Responding to the emails of your prospects will help you to build your business more quickly. I can remember when people first began to ask me questions by responding to my broadcast and autoresponder emails. Sometimes they thought I had written to them personally, and I took that as a great compliment. Over time I began to build relationships with the people on my list, and it all started with me answering their emails with answers to their questions.

Make sure the email address you use in your autoresponder sequence is a current one. You will not want to miss anything that is sent to you. This is done when you first set up your autoresponder, and can be changed if you need to later on.

You may want to initiate the contact with your list. Ask them what they think about something you have written to them about. Because the overwhelming majority of marketers do not respond to emails, you will set yourself apart very quickly.

You may already be thinking that this business model will not be scalable as you become more successful in your online business, but I have been answering all of my own emails for four years now and still do not find it to be too difficult. People are amazed when I answer their questions so quickly, and when I am busy I will write back to tell them I will answer their question the following day. I have found this to be a wonderful way to find out exactly what my prospects and clients want from me, as well as a way to get to know them much better.

When you are getting started on the Internet with information products, it is typical to want to write an eBook on your niche topic. The problem is that you can’t be sure the eBook will sell until you have spent valuable time marketing. It also does not help you to build a relationship with the people on your list. For this reason it makes a lot of sense to write a short report before you write the eBook. This will tell you if it will be worth your time and effort to take the report and turn it into a much longer piece of writing. I have a free report on writing short reports that you can access right away.

Short reports are typically anywhere from about 7 to 15 pages long. This gives you enough space to present your specific topic to your prospects. This type of writing can also be completed much more quickly than an eBook. The result is a short report that will be ready to market in days instead of weeks. This will allow you to determine very quickly if there is a market of hungry buyers in your niche who would be interested in a more detailed presentation of information in this area.

I like to give away my short reports, but you may decide to sell yours instead. My thinking is that I would prefer for more people to have my report in their hands. I also encourage people to give away my short report in any way they choose. This means that they can use it as a bonus for one of their own products, or simply give it away to their list. Either way, my information will reach more people and my list will grow. This is because I include my contact information on each page of the report. I ask people to sign up when they receive it in order to receive even more information on that topic.

Short reports work well in any niche you can think of. The idea is to choose a specific topic and give as much information as possible. If you receive a favorable response to your report, you will know that an eBook will be a worthwhile use of your time.

I also include some affiliate links in my short reports. This brings me residual income for many months to come. The idea of building your list and earning some income, before you have ever sold anything, should be attractive to you. I also repurpose my content almost immediately, giving me more formats in which to distribute my information.

You can increase the effectiveness of your marketing by cross promoting with partners in niches that are complimentary to yours. Allow me to explain exactly what  mean by this. You are looking for people who have something to offer that would be a good compliment to what you offer your prospects and clients. I think of this as the ‘would you like fries with that?’ example. In order for this to work well, look for people who are open to promoting you to their list, understand how online marketing works, and are open to teleseminar interviews, social media marketing, and other Internet marketing styles.

Your products and courses do not stand alone. There are other products and courses that would come before or after yours. Even if you are offering introductory courses and products on your niche topic, there are other courses and products that your prospects would find beneficial.

Think of everything that is offered online as falling somewhere along a space-time continuum. People who are learning are always at some point on that line, so it makes sense that they will seek more information to help them to keep moving forward. Take a look at where your information falls on this line, and then look for others who provide information that would come both before and after what you are providing. This will also give you a good idea of what other types of products you may want to create in the future, in order to fill this gap.

The very best products and courses to promote will be those that are complimentary to yours. For example, if you are teaching people how to knit, a complimentary product might teach people how to choose the right type of yarn and other supplies. That way each product will compliment the other and both businesses can prosper.

Once you find two or three people who have created these complimentary offers, make arrangements to cross promote each other’s information, using affiliate links. This way everyone will be able to profit when sales are made through their marketing efforts. Use teleseminars to interview each other to expose the information to each person’s list, as well as blogging and social media. You will be able to create quite a buzz that will be good for everyone in the long run.

If you look at some of the most successful people on the Internet, you will see that they have used this exact technique to increase their credibility and visibility online. Follow their lead and cross promote others in complimentary niches in order to build your online business and increase your bottom line.

As you grow your online business and more people join your list, you will want to keep the same type of community you started with. The best way to do this is to ask the people currently on your list to refer their friends to you. This is an excellent way to connect with your list, find new prospects who will already know something about you, and to start an affiliate program for yourself, if that is something you are ready to do now.

Think about how things work in the offline world. You may be looking for a new restaurant, or a place to hold a birthday party, or a new hair salon close to where you live. These days we usually go to Google or somewhere on the Internet to get ideas on who we can contact, but isn’t a personal referral always better?

When I moved to my city in 2006 I needed to find a salon to cut and color my hair every few weeks. I looked online, drove around town to see what was there, and looked through the magazines and flyers that came to my home. But for the first six months or so I continued to drive more than twenty miles each way to go to the salon in the city where I had lived for more than ten years.

Finally, I met a woman who told me about a salon she had been going to for a couple of years. She told me stories of what she had had done to her hair, as well as some details about the woman who owned the salon and the woman who did her hair. Because I received a personal recommendation I called to make an appointment and have been going there ever since. This is the power of a referral.

Do the same thing in your Internet business. Ask your prospects and clients to refer someone to you by sharing some information about what they like best about learning from you. Invite them to a teleseminar so they can hear your voice. Give them a short report or direct them to one of your recent articles or blog posts. This is how they will come to know, like, and trust you to share information with them on your area of expertise.

If you feel that you are ready to start your own affiliate program, ask your list to sign up as affiliates and to refer their friends through their link. This can also be very productive in terms of building a stronger business relationship with your list.

You will want to build a lasting relationship with the people on your list. In order to make huge profits with a small list, one with fewer than a thousand names, you must remember why they came to you in the first place. This may be the most important thing to keep in mind when you begin to connect with them and to promote your own and affiliate products to them. These prospects are much more than just numbers on your list; they are the people that will determine if you are successful or not in your quest to build an online empire.

Think about this as you write your emails, choose the products and courses you will promote, and respond to your prospects individually. Straying off the path and offering them off topic information will not serve you well over time.

Writing an email to your list should be a personal communication between you and each of them. What I mean by this is that you need to write as though you were writing to just one person. The highest compliment you will ever receive is when someone thinks you have written only to them when you send out an email to your entire list. This is an art, so do not be surprised if it takes months, or even years, before this happens to you. Once you get into the rhythm of emailing your list, this will become a regular occurence.

What kind of relationship are you building with the people on your list? Do they feel comfortable with you, and trust you enough to ask you anything, knowing you will give them an honest answer every time? Creating this type of know, like, and trust factor does not come easily, but it can be accomplished if you spend some time with getting to know your prospects. I believe it has worked for me because of my email messages, my teleseminars, and my follow up techniques.

My emails almost always include a little something personal about me. I share what it was like to get started online in 2005, when I did not have a clue about starting an Internet business. I relate my current business to what it was like to be a classroom teacher and also work in real estate at the same time.

I have shared my successes, like winning twenty-five thousand dollars in Armand Morin’s contest at the Big Seminar in November of 2009, along with my mistakes, like the time I kept pressing send and accidentally sent out hundreds of messages to my list. By showing my vulnerability as a human being, my list has been able to relate to me.

Holding teleseminars has made this even more pronounced. I will never forget the time someone asked me when it was that I got serious about being an online entrepreneur. I got choked up as I answered. I said that I got serious the day I received a letter from the bank saying that it looked like my payment were coming in later and later each month, and that if I were late on my next payment they would begin the foreclosure process. I had not planned on sharing that type of personal information, but it sure felt good to know that I could share it with the people who looked to me for guidance in how to build their own online business.

My follow up with the people on my list is also very different from what I have seen other marketers do. When one or two people email me and ask about something they are struggling with, I send out an email message to everyone and address the problem head on. I know if one or two people are having difficulty or confusion, there must be more people who need help with the same exact thing.

I answer all emails and create new products and courses based on what my list has asked from me. I believe this is the best way to build a relationship with your list so they will come to you with all of their questions. They also feel an extreme loyalty to me, asking me for my affiliate link whenever they decide to purchase someone else’s product. That means the world to me.

An e-course is a series of short lessons that teach your prospect some basic information on your area of expertise. I love e-courses. They have proved to be extremely profitable for me and thousands of others who are working on the Internet. When you are creating your own e-course, think about the topic, what else you will promote, and how you will follow up with the people who sign up to learn from you.

The only mistake you can make is in trying to provide too much information on too wide a topic. Instead, choose just one slice of your niche and create about 5 lessons on it. Each lesson can be two or three paragraphs long – just enough to fit comfortable into an email message that is set in your autoresponder sequence. Each lesson can include a recommendation for one of your products or that of an affiliate. You may want to also include an assignment for them to do to encourage them to connect with you by email. Here is an example of an e-course that has done very well for me in terms of building my list and increasing my income.

You can create raving fans very easily on the Internet. Responding to your prospects’ emails is one way of doing this, and you will be connecting with them on a deeper level. We can probably all remember when we were brand now to online marketing and needed help with some of the smallest things. I know that it would have been extremely valuable to me to have someone I could have asked a question and received a reply. Instead, days went by before I could move on. Be the person the people on your list can write to with their questions and you will build a list of loyal and raving fans in a very short period of time.

You need to establish this as part of your business model from the very beginning, because we are not expecting anyone to be open to receiving emails from us. By telling your list to hit the reply button and tell you what’s on their mind, you are opening yourself up to taking your relationship to a whole new level. Imagine your list feeling like you are the one to ask before they make a purchase or other major decision for their business.

I believe this can also be enhanced through teleseminars. I still offer a free call each month for people to ask me anything they want or need to know. During those calls I answer all questions, give advice, and recommend my own and affiliate products and services. When people hear our voice they feel like they know us, and this gives us the opportunity to connect with them. It’s all about the relationship, so build that relationship with your list through your emails and teleseminars.