Landing pages usually don't sell anything, they do offer some free tool or videos or whatsoever for an email signup so you're most probably not talking about the same as we do here.

And you can only be "stolen" money if you gave permission to do so or have downloaded a trojan virus onto your PC so hackers got access to your bank account.

But overall you are correct that you should start with a content rich website to build trust with your visitors.

Point is that you can already at an early stage ask for their emails to give out even better content exclusively to your subscribers only which then are at your disposal so you can market to them and recommend good products - like WA for example.

Promoting WA to your website visitors only or additionally to your List is giving you a totally different conversion rate, meaning that you get about 4 times more sales WITH a list then without..

When you now think about your TRAFFIC generation, be it Article writing or video marketing or Pay per Click or WHAT SO EVER you know that it will cost you time or money to get them to visit your website, then you agree that you simply NEED a list to improve your conversion rate.

Or in other words - make the most out of your investment - what's a simple business rule.

Hope that made sense.

G.

Thanks for the nice words.

I would say YES due to the fact that you need to show off your "business" and have to look professional what almost needs a well done site with Landing page.

Technically spoken you don't as AWeber can host your signup form at their end and you get a URL you can send people to signup.

So in theory you could have a AWeber list form on their hosting and could drive traffic to it from free social sites like Facebook or G+ etc.

What most probably will happens is that your traffic will think that this as a bit strange what will lower your conversion rate.

Treat your list very well and give them what you promised and a bit more and not send them a promo email each and every day. But DO promote some from time to time so they are used to it, principally if it's a freebie list.

Hope that helped.

G.

Thanks, this does make a truck load of sense. I was thinking of a 7 day video course for free to offer them and great newsletter to keep them engaged.

you are right, just a little bait once in awhile and that will be more professional than amateur

I was thinking of also using the list to do survey on what they wanted so I could create a product geared towards their wishes

I am so looking forward to creating a genuine relationship with my subscribers and yap, it's going to take time and work but I am willing to give it my best

Will be asking you to check out my landing pages for a guidance through the process

Thanks
Margaret

Great, let me know when you are ready and I will take a look at it.

And for your subs, use videos, make audios they can download to a pen drive and listen in their cars, hand out PDF's etc....and do surveys

All what you do is worth it if it contains some value for them.

Just do It!

G.

Thanks Trialynn

Yes, that was really a good return for little work where the main message is in the point that I actually didn't planned to do any promotion at all - I wasn't aware of Black Friday.

So just because I had that list I was able to throw quickly something together and make a few bucks on top of the regular sales.

This to show the value of a list.

Otherwise, without that list, I would have the work to design a landing page explaining in details what the offer is all about and drive lots of paid traffic to it.

No way you can get lots of visitors in a short period without paying for them.

And to say this, that list is for Freebie Leads so it's not a Buyer list which respond even better to your offers.

G.

Thanks and absolutely a must if you want to get into setting up a online business to make money online.
G.

Shawn
I also started out from nowhere but something I got into early was listbuilding.

It's a bit like if you would meet people at a trade fair and no one would share business cards if you ain't use a optin form at your page.

So I highly recommend that you get into listbuilding at any stage.

Now, you can do this for free with Mail Chimp starter account but they don't like Affiliate Marketers. You should try out AWeber or Getresponse - I use AWeber since the start and had the luck to get the $20 bucks plan per month till 10k subscribers.

You can get a First month trial account for 1.- at AWeber here http://emaillistbuilding.aweber.com

Now, the part about me having a list of 3.5 k subs and my own product is most probably advanced for most, but if you stick to Internet Marketing, you will become a product owner sooner or later as that's where the money is.

IF you already have a list at that point, your own product launch will be way more successful.

So listbuilding in itself doesn't rely on having your own product, it's part (the essential one) of setting up a profitable business.

As affiliate, you do it by giving away great content for your subscribers in form of a Newsletter, a free PDF or what I love to do is taking PLR articles from the topic and recording videos which I narrate myself talking about tricks and tips people can benefot from - gives the most value for the subscribers.

You then drip feed that content to your subscribers what is all pre-set in your Autoresponder account. A continious relation between you and your subscribers build trust and they will become your buyers when you send them a promotional email from time to time.

What I did in the OP was sending out a Broadcast. That's not a scheduled email and is used to communicate some special events and stuff which is related to a specific date like Black Friday or Cyber Monday promos.

You can't have those in a Follow up email series as people would get a Black Friday email in the middle of the year. Therefor we use Broadcasting.

So again, I highly recommend that a marketer which decided to start to make money online use Listbuilding in his efforts.

You actually even don't need a website to run email campaigns as AWeber for instance is hosting your emails and optin forms at their Host. You get an URL to every email you like to send and can share it over Facebook and all other social sites.

Good luck.

G.

I hope that the reply above does explain your question, but to sum it up

Listbuilding is a marketing tool to fetch your visitors contact email and names over an optin form.

Once they signed up to your "list", a permanent flow of preset emails with helpful content will be send to the subscribers.

You also can send out a Broadcast to one or all lists about a special event - Maybe you made a Million Dollar in sales last week and want to tell that to your subscribers - send a Broadcast.

It makes sense to split the lists into niches you are working in AND level of relationship you have like Freebie, Buyer or Affiliate (and whatever you think make sense like "Team" or so) so you can target specific communication to specific groups of contacts.

Guess that explained it in detail.

It's IMO the second most important tool in IM after the website.

G.

Thank you!