List Building - Lists Are PeopleBY: Tellman Knudson
Remember in the old move Soylent Green how Charlton Heston reaches out on his way to being dragged into the green spam factory, and he screams, "Soylent Green is People!"? If you have never seen the film, it's set in a very bleak future, where humans are surviving on food called Soylent, and it comes in a couple of colors. Anyway, the green stuff is what people fight for because it's protein, which turns out to be a tortilla chip form of ground people. So, what does that have to do with list building? Well, it's kind of that way with a list, too. You have to remember that people are individuals, not food, not some nebulous group of ravenous buyers. People put their names and emails into your list building page, first and foremost, because they like something about you. It could be the way you look, your personality, or just something you said or the way you said it, the way you wrote it. All of these things come into play. For some reason, people just decide to trust you, and that's exactly what you want to happen. Always be list building in trust. When you have a list of people who believe in what you say, you'd better be doling out solid information, too. For instance, never send out a newsletter with so-called "facts" that you made up. Don't tell people, "I made six figures with this product, unless you actually made six figures." Not only is it unethical, if people learn differently, they'll never believe what you have to say again. Don't hype someone else's wild claims, either, without proving them true. It's just not right. Don't give them bogus information about the product. If you don't know what a product does, and you haven't used it, then how do you know if it "gets the best results"? You don't! Before you offer anything to people who believe in you, you have to know that what you're selling works. You wouldn't treat your family that way; don't treat your list that way, either. Another thing you should never do is send boring emails to them. If you aren't good at copywriting, get good at it. Go to Gary Halbert's web site or Dan Kennedy's and learn about writing copy. Start putting this stuff into practice, immediately! The whole thing is, people don't want to read boring material. They want to read good stories. Think about that when doing your list building preliminaries. Have this all set to go before you even start list building. But don't keep it going too long on your squeeze page or in emails. They should be in short line lengths, so that people's eyes can follow easily, and they should be no more than a couple of hundred words. Make them interesting and people will really enjoy getting messages from you. But if you study all the tricks and you still can't do it, hire someone to do it for you. You can hire writers to create a whole autoresponder series for you. The is the solution for someone who has a hard time writing anything. Get this done before you even start list building because you need to have it all set up before advertising your list building page. The whole thing to remember is that you're not a huckster selling hot dogs at the game. You have a responsibility to the people who signed up for you. That's right, they signed up for you! First, have your list building ducks in a row. Then, give people the truth. Only offer products that you enjoy yourself, and help them to see your product through your eyes in an entertaining story. If you can do those three things, just those three things, you'll always make money.
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