I think this statement is going to upset a lot of people. All the Gurus are telling the newbie Internet Marketer that the list is your most important money-making tool and yet here I am saying the opposite!

As I continue to learn more on email marketing and working on my autoresponder follow up messages, I realized that the time of having many pre-written sales email is no longer that easy to make money.

One of the reasons why I recently unsubscribed from many lists is that I realized that more and more Internet Marketers use autoresponders to send out nothing but sales pitches. Where do these sales pitches come from? Well there are mostly swipe copies created for an affiliate program.

So I used to get 10 exactly the same emails with the same exact headlines in the same day. And because they are swipe copies from an affiliate program, the message of the email is basically asking you to “Buy this and Buy that” and “the offers will end pretty soon so get your copy while you still can”.

As I do more of my own autoresponder follow up messages I realized  that making long-term money with email marketing by just loading up these “buy this product now” emails doesn’t work. You can make some money but if my offer is just endless stream of sales pitches all I am asking my subscriber is their money and there is no value in the messages.

The fact that I have 10 emails in my inbox having the same headlines and message body means the affiliate marketers did not do anything extra to convince their subscribers why they should buy from him/her. Yes many may have added some bonuses at the end of the message but the motivation is the same “give me your money”. So the mentality of “I just want to get paid, no matter what” is not going to work and you can potentially lose a subscriber.

When I first started I thought that’s the way to go because the Gurus said so. I have been wondering why I am not making sales and subscribers drop off from my list. As I learned more on this subject I realized that just copying a swipe mail and send it out to the subscriber does not help them to achieve their goals.

Just the same when I read the emails from other Internet Marketer I keep asking myself if this product or information is going to achieve my goal. Well the answer is NO most of the times. Because I can’t find a good enough reason to buy I just ignore the emails. Instead of getting more “junk” mails from them which has no value I recently decided to unsubscribed from many lists because they are not providing value to me.

For now I am focusing on building a relationship with my subscribers and provide them with good information they can use immediately and put into action. This is another advice that Gurus advocate that you need to earn the right to recommend an affiliate product. I will continue to work on this aspect of email marketing further so that my subscribers see me as a friend and gain their trust.

The same concept can apply just like in a brick and mortar business. We need to think about the customers, what they need, provide goods and services that fulfil those needs. Give them enough and down the road they will return more often.

Because of the value I can get from good information that is beneficial to me I continue to stay in the lists of a few Internet Marketers because they constantly provide free information that I can use and can put into action.

So the money is only in the list when you have a list of “friends/buyers” and not just another bunch of “subscribers”.

A nice video that reinforce this message is here.