This isn’t exactly a factual percentage but 90% of internet marketers know that building a list is one of the most important things to further their business, whatever it may be. Why is list building so important? Once you have a list of people who directly receive your emails, it’s practically free to contact them about whatever product or service you want to tell them about.

Let’s look at some popular internet marketing names.

Mike Filsaime is a very successful marketer who has created countless websites that simply help build his email list. Mike believes in lead generation as a crucial part of his online business. As an 8 figure earner, he has done incredibly well for himself in a short time period, and his email lists are very big.

On a different style of marketing, Frank Kern uses his personality and creativity to draw people to himself. His unique approach has drawn very large numbers of people to his products/services even though he’s really only sold a handful of internet marketing courses. Primarily, his copy writing style is what catches people’s attention by using clever wording and phrases. His email lists are enormous for the “work” he’s out into them and some of that is due in part to the free marketing content he simply gives away.

One of the most well-known marketers is John Reese who’s proven his success over and over. His following is asbolutely HUGE – when he announced to his list about joining Facebook, he maxed out the “friends” limit of 5,000 pretty quickly. John’s list building efforts have brought him to have one of the biggest followings of any single internet marketer.

These are just three internet marketers who’ve taken list building as a focus of their business. If you follow in the footsteps of successful people, you’re more likely to succeed as they pave the path to success. Getting started is usually one of the toughest parts to list building but if you stick with it and are determined, you’ll make the best of it.

You should also check out my post about Lead Generation that I wrote several weeks ago.

Several minutes ago I finished listening and watching a recorded webinar between two networkers. One of the messages has really stuck as it’s probably quite accurate regarding how people use networking in their business and even their lives. Unfortunately by human nature we’re greedy – we put ourselves first.

Networking on the internet has become a career for many people. Additionally, even more people dream in becoming financially successful through network marketing. There’s a fundamental issue staring those people right in the face and the majority of them probably don’t even realize.

While I was listening to the webinar, one of the marketers said that you need to be willing to invest in someone else. How many times have you heard that? Personally I thought the saying was “You need to be willing to invest in yourself”…not “…invest in someone else”!! This CAN’T be right…

To my surprise this concept is way more powerful than I would have ever thought. Chances are I wouldn’t have thought like that anyway but it makes a lot of sense. In theory you’re not just investing in someone else but also yourself, at the same time. Now, we’re not talking about money necessarily so don’t freak out too much on me.

One of the great powers of networking is the blossom and even viral effect it can create for you. To do so you can start by asking people how you can help them. I know, it sounds pretty basic…and it is. Providing people with a value that they need is THE item of importance. Again, providing someone else with something they feel is valuable can drastically improve your networking success. Yes, it’s a very simply concept but makes perfect sense.

Let’s take an example of the above and put it into context.

You know John who is an internet marketer. John already makes $40,000 a year in his online business. Great! Just because he makes more money than you do (and in this example we’ll pretend it’s true) doesn’t mean anything. You contact John and simply ask if their is anything you can do to help him. Of course, that is done with a slight introduction of yourself. John gets back to you and says he needs help designing a better website and you reply back saying you can help him get a great new design for his site.

At this point John has already welcomed you to help as well as told you what he needs. Now you can do one of two things; give him that value he’s looking for or not, it’s that simple.

You then contact a couple web designers after taking a look at their samples and connect John with one of the designers. You’ve now provided John with value, not trying to sell him something without knowing him. Do you think John is going to stay connected with you? Chances are he will as you did something FOR him at no cost on his end.

This type of networking can get even better. Imagine applying similar principles to marketers who are more successful than John. Don’t think it could happen? Think again.

As a networker you want to connect with people by earning their trust and providing value to them. This can be done several ways but the above is a powerful idea that I’ve just learned about. Put other people’s needs ahead of yours like the example explains. It’s easy to say “What do I get out of it?” and if you think about the example, you’ll understand how quickly you can connect with very successful people for almost nothing.

Although it really isn’t “new” news I thought to share a quick tip to help propel your blog and/or website.

Before I say it, until today, I actually hadn’t integrated any social bookmarking tools – hypocratical? Not quite.

If you look at the bottom of this post you will see about 15 little icons under “Bookmarks“. The icons have dramatically increased in numbers and for good reason. You see, social bookmarking is a way to let your readers “bookmark” a page which may be on a specific topic such as how to properly change a car tire. Think it’s a little overkill? Think again.

You see, having a flow of visitors is one thing but having return visitors is also important. What better way to keep visitors coming back than to give them the easy tools of bookmarking what specific content/page they want directly on their favorite sites. I’m sure that sounded a bit confusing but let me clarify.

I’m going to use Facebook and MattKoshko.com as examples.

A reader who enjoys an article on my blog may want to share it with others and/or save the location of that post. The reader may use a variety of websites such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook. Then the reader sees the ability to quickly click on the Facebook icon at the bottom of the post and in a matter of seconds, that link is added to their Facebook account. Now, the reader can quickly access the specific blog post through their Facebook account whenever they want to refer back.

Sounds good, right? Check this out. If the reader decided to make their Social Bookmarks public, all of their contacts (given they “all” have permission) can also access that Bookmark link. And, in fact, if their profile is public, then anyone can access the link as well! Do you see how you can get traffic from this now?

Imagine if 10 people Bookmarked a post from your blog every month…and that’s only 10!

If you haven’t already done so, you should seriously consider adding Social Bookmarking capabilities to your blog.