Biggest Marketing Mistake

What is the single biggest mistake most online marketers make?

Brian shares what it is, how he learned list buidling the hard way, so you can avoid this deadly marketing mistake.

Share this on Twitter!

My Single Biggest Internet Marketing Mistake

We learn the best from our mistakes.

We all make mistakes. Let me tell you the story of one of my biggest ones...and how I learned one of the most important lessons in running an internet business.

I put up a website that attracted over 100,000 hits in one week. That’s right...100,000. We did pretty well with that site--we made about $50,000 that week. Unfortunately, I paid a lot of that out to my affiliates that helped drive that much traffic to that site. The biggest regret, though, was that I didn’t focused on list building. Instead of worrying about the amount of money I made or didn’t make that one time, I should have focused on how much I could have made with the people that came and left my site.

What happened is that if I had 100,000 people come to the site, and only 2% bought the product (a normal conversion), then I let 98,000 leave...never to be heard from again. So, because I wasn’t focused on list building, I used all that time and all that effort to get 2,000 people to buy something on the front-end.

Instead, I could have been focused on the lifetime value of a customer by focusing on list building. If we had put in an opt-in box or squeeze page where they could give me their emails, the normal conversion rate would have given me about 30,000 to 50,000 emails. Those extra names would have easily brought in an additional six figures in a year.

So, because I didn’t focus on list building, I missed out on a six figure income per year for who knows how long. I had the time and effort already put into getting that traffic to that website, and I didn’t really gain the full benefit from that traffic. All of that could have been solved if I would have focused on list building. I missed out.

It was a mistake. A big mistake.

And it hurts.

It’s one of those that you wish you could go and take back.

But you learn from your mistakes. I sure did. What I’m hoping is that you will also learn from my mistakes.

The biggest thing I’ve learned--and you should learn it too--is to focus on list building.

It’s been said that hindsight is 20/20. Hopefully, you can get the benefit of 20/20 vision by using my expense as hindsight for you and your online business. My biggest mistake can save you from missing out on a six figure income like I did.

Whenever I build a site and anything I do online, whether it’s pop ups, emails, editorial mentions, online ads, or whatever, I’m always focused on list building. And so should you. It could be the difference in making less than $50,000 one time from a bunch of traffic to your site, and getting a regular six figure annual income from building a list off that same exact traffic and the same amount of work.

The same effort, the same tactics, the same work--all to make a steady income instead of a one time hit. It’s a no brainer.

Focus on building your email marketing list!