The Money Is In the List. It's a Common Expression, But What Does It Mean?

It means that if you have a list of qualified prospects, you can sell them many offers over time, and quite possibly for years to come. In the hands of an experienced marketer, such a list could be worth millions (or even more).

Having a responsive email list could change your financial destiny forever.

But how do you get started?

The first step is to create a mind map. 

Here’s how it works. You get a sheet of paper and draw a small circle in the center and write down your name. Next, you draw six lines radiating outward from the center. After that, let you mind come up with ideas. Write each one at the top of each line. If you have similar ideas you can stack them and if you have more topic ideas, add as many lines as necessary. The process takes only minutes.

Once you're done, pick the top three ideas and rank them in order of importance. You're going to use those for the next phase of your research, to see how well those items are selling on Udemy and Amazon. Assuming the product/service you picked is selling well (with, preferably, thousands of reviews), it will be a good candidate for building a list.  

Once you pick a product/service, you have two choices, to become an affiliate of an existing product/service, or to create your own. 

If you become an affiliate, you gain a commission on an existing product or service. The single biggest downside is finding a product which pays a decent commission. Fortunately, there's a workaround, which I'll explain in a minute.

The second option is to create your own product or service. The main downside is the time it takes to create it. The simplest, fastest way to overcome that problem is to use PLR or private label rights. This is a product you buy which you repurpose as your own. 

With both options, you want to use them to build a list.

The Importance of Driving Traffic

Quite simply, driving traffic is the lifeblood of your list. Without traffic, everything stops. 

Here are three ways to drive traffic, by content creation, paid advertising or joint ventures.

Before You Get Started, Here Are Some Things You Must Know

If you don't have much money, the fastest way to build a list is by making guest posts to blogs which match your niche. 

The number one caveat is this - it can take time to build an audience, from 2-3 months or even longer. 

Why? 

Because you need to build trust. Over time, as more and more people see your posts, the more likely they will be to sign up for your list. 

If you choose this approach, here are several things you need to watch out for. Look for high traffic blogs with A LOT of shares. Engagement is very important. 

Also, it's essential to look for blogs which allow you to place a link in your article below the fold (below the viewing area on your monitor) AND you must be able to make use of an author's resource box, where you can make a pitch for your product/service and include a link.

If the blog does not allow for links or an author's resource box, don't write for them. You will be wasting your time.  

And while we're on the topic of links, DO NOT create a link to your domain. That's a huge mistake. Instead, you need to create a link to an existing offer, so you can build a list. That's the whole purpose of this approach. 

Paid advertising, in the form of solo ads or Microsoft, Google, or LinkedIn ads is the fastest way to go. The main down side is once you stop paying for traffic, your marketing stops. 

Based on what I have seen, the fastest, least expensive way to begin is by using solo ads. You would use these until you reach $10,000/month in revenue, then look for other options, such as Microsoft Ads or Google AdWords. 

Joint ventures are where you create a deal between yourself and a third party to sell your services. As an example, I did a joint venture between myself and the Corel Corporation. My software manual was sent out to their list over a period of years and I made money every time the offer went out. 

Note: While joint ventures can pay off handsomely, they often take a lot of work to set up. 

I also built a highly targeted list and sent out various offers. Of the methods I used, Frank Kern's 4 Day Cash Machine created the best results.

The Number One Mistake Affiliate Marketers Make

One major mistake made by many affiliate marketers is to drive traffic directly to an offer. Here's why. If the prospect doesn't buy, you lose that prospect forever. Not only that, the email address gets captured by the product creator. You get nothing and you have to start all over.

This is a great recipe for going broke.

Here's how to fix that.  

You create an offer, based on the product you represent, you create an opt-,in page and drive traffic to that offer. When people sign up, you give them your offer. After that, you redirect them to the affiliate offer.

Do you see what we did here?

By creating an offer of our own, we got the prospect to sign up for our list. By doing so, even if the prospect doesn't buy, you still have them on a list and can send them many offers over time.

That's how you build your business. Do it right, and you could make a fortune.

Over time, you will see the truth of the statement, "the money is in the list."