If you have been Internet marketing for more than a day then you probably already know that lists are your most important asset. But just in case you haven’t heard, you NEED a list. I’m not going to go into the why’s as that has been covered many times before (Search Google! ).

I want you to think about list building from a business perspective, you see it’s no good building a list of 12,000 people at a cost of $2,400 when you only make $200 from your list.

Of course there are many factors at play but I just want you to change the way you look at list building for now. For a start stop referring to it as list building and start calling it what it is and that’s lead generation. Each member on your list is a lead.

When you realise this and start looking at your lead costs and income per lead you can start looking at what sources of leads are most profitable for you.

Ideally you want to take your lead from new lead to purchaser within a week. If you secured them as a lead then I would hope they are already interested in your niche. With a little bit of care you should be able to rather easily sell your leads on products from within your chosen niche. Please notice I said products – plural. You need to be thinking how you can maximise your income per lead.

How do I take leads to repeat purchasers of products I promote to them?

The best (most effective way I have found) to get your leads to buy from you is to give them quality free content. Give them content that they can use that will help them in some way.

If you are able to do this your relationship with your list will grow stronger and stronger. This will in turn mean that the trust your leads have in you will grow and grow. This is absolutely key; you have to build a strong relationship with your list. Having this strong relationship or not is the difference between the list owners that make money and the list owners that never do.

It’s important not to ruin the relationship with your list once it has been built as once its broken you will struggle to get it back. Continue to offer them good free content and products that they will get true value from.

If you start sending your leads product recommendations every week they are soon going to either unsubscribe from your list or just not open your emails, if that happens you cannot earn any more money from them leads. You are much better off only recommending products once a month or one every couple of months while still keeping in good contact with your leads between product recommendations.

Working this way you will keep your leads longer sell more to them and therefore make more per lead.

I will leave it there I think, this is my first post about lists and lead generation and I can see myself rambling on for 100 pages if I’m not carful.