Building Trust, What Does It Really Mean And How Does It Make You Money?

Everybody is talking about building trust nowadays. You have to build trust with your lists, with your clients, with your blog, your website etc. But what does it really mean, and how does one build trust?

We live in a society where we don’t really trust advertising, we have lost confidence in it. Many people, especially of the younger generation, receive advice on where to surf or what to buy from friends, not from ads. Imagine the power of being someone people “trust” and refer to their friends. Now that’s powerful and viral marketing right there!

To become a trusted person, you must establish yourself as a non-sales oriented, and also a non-high pressure marketer. Genuinely care about your visitors, subscribers and clients. Connect with more people than everyone else, and most important of all, leave a good impression! Utilize social networks and web 2.0 platforms for this, and you’ll soon see results.

Talk/write about things you know more about than anyone else, and do it in a way so that everyone can understand you. Give people high quality and valuable information. If you want them to sign up for your newsletter, give them something in return for their email address, such as a free report.

Another thing that I’ve used to build massive lists is the “free e-course” method, where I offer people a free 5-day course for something that’s relevant to the niche I’m promoting. When they sign up, they get one email “class” per day for 5 days (all from an autoresponder, of course). I don’t put ANY affiliate links or sales stuff in the first 4 emails, I’m just giving them high quality content, and in the 5^th, I mention the product or service I’m selling. Doing this ensures that they become used to getting emails from me, and they get used to opening them, plus that they know that it’s high quality. Conversion rates? Very high!

So how do you make money off of all this if you’re just building trust and giving away all the good stuff for free? One word, and it’s something that many, many marketers lack: Patience. Trust me, once you have a list or a following that trusts you, your conversion rates will be ridiculously higher than if you’re just driving traffic to an offer. Plus, a majority of them will buy from you again, and again, and again, not just once. Repeat customers from one effort!

As for the viral part, when you have a following, you can make tons of sales and tons of cash from free traffic. How? F.ex. write a great blog post, and your readers will bookmark it. Then other people will bookmark those bookmarks, other bloggers will blog about it, and all of a sudden the ball is rolling, plus you’ll get tons of great backlinks. All from one post! Do you guys see the power of this?

Sometime in the near future, I’ll have a list of resources for those of you who are new to social and web 2.0 platforms. This is something that takes longer than driving instant traffic with PPC or CPV (which you can use if you have a budget), but in the long run, it’s something that can give you a long-term income with repeat customers. Unbeatable!