I’ve seen this done before but this time it’s a little different because of the total inexperience of the person (we’ll call her Pam) who did this.

Pam had zero experience at online marketing, zero experience at list building and zero experience at creating any kind of a software program.

She’d read enough marketing materials to know that building an email list was paramount to finding success in online marketing, but she didn’t want to bother with slow, traditional list building methods.

Nope. She wanted to do it fast and with as little effort as possible.

And so, she created a software program for laptops and an app version for phones.

Her software is in the self-help niche, but she’s asked me not to give out any specifics because it would be super easy for someone else to come along and create a look-alike product.

I can tell you that her program provides guidance and help for some very real-life issues. While it’s not a therapist in your pocket, it almost feels like it.

She was torn between wanting to get this program into as many hands as possible, and only letting paying customers have it. She knew from her research that one paying customer is worth ten or even 100 freebie seekers. She also knew that there could be some customer service issues to deal with, and if she had only paying customers then she could hold the number down enough to be able to handle it herself in the beginning.

Here’s what Pam did to get the software into as many paying customer’s hands as possible: She gave it away with the purchase of any other self-help product or coaching that sold for more than $45.

In other words, other people in the self-help niche who were selling products could offer her software as a bonus to purchasers. This helped them to get more sales and it built a list of buyers for Pam.

Pam now has a list of over 10,000 people who pay for self-help products and services, as well as several dozen new connections and relationships with players in her industry.

She’s already working on joint ventures with several of those marketers. She’s selling affiliate products to her list. Her list continues to grow with buyers with almost no effort on her part. And in less than six months she is now earning over $5,000 a month.

She credits her success to finding out what people want, hiring someone to create the software and app for her, and giving away something super valuable to people who are actively working on making their lives better.

I asked Pam if she might open up the software to the general public to build her list massively bigger and she said it’s not really a consideration right now. The people on her list are all buyers and her list is crazy responsive. She only sends out three emails and one offer per week and yet she’s earning over $5,000 a month. She does plan on creating more of her own products to sell to her list and she has two of them in the works right now – one is a course and the other is another software program.

I love this because her list building efforts are minimal, her list consists of nothing but proven buyers and she spends only about 10- 15 hours a week on her business.

Could this be duplicated in other niches? Absolutely. I know of one person in the online marketing niche who has built a list of over hundred thousand business owners by giving his software service away for free, and I’m sure there are many others.

The twist here is giving it only to buyers of other products. Those product owners – who already have substantial credibility with their followers – become her best marketing tools as they rave about her software to their prospects.