the more ad money you earn.

2. You need to network with others.

Getting to know other information marketers is one key to your online success. You will be amazed at the personal friendships you make and business relationships you forge. You will get satisfaction from helping others out and you can ask them questions when you have problems. If you want, you can form partnerships (joint ventures) that end up making you more money than you would on your own.

3. You need a plan.

Yes, yes, yes. You can waste days and weeks out of your life when you try to read everything on the internet about what you might want to do online. You can fail before you even begin by getting bogged down with information overload. Many new internet marketers don’t make it because they dabble in this and that, always falling for the next big promise of becoming an online success and making oodles of cash.  They don’t have a plan for what they want to do and don’t get very far.

Considering that you are probably drowning due to information overload, get your focus back with a ‘life jacket’ from my friend and accountability partner, Peggy Baron.

Stay tuned for Part 3 and be sure to sign up for the K.A.R. (Knowledge-Application-Results) newsletter to get more ‘inside’ information marketing tips and tricks.

Here’s to YOUR success,

Ron

Internet Marketing doesn’t have to be hard, but there are wayyyy too many people that make it that way.

Why? Probably because there are soooo many different ways to make this business work.

Have you decided which direction you want to go? That is the biggest obstacle that most people have a hard time overcoming.

Affiliate marketing? Creating your own info product? Pay Per Click Advertising? Joint Venturing? Social Networking?

The list is endless, but the ONE biggest thing that every guru out there has?

A LIST.

Not just A list, but a responsive list of people who are willing to purchase from you.

In my opinion, if you don’t have a list, spinning your wheels trying everything else can lead you to the poor house relatively quickly. I will expand on list building in another post.

Now, not to change the subject, but if you look at the header of my site, you will see my ‘motto’ if you will….it’s what I call the K.A.R. system and it’s what I truly believe will lead you to be prosperous as long as you don’t get distracted by everything else.

What is K.A.R?

KNOWLEDGE–APPLICATION–RESULTS

It’s the ’system’ that I am going to using through this vehicle to teach others how to start creating an income doing this wacky thing called Inernet Marketing.

Knowledge–You must acquire some sort of knowledge of what you are going to be doing to create that income before you start doing it. Reading. Sitting in on teleseminars. Listening to mp3’s on your Ipod. However you acquire that knowledge (hopefully through my site) of what you are going to be doing.

Then……..

Application–How do you apply that knowledge that you have acquired. What do you do? Where do you do it? THAT is probably the area that most people, me included, struggle.

You have questions–how do I do it? Where do I do that? How often do I do that?

Results–What does the application of the knowledge that you have acquired bring about? Does it bring in more subscribers to your list? Does it bring in more affiliate sales? Sales of your own info product? Whatever it brings, you need to track it and change it if necessary to bring about the desired results. Or if it gets the results that you are looking for, tweak what you have done and do it again to make the results improve.

So, back to my post title: How Can I Help YOU?

What do you want to learn about? What would you like me to write more (or less) about?

Your successes are tied to me….if I can’t be successful, how am I supposed to show you how to be successful?

You are here to track my results and I am going to be sharing with you my acquired knowledge, how I apply it, and what my results are, so that YOU can duplicate it! How’s that?

My personal assignment to myself is to post here at least 3-4 times a week and share with you what I know, apply and what that brings about. What is your assignment to YOURSELF going to be?

Leave a comment and let me know.

Until next time…..

Here’s to YOUR success…

Ron