Saturday 8 May 2010

Learn To List Build


To make money online you must learn to list build. Successful list building is a dynamic process. What is right today may not be right tomorrow because new methods are constantly being developed.

Most of what was taught in the past might as well be forgotten and internet marketers should look again at how they build their lists today. As more and more entrepreneurs seek better and better ways to communicate with their market places it is inevitable that new list building methods will be developed. They will be better than those that were available yesterday.

What, then, do I mean by "better"?

As just one example, anybody who has been selling on line over several years will have experienced the time when it was easy to use Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It was reasonably priced and attracted a good number of enquiries as long as the offer was competently presented. All those enquiries were then added to an auto responder to form the mail list for future sales.

That's no longer the case. The cost of PPC has escalated to the point where some leads can cost several dollars each. That's fine if you are selling a high priced product and are able to achieve a reasonable number of sales but otherwise you simply spend more and more dollars trying to find buyers; an effort that simply ends in a financial loss.

Companies providing facilities for PPC, such as Google, are constantly trying to develop the tools they offer. Often the changes appear to benefit those companies whilst penalising the frequent advertisers. PPC experts are often known to complain, "Google has changed the rules yet again".

They are then faced with a choice. They can either stop using PPC or work hard to set up their offers in a way that complies with the changes forced on them. In the meantime they lose sales.

PPC is not the only tool where the rules get changed. In fact it can happen with any list building method and the real impact may be greater or less than with PPC.

Of course PPC is still used. In fact it is a major tool used by many millions of web marketers. However, some marketers have looked for ways to build their lists that overcome the problems associated with PPC and other tools from yesterday.

Recently developed list building methods seek to overcome these problems. Many go much further than just getting round rule changes. They have, in many cases, eliminated the ever present cost of PPC. In fact the most recent developments have only one cost - the time it takes to set up. There is no financial cost.

So, how much time do you need to commit to these methods? Some can require only thirty minutes or so. With a little practice other, more complex processes, can need up to about two or three hours for each project but rarely need much more than that. Once set up they remain in place for the long term and build your list on a daily basis plus put money into your account at the same time.

Modern list building methods don't just aim to reduce costs. It is important to recognise that many new tools are developed by the most successful internet marketers. They are the most successful because they have explored ways to improve their communications with their potential customers especially how to reach bigger audiences.

These tools are the ones you should aim to use for maximum market exposure so as to build the biggest lists. They are already available and in daily use by leading marketers. Even more are being planned and developed as you read this. But what are these tools?

An in-depth description is beyond the scope of this article. It would simply take too much space. There are, however, web sites that specialize in keeping up to date with the latest techniques. One useful benefit of using such sites is that you can see most of the methods available yesterday (and still used now) as well as those that are considered to be today's tools.

They are well worth using regularly and the top ones not only describe the tools but show exactly how to use them to gain maximum benefit both for your list building and your actual sales. I use one that is the most comprehensive web site that I have ever seen for list building. For new marketers it even goes through every step from setting up an on line business to marketing methods that have built very substantial lists for many people.

I typically use around twenty different list building tools, some of which I would not have known about if I had not been introduced to them on that web site. In many cases the work I do to get one tool operating for a project is easily adapted for the other tools with minimum effort or time. The great benefit for me is that for very little work split over all the tools I get a very comprehensive coverage in the market place.

In most cases the web presence generated for me by each different tool is seen by a completely different audience. This vastly multiplies the response I get and results in substantial sales and, of course, many additions to my lists on a daily basis. My list building helps me make money online.