Create a solid business by building a list

Everywhere you go to get information on building an internet marketing business, the most often repeated statement you will hear is "The Money is in the List." And you will also find a lot of different ways to build your list. The first thing that you have to understand is that you MUST have a list. If you don't, you are going to struggle to build your business.

One way to create and build a list is to offer a free e-course or book in a niche that people will be interested in. But having a great offer does you no good if you are not able to get people to see it. One place that I've found to have people look at your offer is on social networking sites like myspace. They kind of act like a first line filter for your prospects. You have to have a list of friends and groups to make posts to. To get friends on your list, you just have to ask to be added. This is fairly easy, you can just click on browse and then click on the profiles and click add to friends. Probably about 60% of those you request will accept you as a friend. This will build your friend list and eventually the number of people who see your bulletins.

While building your friend list manually is the only way recommended by MySpace, there are software programs that will automate the process. Programs like Friendblaster Pro automate the process and make things go a lot faster. It's a program that you can get for free and it automates thing so that the mundane tasks can be taken care of while you spend your time on more important things. You must be careful when using these programs as they may be contrary to MySpace policies.

Once you have a list of friends built up, you can post bulletins informing your "friends" of your niche and what you are offering. Then you have to have them go through an opt-in process, signing up for your list in order to get the freebie. You should use an auto-responder to manage your list at this point.

An auto-responder is a program or service that takes your subscribers information and keeps it in a database for you. The auto-responder then will send out e-mails which you preprogram out to your list when you specify. These are another part of automating the repetitious tasks of your business. They are also a great way to increase the contact you have with your subscribers. The more you have regular contact with your subscribers, the more your list will trust and have confidence in what you are presenting them with.