List Spark offers a pretty interesting take on growing an email list quickly and I’ll show you what the strategy is in this review of it.
Quick Report on List Spark:
Creator: Emka.
Price: Free with an optional $1 trial for an upgraded membership which after 14 days becomes $19.95/month.
Overall Rating: 5 out of 10 stars.
The way the system works does define the product’s name and if used correctly, it can create massive results. I spotted List Spark while browsing the Warrior Forum and saw it advertised as a WSO and because it was free, I figured why not try it? And so I began discovering what it was all about.
What is List Spark?
It’s a system designed to help you build an email list very quickly not just by yourself, but through people whose emails you collect. The way it works is that the people who sign up under you then sign up others and a portion of their email signups become YOUR signups. The multiplication effect is what leads to the name “list spark”.
All of the things you would normally handle with email marketing (website, autoresponder and sales) is mainly done through the List Spark website.
There are 2 parts which make up List Spark:
1) Email marketing training which is very basic.
You learn free ways to get an autoresponder, use the main website and collect email lists, a bunch of squeeze pages and a system to integrate it all together. There is training provided via videos explaining all of this.
Nothing out of the ordinary here and if it was just that, I might have given List Spark a lower rating, but the second part is what I found VERY interesting.
2) The actual List Spark system.
And I did I briefly explain that above but I really need to go over it because it’s quite genius and I’ve never seen this sort of thing used before the way it is here. Here is a picture from within the training explaining it:
It’s ok if you don’t understand it, that’s why I’m here 🙂
The way I want to describe it is by comparing it to MLM programs and pyramid schemes. Not the best way to start an example of a program I’ve rated high, but you’ll understand why I’m saying this in a moment…
MLM programs pay their members in tier type levels.
- You refer a person, you get paid.
- They refer a people and you get paid for a portion of those referrals.
It’s a system where the people you refer work for you and they bring in referrals to you. I don’t want to get into pyramid schemes because the MLM compensation model I just explained is almost identical in many ways so it would basically be the same example.
The problem with these models is that most people aren’t going to be able to make it work and most places charge you a HUGE entry fee plus even more expensive up-sells once you’re inside to get you to buy more and this ends up being thrown in the faces of people you refer, they refer and it just basically becomes a huge mess that I have been VERY critical of and why I’ve never done business with any MLM program.
However, List Spark takes that shady system I just explained, but uses it in a good way. How you ask? Well what they do is make so if you use the program, you will need to pass up 5 signups to the person above you. Then person 6 and onward become YOUR email subscribers. Then whatever subscribers are yours, their first 5 people each of them refer will become your subscribers.
Still doesn’t make sense? It will when I give you this example, plus illustrate numbers.
How list collection can explode through List Spark’s strategy:
I joined List Spark with no referral. The first 5 people I refer to this system will go to the creator, Emka.
Then when I move past 5 people and start referring the next people, all of them will become my subscribers. Let’s say I referred 10 people in total, 5 of which went to Emka. I now have 5 subscribers.
If those 5 subscribers each refer 10 more subscribers, every first 5 each member refers will go to me. I will now have 25 new subscribers + the original 5, making a total of 30 now. And most of them came from my subscribers working for me, not me having to find them.
Now this is where most people can get lost and believe me, I did too a few times. Up until now, we’ve had 2 tiers of subscribers: The first 10 who signed up to us, 5 of which went to Emka, then another 50 which signed up under our 5 referrals (remember, they each had 10 more people sign up to them), 25 of which went to us. Now we’re moving onto tier 3…
Those 25 referrals (tier 3 people) who went to us from out tier 2 will now also be referring people. However, whatever referrals they make, 5 of them will go to us so if each person of those 25 refers another 10 each, we’ll get 5 of those which means we’ll have 125 NEW subscribers added to the list.
This tier is the hardest to understand, but basically the situation is that the referrals who are owed to you by your subscribers, whichever new referrals these people bring in, 5 of them become yours.
So what started as a collection of 10 people, 5 of which we passed to Emka, through this system grew to a total of 155 (5+25+125) and most of the work was done for us.
I can then go on and personally promote to these 155 people in a standard email marketing fashion and make money doing that. The whole purpose of this system is to collect a gigantic email list and then make money through it. This system just accelerates the standard approach most of us are already used to.
Note: This is an example where everything goes right and considers that the people you refer worked perfectly to make this happen.
I really feel so guilty even talking like this because it makes it sound like a pyramid scheme. This is a pyramid system, but by no means a scheme, because this is all free to do and even if you do go for the next level membership, it’s pretty cheap.
Pros:
- Free to check out the site and the membership is also cheap.
- A lot of video information within website explained pretty clearly.
- This is a system I’d never endorse if it were very expensive, but through this system, I like the approach.
Cons:
- I don’t believe beginners will do well with this system.
- The business model under which it functions might not work very well if you have the wrong type of subscribers signing up. Technically the way the system and training is set up, the audience that comes into List Spark is interested in the make money online topic, but you can never guarantee that every sign up is going to become profit generating for you.
Final Rating: List Spark
Green Flag (Worth a shot)
5 out of 10 stars. I’m very curious to test this out personally and record my results. Keep an eye out for a case study.
My final thoughts:
If you’re intermediate and above with online marketing and have had any experience in list building and want to expand, this is definitely something I’d recommend experimenting with. For me personally, I would set the goal to collect a list, but only promote something I truly know works for them, like Wealthy Affiliate.
List building isn’t so much hard collecting, as it is keeping the list itself. You need to stay connected to subscribers to keep the success going, otherwise, they’ll just forget you.