A few days ago I wrote about the 6 most common list building mistakes that I’ve seen over and over again both new and experienced internet marketers make…and yes, I’ve made some of them myself too, BUT…there’s one more that I didn’t mention.
In a conversation with someone who wanted consulting earlier today we discussed taking an early step toward gaining a web presence in their market and begin to build a list, but that’s where things went a little sour.
This person who claimed to be "serious" about their online business persistantly told me they wanted a free or extremely low cost autoresponder service to get their email marketing and list building campaign off the ground.
I advised against taking the free or extremely cheap route out…it was based purely on my own experiences having had to change autoresponders after building a list of close to 20,000 red-hot subscribers in one niche market – painful to say the least.
In fact, it was SO painful, I had to abandon tranfsferring those loyal, terrific subscribers to a new system when my old autoresponder went out of business and instead convince them to re-sign up on a new list.
Certainly, many did, but I still lost close to 40% of my list – a list I had poured 4-years into building publishing content week after week to earn their trust and have them maintain their subscription.
So, when I advised our good friend to not skimp on his autoresponder service and instead stay professional, yet affordable, I was speaking based on 1st-hand experience.
The service I recommended was this autoresponder service – I’ve used them for over 4-years now, operate dozens of lists with 10s of thousands of subscribers and haven’t had ANY issues. Even better, they are only $20/month when starting out – not exactly breaking the bank.
Let’s face it, when you start your online business, you must know that you will need to invest a couple hundred dollars in the beginning to get things rolling – the attraction, of course, is that it’s only a couple hundred and profits can come very quickly and rise VERY high.
So, let me add to my six mistakes of list building by suggesting that anyone not willing to spend $20/month for a professional list-building service like Aweber, is not serious about their business and is highly unlikely to have the right attitude to make their business work.
Needless to say, that was the end of our call…I’m just hoping our good friend re-thinks his goals and strategy to think bigger about his business, then we can work together to get there.
Jeff
