subject: When You Should Skip On Building a List, and Why [print this page] When You Should Skip On Building a List, and Why
"The money is in the list," is maybe the most often repeated phrase in the world of internet marketing. It's also not always true. How can you make money without a list, and when is a list-building a waste of time? Electronics, consumer goods, and high-end physical products are three types of affiliate sales that might be best made sans list.
Skipping an email opt-in page is often a good idea with electronics, and physical consumer-goods that can be bought at a store. It's almost always a good idea with high-end products. After all, who ever heard of a plasma-screen television email marketing list? If you ever find a market that buys plasma TV sets from an email list, the way most information product consumers do, you'll be set for life--but the market just isn't out there!
In fact, lists often get in the way of high-end sales. Possibly the merchant puts them on a list AFTER the sale. But if you're targeting high-end products, you should be targeting buying keywords--exact make, model, year, color, etc. People, who search for these keywords, are basically searching with their credit card in hand. They want to "click here to buy," not "click here to read about why you should be on my list,"!
If you're targeting several different types of products to sell to people, then building a list probably just isn't going to be worth your time. If you are concentrating on a niche, that's one thing. A list might be of use to you (but not always--remember that every market is different!).
But unless you are an actual plasma TV merchant, you don't need to worry about list-building when you sell your plasma TVs. Just target "Samsung HPT4254" and "Panasonic TH 50PX75U" and collect the cash from people who are looking to buy these specific models! These people are just looking to make their purchase, and you want to get them to your affiliate link as quickly as humanly possible!
When someone is searching for a "buying keyword" like those above, they're either looking to buy, looking to justify what they want to buy, or they're seeing what type or model of basic item that they want to buy. In any case, chances are good that they want to make a purchase, so go ahead and lead them to that purchase.
All in all, you don't need to worry about building a list, when you're targeting "buying keywords" for physical products. Squeeze pages just get in the way, and the lists they build would ultimately be of little value anyway, in most cases. Information products can be another business entirely, however--but that's a subject for a different article!
