It’s true!

List building is a complete waste of time if you don’t regularly send quality emails out to the names you have collected. Regularly doesn’t mean once a year either! It means every month or more often.


Why build an email list?

One of the key reasons why an email list is so powerful is its ability to create trust between you and your reader. When the people on your list start to receive your regular emails, they begin to get to know you and see how much you know about your topic. These regular emails build the relationship between you and them.

If you like to look at it this way, when people first come to your website, the chances are that they know nothing about you and have no reason to trust what you say. They are much harder to sell to and much more resistant to your offers.

Once they start to receive your emails, they get to know you better and therefore they are more likely to consider your recommendations or take notice of what you are saying. And after you’ve established trust, you have multiple opportunities to make a sale to each reader

In my own experience, an offer sent out to my newsletter list converted at around 11% whereas my web page converted less than 1%.


Building your list

To start building a list you need to use a list management service and a popular one that we use is Aweber.

Aweber has been around a long time and they specialize in bulk email and autoresponders. Their system is quite simple to use and it allows you to easily set up a list, build a form, capture visitors details, load them into a mini course of sequenced emails, and send out group emails to everyone on your list at the same time.

Firstly you need to go to Aweber and sign up for an account. After creating your account you will need to create a list where the names and email addresses that you collect will be stored. You’ll then need to go to the form section to copy the form code that Aweber will automatically create for you. Finally, this code needs to be pasted into your web page.

This is the exact method that we are using with the new niche sites that we have created using the Niche Profit Classroom system. By watching the videos and following their plan, you will quickly be able to set all this up by yourself even if you have had no experience at doing it.


The best placement of the form / optin box in your web page

The best place to put your form on your web page often depends on what sort of page it is.
If the form is going into a page that is promoting a mini course, it should be inserted in the main column between two paragraphs. You should also insert it once at the end of the page below your text.

If your page is an article page, then the best place to put it is in the top of the right side column or to the top right of your page just below the header. These placements have been shown to increase the visibility of the form and improve the number of people signing up.

Irresistible offers to improve signups

To increase the number of people who sign up, you need to build an irresistible offer. This might be a quality downloadable product like an original ebook containing hard to get information or it might be something specifically targeted to your website audience. In the case of a tropical fish website, a report on “How to make your filter work 10 times more efficiently and save electricity costs” might be a good giveaway.  The key thing here is that you’re giving them something in exchange for information that they are giving you. It has to be a fair exchange because they are giving you private information that you couldn’t normally get.


Mini courses – silent sales machines

One of the most effective ways to get people’s names and e-mail addresses is to offer a mini course that will help them learn more about your niche. It might be “8 steps to breeding better tropical fish” or “7 ways to get a credit card that has a lower interest rate”.

You take your eight steps and divide them into eight separate sections then go to Aweber and add them into a sequence set one week apart. Obviously you can vary the time between each section depending on your audience and your course.  Now when people sign up, they will automatically get sent Section 1 after they confirm their optin to your list. The rest of the course will be sent automatically each week.


Niche targeted information in a regular newsletter

To continue to build a relationship with the people who signed up for your mini course or irresistible offer, you’ll need to send out a regular email to them about your niche topic. The newsletter doesn’t have to be huge but it should contain useful tips and information that your readers will enjoy.


Big tip: Do not keep sending out advertising to your list just because you can.

If you’re going to send out an affiliate offer, give your readers a reason why you are recommending that offer and explain how it will help them. Mix the offer in with your tips and information. Alternatively, you can use the 3:1 rule - three information emails then one advertising email.

Remember that building a list is about building a community. How would you feel to get your emails? Would you enjoy the tips or unsubscribe?

Email lists can be a powerful long-term source of ongoing income. It is essential that you understand this because you want to keep as many of your subscribers on your list as you can. You need to help them, nurture their knowledge, answer their questions, and encourage their interaction on an ongoing basis.


Learn how we're applying this. . . watch the videos at Niche Profit Classroom

There are already people subscribing to the email mini courses we’ve added to our NPC websites.
It’s one of the great things about the system and training. They’ve encapsulated the whole niche profit system for creating winning sites and huge email lists in simple, easy to follow steps. It makes the process incredibly easy to do and it works.

For a limited time, you can see exactly the same list building training that we're using to build our niche email lists to capitalize on the big opportunities that are still around. It will only cost you just $1 for 14 days. That’s not even a cup of coffee!

If you're interested in discovering the exact plan we're following for our 5 sites, why not take a quick look the NPC video.

So is list building really a complete waste of time?

Of course not! I recently heard a famous affiliate marketer comment that if he was to ever get a tattoo, he would get “build to your list!” tattooed onto the back of his hand. That way every time he had his hands in front of him, he would be reminded of this very important tip.

It is a waste of time if you don’t use and nurture your list on a regular basis.