List Building - What They Don't Tell You

First of all, when I say weasels I want everyone to realize what I'm talking about. I'm referring to those "experts" that want to sell you e-books and software on how to build lists and make money. In my humble experience, most of these weasels simply want your money. They want your money and give you very little actual information in return. For example, I've personally purchased e-books that reiterate over and over again how you must build your list, but offer no solutions on how to actually do it.

I've also been involved with companies that push you incessantly to build your list (which in theory is true), and guess where you're supposed to get the names from? You're supposed to buy them from the very company that pushes you to "build" your list! It's a vicious cycle that I want to help people avoid, if at all possible. The first order of business is to decide which kind of list you want to build. For the most part, there are two types of email lists:

1) Lists that you Buy – These are names that you purchase related to your newsletter, e-zine, or proposition. If you're going to go with this route, be ready to spend quite a bit of money. Not only do you spend a lot of money, the quality of the email addresses is usually suspect at best. This is the easiest way to build a list, but by far the least effective.

2) Opt in lists - These are names that the individuals decide to give you. They voluntarily decide to receive your emails. This is the kind of list that everyone wants, but very few people are honest about building. There are various ways of getting people to sign up for your information, all of which you should begin researching.

The bottom line is that it takes time to build a quality email list. You can buy names all day everyday, but you will run out of money before you see any real results. The real way to build an email list is to invest the time educating yourself on the subject. The more educated you become on the subject, the better off you will be. Just beware of anyone who claims that it's as simple as buying names and sending them some sort of newsletter. Like most things of value in this world, building a quality email list doesn't happen overnight.

That's the biggest hurdle that the weasels won't tell you about. That hurdle is that there is no simple and easy solution to list building. You have to keep at it and demonstrate a little patience. The weasels always want to make it seem like you don't have to "do" anything. I would like everyone to consider one thing: If making money were as easy as buying a bunch of names and then sending those names an email once a week or so, wouldn't everyone do it.