Have you ever been told that "the money is in the list"?
I hear it everywhere I go. And people fret over how many 10s or 100s of thousands of subscribers they have.
If you've been worrying about how big yours is, then fear not: in the world of professional services marketing, size doesn't matter anywhere much as you think.
There are people with lists of hundreds of thousands who are running out of cash, and people with only a few thousands of subscribers who have a fantastic business.
It's not how big it is that matters, but what you do with it.
And yes, this is starting to sound like a Benny Hill routine :)
But here's the thing.
I receive hundreds of emails daily from list owners who probably have millions on their list. And they say little more than "Hey, I've got something really great for you. Click this link."
I don't.
But presumably enough people do that they can make a living from it.
That's not marketing. That's little better than shifty characters on a dark alley trying to entice you into their dingy drinking den. You know it's free to get in, but you suspect it'll cost you a lot once you're in there.
Most marketers are plain lazy or incompetent. They hide their laziness and ineptitude by sending out millions of emails that provide no value to the reader.
Most marketers aim for $1 per person on their list per month if they're lucky.
I'll be very open here. My list is less than 7,500. However I run a nearly-$200,000 business on the back of it.
How?
Because it's not the number of people on your list that matters, it's how you engage them. It's how much value you create through your communications.
Every time I run a seminar, there are people there who cam across me not long before, who loved the content I'm putting out, and decided to come to the workshop because of it.
And in the workshop they get huge amounts of value which reaffirms their decision.
In fact, I don't even talk about building a list any more.
I talk about building a tribe. A group of avid followers who want more and more of what you do.
And I talk about engaging with that tribe cosntantly and consistently.
Because at the end of the day what matters is having a long-term, high-value, high-engagement, personal relationship with people.
THAT's where the money is!
