Latest From Blogigs - Do You Need A Mailing List

Posted: 28 Jun 2010 06:53 PM PDT

What Is A Mailing List

A mailing list is a list of emails that you have built up using whatever methods in whatever places and with whatever price.

How Do People Build A Mailing List.

The most common way of course to stick a opt in form in your sidebar offering some freebies like ebooks in exchange for the email. Even though it is always stated very elegantly that they want to help others ‘increase traffic’, increase income’ or ‘make more money’ by giving you the free ebook, they are actually baiting you to hand over your email address. In cruder terms, they are just harvesting for emails.

Then there are also those who lures you to a page and try to ‘squeeze’ your email out of you with videos and all. All of them are very good showmen and top notch presenters who can talk non stop about lots of things but in the end say nothing. They will get you so phyco-ed up that you just can’t help it but give them your email willingly.

Why Do They Want My Email?

So that they can bombard you with sales letters of every products that crosses their hands. Be it selling an affiliate product or some products they have launched or produced themselves. Some who has a humongous lists will also get paid by other marketers to send out sales letters on their behalf as their own list is not huge enough to make much sales.

For many marketers, they let no opportunity of making a sale go to waste. The first salvo will be fired immediately when you download the free ebook they are giving away. There will be tons of affiliate links in the ebook. So in exchange for one email, they get two advantages in return. One, they add another email into their list and two, they might also get some sales or sign up from those affiliate links.

Does That Work?

Remember why they say, “The Money Is In The List”? Yes it does. If they have thousands of emails in their list, they have a good chance of making some good sales. A conversion rate of just 1 to 3 percent will make them a decent income form each mailing session. Serious email marketers have tens of thousand names in their email list.

What about Newsletters

It is a slightly superior form of email harvesting but the end motive is still the same. They want to sell you something. Only difference is newsletters sounds more friendly and they do give you some tips or articles before swerving gently into their sales pitch without you knowing it. They don’t hard sell like conventional Internet Marketers. They portray friendliness first.

Newsletters are considered the Web 2 way of Internet Marketing. Socialize, make friends, gain trust.

Then slowly bleed those whom have started to trust them to death but in return, will thank them for it.

Okay, okay that was a bit harsh, they don’t bleed you to death, they just scrap off your flesh little by little so you do not even feel the pain.

Is There Any Other Use For A Mailing List?

feeling happy with a huge mailing list

Not that I can think of. Or maybe my imagination is not as fertile as others.

Some ‘blog gurus’ have added the tip ‘build a mailing list’ as one of their tips to increase traffic. It seems that every time you update a post, you should send out a note to all those in your mailing list. Then you will see an increase in traffic when all those in your list comes to read your latest post.

Believe them if you want, but personally I think that is quite a stupid idea. I might as well use that effort to increase my RSS feed readers. At least then, I can insert some Ads in the feeds.

There are some Marketers who does this though. Sending emails to notify people in their list to go read their latest post, but then all the posts in their so-called ‘blog’ are indirectly selling something. Not just normal blog post.

Do You Need A Mailing List?

A YES if you aspire to be a successful Internet Marketer. Without a list, you will not go far. SEO can only do so much for your traffic. PPC Ads cost money that you might not recoup. A huge mailing list is the best option. It’s low cost as you only pay for the monthly auto-responder fees. You have a big pool of ready traffic that could instantly hit your landing sales page the minute your emails are sent out.

A NO if you are trying to increase traffic to your blog.

Mailing list are only for those who has a product or products to sell. The only purpose of building a mailing list is to gather up a vast pool of ready customers. Like all Internet Marketing strategies, it is a numbers game. The larger your pool the better your chances of making sales. Out of the 10,000 emails you have collected, more than half will be phantom emails used by those just to lay hands on the freebies. They are seldom interested in products that will cost them money. But that would still leave you a few thousand potential customers.

Don’t go imagining that since you see most A listers have an opt-in form in their blog to harvest email, you too should have one. I can tell you for sure that they won’t be using their valued email list to tell all those there that they have a new post today and invite them to come read their post. That would be very stupid of them and it would be very stupid of you too if you do that.

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