Fresh out of my inbox today… “I’m going to ask a silly question, but I think I just want to hear it from a professional, the question is why is it so important to build a list??”
First of all, that is not a silly question! It’s a great question… why should you build a list?
To help answer this question, let me wind you back to 2009 when I had a successful PPC business going. I was making a lot of money online running targeted ads on Google Adwords, directing people to Clickbank offers.
But there was a problem… I kept hearing about Google banning other affiliate marketer’s Adwords account and I wondered, ‘what if that happens to me?’ Well, my concerns were justified because in July 2009 I woke up one day to find that my Adwords account had been banned, indefinitely!
(Note: It wasn’t anything I was doing wrong; mine was one of thousands of accounts that Google was closing down as part of an anti-affiliate push)
Before I got that dreaded email from Google, I had already begun to build up a different online business. You see, I thought long and hard about what was the best strategy to take, so that I wouldn’t be affected if I had my account closed by any one service.
Also, I wanted a business strategy that would be scalable, passive and be there for the long term.
What I kept hearing from other Internet marketing experts was that I needed to ‘build a list’. The more I thought about it, it just made sense. When you have a email list, you have TOTAL control of what you do with that list.
- No one can take your list away from you.
- You can contact them whenever you like.
- You can promote whatever you like.
- You can schedule your in advance emails to go out at any time.
- You can automate your whole sales process; lead generation, marketing, sales and follow up.
- It is fully scalable.
- More profitable than sending traffic direct to a sales page.
- It’s a sellable asset.
A couple of other things that I love about list building is that it can be adapted to whatever the current rages are, and there will always be people willing to joint venture with you when you have a list.