The Surprising Truth About Building A List

See, most products (if not some) in the niche of list building do a slight graze over the actual “idea” of building a list. 

Is this just my reality or what!?

I guess it has become a staple for some product creators in this niche to:

1. give an overall view of how list building is done and
2. tell their customers how to get started. 

But the problem is, they focus primarily on the “get started” part of list building. 

This means that they focus on helping their customers do the following:

• Select an autoresponder
• Figure out what niche they want to be in
• Figure out what kind of freebie they want to giveaway 
• Help them write an autoresponder sequence

Once those above steps are completed, the most common methods of list building shared in this industry can be quite shallow and lack substance. 

Common List Building Methods

For example, Solo ads are an option to use to build a list. But people have been saying solo ads are on the way out.

Solo ads used to be a reliable method of building a list… now not so much (but it can still be). The reality is, fake clicks are still a possibility and people still sell them.

So, you can find a solid solo ad provider with good clicks and leads, but it will take a bunch of sorting and sifting through the solo ads marketplace.

Plus, it may take a toll on your funds before you find that provider. Also, if you find a good provider, odds are that they are not going to be cheap.

It’s kind of like the “good, fast, cheap” triangle. You only get two out of the three regularly; finding all three is possible but very rare. 

People say to drop your squeeze page link on your social media pages. What they forget to explain is if you don’t interact on social media, the odds of getting consistent subscribers there is low. 

People also say if you have money, do paid ads (most likely on social media or search engines).

Problem is, everybody doesn’t have money to waste on paid ad data before they learn how to advertise correctly. To build a winning ad, it takes a solid ad created, a solid offer, and solid targeting.

Getting any of these wrong can drastically destroy your potential results. With that said, it can be difficult to build a list successfully using this method without taking the time (and money) to figure it out. 

Other Methods Of List Building

I’ve also heard of how you create content and put it on free sites that will host it. For example, you can create a PowerPoint slide deck and list it on free slide websites.

Or you create a free ebook and list it on free ebook sites online. This would work, but it takes the work of creating content, as described below. 

And of course, forum (signature) marketing, safe lists (not the greatest), bum marketing (article marketing), etc. 

My Take

If there’s a really solid (and easy) method of building a free list, most people are not gonna say it. They’d rather keep the method for themselves instead of giving themselves more competition. 

The only solid idea that I prefer to use is: blogging. 

It’s possible to build a list from blogging but it’s going to take either a lot of writing or a lot of purchasing articles to post. 

Either way, this kind of fits with idea #2 stated above: the social media one. This is because it still involves creating content.

The thing is… is writing content for social media easier because it’s less content you have to write (but you can get terminated at any time [digital sharecropping])?

Or is writing for your own blog better (but you have to pull in traffic using SEO, and google + other search engines update regularly, potentially leaving you out of the search engine results)?

Food for thought. 

In no way am I saying I have all the answers… but I’m definitely trying to find them. 

So What’s The Solution?

At this rate, building a buyers list would seem easier.

But you still have to get targeted traffic to your offer that people hopefully purchase before that buyer’s list starts to get built. 

With that said, How does one start from 0 subscribers and $0, building a free list?

I’ll tell you firsthand, starting out, it’s definitely hard work. 

The way I see it, it’s going to take some form of creating content (short or long, written/typed, audio or video, social media or blogging, created yourself or purchased as original content [or PLR], etc.)

There’s no running away from that. 

In writing this, I realized that. So to the natural writers, you have a “1UP” over those of us that don’t like to/choose not to write. 

Sidebar: Funnily enough, I typed this in 20-40 minutes on my phone… but I don’t consider myself a writer. I digress…

The Takeaway

So the takeaway is: write/create content regularly.

You’re gonna need it to create your freebie, promote your list/freebie, write broadcast emails once you have a list, have content for your blog (if you choose so), have content for your social media channels, create products, giveaway as viral content, etc. 

If you don’t like writing or creating content, pay someone or something (LOL AI) to write/create it for you. In both scenarios, you may still have to edit your content, so beware. 

Once again, there’s no getting away from creating content, no matter how anybody may slice it. 

I just learned this the other day: trying to take the shortcut (the easy way) sometimes is the hard way. The “hard way” we perceive it to be is actually the easy way. 

Doing anything different from “the hard way” can make your goal harder to achieve. 

Applying that theory to this post means that using cheap writers to get content done or purchasing cheap PLR to help your content creation become easier… will inevitably bite you back in the future. 

Just take the high road and either create the content yourself. Or you can use high-quality PLR, high-quality writers, or HQ AI. 

To Conclude

With that said, I invite you to share any list-building ideas that I haven’t come across that people would benefit from. 

Drop them in the comments below. I don’t mind learning also. 

Till next time…

P.s. There was a product earlier this year that I reviewed that actually has some solid methods for building a list. Most importantly, the creator did not harp on the “setup details” as the main teaching information of his product.

He did a great job of explaining the setup and giving methods to get leads. If you’re interested in that, I suggest that you check it out here. 

I’m considering selling that email series and a list-building video course together. Once I list it, I’ll update this post to accommodate that offer.