I don't know how many ways I can say this, but list building is the most important activity for you to be involved in, period. Everything you do should be geared toward list building, and along with that comes the messages in your autoresponder series. One of my students once asked, "I can't get the first message written. I don't know what to say."



Do you know what I answered, "Well... write the second one instead." That may seem flip, but if you can't get started, then just write anything. Don't worry about the "relationship building" email. Get comfortable by writing the rest and you can always go back to that. But I have a better solution.

Get to know what your list wants. Let your first email say, "What's your single biggest question about..." and then, fill in your niche. "What's your single biggest question about putters" or about list building, or whatever it is. This will fit any niche. So, here's what I'd say, " Hello first name, Welcome on board! I'm happy that you're part of our group. Let me get right to it. Because I want to answer your questions about list building, I'd like to know what your questions are. Please click on the link and ask your single biggest question. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

This accomplishes two things. First and most obvious is that you've now written your first email. Second, whatever questions you get back will help you to write the rest of the series. Plus, it helps you to know what your list is looking for and might want to buy. It's much easier than having to figure that out for yourself.

Write a question at the end of each email, or have one a week or one a month. When you do that, you have all kinds of questions to answer in future emails. "Joe wants to have a better swing, and he wants to know what are the top three videos on that subject. Well, I have watched and endorse these highly..." So, there you go. You can write it like a Dear Abby column or whatever.

This simple action is very powerful. It helps you to come up with ideas, but you can just write articles and emails around all the answers you get. How cool is that?

Another way to find out what your list wants is buy using surveys. Survey Monkey (http://surveymonkey.com) and ASKdatabase (http://askdatabase.com) are two of the best. You can allow your audience to choose answers from a set of radio buttons. Whatever they choose will take them to a special product just for that answer, so that you're targeting your offers. You're also building data on what your list wants.

Either of those services are great, but don't hesitate. Get started! Put up a survey or ask questions today. Just get yourself moving forward with list building as quickly as possible.