Once you have a list you own it! Nobody can take it away from you. There aren't too many other business assets you can say the same thing about. For most businesses, you can quickly see a dramatic turn in sales and/or profits (virtually overnight) if big competition happens to settle into your market. It happens everyday in every industry imaginable. Think about all those small grocery stores in all those small towns across the country... and think about what happened when Wal-Mart opened.
But once you build a list of “permission based” opt-in email subscribers... it doesn't matter how much competition you have in your market. You've already built a rock solid foundation. A strong customer base eager and willing to hear from you over and over again. So... what does that mean for your profits?
That means you can send targeted offers to your list on a regular basis (whenever you want, as often as you want) and there's nobody stopping you! You have full control. What types of offers? Let me explain….
As they say, there's more than one way to skin a cat. On the Internet... there's certainly more than one way to make a great living, and my personal favorite tool for generating income is Email Marketing. Email Marketing all starts with building a loyal, targeted list of opt-in subscribers within your niche. Once you have that loyal list... your opportunities are endless:
- You can promote your own products.
- You can promote affiliate products.
- You can do all of the above... and more!
Unfortunately the subject of Email Marketing can become extremely complex. Entire books and courses have been written and produced on the subject. The actual topic (as a whole) is outside the scope of this article but I will briefly touch upon some important and interesting (and very profitable) points.
The truth is... I can send an email to any of my lists any time I'd like and know with 100% certainty that I'll see a profit from that email. How do I know? Because I continue to market to my lists on a regular basis. And they all continue to make me a generous income month after month after month.
I bring up this point because I want you to understand just how important it is to start today building a list and focusing the majority of your online efforts on this one extremely important marketing tool.
Suppliers will come and go.
Products get discontinued everyday.
Search engine ranking fall off the charts without warning.
The list goes on and on...
There are dozens upon dozens of variables that can affect your business and ultimately your profits that are unforeseen and totally out of your control. But if you focus your efforts on building a list in your niche then none of that matters.
