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Everyday more and more people are finding success by building an online business.  If you are thinking about launching a new business online, or if you’ve been trying to build one for more than twelve months and have not seen the revenue you expected, you need to learn the basics of successful marketing. Everything needs to begin with list building, this is where your focus should be, this is your foundation.  Not having a list is like building a house in the sand. An online business needs to have a mailing list to prosper, this is one of the most important part of your marketing career. You may have heard from the gurus before that the money is in the list, yes this is true you do need to build your list. To build your list you need subscribers.  The question is, how do find good quality subscribers?

One of the easiest and most successful methods to develop subscribers and kick your list building into mach speed is to give away a free product and get people to sign up for it. Everyone wants something for free, people will always sign up to try and get something for free. When people sign up they normally have to provide information about themselves, in this case it is usually their first name and email address. Everyone that signs up is another person being added to the list! To be able to collect the names and email addresses you will need an opt in form. To create an opt-in form the first thing you need to do is to find an electronic mailing list software with an autoresponder service. An autoresponder is basically a computer program that allows you to mail out and automatically answers emails sent to it, confirms subscriptions and unsubscriptions and other list activities. I use Aweber, it has been recommended by most internet marketers because it has been tried and tested over a long period of time, does work the best and it cost around $20 a month, a very wise investment.

Think about what your business has of informational value and try and research what people are looking for, these way you stay one step ahead of them all the time.  Create that in the form of an eBook, audio or video. If you don’t know where to start, you can start out by using PLR (private label rights) products and then edit them. Make sure that the information you provide is valuable information. Giving away your free product is not only building your list, but is developing a personal relationship with your potential customers.  That is literally money in the bank. The idea here is not making the first sale it is actually missing the first sale by giving away something valuable for free to build your list.

Once your potential customer has received their free product, you are no longer strangers. When they receive your next email with a promotion or added advice, they’ll see your communication as something of value. You have just turned your cold market into your warm market. This type of list building is priceless.  It is at this point where you’ll start to see increased sales and referrals. What you just did, was to focus on your relationship instead of the money. The money will follow naturally. You are building a rock solid foundation.

Once you have built your list it must be maintained, it is important to follow up regularly with your subscribers, but make sure you don’t flood their inbox with emails all the time. A great thing about modern technology is the awesome tools available for online businesses.  These tools allow you to work smart instead of hard.  You can automate your messages and still keep them personalized for your prospects.  Create your messages one time and automate them to work as you command. But remember, the list you create from your subscribers is not just any list.  They have already requested and received something of value from you. They’ll be hungry for more. Make sure you keep adding more value to your list by offering more advice on an ongoing basis. It’s easy to see how giving away something for free is the best way to build a strong distribution list. Build your strong foundation and watch your profits shoot through the roof.

As your subscribers have entrusted you with their trust make sure that you keep a clean and private list. Do not provide their emails to other people so that they get spammed as most of them will unsubscribe and you will start losing your credibility. Remember a good reputation will get you more subscribers as well as strengthen the loyalty of your customers.