I laugh every time that I open my email inbox and find a ton of emails waiting for me. I reluctantly click most of them over to spam in hopes that they won’t make it back into my inbox again.
I had been working a lot on list building and had even thought about paying an online company to build my list for me. If you are anything like me, you really don’t want to dish your money out to someone that is probably already rich, this is your mission, after all, to make it into the big bad world of working from home and doing it right.
Why would anyone want to pay for something that they can get for free? I kept asking myself this question and I finally decided to go at it alone and to build my list from friends that I had met online.
I have a great mind when it comes to getting out of paying for something. This doesn’t mean that I am cheap, it just means that I know the value of money and what it cost to survive.
I came up with this plan about a week ago and I made sure that it worked before spreading my cheer across the Internet, God forbid it end up indexed on Google as false information. I had to make sure that I had taken care of everything, and I wanted a list of at least fifty people before telling others about this.
The plan is simple but if you are like most people, including me, it hurts your brain to think and therefore you search for information like this so that you can learn the information without having to rack your skull about it.
The idea came to me after I received an email from someone that I didn’t know. It was not a company or anything like that, it was a friendly letter asking me if I minded if they sent me some information from there blog. I told them that I didn’t mind as long as they gave me an option to opt out of mailings at any given time. They said that they would and I asked how they got my email address. I was shocked to find out that it was because I clicked on their blog at one time or another.
Now, keep in mind that you will not always get their email address and that sometimes you may be able to send a message through places like Myspace.com. When you send a message at Myspace.com, you don’t get to send the email to their personal email address but at least you still get to send them something and I will tell you how you can get their attention to add them to your mailing list.
I also subscribed to be a member at mybloglog.com. This is such a great place to start. I started getting people to add me as their friends and contacts, once they did this, I asked them if they would like to be added to my mailing list. I explained what my mailing list was and also told them that if they had one,they could add me to theirs.
I also started writing down email addresses of people that had sent me mail, these were not companies but actual people who was sending out information. I wrote them a letter that had my blog included in it. The letter explained who I am and what I do, it was simple and yet very informative.
The idea to writing a letter is to not make it long. You don’t want to bore them to death or cause them to get tired of reading. I usually make my letters about four paragraphs long and I always add my blog into it with my contact information. This will give it more of a home feeling and they will feel more at ease with giving you permission to send them emails.
If they like what they read in your updates, then send them another letter letting them know that they can subscribe to your blog for free and receive better updates. This will get a lot of people to subscribe to your blog.
A lot of people don’t think that traffic exchange sites work, but they do to an extent. I use some of them and even though it helps me to get unnecessary traffic, it has also helped me to get more frequent visitors to keep coming back which is creating a way for me to build my list. Be aware though, some amortization sites will not allow you to use traffic exchanges so make sure to check this out before doing it.
Forums are a great place to get emails addresses for your list building. You should always get to know people before you bluntly ask them if they want to receive emails. I always wait until they get to know me and then I invite them to view some of my work, if they like it then they will usually be interested in learning more from you and therefore it will create an opportunity for you.
