Following on from my last post, if you've finally made the decision to build a list, then regardless of whether you’re brand new at any kind of online venture or a seasoned professional, you are most certainly on the right track to earning a decent income.

Email marketing has been around since the dawn of the internet and for very good reason, it works! Learning how to build a list is also very easy to do… when you know how of course! It’s also relatively easy to build a large list, with the right tools such as WordPress, and some decent landing page software such as James Dysons' Optimizepress for example.

In fact to build a list really isn't the problem at all. The problem the vast majority of online entrepreneurs’ face in an ever competitive industry is learning how to build a list that’s responsive.

So where exactly do you start?

To build a list that’s highly responsive you always, and I mean always have to consider two things from the outset:

1. The quantity/frequency of emails you’re sending out.

2. The actual quality of those emails.

Build a list and send out too often and you will of course start hitting spam filters (providing your subscribers haven’t put you there already!) If you don’t send out often enough then they’ll quickly forget who you are, let alone the fact that they signed up to your list in the first place.

So what’s the ideal?

Ideally you want to be sending out to your list no more than 2-3 times per week if you want consistent open rates. It’s always to be expected that a number of subscribers will unsubscribe anyway over time, regardless of how good you are at maintaining your list. However to reduce the amount of unsubscribes and to build a list that’s highly responsive, it’s the quality that’s the undisputed king.

If you consistently send out 2-3 line emails hammering your subscribers with offers, it’s not just a lazy numbers game you’re playing, but your unsubscribes will also go through the roof as you slowly burn through your list! If you've ever signed up to a list like that, you’ll know exactly what I mean. However if you take the time to build a list and most importantly build a relationship with your list by providing a good combination of quality offers and useful information, then those subscribers will in turn reward you not only by staying on your list, opening your emails regularly, and trusting you with their hard earned cash, but most importantly of all by doing all of these things again and again.

One man that’s been building trust consistently with his subscribers for almost 10 years now is online legend Tim Lowe. Tim has subscribers on his list and still buying I might add, from when he first started out all those years ago. To sign-up to Tim’s list and discover for yourself how a master of list building builds a list of quality over quantity then take a look at how to build a list the right way, right here.

Paul Graham

Paul Graham Blog.com