If any of you have spent any time at all researching how to make money on the internet you have probably heard about or read about the golden rule of internet marketing. That rule is "the money is in the list." The fact of the matter is that the reason you have heard of this and that you will continue to hear about it is simple; it is absolutely true. The more you focus on building your email distribution list the more success you will have.

We are going to talk about how to build a list of people that you are going to be sending those emails to.

One thing that you must keep at the front of your mind is that even if a person buys from you the very first time you make contact with them, which is rare and only happens about 2-3% of the time, you need to get their email address. Think about it, if they buy from you and you miss the opportunity to collect their email and their permission to stay in touch, you will have lost any opportunity to sell to that customer again. The key to survival for any business is repeat customers! Unless you capture their contact information you will be lucky if that customer even remembers who you are and even luckier if they ever find and buy from you again.

For example, let's say that someone clicks on your affiliate link and buys one of my books. Because you were smart enough to capture their email address you continue to send periodic emails to this customer. You remind them of other products, you provide them with testimonials of other customers and their success, and you send them bulletins on the housing market. Pretty soon they are so excited they click on your affiliate link again and this time they buy the "Premium and Wealth management system." This scenario happens more than you think and will never happen unless you master the concept of building an opt-in list and email marketing.

Briefly, opt-in email means that the person who is going to be receiving email from you has agreed in advance to receive such emails from you. Usually this agreement is made regarding a specified topic. The forms of communication used vary greatly but some of the most common are newsletters, bulletins or announcements of some kind.

Your objective is to build the largest email distribution that you can. The larger your list the more success you will have. It is the law of large numbers, simple math. The more people that you can get your message to the more people you will have that will buy. Getting people to opt-in for your information is the key to communicating quickly with a very large group of people who have already shown that they are interested in what you have to say.

It is going to take time to build up a list, but here are some tips to increase the rate at which you can gain subscribers;

1.) The best location for your opt-in registration should be somewhere near the top of your webpage, preferably on the left hand side but works well on the right hand side as well. Remember that the human eye is already trained to read from left to right and top to bottom.

2.) Provide them with a free bonus for signing up. Well we have already taken care of that one for you. This is the whole point of offering the free e-book! You get their email and contact information and they get a fabulous e-book containing valuable information. A good rule of thumb here is to briefly describe the contents of the e-book and how large it is to get them excited enough to provide you with their email.

3.) CRITICAL: Your first email to them has to be powerful and make an impact otherwise there is a very high probability that they will want to opt-out from receiving any more information from you. This email should contain some valuable information along with the link where they can download the free e-book.

Nothing is going to dictate your success or failure more than your ability to build your list and knowing how to use it.

Best wishes

E. Alan Cowgill

PS. If you have not already noticed, I am using a form of opt-in distribution.