Getting traffic to your list is obviously critical but you now have a secret weapon. Your list itself! Or at least, what you created to tempt people to sign up to your list.

You now have a bonus!

It doesn’t matter whether you have created just a simple tip sheet or a full 5 week course. You now have, in effect, a mini-product of your own!

Using a Broadcast messages is a powerful way to quickly get a message out to your list. If something topical or if a special offer comes up relating to your niche…use a broadcast!

Broadcast messages are ‘one off’ messages. They are not part of your mail message follow-up series and can be sent out at any time to all or just part of your list.

Your mail message series is what list building is all about. You must build a relationship with your list by providing value but there’s more to it than that…

Let’s start with your first mail. This one should be fairly easy. A simple welcome message that includes your bonus (the one you created to get people to opt-in in the first place) and a thank you for signing up. And that’s it! I wouldn’t put any links or sales pitches in this mail at all.

Gave away free tips or a free guide to get people to opt-in to your list. It’s that simple!

It is crucial for you to offer your potential customers an incentive for them to opt-in to your list. This is taken as read in the IM niche and IMers are almost immune to it. Nonetheless you pretty much have to do it.

I thought I’d ‘interrupt’ the ‘List Building‘ series of posts and briefly talk about the mental rather than the mechanical aspects.

With hindsight I probably should have done this post first, although I did touch upon it in the introductory post.

It occurs to me that a lot of people have something of a mental block when it comes to list building. So, what I want to do on this post is help you over that hurdle, or at least open the matter for discussion.

Ya know, I was getting all tongue-tied and twisted with this one, a touch of writer’s block even. Unlike me! LOL!

Thing is, I was gonna start putting up screen shots of how you set up a list and an opt-in form using Aweber… the usual thing you see.

We talked about why you should be building a list in your niche on this post. Now, let’s start to deal with the mechanics.

Over the next few days we’ll give you a step by step guide on how should set everything up from the word go!

Firstly though, let’s be clear you cannot build and manage a list of subscribers without automation. It is simply not feasible to handle a mailing list in the same way you would correspondence between 2 or 3 people.

OK, I know from hanging out in Wealthy Affiliate and I know from the Reaper Lens on List Building that less than half the people who attempt Internet Marketing are actually building a list of potential customers.

This is a big mistake! Perhaps, understandable but a mistake nonetheless.

Why? Because when you build a list of potential customers you are gaining multiple repeat opportunities to sell to those customers. Provided you do it right.

Here’s a topic that will strike a chord with anyone who’s actually building a list (and that should be all of you BTW).

(You can get some free tips on List Building on the relevant Reaper lens here.)

Anyway,  it’s been raised quite a bit recently and is something that a most Internet Marketers don’t like discussing. Because it’s a bit negative… it can be a bit unpleasant… it can be downright destructive… if you let it be.

The Reaper Rips yet again!

I’ve just added the third of my FREE Tutorial Lenses over at Squidoo. It’s on ‘List Building‘ and you can check it out here:-

Niche List Building Tips | Niche Reaper Lenses

Head on over there and let me know what you think, get voting, join in the debates…