You have probably heard countless marketers talk about how the money is in your list and the need of building one. But do you really see the value in this for your own business?

The best way to describe the importance of list building is by providing you with an example. Let’s say you are an affiliate marketer – someone who promotes a product for another person or company and receives a commission percentage.

You decide to promote a specific product that will bring you a nice payment for your efforts. You love the product and decide to set up a website dedicated to just this one topic. Next you spent time promoting this product all over the place and make lots of sales. All you focus on is driving traffic to your affiliate link.

One morning you wake up to find that your affiliate payments have stopped coming in. You contact the company only to be told that they have stopped using affiliates or they are not selling that product anymore.

Your income stream has disappeared over night. Even though you may have sold hundreds of products to happy customers you have no idea who they are and how to connect with them.

Now let’s look at this from a new viewpoint. You still go ahead and build a specific website for this product. You just add one more thing to it, an opt-in form. This is a form that people who are interested in this product and niche can fill out to get more information from you. This could be a video review or a short report with more information about this product.

As visitors arrive on your site, they love the product and they take advantage of your free gift and use the opt-in form. These people are now placed onto your own private mailing list, separate from the company that you are promoting.

Now when you wake up to the news that this product is no longer available, you have a course of action you can take. You simply replace product A with product B on your website. You then send out an email announcing that you have discovered this great product to your list.

During this time you have been emailing regularly to your list and have provided them with great information. They trust, know and like you and will gladly follow your advice. Bingo! You start making a new income from your list and can replace the one that you just lost.

Hopefully this relays the importance of why building a list is so important. Why not start yours today?