If you are marketing a product or service online, the answer is simple! No, if you want to limit your income! Yes, if you want to maximize it! The biggest mistake marketers make is not doing the appropriate followup when they answer an inquiry or give away free info by email or from their web site. They just go on to something else! What did you do with that last valuable email address you received?

The easiest way to demonstrate followup is with an example. We have a number of autoresponders that reply with free information that we advertise in our ezine, at our web site and in other advertising media. One of them offers a free list of classified ad sites where you can place your ad for free. This is one of our busiest! Each time someone makes the request we receive an email notification that they signed up and they are added to our autoresponder list when they confirm their email address.

Each of these addresses is sent a followup message thanking them for their request. We know by the nature of their request that they have an interest in placing classified ads. Along with the followup thank you note, we send them additional information which deals with the Online Classified Club which offers a number of advertising tools. One of these tools is an automatic classified ad submitter that automatically submits places your ad at hundreds of classified sites in one click of your mouse!

We recently tracked how many followups we sent from this autoresponder. Out of 45 followups sent, 7 joined the “Classified Club” and we received the reseller commission. That is slightly above 15% of the number of followups we tracked.

Followups to a highly targeted list (known interest), with a directly related product or service can greatly increase your potential online income. If we just gave away the free information and stopped there, that would be fine. We would be and are furnishing a needed service that our customers appreciate. But with a little extra work, you can turn it into additional income too!

And it can be done with many related products and/or services. You don’t want to make the mistake of only sending one followup message. Your list can be highly profitable if you mail to them regularly. If you use a good autoresponder system, it is possible to send them up to 51 followup messages all automatically. I am not saying that you have to send that many, maybe 10 over a period of time might be a good number but that is completely up to you. You set the number and the sequence that they are sent out. You can set them out every two days, every four days, or once a week, your choice.

I think you are getting the point. Don’t followup and you are missing out on potential sales. Giving away free information has been and always will be a great traffic generator for your web site and/or a way to generate leads and get exposure for your products and/or services. But if you stop short of followup, you are missing the boat to some additional income! Take that extra step!

If you are in the market for an autoresponder check out our autoresponder system. Right now we are celebrating our 20th year online and if you visit our main site at The Entrepreneur’s Home Business Link you will see a special anniversary price for our autoresponders of $27.95 annually instead of the $49.95 annual price. There is a section in the center of the page entitled “Our Featured Anniversary Special!” with a special link.

I have always felt that you should always interject a little humor in what ever you do. I have worked at home with my online businesses for over 18 years now and sometimes you need to have a little laugh since many times you are working alone and don’t have that co-worker atmosphere to help you out.

Even when I send out my newsletter I have a section called “Take A Minute and Smile”
where I add little jokes. One website, called Funny Quotes, which I check out regularly has lots of free Funny Quotes. Go check it out and have a laugh.

I have always played the lottery and have tried many systems. I reviewed a lottery system for lotto originated by an Australian by the name of Ken Silver who figured out a way to choose lottery winning numbers. His system works with lotto games around the world. He has compiled all of his research, and it is quite extensive, into a detailed eBook, The World’s #1 Lottery System For Lotto, Silver Lotto System!

The Silver Lotto system is a type of wheeling system which shows you how you can win the lottery 8 out of 10 times. The fact is that you can win the lottery with this system much like other wheeling systems. You might not win the jackpot grand prize but can win smaller prizes.

This lottery system for lotto has been around since 1991 and has offered a detailed eBook on how to win and there appears to have been plenty of winners as indicated by the hundreds of testimonials on Ken’s website. It is proven that the wheeling system works, and all you now need to do is get the wheels you want to use. The Silver Lotto system eBook contains all the wheels you need in order to win the lottery.

Ken Silver is a lottery winner himself, winning 2.7 million in the lottery. So he knows the way to win the lottery and now you can get that system and win the lottery yourself.

What I especially like is the fact that there is no risk what so ever since there is a money back guarantee and since this system guarantees 8 out of 10 lottery draws won, you will cover your investment of buying this book in no time.

You can click here – The World’s #1 Lottery System For Lotto, Silver Lotto System! to check out Ken’s eBook and start winning the lottery.

Using email is a great way to market and promote your e-commerce business. With people being so busy and getting junk mail, how do you make your email stand out? Here are some helpful tips to get you the most benefits from this effective marketing tool. It is important to do some research and attempt to get your marketing sent to a target market that will likely be interested in the products or services you are offering.

Some companies randomly send emails to people who have absolutely no interest in what is being advertised. You will get a very low response from such marketing methods. If your website asks for consumer information including an email address, be respectful. Ask if they are interested in receiving e-mail advertisements and promotions. If they choose not to then don’t add them to your data base for marketing by email. Make sure you have the permission of the consumer to send them such materials. You are required by law to include an opt out link in the event the consumer no longer wants to receive such emails from you.

Statistics show Tuesday and Wednesday are the most effective days to send out marketing emails. Send them out in the morning so that individuals have time to read them during breaks, lunch hours, and in the early evening. You might have a lot of information to pass on to the target market, but keep your email short and to the point. Most internet users like to go through their emails quickly. If yours is lengthy it may get deleted or saved to be read later. You want the consumer to be able to read it as soon as they click on it and get all the information. Make
sure you have hyperlinks that take consumers immediately to your website if they are interested. Internet users are not patient. Most will not wait longer than five or ten seconds for your website to appear.

It is important to test your marketing email in the various email programs including Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, and AOL because they all work differently. Your graphics and pictures may be distorted in particular email programs. This will result in all those consumers not being able to use your marketing email as it was intended. Taking the time to conduct these tests can make the difference between an effective email marketing campaign and one that is a flop.

How often do you want to send an email to your consumers? This can be tricky to determine. It really depends on your products or services and your target market. You want to keep your business name fresh in the mind of the consumers but they will stop reading the emails from you if they become too frequent. Some businesses do them weekly or monthly. Others choose to only send an email when there is a huge promotion going on. A business newsletter is a great way to contact the consumer monthly with fresh information. You also want to give consumers a very simple way to change their email address as it is very common to change email service providers.

You need to have an effective system set up to answer any questions emailed to you from customers within 24 hours. This will show your business is serious about keeping them satisfied before, during, and after they make a purchase. Issues come up and most consumers will give your business the opportunity to help resolve the situation. This is your opportunity to prove the integrity of your business.

Email marketing is a very effective and useful tool for marketing your e-business. Taking the time to proceed with the process after you have conducted some research to identify the target market and following these effective email marketing tips will provide you with the opportunity to generate the most business from your marketing campaign. There is a great deal of competition in the world of e-commerce and you will have to work hard to be the best.

Over the last sixteen years of my online business activities I have met many new entrepreneurs. Most had very high hopes of succeeding and making the extra income they needed. Most had an initial goal of turning it into a full time income.

Despite high expectations, a majority of them failed and continued in the nine to five grind.

One of the causes of their demise was their inability to treat their endeavor as a true business. Why? Some fall for the hype, you have seen it – “We do all the work, no recruiting required!” or “This is a ground floor opportunity, company spillover will build your organization!” or “Work one hour a day and make $1,000′s!”. You have seen those claims.

Many entrepreneurs are new to online marketing and are not sure what to do. Many believe the claims that you don’t have to invest any money in order to make money. Others just get discouraged after a month or two when they don’t see that big monthly check in the mail. I have spent many hours trying to lay out plans for many people in order to get them started in the right direction.

Like any business, you need some type business plan, even if it is just written down on a piece of paper with some very simple goals and time frames. It doesn’t have to be very complex, it can just be a simple road map or checklist.

Let’s be honest here, you are going to have to spend some money to be successful. One of the biggest traps is believing the hype that you can associate with a business opportunity that is free and you will make thousands of dollars. Think about it logically.

Let’s say you become an affiliate for xyz company. It doesn’t cost you a dime to become an affiliate and all you have to do is promote their product and/or services and you earn a 35% commission. Great! No problem. They even give you a free website with all the products set up on it, they furnish ads you can use, they handle all the order processing, delivery, customer service and they mail you a commission check at the end of the month. It’s a great deal.

But how are you going to promote the product and/or services on the web site? Yes, you can place free classified ads all over the Internet which will get you some traffic and maybe some sales. You can become a member of some traffic exchanges and that will help. But the bottom line you are probably not going to generate the kind of traffic and sales that would meet your expectations of a nice fat check each month.

I want to be clear here, I am not putting down affiliate programs as a good source of income online, I have used them for many years as part of my overall business activities. But I also have to do a lot of paid advertising and mailings as part of my promotions or else I wouldn’t have the traffic I have coming to my sites every month.

Likewise, look at network marketing programs, many of which you can initially join for free. Yes, you can join for free, but at some time you are going to have to upgrade to a paying member. A company cannot pay you commissions if you are not contributing to the funding of the program.

What I am saying is that at some point you are going to have to spend some money. You cannot run a business without spending some. True, you can run an online business for considerably less than one down at the local strip mall but both have one thing in common, they both need prospects. If you don’t have the prospects visiting your web site or your local store, you will not have many sales and you sure won’t be in business long.

Working from home eliminates one of the highest expenses, overhead. Promoting digital products online also eliminates another cost, shipping. Advertising is not eliminated. But online you can reach thousands of people in minutes. For instance, I can reach my 4,500 plus newsletter subscribers normally within a ten minute period. If I had a store at the mall, that would be pretty unlikely.

You have to treat your endeavor as a business. You need to realize that you are going to have to devote time to it and that you are going to have to spend some dollars on it. This will apply whether you are going to promote affiliate programs, a network marketing business or online services. One fortunate aspect is that an online business endeavor can be much more lucrative in a shorter period of time compared to a conventional offline business.

Bottomline – treat your endeavor as a business, have a simple written plan and goals, work out a budget, commit to devoting the necessary time and make sure you are flexible and make adjustments when necessary.

Anything you read today regarding marketing on the Internet contains a section on the importance of capturing email addresses and building your own list. Why? Because they are the life blood of your marketing activities. They are a goldmine!

Let’s say you have a web site which you are effectively promoting. Your site visitors are increasing on a regular basis. But you are not selling much. It could be your offer or it could be the site setup itself. But that could be a topic for several more articles.

Once these visitors surf through and go elsewhere, you probably won’t see them again. One of the essentials to successful online marketing is follow up. Most of our sales this past year have been through either our ezine or through direct email follow up. Our ezine subscriber base has been built through a number of techniques. One of the primary techniques has been offering a free subscription on our web site. A free subscription offer is right at the top of our home page. We also have a free subscription link on just about every page at our site and we have over fifty pages now and growing. All they have to do is enter their name and email address. Easy and quick! Plus they receive an automatic confirmation. 

Once they are a subscriber, they will receive each of our weekly issues and one solo mailing each week. This is our inhouse “mailing list” as we used to call it in direct mail and is worth its weight in gold! They came to the site because they were interested in our topic. They also had an interest in what the ezine offered since they subscribed. And now they will be exposed on a regular basis to what we are offering.

We also offer several monthly contests and these links are on almost every page. We give away an ad on our online malls and advertising in our ezine. If you have your own domain, it’s your real estate and you can just about do anything you want with the space. Giving away an online ad each month costs just about zero! Likewise giving away an ad in your ezine costs close to nothing.

We have our own autoresponder service at 123Response.com so we can offer a monthly drawing for a free autoresponder. All it will cost you is your time in setting it up for the winner. Once it is setup, there is just about no maintenance. It’s all automatic!

Give away free reports using autoresponders. Gear the report to your site theme, product or service. Our site and ezine is geared towards online marketing. We have free reports containing links to free advertising, lists of free classified advertising sites and a list of over 450 ezines, including our own at FreeAdvertising4All.com. Each time someone requests one of these free reports, the information goes right into our follow up autoresponder. Since all are interested in advertising we follow up with one of our sales offers and an offer to subscribe to our ezine.

If we didn’t have these options at our site, we would be working in the dark. We would be losing sales and we would have no idea who was visiting our site. Of course you are not going to capture 100% but if you get 50% of them, you are that much ahead of the game! Take a look at what you have to offer for free. Be a little creative! Think of the potential of having access to these visitors a second time, weekly or more! Capture Them!!!

Do you take that extra step when you are getting ready to email your ezine? Or do you just hit the send button after you finish drafting it?

I subscribe to many fine online ezines and for the most part they look pretty professional when I receive my copy. There are some that could use some help in regards to format and spelling and that is what prompted me to put some thoughts together on the subject. I also thought that these tips might help some of you that might be considering publishing your own ezine.

I have been publishing my own online ezine now for over 15 years. Over that time I have tried to publish a timely and quality document each week. Along the way I have developed certain habits that I believe are key to putting out a professional ezine. I am not covering content here, that can be a whole topic in itself, so let’s assume that you have quality content within the theme of your ezine.

Here are tips that you may find helpful:

Line Format -

Keep your ezine lines at or below 65 characters per line. This will maximize the professional look. I receive many ezines where there is one long line then a line with one or two words and then a long line, then short line, etc. Using 65 characters will work in most email browser windows without the longer lines wrapping to the next lines.

Graphics/Characters -

Keep the use of graphics or miscellaneous symbols and fancy characters to a minimum. Remember that not all email browsers are able to read things the same way. What may look great to you might look like garbage in some other browser.

Spell Checking -

Please use your software’s spell check process. If you are using something like Notepad that doesn’t have spell check then use the one with your email program or run it through another program that has one. It doesn’t look very professional to publish an ezine that has misspelled words in it. You would be surprised at how many articles I receive for possible publication that have misspelled words in them.

Test Mailing -

When you have your ezine ready to go and you think it looks great, send it to yourself before sending it to the thousands on your subscriber list. It takes less than five minutes to do this and can be well worth it. Every once and a while, after I send it to myself, I will find that there is this one or two lines of text that go beyond the 65 character limit and wrap around to the next line because I missed a hard return. Or something I thought I had centered isn’t.

Check the links -

I hate to get an ezine where I might see something interesting and when I click on the link it doesn’t work. So after you send it to yourself, check all the links, especially the ones in your advertiser ads. They are paying customers and you should insure that their links work. In fact, as a matter of practice, I check all ad links at the time I receive them whether they are submitted by regular email or through a web based order form. That way if there is a problem you can contact the advertiser and make sure it gets corrected way before it is ready to go out.

Send Courtesy Copies -

I don’t know how many ezine publishers do this but back many years ago I started sending a courtesy copy of each issue to all advertisers in that issue and to any author whose article I might have used in that issue, at the same time as I sent the issue out to all my subscribers.  It may be a duplicate if they are a subscriber, but in many cases they may not be. And when you get to a subscriber base of thousands, you really can’t keep track of who is and who isn’t a subscriber.

Some of these tips may seem like things that you might normally do, but you should get in the habit of doing them, especially those involving the format and appearance of your ezine. All of the above tips make for good quality control and customer service!

If you have been on line for any period of time you probably have realized that marketing on line can be much more effective and inexpensive than the traditional regular mail or telephone recruiting. Your responses to inquiries can be almost instantaneous. In traditional marketing you placed advertisements or did mailings and then normally had to send out a response package to people interested in your offer or product. You had to pay for printing, envelopes and postage. This process took several days of mailing back and forth. Even if you responded to prospects by telephone, you had to connect right away or sometimes you played telephone tag.

With online marketing everything is almost instant. You can receive inquiries by email and respond within minutes. And it doesn’t cost you a cent in postage. And you are able to respond to anywhere in the world! You can send an advertisement out to a targeted list, let’s say through an online newsletter and see results in a matter of hours, even less. A good example is when we recently joined a new business opportunity on a Monday and by Wednesday had signed up twelve new associates. That didn’t normally happen using the traditional methods. 

You can even limit the resources you devote to it by automating the responses to inquiries. The use of autoresponders can send out all your responses for you, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no matter what you are doing. All it takes is signing up for an autoresponder account, setting it up with messages and you have a 24 hour secretary. There are many autoresponder companies out there and they run the spectrum price wise. They all basically run the same.

Once you set the web form on your web site and create and upload your marketing material into the autoresponder, you are ready to go. When the prospect fills out the web form, they confirm their email address and within seconds have the first message of your marketing material. They get that message instantly regardless of the time of day.

Using the autoresponder automates your online sales process keeping your “store” open 24/7, it automatically follows up with your prospect depending on the number of messages you set up and it builds you a list of interested prospects who you can email sales material on a regular basis.

I have 10 to 15 autoresponders running all the time with our online businesses. They automate our advertising sales process, traffic to our various business opportunity sites and our sales system for our autoresponder service. As a result we have customers worldwide. They especially come in handy when you are working with a large number of associates in business opportunities. You can communicate goals and distribute training materials through the use of one mailing list instead of emailing 20 or 30 members individually.

Autoresponders can be applied in any number of business settings. You can be creative as you want. Automation is the name of the game whether you have a store in the local mall or you are creating income streams at home.

We operate our own autoresponder service at 123Response.com. We have a very competitive annual rate and great customer service.

What people need is something simple and something that is not expensive. I have been promoting an opportunity called EffortlessWeb-CashFormula which is owned by Lauryn Herbert.

The opportunity is, as I indicated, very simple. You give away a free e-book and you could have multiple $37 payments sent directly to your very own account on a daily basis. I have been doing it and it works. All you need to do as I do, is send an email (you get several samples) and you will get paid $37 over and over. It is a great way to make the extra money that you might need.

I don’t think there is anything easier. AND, you can put ads in all the free traffic exchanges and get plenty of traffic to give the free e-book to. There are no strings and no catch. The e-book is totally free and tells you an exact, step by step way of making an easy and regular income from your computer.

Spend a couple of minutes and visit www.ebizcash4you.com

You will see what I mean!
To Your Success
Joe Reinbold
The Home Business Entrepreneur