So we go out and try to find people to sign up for our list. If we're lucky, after a few months we get a few hundred subscribers and we get excited...but then the kiss of death:

We email our subscribers to pitch a product. We wait a day or two for the sales to come in.

The days pass by and nothing happens. What went wrong?

We sent the perfect email pitch, we have built trust with our list, we've given tons of useful content... everything we've been told to do, right?

Here's the answer:

We've just spent the last few months building a list of freebie seekers who will NEVER buy from us, no matter what we do for them.

That's the golden ticket to breaking free from a nose diving list to a big business through email marketing. If you can spend your time finding targeted, responsive buyers that will give you their name and email address (instead of the tire kickers) then you've just solved one of the biggest mysteries to online success.

So instead of going after 20k of people who couldn't care less what you've got to offer, why not go for a list of 500 people who WILL buy what you're selling? I know which one I'd choose, how about you?

In the past, the best way to get subscribers was to give a freebie away as this was always irresistible to visitors. However, those visitors may not ever be interested in buying stuff online, particularly the types of products you're selling.

Whilst this idea varies from market to market, generally speaking this is the reason why giving things away to get people on your list is a huge energy hog and should be avoided where possible. Save your free stuff for your newsletter if you want to build a proven list of buyers.

When building your list, you should try to think about targeting the types of people that have proven themselves to be responsive to offers, or that have actually bought a low cost, entry level product from you in order to get on your list.

Because once they have trusted you enough to buy from you, then the battle in virtually won! All you have to do is build a relationship with these buyers and deliver value. Then it will be very easy to sell to them over and over again, gradually pitching higher priced items as they buy more and more from you.

This is something that you can do whether you own a product or whether you're just an affiliate selling other people's products.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with finding targeted subscribers. If you would like to know how to rake in tons of targeted subscribers in as little as 24 hours, then you should check out a new course by list building, email expert - Michael Rasmussen.