A reader asks the magic list building question:

Hi Ben,

This prob will sound like I’m an idiot when I ask you this.

How do you build a list without the visibility of social media ?

Just to clarify my background, I am about to turn 51, and I’ve been a pharmacist for 30 years. I’m burned out and have been following you for about 2 months. I was trying to figure out how to build a list by using social media, and now this advice

You told me recently not to sign up for email players til I had an offer. I still got nothing.

Props for your Villians book. Have actually been giving some “life” advice to my 21 year old son based on some of your observations.

You can still build a list using social media.

I just don’t mess with it anymore.

Mainly because of its incessant thought-policing, politically-motivated de-platforming, blatant privacy abuse, and their data-sharing/leaking schemes… plus there have been many unintended marketing benefits I wasn’t expecting such as the massive increase in productivity, clarity of thinking, freed up time, less accessibility (which has resulted in more demand for my attention i.e. buying what I sell, a nice side benefit…), etc. But I would never say not to use paid social media ads if you want to use them. I have used paid ads from Facebook, Twitter, and Google to build my list in the past. And, I have gotten many leads doing so. And while you can scale those leads, the quality paled in comparison to the leads I get now. Plus, I don’t have to follow all these sites’ goofy ever-changing rules, either.

The trade off is, I don’t get as many leads.

But, since I’m a 4 quarters vs 100 pennies kinda guy, that suits me just fine.

Plus, it’s rare for a long-term customer to have found me via a Facebook or Google ad. Almost all come from referral-based leads. And, I can “siphon” away the best quality leads from the above platforms, free, now.

How?

By using a couple ways I talked a little bit about in the December “Email Players” issue, one of which I am “zooming in” on in depth, with an example of how it’s done, in the upcoming February issue.

But, a word of warning:

This method can help someone build a list from scratch.

And, the leads will very likely be high quality.

Certainly higher quality than random social media leads.

But, it takes time and it takes patience. And, I don’t recommend someone who has no list or presence in their chosen market subscribe thinking this is going to be the magic list building method that liberates them from the 9-5 world.

It’s a tool for the toolbox.

And, you can’t build a house with just one tool…

The deadline to get this issue is later today.

(When I send the list to the printer)

After that, I’m disabling it in the shopping cart so nobody can subscribe until next month, when it will be way too late to get it.

Here’s the link:

http://www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle