You might wonder why this idea of building a list is so important in your ability to make money as an online marketer. Many wonder why they cannot just throw up a websites, write some copy and collect their profits. Why is it so vital that you consider building a list?

First, let’s talk about what list building really means, basically, this is where you have visitors to your site fill out a form with their name and email address.

Using this information, you stay in touch with your list (whether they have bought from you yet or not) via email. You will send good, quality information as well as the occasional sales letter to this list.

With any niche that you choose, you will need to make the decision as to whether building a list is even a viable option. However, if you think about it, there is usually some room for up-selling in just about any niche.

For example, if you have a website related to infertility and how to overcome it, you might wonder what else you could offer that group of people. If they use your program and are successful at getting pregnant, you could offer them all kinds of baby related items during their pregnancy. It is important to think outside of the box!

As marketers build their lists, they often see the huge potential they have in that niche. Taking the example above, perhaps you decide to write your own ebook that will complement the one you have been selling.

If you have been selling an ebook with the title “How to Overcome Infertility Naturally”, you might decide to write one called “Yoga Moves for Infertility”.

This way, you can still sell the original book, but now you can also offer your list this accompanying book.

To see the potential, let’s assume your list has only 500 people right now. Your ebook is priced at $19.95, and you send an email out to your list (which takes all of about 2 minutes).

If 100 people on your list purchase your ebook, you just made a quick $1995 for one email! That is the power of list building.

Of course, if you had to hire out the writing of the book, your profits would be reduced. However, what if your email pulled a better return? You could make even more than that!

That in a nutshell shows the power of Building a List of subscribers and having a relationship with those subscribers, so in essence the quote should be “The money is in the relationship you have with your list”

Imagine the scene………. you go online and decide to check your main blog………… www.terry-weatherill.com/blog the page loads then…… Error 404 page cannot be found!!!  Oh thats not good you think, try again, same message error 404 page cannot be found. Oh dear, I’ll try another one of my blogs www.health-facts.co.uk, same message.  Now you start to get worried………….
Have I not paid my hosting account? you think, no thats paid till next year.
I know I’ll check my web hosting, log on, C Panel-Fantastico-Wordpress…… current instalations…. NONE!!!!!! What!!!!!!! I should have 5 or 6 Wordpress sites, this isn’t looking good at all. You can now feel the sweat slowly but surely starting to run down your forehead, all my blogs are gone,all that work, all that effort, all gone!!!!!!!!!

Then I remembered noticing a message as I logged into my Web Hosting account ” Can’t Find Your Web Sites? Click Here…. So I clicked, and up came a message ” We are migrating all our data to a new data centre”, or words to that effect, in laymans terms they’re moving everything to new servers, including MY beloved blogs. Then panic really sets in what if they’ve lost everything, stupidly I havn’t made any backups :-{
So what do I do now? I know I’ll submit a support ticket telling them about my plight, so thats what I did, within ten minutes I had a reply back to my email address………..”Hi terry, I’ll get those fixed for you and update you when complete”.
Within another fifteen minutes another message………… “Hi Terry, If you try now you’ll be able to access your sites”.

So I tentativly re-typed in my blog address…………………… and lo and behold my beloved site popped up in all its glory   So in less than 30 minutes I’d gone from total shock and horror to total elation.
Now thats what I call customer service, thats not the first I’ve had a problem solved so quickly either, I’ve had 2 or 3 other minor problems, usually as a result of me not doing something right or missing something out!!!!!!

So I would like to say a very public Thank You and Well Done to all the staff at D9 Hosting for your excellent customer service and promp replies to all my cries for help, your service is second to none

Starts 1/7/10 – Ends 31/7/10

Starts 1/7/10 – Ends 31/710

The Australian Giveaway
Starts 21/7/10 – Ends 31/7/10

The World JV Giveaway
Starts 21/7/10 – Ends 31/7/10

• Firstly I now have 2 blogs online, this one and Health Facts.co.uk
• I now have the grand total of 114 subscribers in 2 different niches from Giveaway Events.
• I have learnt a hell of a lot about blogging and Internet Marketing in general, a lot of it by trial and error.
• I have realised that nothing comes without hard work, especially web traffic.
• I have recently started Dave Nicholsons Coaching Program

So what hasn’t happened in the past 12 months that maybe should have done:

• I havn’t got as many subscribers as I would have liked.
• I havn’t yet got my own product online.
• I havn’t got my Ferrari yet
• I havn’t made any money online yet.

By this point you may be thinking a couple of things, what a whinging so and so I am and why on earth should anybody bother listening to me about anything. Well the answer is I’M STILL HERE and I’m not going away. I WILL get my list of subscribers, I WILL get my own product online, I WILL make money online and I WILL have my Ferarri. There I’ve said it now for all to see, no going back, I WILL be a success online and if anyone wants to follow me on this journey then hop onboard otherwise I wish you all the best for the future,

See you on the beaches of the world

Because I had no list to promote to I had to find other ways of promoting to be able to keep my product in the giveaway, one of the main ways was by building my Giveaway Squidoo Lens http://www.squidoo.com/J-V-GiveawayEvents. I also used Twitter to promote the Giveaway, I was also going to use List Joe to promote the Giveaway but the other two ways seemed to do the trick without  using anything else.

I wish that I had tried JV Giveaways earlier to build my list but like a lot of other people I have spent too much time procastinating and anylising rather than just bloody getting on with it.

Two of the giveaway events end on 28th Feb, one ends on 3rd March and one on 14th March, so if you do the maths and I can get an average of 10 subscribers per Giveaway then 10 giveaways and I’ll have 100 subscribers. Times that by 10 and I’ll have 1,000 subscibers, WATCH THIS SPACE

So here it is my first ever give away event as contributor, in my time on the internet I have entered into a lot of events as a member to download free stuff and consequently ended up on a lot of email lists!!!!!!!!

But I thought it was time to have a go myself and try to build up my own email list, I have contributed to 4 JV Giveaways  in total all starting this month and most ending in March. I have to say a big thanks to both Paul Hooper and Matt wolfe both of who have produced excellent videos series of how to get started with Giveaway Events. I am hoping to document my progress in these events as blog posts in the coming few weeks, good or bad, so stay tuned for an update.

Stay happy and positive

Terry Weatherill