In the business world, there are 2 schools of thought regarding growing and monetizing your customer base.

Both can be potentially viable and allow you to harvest the fruits of your effort.

• One school of thought says that you spread your net far and wide, and catch as many fish as possible.

By expanding your catchment area as far as possible, you get numerous fish and able to benefit from the fruits of your labor.

• On the other hand, the other school of thought seeks to breed fish. The fish are attracted toward a certain area, and the fish are cultivated in a nurturing environment.

Although the number of fish is not especially numerous, the opportunity to continually reap continual benefits from the school of fish provides a greater opportunity and benefit in the long term.

How does this information benefit you?

Imagine for a moment you are an affiliate marketer.

Are you placing your ads on your blog or website, continually casting for new prospects?

Are you constantly renewing your efforts to bring in new customers?

Does it get tiring after a while?

Too often I see Internet Marketers look as their customers as a one-shot sale.

Their approach seems to be close, then move on.With a sell-discard-sell-discard approach, they are forced to continually prospect for new leads.

The cycle never ends.

If you want greater results with less effort:

Why not consider the deep diving approach?

Rather than continually swimming around looking for new clients, why not work within the group you have built up?

You can choose to build up a community of like-minded individuals.

By continually serving their needs, you create a group of intensely committed and loyal Internet Marketers.

Here’s some ways to cultivate the community:

• Common purpose, common goal: Why is the team put together? Are they set to achieve a common goal? Is everyone moving in the same direction?
• Create an identity and sense of bonding: Do your group members feel like they’re part of a team? Are they full integrated into the group?
• Online AND offline: It’s too easy to get sucked into the culture of visiting the team members blogs and chatting on the forum. But nothing beats meeting up face-to-face. By putting a ‘face’ to the name, the sense of a real community develops. The team is not just a mailing list, or a members list, but rather a real life, breathing group of people.

By continually building the links between:

• members to members and
• members to the group

A strong group will form over time and the opportunity to grow the group and monetize the list will gradually combine over time.

I’m doing my best to achieve this goal with DigitalKeiretsu.com.

If you’d like to plug into a strong, motivated and commited community, check out: Why 90% of Internet Marketers fail

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