List building strategies that will help you build a list that grows between 5,000 to 10,000 new subscribers each year can mean the difference between a struggling, part-time online hobby and a full-time online business that replaces your current paycheck. 

Does this sound familiar?  When I first started out I posted some articles and posted in forums pitching an affiliate product – and yes, I made a few sales, enough to know that this was a legitimate way to make money online, but certainly a long way away from making a living online.

Then, I put my first website up and wrote content like MAD, posted my first infoproduct and did pretty well – converted about 2% of my visitors into sales leading to a pretty nice cashflow each week – but I didn’t realize what money I was leaving on the table until 6-months or so later when I first started building and marketing to my list.   

Even those of us who do clue in and see the throngs of top online marketers who earn a living from lists of 10,000 or 15,000 hot prospects in almost any niche imagineable often miss the boat by simply putting up an opt-in form and settling for a few dozen prospects who join each month when that number could be more in the high hundreds.

What’s the difference between getting a few signups everday and those who get hundreds?

What list building strategies will turn a few opt-in’s each day into 10’s, then 100’s? 

Here are 3 fundamental list building strategies that will make a massive difference to your subscriber list size and profit.

First, before you do anything – go over and watch this free video on how to surgically extract precise topics from your niche market that will hit a nerve, this was such an important lesson for me when I was starting out – it made an incredible difference in my response rates and profits…

Watch "Niche Finder – Magic Formula"  , then come back and apply these list building power strategies.

1. Do you really know who your subscribers are?  Let me ask you this, if you don’t have a crystal clear picture of who is coming to your site, what they were thinking when they arrived and what they are looking for…how can we possibly expect to catch their attention and convince them to submit their contact information to someone they don’t even know?

Try this, put yourself in the role of your "typical" prospect – arrive at your site imagining that you are looking for information about your topic – is there anything that really stands out and screams – let me have that right now!

If there’s not, then the chances of you getting that visitor to sign-up to your list is slight to none. 

If you were reading closely, you’ll notice that the emotion you need to invoke from your visitors to produce powerful list building results is ‘let me have that right now!"  But…

How do you get that response unless you know these important things:

• Who is your prospect – age, gender, stage in life?
• What are their dreams, goals and irrational desires?
• What do they desparately want…but do not yet have?
• What is standing in their way?

Hold On!

This is where most of us begin to judge our prospects too harshly.  It’s where we say that the woman who is 50lbs overweight and has tried every diet under the sun is NEVER going to lose that weight  – what can I offer to her that she hasn’t already seen and why would she consider ANYTHING else?

But…has that woman lost her desire to be thinner?  Don’t you believe that she still has a strong desire to lose weight, even if YOU feel that is impossible?

Here’s a harsh reality – what you believe doesn’t MATTER!

It’s what your prospect believes and wants that is most important.

So, suspend your disbelief, go ahead and discover what they believe, what they want and what they feel stands in their way.

Now that you know what they want – it becomes a simple exercise of putting information in their way.  

That’s right, it’s no fun trying to convince people they need to buy something – it’s much MORE fun putting information in their way and watching your list building strategy take flight.

2. Now You’re Ready To Drive Traffic

Once you have a good incentive, you can generate traffic in many ways such as forums, free content ranked by SE’s such as articles, videos and paid traffic through PPC and other forms of advertising. 

Putting traffic generation as your second concern behind giving your visitors a reason to opt-in will ensure your time and money spent driving traffic is a wise investment.

No sense chasing after the traffic though until you have a good understanding of what your market wants and a well-matched incentive to convert them once they arrive. 

3. Working Your List

You have major objectives when you begin to build a substantial list of at least a few hundred subscribers…

• Give ongoing value…this could mean more content, saving them time by giving them top resources, sharing your experiences, letting them know you understand and are helping them achieve their end goal
• Create a relationship – this is done through giving value, talking WITH your audience instead of talking TO them, building your brand and credibility through proving that your information works.  If you notice most companies and many entrepreneurs choose to speak above or AT their marketplace instead of speaking as one of them who has ‘figured it all out’
• Have them tell others about you.  One of the key ways your list building can really take off – from dozens of signups each day to 5X that number is when others share word-of-mouth positive feedback about your value.  

Not one of these 3 steps for list building is complicated, anyone can accomplish the task of building a powerful, responsive, loyal list – but it does take paying attention and constant improvement on each of these 3 strategies to place your list building into overdrive.

What will you do to improve your list building results?