Most marketers will tell you that building a list is one of the most effective ways to spend your time if you hope to make money online.

Despite this, countless people do not bother to even try, or, having looked at the work required, decide that the effort is just too much. If you have come to think this way, I would seriously suggest that you rething your marketing strategies. An opt-in list of prospects is one of the most valuable assets you can build. Let's look at that statement a little more closely.

I was talking to a friend and fellow marketer the other day, and we were discussing the relative merits of blogs and mailing lists. He runs a reasonably high traffic blog in the marketing and making money online niche and has built up a fairly decent subscriber base over the past couple of years. He is experienced and makes a full time living online, but, until recently had not focused too much on building a mailing list.

Recently, he changed his approach and began to build his own list and has been amazed by the difference in conversion rates that he has experienced. A mailing to his young list produced 40 sales from one email. A blog post on the subject of the same product produced 1 sale.

As you can imagine, he is now converted and a true believer in the power of owning a list.

This is all well and good, but the things that hold many people back from trying to build a list are often cost related. It costs money for a professional autoresponder - usually a monthly recurring charge, and it's not always easy to persuade people to sign up for yet another list, and it's no simple task to drive traffic to your opt-in forms either.

This is where maintaining a blog and your own website(s) becomes very important. Placing your opt-in form in as many places as possible will increase the chances of tempting new subscribers. You will need something to offer them in exchange for their information too and a free gift of some kind is usually the way to go.

It is a lot of work, and this is the other thing that puts a lot of people off. In terms of return on investment however, the work and the costs really are worthwhile.

There are plenty of free programs out there that claim to do the work for you, but, despite the best efforts of the program designers, most of them fall short for the end user and are really no substitute for your own list.

There is one solution that works very well for the beginner however. It does not require that you have an autoresponder (although if you do it provides for full integration) and you do not need to pay for the service. It works on a very simple principle, that goes a step beyond traditional viral marketing. By using the system to build your list, you will also be helping others to build theirs. It sounds so simple it's a wonder that not more people have caught on to it but the results can be quite impressive. The marketer who invests in the primary software and hosting stands to gain the most of course, as he or she will reap the benefits of the viral effect in spectacular fashion, but it doesn't detract from the benefits for everyone else.

If you are still hesitant about building an opt-in list of your own, don't put it off for too much longer, because the sooner you begin, the sooner you will see the rewards. I have helped many new marketers on the road to their first list and if you want to know more, you can pick up a free manual from our site.

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The author writes regularly about internet marketing issues at his blog and offers free solutions to those seeking to start their first opt-in email list with this free guide entitled Big List Secrets Exposed