But do you want to know how the uber successful online business owners make their mark, how they are able to make money while they sleep?

They have a responsive list of subscribers who are eager to hear their message.

The Idea

List building is actually very simple in practice, it’s the theory part that seems to put up a warning sign as in “Stop, this is too complicated, don’t proceed any further.”

As I outlined in 5 Action Steps to Build a List Now, building a list can be broken down into steps, even better, they are actionable steps.  Do this, do that, set up this, etc.  But back to the theory of list building…

I read a post on a forum once where someone’s niche websites were all hit pretty hard with a Google update.  In a matter of a few hours, their Google ranking dipped to obscure levels.  Bad news, right?  Well if he had been dependent on his Google ranking it would have been.

But what this person had and what made him able to “not miss a beat” in terms of income was the mailing list he had been creating all along.

The Practice

One of the keys to any new endeavor is to step back and look at the big picture.

Picture your business a few years, or even months down the road – maybe you have some niche sites making a good profit or you are a successful blogger.  Either way you have visitors regularly coming to your sites.

Now imagine this – you have the successful websites, but in addition, you also have a subscriber list into the thousands.  So what this means is that every time you post something new or offer a new product, you have a captive audience to inform.

And that is not even the best part.  The fact that they have heard and seen your name before means they are more likely to trust you and open your email to see what you have to say.

Ready to Get Started?

There are several strategies for building a list, but we aren’t talking about building just any old list. Who wants just a bunch of names and email addresses?  An unresponsive list is no fun at all.

What we want is a list of targeted, responsive people who are eager to hear our message.

I cover this in more detail How to Build a Responsive List of Subscribers, but ultimately it boils down to…

Offering them something awesome, some incredibly valuable piece of content for FREE in exchange for their email address.

It’s as simple as that.

So if you have yet to start your list or are wondering how to grow the list you do have, stay tuned.

The next series here on the blog will have your list rocking and rolling.

Let me know in the comments your thoughts or concerns with building your list…

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