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  “I don’t have any college savings plan at all, because I’ve got a list.”

  She stared at me blankly, completely confused, which didn’t surprise me. After all, it was something of a smart-ass remark. But I had answered truthfully. I wasn’t worried about tuition bills, because I knew I had something far more valuable than a college savings plan. What I had was almost the equivalent of a license to “print” money whenever I needed it. I had an email list of clients and prospects, and that list gave me the ability to create income on demand. Of course, there will always be work involved, but the bottom line is that having an email list is the closest thing you can have to a printing press that will print money for you.

  Would you like to have that ability to create income on demand? That’s what this chapter is all about.

  Let me give you a real-world example from my life. When my wife and I decided to move out of the Denver area, the timing wasn’t ideal. My business was just starting to really take off, and Mary had just recently quit her job to be home with the kids. We wanted to move to the mountains, specifically to Durango, a beautiful town in southwest Colorado. However, we thought we would take some time before we made the move; we wanted to adjust to Mary being home. And we were still a little nervous about my business being the sole source of income for the family.

  But you know what they say about the best laid plans. Just a couple of months after Mary left her job, we took a weekend trip down to Durango and found the home we wanted to live in. It was our dream home in a dream community. And it was available immediately, and we knew it wouldn’t stay on the market very long.

  The problem was timing. We weren’t quite ready to move 300 miles across the state. For one thing, we wanted the kids to finish out the school year in their current school. Secondly, we would have to buy the home in Durango several months before we sold our home in Denver. To do that, I needed a bunch of money quickly—something like an extra $70,000—for the down payment on the new home.

  Now at that point a lot of people would start thinking about borrowing money, either from a bank or possibly from a friend or family member. But that isn’t what I was thinking. My first thought was “What type of offer can I make to my email list to raise that kind of money quickly?”

  That’s the power of the list. It means that you have the ability to create a big payday on demand. And that’s exactly what I did. I looked at all the interactions and feedback I’d had with my list, and I sat down and mapped out an offer that I knew the people on my email list would want. I also made sure it was a product that I could create quickly and easily. And then I put together a launch for that product.

  That’s the backstory behind my first six-figure launch—the first “six in seven” that I mentioned in Chapter 1. The result of that launch was that I did $106,000 in a single week, and of that about $103,000 was profit. And just that quickly I had my down payment for my house.

  That’s the power of the list (and, of course, a well-orchestrated Product Launch Formula-style promotion).

  But again, I’m not some magician. I don’t have any superpowers. I put in the effort to create that email list—and you can do the same thing. Think about what it would be like to have that kind of an asset in your business and your life. Think about how it would literally transform every aspect of your life.

  That’s what this chapter is about—building the kind of responsive email list that gives you tremendous power in your life.

  The Golden Strategy

  List building is one of the core strategies I always focus on in every business I own.

  If you take NOTHING else from this book but an obsessive focus on building your list of clients and prospects, this book will still be worth 10,000 times what you paid for it.

  So what exactly am I talking about when I say “list”? This is really simple—it’s a list of people who have asked to subscribe to your emails. Typically, you have an “opt-in” form on your site, and people can enter their email address in that form to subscribe to your email list.

  Of course, you have to give people a reason to subscribe. It might be to receive a newsletter or get daily updates or learn about daily special deals or find out about new content. But no matter what the promise is, that is the reason they are joining your email list.

  For example, I’m an avid skier, so in the winter I get daily snow updates from two ski areas near me. Every morning I receive a short email from each that tells me whether they got any new snow overnight. I’m also a guitar player, so I’m on a couple of lists where I get notices of new guitar tutorials. And I use a Mac, so I’m on a list that sends me updates about new Mac software. Those are just a few examples, but I’m on lots of other email lists. I’m sure you’re on several as well.

  And make no mistake—once you start to build an email list for your business, you’ve taken a huge step toward controlling your own financial destiny. Of course, this is true no matter what type of business you’re in. Your list or database of prospects and loyal clients is always one of the most important assets in your business. If you own a dry cleaning store, the clients who come in regularly are your bread and butter. If you run a restaurant, the customers who come in every week or every month are the people who keep you in business.

  However, the online world tends to speed up and intensify everything, and that’s definitely the case with your list. In the online world, your list is everything.

  EVERYTHING.

  In fact, it really is hard to fathom the power of an email list until you have a list and you push that “send” button . . . and then within seconds you start to see the people on your list responding and clicking through to your web site. That power is breathtaking, and once you experience it, you will realize the way you live your life has changed forever.

  And, of course, since there is so much data and tracking online, you get to see the results in real time. For larger lists (say lists above 10,000 subscribers), it can actually take several minutes before your email list server delivers all the email. But once the email starts going out, you’ll typically start to see the response within seconds. And for really large lists (I have well over 100,000 subscribers, and there are far larger lists out there), you sometimes have to take extra precautions so that whatever website you are sending people to doesn’t crash. For example, if I put up a new post on my blog at JeffWalker.com (http://www.JeffWalker.com), I have to be careful. If I send too many visitors at the same time, it can crash the server. What I will typically do is stagger my email broadcasts, so that I mail only a portion of the list every few minutes.

  Now I don’t want to get too technical on you too early in this discussion, and I don’t want to intimidate you. If you’re starting out in your list-building endeavors, you’re a long way from having to worry about crashing servers. I just mention that to show you the power of having a list. You can actually send so much traffic to a site that you overwhelm the server.

  We have a saying in the business that sums it up in four words: “Push send, make money.” That’s why having a list is like having a license to print money at will. Which, of course, is why I wasn’t worried about saving for my kids’ college education—because I had a list.

  What about Spam?

  Before we go any further, I just want to be super-clear about one thing. When I talk about email lists, I am NOT talking about sending spam email. I’m talking about building a legitimate list of people who have asked to subscribe to your emails.

  There are many definitions of spam out there, and what is regarded as spam has changed quite a bit over time (and the laws regarding spam continue to evolve as well). But for our purposes, spam can be defined as unsolicited commercial email.

  When I talk about lists and list building, it is always email that people have asked to receive. I’ve been publishing online since 1996, and I have never sent a single spam message. In fact, everything I do (and teach) is the very antithesis of spam.

  The reality is that spamming is
a very quick way to put yourself out of business. Don’t do it. Send email only to people who have requested it.

  Your List Is Not a Strategy, It’s the Strategy

  As I mentioned above, list building has been a core strategy for me since I started. In fact, it was the ONLY strategy I had when I started out. I actually began my list building efforts before I even had a web site.

  I can’t remember exactly why I was so focused on list building from day one, but I quickly realized just how powerful lists were. Those lists have become the cornerstone of everything that I do in my business. Of course, over the years, plenty of other people have figured this out as well. But there’s another thing that set me apart from the majority of other people who were building lists, and that is summed up in one word:

  Relationship.

  That might sound like a funny word when we’re talking about your email going out to thousands of people, but the reality is that your email is landing in a lot of individual inboxes. Every subscriber on your list is an individual, a unique person. I know I’m stating the obvious, but many list owners seem to forget this. I hear them talk about sending a “blast” to their email list—their term for an email broadcast. But think about it . . . does anyone like to get blasted?

  Remember that your email is landing in a very personal place—the inbox of your reader’s computer. If you doubt how private this space is, just think about letting a stranger browse through your email inbox—not a very pleasant thought for most people. Most of us feel very protective of our inboxes, and because every email you send is landing in your subscriber’s inbox, you have a lot of power.

  Lots of times I’ll go to a conference, and people will come up to me (people I’ve never met), and they’ll start talking to me like I’m a long-lost friend. Sometimes I’ll wonder if they actually ARE an old friend I’ve somehow forgotten. They’ll start asking me about the stuff I’ve shared from my personal life in my emails—about how the skiing or the mountain biking season has been, about how my kids are doing, about how my guitar-playing is going. And that’s a good thing, because I want my readers to feel like they have a personal connection with me. That connection is what gets them to open my emails, read them, and ultimately click on the links in those emails.

  It doesn’t matter how many people are on your list if the emails sit unopened in your subscribers’ inboxes. If they don’t actually open your emails and read them, then you might as well not bother building a list.

  What I’m talking about is how “responsive” your list is . . . and the responsiveness of lists varies dramatically. There are lists out there where 60% or more of the people on the list open the email. That’s on the super-responsive end of the spectrum. And there are other lists where less than 1% of the people on the list open the email, which, of course, is on the dismally unresponsive end.

  Obviously, you want a responsive list. It’s better to have a list of 100 people where 60% of them open your emails (i.e., 60 people are reading your email) than a list of 1,000 where 1% open your emails (i.e., 10 people are reading your email).

  So how do you build and maintain a responsive list? Well, there’s a lot of strategy (and a little magic) in building a responsive list, but it really comes down to “relationship.” And the easiest way to increase the responsiveness of your list is to increase the connection and relationship you have with your list. Remember . . .

  1. The size of your list is not nearly as important as how responsive the list is, so your list relationship is extremely important.

  2. The entire PLF process you are about to learn is one of the best ways to build your relationship with your list.

  What about Social Media?

  Of course, there are other types of lists in addition to email. You can also build a list of followers on social media sites, such as on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.

  But as of right now, email still has the real power. In fact, social media lists aren’t even in the same ballpark. In terms of pure response rates, an email subscriber is worth many times more than a social media subscriber. In fact, the latest tests I’ve seen have shown that email is at least 20 times more powerful than a Facebook list. In other words, an email list of 1,000 people will outperform a Facebook following of 20,000. Of course, that number will vary dramatically in each situation based on a lot of different factors, but the fact remains that email lists are still much more powerful than social media lists.

  That might change sometime in the future, and if anything is a sure thing, it’s that the mechanics of online business are ALWAYS changing. However, I’ve been hearing about the death of email since 2003, and it’s still generating millions of dollars a year for my business.

  Another problem with building lists on social media sites is that you are not in control of the platform. If you build a list on Facebook, you need to remember that the list is actually owned by Facebook, and they can change the rules any time they want. And please note that social media sites DO change the rules and have done so with regularity. Your list will become the biggest asset in your business, and it’s much too important an asset to build on a platform that you don’t control.

  Finally, social media sites come and go. A few years ago Myspace was the big thing. Lots of people put a lot of time into building a large presence there. Now it’s pretty much a ghost town. Make no mistake, that WILL happen to other social media sites, so you have to be careful about list building on platforms that might go away some day.

  So just to be clear, I think there is value in building lists of followers on social media sites, but you need to be careful. When you build a list on a social media site, you have two big dangers. The first is that the site might change the rules in how you can use your list, or they might close down your account altogether. The second risk is that the social media site might actually lose its reach, and people might abandon it for the next big thing.

  A Buyer Is a Buyer

  There are several different types of lists, and it’s important to understand the differences. Lots of times when people talk about lists, they just throw out a number: “I’ve got a 30,000-person list!” Well, a statement like that doesn’t mean much. So let’s peel back this onion a little bit . . .

  So far we’ve talked about two types of lists: email and social media. I also mentioned that as of right now, email lists are much more powerful than social media lists.

  Another critical distinction is between “prospect” lists and “customer” lists. The definition is pretty simple. A prospect is someone who has NOT bought anything from you yet. A buyer is someone who HAS bought something from you. In your business you will have both types of lists. And the important thing to remember is that a list of buyers is a lot more valuable than a list of prospects. In my experience, a person on your buyer list is worth 10 to 15 times what a person on your prospect list is worth.

  This leads to a couple of key points. First, you want to try to move people from your prospect list to your buyers list (and incidentally, a PLF-style product launch is the best way I’ve found to do that).

  Second, you will treat the two lists differently. You want to maintain a great relationship with both, but if you’re going to spend extra time and effort on your list relationship, then the place to spend it is on your buyers list. That usually means spending the time and effort to send them some cool content or a bonus of some kind. I remember ordering from an ecommerce store that would often (but not always) include a little bit of hard candy or some other treat in their packages. I’m sure their cost was just a few pennies, but I still remember getting those extras—and it’s been several years since I ordered from them. A little surprise bonus or personal touch can really go a long way. For example, we always send out a handwritten “Thank You” snail mail postcard to our new Product Launch Formula Owners. That’s a simple way to stand out and build a relationship.

  With an online business, it’s really easy to create and send content-based bonuses, like an extra training vid
eo or report. This obviously works great for information-based businesses (such as someone selling a product on “learning to play guitar”), but it will also work well for other businesses too.

  For example, for that web site that sells “learn to play guitar” courses, they could include an extra video lesson on playing moveable chords or some other topic. But let’s say you have an ecommerce store that sells guitars. Well, you could send that same video about learning to play moveable chords. Or you could send a video about the care and maintenance of a guitar.

  One key factor is how you “send” the bonus video. You could put it on a DVD and ship it out to your client; that would be the old-school way. You would have the time and expense of preparing, duplicating, and shipping the DVD. And the DVD would probably be put aside and never watched.

  Or you could put the bonus video online on your web site (which is extremely easy to do—you can find the Resource Page at http://thelaunchbook.com/resources). This method is simpler, faster, and will cost almost nothing other than the time to shoot and edit the video. In addition, you can send a direct link to the bonus video in your email—a great way to condition people to open your emails and click on your links. After all, if you occasionally send them cool bonuses in your emails, they’ll always be looking forward to your next email.

  List Getting: How to Build Your List

  Okay, now that I’ve been going on for a while about how awesome lists are, hopefully I’ve got you sold on the idea that you want to get a list as soon as you possibly can. So here’s how to do it.

  First off, this is going to be a hyper-abbreviated lesson on list building. I could write an entire book on the topic. And I’ve actually created an entire course on list building, because it’s a rich and deep topic and so important. If you want to take this topic further (and you should!), you can get my List Building Blueprint free at http://thelaunchbook.com/list.