One of the first things that we are taught when we first get into the internet marketing arena is that “The money is in the list.” How many times have you heard that one? It may sound like old hat, but it really is one of the most truthful statements you will ever hear.
The 'Big Boys' are always telling us that list building is the only way to go for the long term marketer and a good list is worth on average $1 per subscriber per month. No wonder they are rolling in it!
One of the biggest mistakes I made when I was starting out in internet marketing was thinking that I would start my list building once I had started to earn money. I should have been building a list from the start. Don't make the same mistake that many thousands of people have made before you.
For those of you who are just branching out into Internet Marketing a list is where people give you their email address, usually in return for something free. You are then able to stay in contact with that person and send them offers.
Sound easy? If you ask many internet marketers how many people they have on their list you'll be surprised to here that many only have 20, 50 or 100 people and that took them a year or so to get. Yet look at the 'Big Boys' the 'Gurus' and they have thousands of people gladly signing up.
So why is it that some can do this on auto pilot and others never master it?Internet marketing is full of failure at all levels, from the beginning and starting out, to pushing to the next level and becoming a wealthy person. Most people give up and walk away before they ever make a single cent.
People are pulled into internet marketing, at different levels (eBay, adwords, adsense etc), but with the same illusion of quick riches and overnight success. They are sucked in with dreams of instant riches with little to no work, yet in reality the real picture is very, very different.
In this game you have to work hard and keep working hard. Gone are the days when you can create a website get instant free traffic from Google and sell it on for thousands of dollars at the drop of a hat.
Things have changed and so many people are now jumping into the 'latest' craze that words like 'work' and 'takes time' are no longer in the sales letters, words like that just don't sell. With all these people trying to break into the market it makes it much harder to even start up.
Let's take an example, five or six years ago you could go grab some keywords based around a product and use PPC to drive loads of traffic direct to that products sales page. But with everyone learning how easy it was, they all jumped in and pushed the price of those keywords through the roof.
That meant that no one could earn the same profit and many soon started to go under with huge adwords bills trying to compete. These days words like 'make money' will cost you at least $4 or $5 per click! They are so broad that you will get shed loads of traffic, but hardly anyone will purchase.
This means Lots of Traffic = No Sales = HUGE Bill = Failure!We all had to start getting creative and the next marketers were born, all trying to compete against each other, this pushed the prices up even more. More people all left the scene claiming to have failed.
The methods have changed these days, but the sales letters are still the same, 'easy money' and 'get rich quick' are still selling the dream to people so the cycle continues to go on. They come into the market dreaming of quick riches and soon leave with big bills and failure on their lips.
With this said, there is still lots of room for anyone who is serious about this business. There are STILL ways in which the little guy can make money online. It's not instant and it's not millions of dollars overnight.
It takes time, patience and dedication, but it can be done. Just ask the 'gurus' to be honest with you and they will ALL say that they put in long hours for years before they got to where they are today.
They all say that they get to stay there because of their list building and the relationship that they built up with the people on the list.