The Importance Of Building Relationships

Relationships are the lifeblood of any business and without them you'll either fail or have a lonely existence. Building up a relationship with someone takes time, and can take alot of work and effort. In the long term its rewarding and definately worth it.

Benefits of Relationships

1/ Friendship
2/ Joint Ventures
3/ Advice and Help
4/ Your friend might know something that you dont
5/ Inside Knowledge
6/ Link Exchange

Why Build Relationships?

Life on the Internet without friends can be very lonely, and its great to know there are other like minded people out there who you can turn to if you need to, and Vice versa. I've always been the type of person who likes to help other people, it's in my nature and I'm glad of it. I'd hate to be someone who felt that everytime I made a new friend, I'd gone out of my way to do it. What a life that would be! I put my success online, down to building and maintaining relationships.

In my 3 years on the net, I have built up relationships with other webmasters in several different niches. If I have an ebook that I need a testimonial written for, I just fire them an email and bingo, a few days later, I get a testimonial. I couldn't do that without friends. If I want inside information about a new product they are launching, they let me know a few weeks before it goes live and I get to launch that product to my list first.

This gives me a great advantage and makes me a lot more money that if I emailed my list at the same time as everyone else. Link Exchanges - If I start up a new site in the same industry, I can just fire off an email again to my contacts and instantly get backlinks to my site. The list goes on….. Relationships can help you in numerous different ways.

The most important things when building relationships are:  

• Always be polite
• Always reply to emails, no matter how trivial you think they are
• Dont let success go to your head and forget about the small guy (You might need his someday and he might need you)
• Post 'Thank You' comments on the bottom of your blog posts, thanking everyone who has commented (This is courteous)
• Offer your help, no matter how busy you are
• Look for win win relationships when you can both help out each other If you don't know many people in your industry, then go looking for people and drop them a quick email introducing yourself. Just say hi, I own xxx website or blog and I'm looking to get to know other people in the industry……. Etc… I always offer to help people.

  It might take a little extra time to help them out, but its a win win situation. You never know, you might learn something new from the experience. By helping other people the Law of Reciprocation comes into play and eventually, the other person will feel the need to help you also. Im not talking about manipulation, Im talking about being a genuine, helpful person that people turn to when they need help. Let this be food for thought and start cultivating your relationships online.