I’ve been asked Why build a list? about 100 times. It’s a question that is asked by people new to internet marketing and it deserves a simple answer.

The very short and simple answer is that a list means you’ve got traffic and customers. At a minimum, you have potential traffic and potential customers.

Consider this. If I have a list of 5,000 people interested in pet products then I have list of 5,000 who might buy something from me if I send them an email.

Once someone is on your list you can send them messages. You can build a relationship. You can build trust. You can establish a rapport with hundreds or thousands of people.

All businesses need these relationships to ensure long term success. But, online businesses need even more love and attention. They need more tools for building trust. There is great skepticism online and having a list can save you.

Let me give you another perspective. This is very real; very tangible.

Just 2 days ago I bought the rights to a great video series on getting top ranking in Google for less than 1 hour of work; One Hour Google. (Highly recommended, by the way.)

I spent no more than two hours getting the videos set up. I made some quick changes to the graphics and content. I also set up a payment link and some other things. This was very easy for me to do. (If you’re curious about all that magic don’t miss PLR Exploitation. I explain all of this in great detail.)

In any event, I set up everything quickly but then I had to take the next action:

DRIVING TRAFFIC

Now, most people would use pay-per-click (PPC), article marketing, blogging, and other techniques. That makes a lot of sense. These techniques are not “fly by night” — they are legitimate. They work.

But, I decided to be a little bit lazy. What I did was craft a quick note. I added that note to my autoresponder. Thousands of people are now learning about One Hour Google. I provided a little background about it and pointed my list in the right direction.

Now you know the power of list building. It’s something that you must do if you want to succeed in the long term. Get going right now. You’ll be glad you did.

I have a site that has a PageRank of 6. Google loves my site. I’m ranked for an incredible number of keywords. Many of which I don’t even know.

It has over 500 pages of content. (Maybe more?) It’s awesome content. Nearly 100% original and added over the years, naturally and with great care. Much of the content is linkbait. I have thousands and thousands of incoming links.

The domain is over (gasp!) 10 years old. Yes, it’s been around since 1998. It’s a 7 letter domain, which is a bit long considering the age, but it’s good. Is it SEO’ed or otherwise optimized? Not really.

There’s more too…

This is one of the very first blogs on the internet. Seriously, this was absolutely on of the first 10K blogs out there. I would even place a small wager that it’s one of the first 1,000 blogs.

When it started the site was 100% static. Then, I started to manually update it with news. It
became a manual blog (FTP uploads of HTML). That was it; 100% old school.

Now, at first, it was a labor of love. I just had a web site because I could. It seemed like a smart thing to do.

Then, over time, people started to call me. They emailed me. And, I landed some huge contracts as a consultant in this (extremely competitive) niche. That was back in 1999 through 2001. That was a monetization model that simply fell into my lap. No effort!

I even had a list of 8,000 hungry subscribers. I sent out more than 80 newsletters over a 3-4 year period and I drove substantial traffic. (Thelist size is about 500 now.)

All of this sounds FANTASTIC, doesn’t it?

Well, it becomes a sad story with a great ending. You see, for many years (on and off) I would update the site. But, not enough to keep it growing. Although it still pulls substantial traffic, it hasn’t grown.

Furthermore, the site wasn’t properly monetized. I did very little with Adsense and nothing with any products or services. Well, next to nothing. I did some things but it was feeble. Not much cash flowed in, which just encouraged me to stay away and focus on other things.

Now, however, I am ready to strike. I realize that I was blind to business opportunities with the site. I know more about how to market and sell products to my site visitors. More importantly, I know how to add more value and deliver more value to my readers and customers.

The best news is that I realized that I have a super high quality asset. It’s time to leverage that asset and generate some money. It’s also time to help more people through that site. It’s time to strike.

Recommended Reading

• One Million Dollars?
• Meta Tag Description SEO Secrets
• How to Create a Membership Web Site

Kevin Smithurst has an incredible story about the Simple Cash Blog that I want to share with you. I’ve invited Kev to be a guest blogger on IMsimple.com — This is something that everyone will enjoy.

~ John

– — – — –

Up until a few months ago i was just a regular guy with a regular 9-5 job and running the rat race day in and day out with no real direction in my life.

I have always been a “computer geek”, most of my spare time was spent sat in front of the computer. I came across Internet marketing and quickly realised there was a whole lot more to life than working my butt of every day and earning just enough money to live.

As with most people who are new to Internet marketing i would buy just about anything i saw that promised to make me $xx in xx days. I built up quite a collection over my first few weeks online.

This was a big mistake!

I would buy a report or an ebook, read it, absorb everything in it and go of and start a new project to implement these new ground breaking tactics.

Then…

Another great ebook or report would be released, everyone would jump on the bandwagon and i would follow. And again i would start a new project for this method.

Can you guess what happened after a couple of weeks?

I ended up with masses of information, several projects that i had started and not finished, and i hadn’t made a single dollar online.

I didn’t know where to turn next. I was totally confused as to which direction i should go in, there was so many different options. When it comes to making decisions like this i’m totally useless, i just wanted someone to tell me what i should do and which direction i should go in.

I decided to find someone who was already successful and use them as my guide if you like. There were a couple of reports i had purchased from the warrior forum special offers which stuck in my mind for one reason and another, and the authors were John and Matt Rhodes.

While doing some digging on “The Rhodes Brothers” in google i came across “The simple cash blog“. One of the Rhodes brothers flagship memberships. Having already purchased their other reports i had to get in on this one too. I was already a big fan of their work so i knew if anyone could help me make it online it was these guys.

After signing up i gained access to the private members area within minutes. You only have to scan the first page to realise just how much they have packed into this site. Its difficult to describe just how much value there is in here, to say they over-deliver is an under statement. After browsing the main members area like a kid in a sweet shop for a good few hours i decided to take a look at the Simple Cash Blog forums.

Now let me tell you, this is far from what you expect from a small forum hidden away in a members area. This forum was alive and kicking to say the least, over six hundred members posting nothing but valuable content daily, this was just the icing on the cake for what i can only describe as the best investment i have made to date!

A lot of sales letters for Internet marketing products are full of hype and BS, to be honest. Let me tell you now, EVERYTHING you read on the simple cash blog sales page is 110% spot on. When it says you will be making money fast, that is exactly what it means.

If you are like i was several months ago, overloaded with information, pulled in one hundred and one different directions and no idea what great “way to make money online” method to chase next then i strongly urge you to stop what you are doing right now, and head on over to the simple cash blog. I promise you will never look back, i haven’t!

Kevin Smithurst
How to Make Extra Money Online
how-to-make-extra-money-online.com

These extensive notes are based on FreeBusinessModel.com — Where you’ll find a 100% free video on setting up an autoresponder membership. There are no strings attached. We’ll ask for your name and email only if you want to learn more advanced internet marketing techniques. (I promise.)

Quick Introduction 

Setting up an autoresponder membership web site is easy if you are familiar with common internet marketing tools and techniques. If you’re not, then you might need to invest some time to gain the required technical knowledge. Here, you’ll learn the process of combining an autoresponder with PayPal to create a membership web site.

What You’ll Need

* An autoresponder delivery service (Recommended: AWeber)
* A hosting provider for your sales page (Recommended: BlueHost)
* A PayPal account

How to Set Up and Run Your Autoresponder Membership

There are 8 steps to setting up and running an autoresponder membership:

1. Obtain content (private label rights) or create your own
2. Fill up an autoresponder with content with regular delivery planned
3. Set up a sales page to sell access to the autoresponder content
4. Create a PayPal subscription button
5. Place the PayPal button on the sales page
6. Drive traffic to the sales page (See: 31 Ways to Drive Traffic)
7. When a customer subscribes redirect them to an opt-in page
8. Deliver regular emails to customer via autoresponder

Step 1: You need content for your autoresponder. This is what will be delivered to customers by email. This could be on any topic in any niche. For example, you could regularly deliver information on “herbal medicine” to customers. This content could be private label rights (PLR) material you acquired or it could just be your own content.

Step 2: Using the PLR or your own fresh content, you’ll load up the autoresponder. This is what people are paying for on a regular basis — great content by email.

Step 3: You’ll need a sales page for your autoresponder membership site. If you’re delivering “herbal medicine” content, then your sales page will be about that topic and the benefits of getting emails on a regular basis, e.g., pre-sifted information, direct delivery of content, and easy access via email.

Step 4: You’ll head to PayPal and create a subscription payment button. Creating a PayPal button for subscriptions is relatively easy although it might take some time to navigate through PayPal the first time. The PayPal subscription button is very much like a normal PayPal button; when the customer pays they can be redirected to a web page of your choosing.

Step 5: Place your PayPal subscription button on the sales page your created. Again, when the customer pays, they’ll be sent to a pre-determined landing page. (Described in Step 7.)

Step 6: Drive traffic to your autoresponder membership site. You can use a variety of traffic techniques such as Google Pay-Per-Click or posting to blogs. (Recommended: Fast and Simple Web 2.0 Traffic System)

Step 7: When a customer pays by Paypal, you’ll redirect them to an opt-in page you set up via your autoresponder service, such as AWeber. This opt in page, hosted on your web server, is how you’ll capture email addresses and names of customers. This is how you will know where to send customers their emails. Remember, this is absolutely not spam since they just paid for this content and they are asking to get your emails on a regular basis.

Step 8: Deliver the promised content via your autoresponder. This is almost always handled automatically by your autoresponder. However, you could exert manual control over the delivery by using a broadcast to your members versus pre-determined delivery.

Additional Tips

First, take time to plan out the entire membership before taking action. Make sure that you have a good niche and solid content to work with.

Second, be sure that you have a well-designed and well-written sales page. Some people don’t fully understand “autoresponder memberships” so make the concept very clear. In essence, and autoresponder membership is a way for customers to get smart, trusted emails for a fair price.

Third, The Marketing Minesweeper is an exmaple of an autoresponder membership web site, if you are looking for one. Consider modeling your sales page after The Marketing Minesweeper, at least in terms of how the content is provided to members.

Fourth, if you need PLR content consider The Simple PLR Club. It’s a membership run by the Rhodes Brothers and it offers 3 full reports and sales letters every single month for one low price.

Getting rich is simpler than you might think. The formula is well known.

1. Get a job
2. Start saving money
3. Wait 40 years

At the end of step 3 you’ll be rich. You’ll have hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the magic of compounding. 

To make the formula clear, you need regular income, some discipline and time. Keep making money, set it aside on a regular basis, and wait for a long time. In the end, you’ll be rich. You’ll have hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions.

There are three reasons this works. First, you get compounding. That is, you make money on money due to reinvested gains coming from capital growth and dividends.

Next, you have dollar cost averaging in your favor if you regularly invest. If you regularly drop money into a 401K, for example, you’ll buy more shares at a lower price and fewer shares when the price is higher.

And finally, there is risk reduction. Since you’re investing over time, you’re likely to win over the long haul. The stock market has provided 8-10% gains on average over the years.

This sounds pretty good…

But hold on, who wants to get rich fast? Who wants Hot Damn Wealth? You know – lots of money in your hand, right now. The answer is easy: Everyone wants hot damn wealth!

One way to make money is to compress massive effort and brainpower into just a few short years. Typically this occurs by creating a startup business. What you do is work 80-100 hours per week, create something wonderful that everyone wants, then either go public or be bought out.

This sounds pretty good. But, there are two problems. First, you need real technical skill or business skill. You need to be able to actually create something unique and new and jazzy. That’s no small deal. And second, you have to compress years of your life into 2-3 years. That means burning up 2-3 years of your life – it’s a sacrifice that you must accept.

So, the start up route to wealth is not going to appeal to work at home mothers. It’s not going to work for people with 2-3 kids and a mortgage and college expenses. Basically, life gets in the way. Consider also that most start ups revolve around start up hubs, like Silicon Valley.

I will say that going the start up route is interesting and exciting. But, there is high risk. On average about 90% of start ups fail. That means that you have a 1 in 10 chance of getting rich fast. For some people – think youth – these are great odds. Plus you get experience. But, for many other people, the start up path is not viable.

So, how can you get Hot Damn Wealth?

The answer is starting your own small business. You can still work for a big ape company and fill up your 401K and grab health care along the way. No problem with that. But, you start something on the side — apply a little elbow great and booststrap as much as you can.

When you start your own little business on the side, you get these benefits:

1. Reasonably low risk since you can fall back on your big company job
2. You can test the waters, meaning you can see if “real business” is for you
3. You can rapidly master a small niche and go large on your own schedule
4. Costs to start a small business, especially online, are reduced

There are many other reasons. The key is that you can create a business, give it a try, then see if you can get rich quickly. It is possible. And, even with a high failure rate, you can be safe.

Now, here’s another piece of the puzzle. You should probably investigate internet marketing, meaning the tools and techniques for marketing online. If you master online marketing techniques, two things happen:

1. Your chances of failure go down
2. Your opportunities increase

Mastering online marketing is more important to building wealth online, in many ways, than the actual topic or niche you’re working on. If you’re missing the point, consider that you can use proven business systems in any niche to achieve Hot Damn Wealth. How you make money (systems, techniques, approach) is more important than the actual topic or type of business you’re running.

Here’s a great example: Watch these Free Business Model videos. In the first video, you’ll learn all about autoresponder memberships. If you’re scratching your head, that’s fine. The video explains it all.

My point is that there are many proven business systems, just as you can see with the Free Business Model videos. You can achieve radical wealth online in virtually any niche if you understand the models. This is true in thousand of niches. Risk is reduced significantly, with the right models.

What else?

• You don’t need much money. 
• You don’t need venture capital.
• You don’t need fancy equipment.

You don’t need much at all except determination and some knowledge. You’re not tied to a dead end job to achieve wealth over 40 years of your life, and you’re not heads down for 2-3 years straight, destroying your health with poor odds of success.

There will always be room for smart marketing online. Hot Damn Wealth is possible. Once again, if you need a place to start, so you can wrap your mind around the possibilities, consider the zero cost Free Business Model videos.