I just finished watching video two from Jason Van Orden as part of his Traffic Attraction Formula launch.

The title of the second video is – href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/listmyth">The Myth Of The Big List

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The premise goes that conventional thinking states in order to make big money with an email list it needs to be big – you need lots of subscribers.

Jason in the video explains that you don’t need huge numbers, what you need is a strong relationship with the people on your list.

That’s true of course, and I’ll talk more about this in a moment, but let’s state something obvious – if you have a big list AND great relationships then you will make more money than a small list despite great relationships.

The relationship with your subscriber comes first, and that’s a good thing, however simple mathematics dictates if you can reach more people you can make more sales.

I’m not refuting Jason’s statement of course, but I do think it’s necessary to point out the importance of your reach and your relationships.

I certainly have made more money as my email list has grown, but it’s not a direct correlation. There are all kinds of variables that go into making a list profitable. The important thing, and this is what Jason’s point is, you can do very well even with a small list, if you build a list of quality subscribers who trust you.

How Important Is The Relationship?

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I like what Jason says in his video. He talks about how he build his audience using podcasts, which are distributed via iTunes. He provides valuable content that people consume, which helps to foster great relationships because his listeners hear his voice every single time they listen to one of his shows.

You can imagine people sitting in their car listening to Jason and his co-host Sterling interview experts. That’s like having a captive audience spending intimate time with you. There’s no distractions like on the web – no browser back button, no banners, links, email, search bar, skype, facebook, twitter or all the usual suspects that grab your attention.

That’s some powerful relationship building time, and all it takes is one show a week to keep people connected. There’s one more reason you should have a href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/category/podcasts/">podcast on your blog too – I’ve had one for years and it’s one of the best traffic and relationship building resources I’ve ever created.

If you watch the href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/listmyth">full video Jason explains how he was able to rank first in a product launch affiliate competition (one of Jeff Walker’s product launch formula campaigns) using a list of about 10,000 people.

I happened to rank 4th in this particular launch and I was marketing to about 90,000 people, so you can see why Jason is proud of his results.

Obviously there are other factors, such as what bonuses were offered, how often you email your subscribers, how often you promote affiliate products to them, how many times you mailed for this particular offer, which impact results, but still, Jason’s result is particularly good considering the competition he was up against. Some of the other marketers have lists in excess of 100,000 subscribers.

I suggest you watch the whole video to hear his case study and explain why you don’t need a big list to succeed.

What Makes An Email List Responsive?

To add to what Jason talks about in his video, here’s a few relevant factors that impact how responsive your list is. The more responsive, the more money you make of course, so these are some very important concepts.

• The source of subscribers is really important. Where the traffic comes from, and what motivation they have for joining your list dictates how targeted they are. The better the targeting, the more responsive to your messages.
• The content-to-promotion ratio really matters. Some email marketers send nothing but affiliate promotions to their lists and obviously the response rates will drop unless they can continue to find new subscribers. The real key to success here is to make affiliate promotions about content, that way you get the best of both worlds – you provide value no matter whether someone buys or not, and you make money from those who do buy after consuming the content.
• List segmentation really helps too. By sending consecutive messages only to people who indicated they were interested in something you offered (flagged by either by clicking a link or opening an email) you maintain the integrity of your list. This is because you don’t send repeat messages to people not interested in certain things. You can read more about how segmentation has helped increase my income here – href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/1003/email-marketing-tips/">How Email Segmentation Made My List Stronger AND $ 31,940 More Profitable
• Message frequency and format matters. People become used to seeing your messages and depending how interested they are will respond better to more or less emails. How you format them is important because subscribers respond to patterns – for example always asking your subscribers to click a link in your email to access content will mean they come to expect links, as opposed to placing all the content in the email itself.

There’s a lot more to it than just these points, but they offer a good starting point to begin your email marketing training. If you’re keen to learn more, watch Jason’s videos, they are free as part of his Traffic Attraction Formula launch.

href="http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/listmyth">The Myth Of The Big List

Yaro Starak /> Sending Email Since 1998