The importance of being original while building your list

Discussion in 'General Marketing' started by vishenda, Feb 1, 2007.

  1. #1
    Here and there we can hear everyone talking about an importance of building a list before you can actually start making money.

    The standard way of building a list seems to be as follows:

    1. Find a product you can give away to people for free;

    2. Publicise it in online forums (such as this one) so that people can see what you are offering;

    3. Start getting visitors to your webpage. They visit your webpage, enter their name and e-mail address in your squeeze page and voila - you've got a new subscriber to your list.

    By now I have seen a lot of offers of free reports on this and that and the other thing. Some of them I have found interesting, some of them, not so much so.

    But that is not the point.

    A slight issue with this standard approach is that it is ..... standard. There is very little originality in it. You know that if you give your e-mail away to someone, this is to help increase the size of their lists - giving away a free report on something is just an excuse to capture you.

    Like I said, sometimes you can get good value for giving your e-mail away, most of the time - no.

    Then once you've subscribed to someone's list, they start bombarding you with offers, without making any prior communication as to why I should trust these people and buy something from them. Inevitably, I unsubscribe from a lot of such lists. Therefore, list holders do not really achieve a lot by using this approach, at least from me.

    There is little originality in this approach. I am not critisizing it per se (at the end of the day, we all need to have our lists). I am just saying that if people start thinking about how to attract subscribers for "real content", their success rates may well improve.

    These were my thoughts when I started promoting my newsletter Adventures of an Internet Marketing Novice. I have not seen anyone doing it before and I thought why not.

    People know that if they give me their e-mail address they can hope to receive real content not just purely commercial offers.

    In one word, I am hoping first to build a relationship with my readers by providing them with interesting newsletters. Then I can start making some commercial offers for them.

    Will be very happy to hear your feedback.

    Thanks in advance!
    vishenda;)
     
    vishenda, Feb 1, 2007 IP
  2. syia

    syia Member

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    #2
    can you give some ideas of originality ways?
     
    syia, Feb 1, 2007 IP