List Building – 5 Mistakes To Avoid When Building Your List

The most important activity in your online business is building a list. You must have people who are interested in your niche topic and who have given you permission to email them on a regular basis. I started my list during 2006. I had an optin box on my blog where a few people would sign up every week. It grew very slowly, but I believe this was best because I was just learning how to run my online business. I emailed them once or twice a week, providing short reports, information and tips, and invitations to my teleseminars.

I promoted some affiliate products and courses to my list until I created my first product at the end of 2006. That product was a four part teleseminar training on how to write articles and blog posts that sold for $97. Fewer than 10 people signed up, but that gave me the confidence to keep going. When I created my second course in February of 2007, I invited the original people to take the new course as a bonus.

I continue to build my list through article marketing, blogging, social media, teleseminars, and interviews from other people in my niche. My training on this comes from Jimmy D. Brown in his list building and email marketing course. This gives me the opportunity to constantly have access to people who may want to join my list and hear what I have to say. Remember, your prospects must feel like there is something in it for them if they are going to remain on your list over time.

There are several mistakes everyone seems to make when starting a business on the Internet. One is not using a professional autoresponder service to send your emails out to your online business prospects and customers. Trying to stay in contact with a growing number of people through your personal email account just does not make sense. Instead, choose one of the professional services that is designed and intended for commercial use for online businesses.

The next mistake is to only collect names through an optin box on your blog, instead of setting up an optin page on its own domain. I was guilty of this myself during my first year working on the Internet. Once I set up an optin page my list began to grow much more quickly.

The third mistake is being afraid to email your list too often. Remember that people are excited to hear from you when they sign up to receive more information. Email at least twice each week so that they will get used to hearing from you on your topic.  Connect with the people on your list and build a business relationship that will be mutually beneficial.