How many times have you heard the phrase “the money is in the list”? It is an old truism in Internet Marketing circles, one repeated over and over again – even by people that have never had a list and aren't speaking from first hand knowledge.

But what does it really mean – and is it actually true? All too often these phrases are actually outdated or even meaningless all together. Is there really money in the list, and is it much money if there is?

What it Means

The meaning of the phrase 'the money is in the list' is a simple one – it refers to the fact that having a mailing list of people who are interested in receiving mails from you means that, in most cases, you can leverage that for money.

This means using a newsletter service or autoresponder – the most famous of which is Aweber, popular amongst newbies and experts alike.

In most cases the math is simple. You create a list for people to sign up to in the niche of your choice and then drive traffic to it to get them to sign up. You are then able to hit them with an auto-responder series or a regular newsletter.

On this newsletter or autoresponder series you can then sell various products or services to people you KNOW are interested... because they signed up.

This is powerful. People on such lists are often buyers... it is estimated that with a sound knowledge of sales you should be looking at £0.50 per person on the list per month. When you think of the large numbers you can sign up that is a lot of money!

Not just any list will do though... it needs to be targeted followers. This means that simply buying in any list, using old lists (people need to trust the sender) to getting anyone and everyone to sign up is no good.

The money is in the list – but it is in the targeted list.