When Alex Mandossian first challenged me to double my list in October of 2008, I immediately thought of the friends and contacts of the people already on my list. I sent out an email asking them to refer at least one friend to me. The result was overwhelming.

People on my list emailed me, telling me they had been wanting to tell others about me. I realized right then that I had overlooked an excellent way to build my list.

There are people currently on your list who

Even if you are just starting out online, you will want to find some other people to collaborate and partner with. The best scenario is to find people who have a niche that is complimentary to yours. Then you can cross promote to each other’s lists to sell products and increase your own list size.

Let me give you an example of how to do this successfully. If your niche is helping home school families to find appropriate curriculum and resources for their kids, look for people who work with stay at home moms, children with special needs, building self-esteem in children, and so on. You want partners who offer something that your list may also be interested in.

Take your time in deciding

This site may be devoted to teaching you how to make huge profits from your small list, but never forget that building your list is the most important part of your online business. Every day you must engage in at least one activity that will help you to add names to your list.

You will want to create several different opt-in pages that will attract different segments of your market. For example, I have recently added a page that will help me to reach the work at home mom’s that would benefit from what I am teaching online. That page looks very different from one that attracts men in their 30’s or people over 50 who are struggling with technology. Even though I serve all of these markets, the initial page they sign up for will look very different.

Write articles, post to your blog, use Twitter and Facebook, and hold regular teleseminars to reach more people and have them join your list. List building and marketing is a worthwhile activity that will increase your bottom line.

Even though you can be extremely profitable with a tiny list, growing your list should be a goal that you think about regularly. In fact, everything you do must work towards list building. This is all new to most of us, so it takes some time to get used to.

When I started out I did not fully understand this concept. I invited people to my teleseminars without asking them to opt in to my list, and gave out my affiliate links in the same way. Now I do not do this. I ask people to join my list, in return for a free report or audio recording, and then I invite them to my free teleseminars and bonus calls. This has helped me to build my list steadily for the past two years. You can do the exact same thing, but your list will grow much faster than mine because you will not make the same mistakes as I did.

Several of my students are growing their lists very rapidly by following my training. When people see the value in the information you are sharing with them, they will want to join your list.