Email Marketing List Building – The Three Essential Elements You Need

“The money is in the list” is a phrase I am sure you’ve heard before if you’ve been around internet marketing for any length of time. While trite, it is nonetheless true: most people who successfully earn money online have an opt-in list that they’ve built themselves and to which they are able to market products, either as an affiliate or otherwise.

Let’s be clear about what I mean by opt-in list here: I mean a list that you build yourself, not a “safelist” or a list of email addresses you pay for…those are pretty much worthless.

There are three components to successful list building: Offering something of value, both in order to entice people to sign up and to keep them interested in your emails, gaining your readers’ trust and branding yourself as the expert in your niche.

So what can you offer as an incentive to get people to join your mailing list? You can offer them a free e-book or report about some particular part of your niche or you can offer them a free membership in a newsletter service. If you opt for the latter, be sure to have some carefully crafted newsletters together and mail them out to your list regularly.

Gaining your readers’ trust is very important because people are much more likely to buy from someone that they trust. It is just a fundamental fact. Once you have your readers’ trust, it becomes less about selling them a product and more about providing them with the a great solution to their problems. It is much easier to guide someone do to something that they realize is a good idea than to have to convince someone that an idea is good and that they should take part.

Branding yourself as an expert in your niche is equally as important. Why? Because you must inspire confidence in your readership. They must believe that you know all of the ins and outs of your niche. Think about it. Would you listen to someone who you thought didn’t know what they were talking about?

If you can do these three things, you will be able to create a great mailing list of people who are targeted to your niche and readily interested in what you have to say. These people will be much more likely to buy the products you recommend and will help your online business grow.