Article for freelancers: The List Is The Thing: List Building For Your Home Business

The List Is The Thing: List Building For Your Home Business

By Ken Leonard Jr.,
KLJ Online,
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

http://www.kenleonardjr.com

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Ken Leonard Jr. Many people begin their online home businesses with the wrong strategy to build long term success. Thinking that a website is the core of their business leads them to focus only on getting website visitors. Does this sound like you?

Using a member-only area or a community feature such as chat or a forum may get some of your site visitors to come back regularly. Unfortunately, the large part of your visitors may not use these features. Being in a hurry, they are just a click away from another new and interesting website. Many of your "hits" are just that, a quick click and they're gone forever.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

The visitor that clicked away may have found your site by using a search engine. They were interested in the search term that was one of your site's prominent keywords. That means that they may be your target customer. They could have come from the link in a promotional article you wrote or an ezine ad you ran. These would be high quality visitors, too.

Isn't it a shame that you only had one chance to sell this visitor on your product or service while they were at your site? Don't you wish that you could follow-up on that targeted prospect at a later time? With a better offer or a different related product?

You can.

The focus of your online home business must be on capturing lead information (email addresses and postal addresses) and building a database of targeted prospects and customers. This "house list" enables you to keep in touch with your leads and your customers, building a relationship and your credibility over time. Your website IS an important part of the "online sales machine", but is not the primary focus, building your house list is.

Many people think that the value of a house list is determined by the number of leads it contains. This is true in some cases. But the real value in a list is the quality of the leads or subscribers. A small list that is highly targeted (with responsive leads) is more valuable than a large list that is not market targeted.

Quality comes from the methods you choose to build your house list. You want prospects to opt-in or request information from you. These people are interested in your niche, or they wouldn't have joined the list. Using email addresses from one of those "One Million Emails For $10" CDs will get little or no response. You will also be labeled as a spammer, so don't do it. Buying subscribers from list brokers is another option, but you have to be certain that the leads opted-in to the list. If not, they are practically worthless.

And don't think that you have to use only the Internet to generate targeted prospects. Direct mail postcards with a short punchy headline and your web site address or a phone number will get you a lot of qualified leads, as will your URL in an ad placed in a print magazine that deals with your market niche. You have even more offline options that you can use to drive people to your web site and collect their contact information. You are only limited by your imagination.

Build YOUR house list, do it properly using opt-in methods, and reap the rewards of a responsive and loyal group of contacts. Follow-up with your leads and customers on a regular basis and you will get the results you really want.

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