One of the best techniques in building your database is through Joint Ventures. You can use resources such as Facebook, SelfGrowth.com and even Amazon to find authors, speakers, and others who will be glad to participate in programs to help you grow your database.
I look for people who are authors who have the same topic as mine and after an involved conversation of no less than a half hour, I ask if they would be interested being interviewed about their book, services, radio show or an article they wrote.
I’ve only been turned down once. It was a very famous author and he was too busy to talk with me personally. Typically authors and speakers are flattered.
I’ll normally call about three people to talk with one person live. Once I’ve determined their relativity to my book, I’ll simply ask if they would like to be interviewed. I offer them a copy of the interview and I have them send out a notice in the form of a webpage I design which will have the people from their database signup to listen to the interview free just by listening on the appointed day.
I’ll typically get 50 to 100 new names in my database every interview. I try to do at least three or four a month. It takes about four years to build a database of 10,000 which seems to be the magic number. You can do more interviews and when authors have more than 3,000 in their databases, you’ll build your database faster as well.