Your List

There are literally millions of businesses that can help you learn to build a list of customers. they will tell you that it is the single most important thing you do when in business. They will tell you how much it costs to get a new customer and then how much less it costs to keep that customer.

While I agree that a list of people is extremely important it is NOT a simple as just getting names. Anyone can buy names. Anyone can get a bunch of people pay attention to them for a few seconds. Youtube caters to just that market all day, every day.

What really matters is that you gain a list of members that want you to talk to them regularly, and are even desperate for you to provide them information. In fact they want to communicate with you rather than you with them. This is not an only online discussion. This is for every style of business .

It is better to have a list of 100 passionate people eating up every morsel of information you give them rather than 100,000 people that don't care one iota what you say. In fact people are so lazy and their trust level with information dissemination so low that chances are they get your email or postcard and just delete/chuck it. 100,000 people that think you are SPAM. The absolute worst thing ever.

So how do you build this list?

The first things are technical in nature and we will help all of you find information to get your list building going for free. Try feedburner for your blog and that will capture some names for you to talk to regularly. Of course RSS feed your blog so that people can easily choose to hear from you and then we will continue to provide exact information on what else is available in future articles. Today is about keeping your names happy and talking about you.

Give your list something to talk about. Help them with your expertise. Don't waste their time.

It sounds like hard work but feeding other articles that bore people or just writing trash is useless. There are millions upon millions of choices. The only way you build a list is through credibility and giving people something they want.

This is the cold hard truth. Like my Dad said, "you get nothing for nothing". Slowly the Internet and blogosphere is realizing this as well. You give nothing you will get nothing.

Period.

So talk to your list, become their friend and confident, and do this by making sure every single thing you do helps them, informs them and makes them want to then help you.