I guess somewhere in Online Business Marketing 101 it must say that in order to have a successful online business you need to establish an email list and focus a good amount of time, effort and money into growing that list by any and all means possible. Of course, I skipped Online Business Marketing 101 and figured out a long time ago that much of the traditional marketing practices constantly touted as business essentials online are nothing more than mere suggestions. If you have started a business online or want to start one but get intimidated by the jargon and fancy lingo that the usual online marketers use, or get confused when you hear about SEO, Leadpages, Hooks and Facebook Ads, well, guess what? I am here today to tell you that you don’t need any of it to find success for your business online!
Why? Well, because building a successful business online doesn’t have to be about marketing, endlessly selling yourself and your products online. or even knowing some secret formula for generating leads through advertising. You can make the intentional choice to focus your business strategy on growing a community and finding that audience of like minded individuals who really need that product or service that you have. Let me ask you a question. Would you rather do business with a company online that spammed you with emails, constant product updates and click-bait sales methods or would you rather do business business with a company that took the time to get to know you, was there to answer your questions and support you first before they ever asked for a single penny? I know which I would choose! No one wants to feel like they are being sold to, and for many online entrepreneurs, it feels icky when we have to resort to basic sales tactics. Although I run a business online, I don’t consider myself a sales person, I consider myself a creator and I don’t want to waste my creative energy focusing on business principles that don’t align with my values and interests. I don’t run my business based on antiquated marketing principles, developed at the start of the dotcom era, and I’ve found more success than I could have imagined just by being myself, truly trying to connect with my customers and providing a source of helpful information for my community everyday!
So, you are probably asking yourself, “Alexis, how did you learn how to grow a community online? Where did you learn from? Which program did you take?” The truth is, I learned all this information the hard way, through trial and error. I’ve been at this for over six years at this point and it’s only been through testing and trying new things that I have slowly but surely uncovered the knowledge and information that I now know and which has led me to grow my blog, YouTube and Social Media feeds to numbers far beyond what I could have expected! In just the last year alone, I have grown my blog from just over 10k page views per month to nearly 150k, and my YouTube from 1k subscribers to over 20k! Oh and did I mention, all that and I never spent a single dollar on advertising, nor did I have an email list to communicate with my followers. Instead, I harnessed the power of social media and my own creativity to naturally attract an audience and community for my work who then turned into my customers!
Now, if you are interested in replicating my success, I will tell you, it’s completely do-able! I don’t believe that I was some one-off success story, I know that my success is repeatable for those who know and use the lessons and information that it took me years to figure out on my own. The best news is, that I am not just keeping this information to myself. Like all other great things I learn about and experience in my life, I want to share this with my community! That is why I developed the Empire Building Program, my personal e-course designed to help other creative business owners build a community of customers online using creative methods of communication instead of old-school online marketing tactics! If you want to build an online business, but you’re not interested in learning all the ins and outs of business strategy, this is the course for you!
The great thing about Empire Building is that I created a few different levels for the program to help people learn at the rate and style that works for them. You can sign up for my Empire Building Architect Path to get one-on-one coaching sessions with me as well as a Custom Content Development Action Plan that I create for your business, and of course access to the full Empire Building Program of 5 digital workbooks and a private Facebook group for members. Or, if you want to join the program, but don’t have the time for one-on-one coaching, you can join the Empire Building Blueprint Path and get group coaching through the private Facebook group as well as full access to the 5 digital workbooks so you can work at your own pace and check in with me for additional resources and guidance as needed. Finally, if you prefer to go it alone and select the digital workbooks and topics that you need specific help with, you can purchase my Empire Building Workbooks* individually! Each digital workbook is filled with all the information you need to know on the subject, as well as numerous worksheets that you can print out and use to build a custom plan for your business!
If you want to start your online business but aren’t sure where to begin, let me guide you! If you have an existing business but are having trouble gaining traction online, use my knowledge to your advantage! You don’t have to spend years testing every trick in the book just to figure out what works and what doesn’t. I’ve done all the heavy lifting for you in Empire Building! I can’t wait to work with you!
If you have any questions about Empire Building please do not hesitate to send me an email so I can help you decide which path of the program is right for you!
xoxo,
*Currently, the first two of the five workbooks have been released and the remaining workbooks will be published once a month through July.
You’re the only one I hear saying this and I really appreciate it. I started a mailing list almost two months ago without having a biz (yet), because EVERYBODY says it’s the right thing to do for the future of your own blog, but I’m not sure about that anymore… It might work, yes, but starting a newsletter without a solid readership isn’t so useful.
And you hit the nail right on the head, a mailing list with no readership is useless. Don’t put the cart before the horse!
Your courses are very interesting. I’m just curious if they cater to a certain area or type of online business/blog, such as niche, lifestyle, beauty, etc.
My course is geared towards online businesses that either have a creative aspect or want to encorporate solid content creation and content marketing into their routine to gain a larger audience via social media!
Yes, you CAN build an online business without an email list, or without Facebook, or Twitter, or any number of other things. But I disagree that having an email list equates to spamming people’s inboxes with stuff they don’t want to read.
The type of online marketer who is going to use an email list for spammy, clickbait type content is also going to post that type of content on their blog, Facebook, Instagram, and everywhere else. The problem is with spammy and inauthentic content, not with the method of delivery.
For an online marketer that understands it really IS about building long-term community, an email list can be a GREAT way to stay as close as possible to that community and make sure they hear you. (Because they opted-in, and therefore they WANT to hear from you.)
I love social media, but the problem with relying primarily on social to build your community is that you’re at the whims of any given social media channel’s algorithm changes. We’ve all seen how organic reach on Facebook has continued to decrease and has become more and more pay-for-play for brands and businesses.
An e-mail list should not be your only method of building an online community, and it SHOULD be first and foremost about building a community, but I do think it’s a critical component of virtually any online business.
You make some great points and I definitely agree with most of this, however, my only two issues with the subject of email lists is that (1) they are often touted as the be all and end all of online marketing and that if someone doesn’t have an email list they won’t be successful. And (2) that email lists are a form of community building, which I do not believe is true. An email list is a rolodex and a rolodex does not a community make, it’s simply a method of communication. You can send an email to everyone in your community, and they can email you right back, but their is no interaction or transparency within the community through this form of communication. It’s that interaction that makes your community a community, and those sorts of interactions are only sustainable in places like Facebook, the comment section of a blog or YouTube channel and of course social media! Community is definitely the most important part of online marketing and it’s clear that you understand that, I just don’t believe that email will add much to my community, its much more self serving in my view. That doesn’t make it bad, but I think this is a topic where I enjoy rebelling against conventional wisdom because I myself have been able to build my own business without an email list. Will I start one? Probably. Will I rely on it as a primary method of communication for my community? Na, I’ve already got that covered!