Mailing List – From Zero to Thousands

I said that today I’d show you a video inside my Aweber account, but due to a couple of technical problems and a lack of time to fix them and get this post done, I’ve decided to do a screen shot instead.

Remember in an earlier post I said that 18 months ago I didn’t have much of a clue, and I certainly didn’t have a mailing list. Okay, I had a few people I’d gathered together, but there were so few I don’t count that as having the kind of list you’d call a list.

I then started list building about 15 months ago, maybe a little less. Here’s the screen shot that I’ve just taken inside my Aweber account.

You can see from that, that things have changed fairly rapidly for me, but how would you feel if you knew that most of that list has been grown in the latter half of 2007?

Look particularly at the one called fhblog. I only started that one two days ago and there are 15 subscribers on there. Well 13 of them were from my existing lists who I asked to come here, but there are two brand new subscribers on that list.

That’s just from blogging. (I also spotted that some kind soul has “Stumbled” me on StumbleUpon – I thank you sir or madam if you’re reading this!)

I found the same effect when I did my 7 Products in 7 Days, and I wrote to one of my friends about it. I only told my lists about the sites for my Default Ebook Layout and also Keyword Inspector.

And yet…

I picked up brand new subscribers!

I can only surmise that people on my list told their friends about the free products, who then came along and signed up.

So it seems clear to me what the lesson is here.

Just by the act of having done a few things, I’ve moved my business forward. More importantly, the act of doing those things is cumulative. This is certainly what I’ve found in the last few months.

Sometimes, I don’t do anything. But still the business asset in the form of my mailing list continues to grow and harden.

(By harden I mean that every time I send a mailing out, I get a number of unsubscribes. But the people who remain make the core of my list denser. I hope that makes sense.)

But no-one seems to be talking about this effect. Or at least, not anywhere I’ve been looking.

Overall the trend is up and I’ve realised I don’t have to do much towards it, but when I do, I’m extending my net to capture more subscribers, and things get better.

I’ll finish today by repeating what I said yesterday. It’s very important and will be core to my coaching programme.

More prospects = more customers = more money.

> Frank Haywood.