When you build your first list a very important aspect to keep in mind is your users trust. If your users have trust in your knowledge and think of you as the expert then they will value your opinion on any services or products that you show them. This will mean more affiliate commissions for you and will make sure you don’t have a bunch of people un-subscribing from your list.
How to Build Trust
In previous articles I’ve already showed you how you should start your autoresponder off and this can help build a lot of trust in your email list. But, it doesn’t end there.
Giving your list free content or products will greatly increase their trust in you and they will want to support you by buying more of your products. When you start building your email list, place emphasis on building up trust with your subscribers and not making some money. Once you have their trust, only then should you start mixing in promotional emails (i.e. promoting your own products or promoting affiliate products). Personally, I’d say for every 3-4 emails you send to your subscribers with free, valuable content, send out 1 promotional email.
Spend time on making your free content actually valuable. Don’t just copy and paste some article you find online, put some thought into it and make sure it actually provides some real value. Building trust is the most important thing you could focus on when you build your first list so do not pass it by. Create high quality information for your list and you will receive high quality conversions and revenue in return.
But it doesn’t end here. Just because you’ve gained their trust doesn’t mean the user will for certain by from you. Let us break this down with an example. Take James Reynold’s blog – Incredible Internet Marketing.
Now, he offers free, valuable, useful content to his readers, but also promotes affiliate products. He goes about this in a way that I think is the best. He uses the trust he’s built up and makes it personal – he uses the word ‘I’ a lot as it tends to make readers side with the author. Take this article for example:
http://www.incredibleinternetmarketing.com/news/james-schramko-traffic-grab-review-bonus/
Here he doesn’t simply say “here’s a product, go buy it through my affiliate link”. This would be stupid and could loose him subscribers. SO what does he do? He writes a good, solid post, talking about his background, the product’s background and what you get in the product itself. He also offers a bonus, but that’s more like the icing on top of the cake.
[note] In short, don’t just blindly promote a product through your list – take the time to build the product up for the users and leverage the trust you’ve built with the subscribers to its full extent. [/note]
Benefits of Building Trust
I’ve already told you about a few benefits, but this can not be overlooked. If your users have a lot of trust in you it could mean the difference between a $10 email or a $100 email. It is actually a lot better to have 100 people that really trust you on your list then 1000 people who you never gave any value to. More people is not always better when it comes to email lists.
Another factor that will build trust in your list is to stay within your niche. If you build a list on how to lose belly fat then don’t send some promotional emails about a cool new dating site or a product to make money online. You could send some other weight loss products since if they are interested in losing belly fat they probably wouldn’t mind losing fat in other areas as well. But stay as close to your niche as possible when sending promotional emails and people won’t just see spam showing up in their inbox.
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