Have you ever heard someone spout some jargon and not have any idea what they were talking about? It happens to me all of the time.

People talk about their CTR or CRM and I just nod my head like I know exactly what they are saying. Then as soon as they stop talking, I go straight to Google to figure it out.

It's annoying and intimidating.

People assume you know what they are talking about and they never take the time to fully explain it to you. So throughout this course I'm going to take the time to make sure you don't get lost in the jargon.

Let's take 5 minutes to make sure you and I are on the same page about what an email list is.

At its core an email list is exactly what it sounds like: a list of email addresses from people that have asked you to communicate with them.

Two different types of email lists

List Type #1: Personal email service providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc...
List Type #2: Business email service providers such as Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Infusionsoft etc...

When I first started my blog, I had no idea what an email list was.

I had no idea of all of the technical complexities involved in sending an email to 100 or even 10,000 people.

Think about how you send an email now.

Step 1: You open Gmail.

Step 2: You type in the email address of the person you are going to send an email to.

Step 3: You type your subject and message, then press send.

If you wanted to send the same message to 5 friends, you would just type all of their emails into the TO: field.

But what if you wanted to send that same message to 100 people? 1,000 people? 10,000 people?

You could keep a spreadsheet with all of the emails addresses in it and copy and paste them into the TO: field every time you wanted to send an email.

But there are a few problems with that approach.

1. Everyone would see everyone else's email address. (Can you say spam?)

2. If someone hit reply all, everyone would get the message. (Massive annoyance!)

3. Gmail limits the total number of people you can send an email to. (Not scalable.)

4. Every time someone new told you they wanted to get your emails, you would have to manually add them to your spreadsheet.

Doing it this way is fine when you need to send an email to 2 or 3 people, but if you want to build an email list of 10,000 subscribers, it will be a massive pain in the butt and a huge time suck, not to mention illegal.

That's where services such as Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Infusionsoft etc... come in.

They make it extremely easy to collect email addresses, organize contacts, and send email broadcasts out to all or just a segment of your list.

Have you ever Googled "how to build an email list"? If you ever need a good laugh, give it a try. Here are some of my favorites... "You'll probably want to invest money on an amazing website." "Consider implementing Facebook Connect." "Build an email list through high-value content delivered to a niche." When I first started trying to build my list, I kept getting advice like that.

• Do retargeting.
• Try Facebook Connect.
• Use content marketing.
• Make some videos for YouTube.

I had no idea where to start. The truth is, at its core, building an email list is very, VERY basic. Listen closely.You only need three things to build your list.

Thing #1: Someone to give you their email address

Thing #2: A way to collect the email address

Thing #3: A place to store and send messages to those email addresses Super simple. No Facebook Connect or fancy websites needed.

Don’t over-complicate things.

Right now you might be wondering what plugins you need to set up on your site.

You might be self-conscious about your logo or web design.

You might be worried that you don’t have content or that you don’t know what to send the handful of subscribers you have (or don’t have).

For now...set all of those worries aside. We’ll cover all of that at the proper time. You don’t need a website, domain, logo or even a business name.

Right now you only need to do two things:

Thing #1: Understand the fundamentals of how email lists work
Thing #2: By the end of this module you need to get your first subscriber

Ready for the next lesson?