What I'll cover here are several reasons why someone would be happy to give you their email address and join your 'opt in' mailing list. In Internet Marketing Jargon this is known as the 'Ethical Bribe'. Whereby you bribe people to give you their contact information in return for a free gift of high perceived value.

The value for you in creating a very good ethical bribe is enormous when in relation to how to make money online. For example traditional marketing methods are all about getting a visitor to your site. So when they then fail to have any intention to capture their details is just plain madness. By you capturing their email address and nothing else then you have their permission to go back to them whenever you want to so that you can try to sell them something else. This is the same as not needing to have your shop open during normal hours because now you can turn on the demand for your service or product whenever you want to.

One of the best bribes has always been the Special Report or FREE Report. This is something where you simply could take a chapter from your book, or possibly a report on some researching you did into a subject. You simply compile your research notes into a report, add some royalty free images and you have your Special Report. You then have to come up with a good reason why your potential customer may well be interested in having a copy of this special report. i.e. this will be of benefit to your life because...

Another great one is to do exactly the same thing with the same information but this time offer it in a video with you presenting the info. Or perhaps in a video PowerPoint using 'Camtasia' screen video. Video and Audio are the way the web is currently heading. However, in a recent test I did, I found the 'Special Report' significantly out performed the same report done on video by well over 100%. So be careful not to let your own opinions be your only guide, always test to see what your market likes best.

You can give away other bribes like free ebooks you've found online. Or you could buy 'PLR' products which have resale rights for you to give them away. In other words you can just give away someone else's product as your free gift for sometimes a one off cost of a few dollars. I have found these are ok, but I prefer to create the content myself in my niche. An example of a quick special report is, let's say I was building an opt in list for holiday rental villas then I could create a bribe which said, The Top 10 Best Restaurants in XYZ location as recommended by locals. If you would like my Special Guide into the very best locally approved restaurants then just enter your email address below.

When you give your ethical bribe don't be tempted to give poor content. Instead always make sure you give only the very best content as this is the content which someone is using to assess whether or not they should buy your product or join your site. So get your good stuff out to the world for Free and then you will create a fan of your material from the start. This of course does not mean your other content can be poor. Very far from it, that has to be great content too. However, if you want to know how to make money online then you want to have raving fans, and they come from your very best stuff. So when you do something really good then simply get it to as many people as you possibly can so that they can rave about you. Your goal is to have them thinking, "Hey this is really great stuff, and if he's giving all this away free then just how good must the paid stuff be?"