List Building Secrets - What It Really Takes To Build A List

One of the best things you can do to grow your business is to build your list. It seems as though everyone gives the same list building tips, which goes something like... "the money is in the list". And that's true, to an extent. Actually, it's the relationship you build with the people on your list that creates the money. Just because you may have a big list, doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to convert well. If you are just pitching them stuff all the time without providing any real value that will actually help them, then they won't trust you, or like you enough to take any action when you suggest it. So yes, the money is technically in the list, but more than a bank account where you can just take out withdrawals whenever you want to, you have to give much more in return first.

Unfortunately most people don't really talk about this aspect. They just say to build a list, as if that's enough. You have to make sure to nurture the relationships. One slip, and those people will probably stop listening to you. Warren Buffet said that it takes twenty or so years to build a reputation, and five minutes to completely ruin it. When "building your list", this quote applies to that as well. You have to treat the people on your list, the exact same way you would want to be treated. I'm sure you know how frustrating it is when some Guru is pitching products to you every day, hoping something will stick. Does this work? Most likely, but these guys have such a huge list, that they're ok with poorer conversions. If you're the little guy with a smaller list, then you have to take extra care.
One of the fastest ways to build a list is to do pay per click. Create a squeeze page (usually they have sample templates on places like the warrior forum for free), and start driving traffic to it. Of course, there's a lot more details left out here, but the goal is to test as quickly as possible, and see what works. You do want to do some initial research ahead of time to choose the right keywords to ensure you get the most qualified traffic. Once you do the keyword research, and optimize your site for those keywords (i.e for quality score in Adwords), and some other on-page elements like privacy policies, contact information etc., then you can launch your campaign. You don't necessarily need to use Adwords, but it's definitely a good place to start if you're looking to test quickly. It's usually a good idea to use the content network first, and see what converts best by split testing landing pages, and ads.
Another way to build your list is to do SEO. Most people are familiar with SEO to an extent, but usually think it takes too much time and effort and would rather find something with quicker results. Actually SEO doesn't have to be painfully slow if you do it correctly. You can also do quick tests by optimizing for extremely long tail keywords, and drive them to the first page within the first week or two. You should be able to get some traffic, and test. It's obviously not going to be as quick and effective of a test as PPC, but at least you'll get some data and won't cost you a lot of time or money. If you find whatever offer your promoting works relatively well, then you can launch a full SEO campaign using more competitive but higher traffic keywords.
And of course, once you have people on your list, then as we discussed before, you want to make sure you take care of them by providing value. Send them valuable but free information in the form of audios, videos, articles, ebooks, just like you would a paying customer. They will come to know you and like you after a while, and will feel comfortable purchasing your products, or buying through your affiliate links for affiliate products.