Which One is More Important – Product or Mailing List?
If you would ask this question, “Which one is more important – the mailing list or
the product?†any savvy marketer would answer you--“The mailing listâ€.
Principally, any wise business person puts the importance of hungry demand
(and not just any demand) in front of the product. In other words, there is no
product if there is no demand! And a mailing list represents the demand or your
business if you would like to call it.
If you frequent Joint Venture forums and membership sites of any kind, you will
find that product and service owners need mailing list owners more than the
other way round. This is because the mailing list owners have the prospects that
the other type of partner is looking for to sell to.
And if you are a mailing list owner, you do not have to necessarily make money
from selling your own product. You can sell advertising space or craft a Joint
Venture with product owners in return for commissions, recurring or not.
Many of the most successful web businesses on the Internet today often
establish the mailing list (or subscribers) first before the product. One fine
example is Friendster.com.
Friendster.com, in a nutshell, is a website that connects friends and potential
friends from around the world through free membership access.
While Friendster.com does not make money from the number of members who
join the site, the business makes money from selling advertising space and
partnering with other big time merchants and businesses, owing to the
established number of members Friendster.com has recruited.
This business demonstrates why every business should establish a need or
demand before the product itself, and why you should do the same, whether you
run a friends site or not.