mailing list

Johnny · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 26

is it actually possible to build a successful online business without a mailing list?

Rosalind Gardner · Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 1:48 pm Post subject: **Your mailing list is critical**

Hello Johnny,

While I suppose it is possible to build a successful business without a mailing list, that 'successful' business would be 100 times MORE successful WITH a list.

Think about this... Are you on anyone's mailing list? Are there newsletters that you look forward to receiving and enjoy reading? Is that because they share good information or are entertaining? Are you more likely to buy from those people because you trust them through that relationship?

If you've been online for any length of time, my guess is that the answer to all of those questions is 'yes' and should therefore be a good indicator of the incredible value a business person derives from building a list.

I personally consider my lists to be my most valuable business asset and I use Aweber's autoresponder service to build them.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,

Rosalind Gardner · Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2008 2:14 pm Post subject:

Johnny,

If you are hesitant to start a mailing list because it seems hard to do, then you might be interested to know that Aweber holds live webinars and training.

Honestly, I can't say enough good about those guys and their service. Been using them for 10 years and what few glitches I've run into, they've responded to right away.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Johnny · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 26

Actually my biggest issue is money (I'm a student and I'm completely broke Laughing

) followed by having to actually write the content. I take it that most marketers pay other people to write for most of their campaigns later on?

Lowell Rieger · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 10:14 am Post subject:

Johnny,

If you start with a blog, you can avoid the cost of an autoresponder by using FeedBurner's email subscription function. You can even use Feedburner with a blogger blogspot blog, so no cost at all to get started. For a lot of reasons I don't recommend this if you can afford web hosting, but if you just flat out don't have any money it's a way to start.

Feedburner is at http://feedburner.com - owned by Google so unlike some free rss to email providers they aren't going to disappear.

You are limited to sending ONLY the content of your blog posts, as it picks them up from your rss feed. It will send every post from the preceding 24 hours. For some that is enough. It is very limited but you are able to specify when broadcasts are sent and have limited subscriber management as well as subscriber export ability.

The default template is attractive (you can change look) and it works fine with clickable links and auto html or text delivery depending on recipient.

You can see an example of how the Feedburner optin box looks (customized a bit) on one of my mentoring student's sites -

http://getfitwithval.com

Already you can see that this is email address only, so another limitation is no personalizing with name. The only input is subscriber email.

Like Ros I prefer Aweber, but when you absolutely haven't got the funds FeedBurner is an option. I use it myself on some sites where I don't need a full blown autoresponder.

Lowell

Rosalind Gardner · Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:14 am Post subject:

Hi Johnny,

Take Lowell's advice re http://feedburner.com if you can't afford Aweber.. just yet.

As to having other people write autoresponder messages later on - sure, that's an option. However, if you really want to connect with your audience in the same way that you do through writing on your site, you'll want to write the first series of messages yourself.

Once again, more work involved, but less cash outlay.

Cheers,

Johnny · Joined: 17 Dec 2007 Posts: 26

Thanks for the advice, I'll give feedburner a try.

Also, about hosting (and I think Rosalind might wanna tell her list about it since it's very useful for beginners who don't want/have money to spend), there are a handful of places that offer free ad-free online hosting. I use x10hosting (and yes, you can put your own ads on the web site). You get 300mb of storage and 10k mb of bandwidth. The only catch is that you have to sign in to their forums every 2 weeks or your web site gets suspended (I actually went for 3 weeks until Lowell mentioned hosting and I went into turbopanic, but it looks like I got lucky because my web site's still unsuspended :p).