Your Portable Empire: How to Make Money Anywhere While Doing What You Love

Chapter 2. Building Your List

I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.

—Henry David Thoreau

By now, you've chosen your niche. You're ready to build your playground, and invite others to join you there.

Let's look at how to build a list and to build a relationship with the people on that list.

The dream of every musician is to have a huge concert hall full of people to play to—people who want to hear their song.

I've realized that dream a few times. When you suddenly stop singing and the crowd keeps the tune going. The zing of excitement as the opening chords of your song are played and the crowd starts clapping the minute they recognize the tune.

It feels real good.

There's no feeling quite like it, except, the feeling you get when you build your list of people who are interested in you—your topic, your perspective on the problems associated with that topic, and most importantly, your solutions to that topic.

Then you hit that list with an e-mail offering a product, and thousands and thousands of dollars magically appear in your bank account. It's like waving a wand and making money appear out of thin air.

The trick is to choose your topic/niche carefully and then gather a large group of people onto your list who are interested in your topic.

Every problem is a product. The key is to match the product with the people who have the problem.

That's why you want to target one particular niche and to attract a crowd ...