Hunting vs Gathering: Building a Mailing List

Are you hunting in the jungle? Or are you gathering a herd?

This is a big mistake a lot of new online marketers make when they’re monetizing SEO traffic, doing affiliate marketing, or doing CPA and PPC advertising.

They promote other peoples’ products as affiliates, but they don’t have a mechanism for building a mailing list of prospects so that they can come back to those leads over and over again. (Gathering the herd.)

Instead, they need to constantly attract new prospects to their site. (Hunting in the jungle.)

There’s no leverage in being a hunter.

But there IS leveraging in being a herdsman.

By bringing your herd back to your site over and over, feeding them with value, and continuing to grow the herd – the herd starts to grow exponentially.

Case Study: The Herdsman

A business that I worked for started with 50 leads. Those 50 were people who had responded on an online forum to a post about a free newsletter.

A website was built. Through word of mouth the herd grew to a few hundred. Then, a few thousand as its reputation spread and invitations to speak at events and semianrs were received.

Those few thousand leads were enough to launch a best selling business book – which led to prime time television exposure – which quickly grew the number to tens of thousands of leads.

Suddenly, a tiny newsletter was worth millions of dollars in revenue per year because the business leveraged the herd.

This is why we herd.

Case Study: The Hunter

On the other hand, a close friend of mine learned first-hand why being a hunter is so risky.

He had used some clever technology to build a site that made around $10,000 per month (passive income) – a fantastic sum of money for a site that ran on autopilot!

It relied on traffic from search engines, affiliates, and advertising networks…

One day, without warning, the companies he was relying on changed – and his income immediately dropped overnight from $10,000 per month, to less than $0 (losing money.)

He had nothing to leverage. No list. No herd. Nobody to come back to his site.

It had all slipped through his fingers, never to return.

Although he was a cunning hunter, when the environment changed and his hunting skills no longer worked, he had no herd he could go back to. So the cunning hunter starved.

Don’t Let Your Hard Work Go To Waste!

The lesson here is simple – gather a herd, and grow it.

If you’re doing affiliate promotions, Cost Per Action promotions, Pay Per View promotions, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization, joint ventures – anything that leaves you relying on a 3rd party for income or traffic – find a way to collect email addresses, or communicate with the people.

Offer a bonus, provide an incentive, just do something!

One day, the 3rd party traffic or income streams you’re relying on now WILL dry up – never to return.

Don’t let the leads you’ve worked so hard to attract slip through your fingers – gather them, keep bringing them back, and grow your business.

Brent

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