The money’s in the list, right?
We’ve all heard that – many, many times over. But what if you don’t have one?
Or, like many bloggers and websites, your list has somewhere between 25 and 250 people on it – hardly the mega-list of tens of thousands that the gurus are talking about.
What’s a guy or gal to do when they’ve only got a small list, and want to make big money?
Well, it turns out, there’s a lot that you can do...
Two Paradigm Shifts for Making Big Money from Small Lists
It is completely possible to make a lot of money without having a large list, but doing so requires that you realize something very important: Having a small list isn’t the same as having a big list!
It seems obvious, but people don’t get it – if you make a lot of money from a large list, and then scale that money down to the size of a small list, then you don’t end up with a lot of money.
Which means that if you want to make a lot of money from a small list, you have to do things differently.
The big question is: differently how?
And to answer that, we need to understand the strategy behind having a big list.
In a nutshell, the idea is to get people to take action without having to interact with them directly – because it would be impossible to do so. If you’ve got 25,000 people on your list, then there is no way that you can email back and forth with all of them – there just aren’t enough hours in the day!
Since it isn’t practical (or even possible) for you to interact with all of them, you need to sell them something that is very “hands off” as well – like a pre-made product, or e-book.
These products usually aren’t that expensive, but that’s okay, because you’ve got a huge list, so you’re probably going to sell a lot of them.
But if you DON’T have a big list, that isn’t going to work. Which brings us to the first paradigm shift...
Paradigm Shift Number 1: High Ticket Sales
If you want to make a lot of money from a small list, then the first shift you have to make is realizing that you can’t do it by selling something that doesn’t cost very much.
Here’s what I mean; let’s say that you’re selling an e-book $69 (not that big an amount). And let’s say that you’ve got 300 people on your list. Let’s even say that conversion rates are really good, like 6% (they’re usually more like 3-5%, if you’re good).
So 6% of 300 people is 18 sales, times $69 is $1,242. That’s the absolute maximum that you can make from your list, and we haven’t even considered the cost of producing or selling the e-book!
And you can’t quit your job on $1,242!
But what if we changed the offer, so that instead of selling a $69 e-book, you sell a $3,000 coaching package. Conversion rates are going to be lower, since you’re selling something a lot more expensive, so let’s say that you only get 1% to buy.
This time, it works out differently: 2% of 300 people is 6 sales, times $3,000 is $18,000. And you can probably run a promotion like this 3 times per year – which means you’ll be making $54,000.
You can probably quit your job on $54,000... now we’re talking!
Paradigm Shift Number 2: High Touch Selling
Now, if you’re trying to sell a $3,000 coaching package, you probably have to do more than send a few emails and direct people to a sales page... in fact, you’re going to have to interact with people a lot more!
But wait – you have a small list, which means that there’s no reason why you can’t do that!
So do it.
Email back and forth with your subscribers. Get them on webinars. Talk to them on the phone.
Listen to what their issues are, and where they are struggling in ways that you can help. Talk to them about their real concerns, and explain the benefits. Build trust and rapport.
Sure, it’s more work, but we’re talking about big money here – isn’t it worth it?
Speaking of Getting People on the Phone...
You probably have questions about how to do all this.
No problem – I’ve got answers, and I’m happy to share.
My partner Peter and I are hosting a webinar about How to Get Big Results from Small Lists, in just a couple of days.
On the webinar, we’re going to share exactly how you can do everything that I wrote about in this post – and more. If you’ve got a small list and you want to make lots of money, then this webinar is for you.
Registration is free, but space is limited. So if you’re interested, go reserve your spot!
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Great stuff! I will keep this in mind. I also wonder what you would suggest for those with a list of ongoing clients with nothing to really sell later or something low price to sell later.
Hi Ashli, actually, in that case it's important to find something new that you can offer them. I talk about that in my free video course here, if you're interested: http://www.firepolemarketing.com/blog/get-more-cash/
It's exactly the post i'm looking for. But in my opinion, you can just apply this method if building loyal subscribers through your blog (with high quality content). In case your email list comes from other methods, like buying solo ads, or do ad swap, it's extremely difficult to build trust with your leads, then can't sell them high cost products. Do you have any suggestions?
My website: http://alexnob.com/signup.html