It is often said that the money is in the list. And the bigger the list, the more money you will earn.

But that’s only partially true, and here’s why.

In fact, it is the quality of the list that decides how much money you make. Some of my biggest and best conversion rates and thousands of dollars in sales have come from a small, but high-quality list. In fact, so good are the customers on that list that some of them have sent me gifts, even after paying me thousands of dollars for my products. So, given the choice, I’ll gladly take a small good quality list each time!

So how do you go about getting a good quality listing from scratch?

Once you’ve generated a stream of quality traffic to your website, you need to retain as much as possible by capturing quality visitor names. There are several ways to do this.

The most popular are popups, which visitors hate and webmasters love, simply because they tend to work.

Increasingly popular is the squeeze page, where the visitor’s name and email address are literally extracted before allowing them to view the website. The effectiveness of these two methods depends on how intriguing your text and bullets are in convincing visitors to fill out the name capture form. Depending on how your visitor landed on your site (by clicking on AdWords, reading an article, search engine result, or recommendation), you could achieve conversion rates ranging from 20% to perhaps double that number.

But how would you like to consistently achieve more conversions and high-quality conversions on top of that?

All you need to do is provide some content for the visitor to read. before you ask for their name and address. That way, you don’t violate the first rule of marketing (don’t upset your prospect). In addition, you also prove your worth by letting them see the type of information you are going to provide. This is much better than a headline, no matter how gripping, and a bulleted list, no matter how compelling. After all, that’s self-praise, which will always have a lower credibility rating than letting them see for themselves how good are you

Here is another benefit with this method. If the visitor subscribes to your list, after they have tried the products a bit, it means that they are more likely to match what you have to offer. The closer the match, the more likely it is to convert a lead into a customer. You don’t want people on your list who are unlikely to ever become customers. Quality beats quantity every time.

But the highest quality list in the world is only as good as its last shipment. Don’t imagine for a moment that all the prospects on your list are so enamored with you and your website that they’re sitting at their computers carefully deleting all emails that don’t have your name on them. You know from your own experience how much you get hit with email offers from every quarter. Therefore, your task is to keep your name in the forefront of your potential customer’s mind.

You want to strive to position yourself as the provider of choice. Just as you might automatically think of Coke or Bud when you’re thirsty, you want them to immediately think of you when they have a problem in your area of ​​expertise.

For this reason, you should email your list at least once a week, and much more often than that initially. If they are signing up for a course for the first time, you may be initially sending them emails every day. That is a good start. From then on, once a week should be the goal, which is why a regular newsletter is so valuable. Always remember that we humans need to repeat something 21 times to form a neural pathway in our brains that creates a habit.

Once you’ve built a quality list using these methods, don’t destroy your reputation by selling something in every email or offering junk. Offer lots of free stuff and only offer something for sale every four emails. Even then, only offer your own products or affiliate products that you have personal experience of using or someone you hold in high regard.

You can also make your contacts much more personal by occasionally mailing your list. Send them a free DVD or CD, because that’s a safe way to open the package, even if they don’t recognize your return address.

Once you have your list, guard it with your life, because it is the list, a properly nurtured quality list, that will give you your wonderful lifestyle. Isn’t that something worth working hard on?

Copyright 2006 Paul Hooper-Kelly and www.InternetMarketingMagician.com