subject: Marketing: List Building [print this page] List building is probably the most essential part of any online business, if its successful. Many new marketers wont bother building a list because they believe they should get sales first.
It does make sense to go after straight sales when you havent made any money yet. But as you will find out. it will slow your businesses growth quite dramatically.
If an affiliate marketer is aiming for sales only, they are redirecting all their valuable traffic straight over to the affiliate website owner's website. This way maybe 1 in 100 hits sent will convert and they will earn a commission (depending on the conversion rate of the offer).
The smarter way to do it is to send all their hard earned traffic to a lead capture page or squeeze page, getting the prospects email address and only then sending them on to the affiliate website which theyre promoting.
Now, out of every 100 visitors you will get around 10-25 email address in your auto responder and again depending on your capture pages conversion rate, this can be as high as 50 out of every 100 visitors giving you their email address.
Now by getting these peoples email addresses rather than just sending them straight to the offer, you have leveraged your traffic. Now you can email them over and over with related affiliate offers. Further, now they are on your list they know who you are, with good content in your auto responder series, they will also like and trust your opinion. People who know and trust you are far more likely to be responsive to your affiliate recommendations.
These arent by any means the only reasons why you should build your list first before sending your traffic to an affiliate offer. One of the biggest reasons you should set up your affiliate marketing business in a list building first type fashion, is because when it comes to doing joint ventures and ad swapping, the size of your list is what determines how much leverage you have to get lucrative joint venture deals and ad swaps with. Joint ventures and ad swapping are by far two of the fastest ways to build your affiliate marketing business. Any marketer that knows 2 bob worth can tell you that.
Therefore, it is in your upmost best interest to build this valuable asset, your list, right from day one. Don't think you can just start to build a list later on, your business can suffer this way. List building will set you free.
