List Building Explained 101

The more you learn about internet marketing, the more you will find the importance of list building being emphasized. However, when they are asked to explain lists and list building, they often stumble and are at a loss for words. List building explained, in its most basic form, will be to define a list as a database of all your potential customers and list building will, in turn, be the exercise of building upon the number of potential customers you have so that your potential market increases. Or, to put it simply, the list is your market and list building is expanding it.

How people come to your site is a matter for another discussion, but they come because what you are offering is of interest to them. But having an interested visitor is not the same thing as making a sale - very few of the first expressions of interest ever turn into actual sales. Sales will only come with building up your website (or building up your brand) and the only way to get this done is by keeping yourself in the front of people's minds so that they are constantly reminded of what your business is and what products you are selling. The only way you can do this is by communicating with them on a regular basis and sending them information that will interest them and also details of why they need what you are selling

Selling online is based on creating trust among your customers and the only way that this can be done is by establishing a link with them through regular communication so that in time they feel they know you and can safely buy from you, although you are a faceless online entity. The email addresses that you use for this communication is your list and is the key to your market.

Many rookies to ecommerce mistakenly think that when it come to lists, size is all that matters. Size is not everything and having a list of 10,000 people living in India is not going to help you to sell a book about "Dating In America." Spend time learning list building techniques and focus on how to build up a list of people who are really interested in what you have to sell - a conversion rate of 20% on a list of 1,000 names is better than having a conversion of 1% on a list of 10,000.