The Value of List Building From Your Blog

By Bruce · Thursday, August 19th, 2010

If you want to make money from your blog, whether you are operating a brick and mortar business or online marketing, you need to build your list as an ongoing goal. Without your list, your blog becomes a free information source with no return of value to you, businesswise.

Granted, you are still having a “conversation” with your audience, and they enjoy reading your content. But, without guiding your visitors with a “call to action” of either purchasing a product or service from you, the only other direction you should take is to keep the “conversation” going with an email newsletter that you can start with your customer list by way of the “opt in” box that leads to your list building.

The beauty of having a list is that you continue the “relationship” with your audience. Autoresponders, which are a program that enables you to pre-write emails, can keep your subsribers interested in what you have to say about you or your product and service. Yes, we get much too much email, but believe it or not, email marketing is still an effective way to keep communicating with your visitors because it comes from someone they already know…..which is you.

I often am asked about what to write in these emails in advance because most of the time you have to plan very far ahead to keep subscribers interested and engaged in your future offers. This is when you have to make an outline and plan out months in advance, where you want to lead your subscribers.

For instance, say you started your email campaign exactly one month before Valentine’s Day. The first email, of course, should focus on thanking the new subsriber. The next batch of emails should focus on valuable information such as tips and tricks from your business that makes life easier or able to solve a problem that the customer has. Still yet, the next batch of emails should focus on selling of one or two items that are either from your business, or a product from an affiliate that you represent. Rule of thumb is to sprinkle giving valuable content, selling items, and informing them of promotions or other reasons to visit your brick and mortar business.

Your list should be treated as “gold!”