Everything Starts With A List

“Everything starts with a list. Potential clients, buyers, places to get published. Everything.
If you don’t have a list, you haven’t even started a business yet."
—Matt Furey

In Issue #229

Everything Starts With A List
by Monica Day

Everything starts with a list. This was the general consensus of the panel of experts who taught in Austin last week.

If you’re just starting out as a freelancer, you need to assemble a list of potential clients. If you’re launching an online web business, you need a list of potential buyers. And so on.

For some reason, people just starting out often skip this simple step – and then wonder why nothing is happening in their career.

We know we need to set goals. Learn new skills. Write marketing materials. Launch a website. But notice that all of these activities are focused on you – the fledgling entrepreneur. How much you want to earn … what you need to know to do it … and how you are going to tell people about your services so they are convinced to hire you.

But you are only half of the success equation. Without the other half – the client or customer – you don’t have a business, or an income, yet!

In order to build a list you have to turn your focus from yourself to the people you are trying to reach – your target prospect. It is the same exercise you would do if you were writing a promotional package for a client. Figure out who is most likely to purchase the product you’re promoting – and make sure your copy speaks to their needs, wants and desires.

When the product or service is YOU it can be a bigger challenge. But it can’t be avoided. At least not if you want to make money.

Nick Usborne pointed out that having an aversion to cold calling keeps many freelancers from assembling a list of prospects. But then he added that he has never made a cold call in his life! He decided he wanted the clients to come to him – so he wrote articles and spoke at conferences and events and positioned himself as a web marketing expert.

Not only did he get clients to call him, he was able to charge top dollar for his services.

But even in Nick’s case – a list is the starting point. But instead of individual clients, it included public speaking opportunities and publications that would accept his articles and provide a link to his website.

The size of your list also counts. It has to contain as many as four times the number clients or customers you need. Matt Furey shared that his list has an unusually high number of buyers on it – way more than the industry average – and it’s still just 45% buyers. In many cases that number is as low as 15-20% — so just a handful of names isn’t going to cut it.

If you don’t have a list yet – get started today. Ask yourself …

Who do I want to write for? Who is the target audience for my website or email marketing campaign? Where can I find them?

Then take it one more step and start assembling the names and contact information of these individuals or businesses into a prospect list or database.

Next week, I’ll write you more about what to do once you have that list together. Stay tuned.

Resource Referral: The Fastest Way To Start Making Money

I got really clear about the opportunity in web copywriting while I was in Austin. And I feel a little chagrined at not sharing it with you sooner and encouraging you to add expertise in web writing to your toolbox. That stops today.

While everyone else is talking about what isn’t working in the economy right now – not enough people are paying attention to what is working. The truth is, businesses are pumping 10% of all U.S. advertising dollars into the web in 2009 – and that number is only going to go up as the economy continues to falter.

Even better, web assignments pay anywhere from $250 – $3,500 and can be done in less than a day! Seriously, I watched people get checks in Austin for 15 minutes of work – and in some cases it was the first web copy they’d ever written.

It’s a huge market, and it’s pretty wide open. You can tell in just 10 minutes of surfing the web that most companies don’t know what they’re doing. Their pages are confusing, and their copy is horrible. Even if they are cutting back in some areas, if you can show them a way to increase sales, you’ll have their attention. And in just a day of web-surfing you can gather a targeted list of prospects for your services!

I was highly impressed with Nick Usborne’s presentation in Austin – and his course is even better. It’s called Nick Usborne’s Million-Dollar Secrets to Online.

I believe this is the most important program AWAI has developed since they launched the Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting 11 years ago. It’s an A-Z, step-by-step tutorial on how to become a grade “A” Web copywriter. Once you go through the program – and master its powerful skills – you’ll know more about writing for the Web than 99% of copywriters in the country  … making it a piece of cake to get as many clients as you can handle.

Click here to learn more.

Quick Copy Tip: Keep It Simple

I’ve heard Michael Masterson say it over and over about direct mail copy. And last week in Austin, Nick Usborne was banging the same drum: clever copy doesn’t sell. Simple and direct copy does.

My favorite example that Nick gave was for a website called “Plaid” that had the tagline: So Beautiful. So Easy. So Plaid.

“So what?” asked Nick!

Then, he made the brilliant suggestion for an alternative tagline that only one of the highest-paid, most-in-demand web writers in the business would know to make:

“We sell craft supplies.”

The hard news here is that it actually doesn’t take a creative genius to write effective web copy. It just takes the discipline to be clear instead of cute. For most of us, it’s a relief. We can leave cute, clever and ineffective writing to the guys on Madison Avenue.

Let’s just not tell them that we can make more money than them doing it our way, OK?