Choosing a Domain Name

In this article you will learn how to chose an effective and
memorable domain name and learn how you can actually
increase traffic by using an old, expired domain name.

Times wasting so lets get started…
In the physical world, you can distinguish a business
because of its structure, window displays, or signs. You can
tell that a bank is a bank, or a clothing store is indeed a
clothing store.

In the Internet, however, it is an entirely different story
altogether. Your domain name is the only clue to your online
business. You do not have visual clues: no location, no
look, and no store design. Instead, users have to type in a
word or a set of words to reach your site. Your prospective
visitor has no way of knowing what your site is all about
until he/she finds it and reads its contents. Who can ever
tell that Amazon.com sells books? Or that Excite is a search
engine?

Your domain name can spell your success on the Internet. A
good domain name is the best asset you can ever have. It can
make your business stand out in the crowd, or just float
aimlessly in space.

The need to provide immediate clues to an online business
led to the prevalence of generic domain names. Generic names
instantly provide the user with an idea of what a business
is all about, what to expect and look for in a site. For
instance, Etoys.com is a toy store.

The temptation of the generic name has been so powerful;
that some companies even paid ridiculously high prices to
get the name they want. The domains Loans.com and Wines.com
were both bought for $3 million each. Telephone.com was
acquired for $1.75 million, while Bingo.com sold for $1.1
million.

However, generic names do not necessarily create the “buzz”
that you’d like surrounding your website. Branding has
always been about proper names: McDonald's did not name
their store Hamburger. Hertz is not called Car Rental. FedEx
is not Mail Carrier. Kodak is not Photographs. Microsoft is
not Computer Software.

For better branding results, your domain name should be
memorable and easy to remember. Remember the following tips
when creating a domain name.

* The domain name should be short
* The domain name should be simple
* It should be suggestive of your business category
* It should be unique
* It should be easy to interpret and pronounce
* It should be personalized
* It should not be difficult to spell
* It should not be difficult to remember

Domain names can be registered through many different
companies (known as "registrars") - a listing of these
companies is available at ICANN: http://www.icann.org. You
can register for 1 to 10 years - prices can vary anywhere
from $10 to $20 per year. Most web hosting companies, as
explained later, will handle the registration process for
you, but make sure that you are properly listed as the owner
of the domain when it is registered. If you have registered
a domain name for a specific period, make sure you renew it
in time. You can be surprised at the number of cases, where
site owners have let a domain name slip by if they have not
renewed in time.

How to create a Weblog?

The majority of weblogs are now created using software or
services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the
software is free - and some of the organizations that
provide weblog software will also provide free server space
to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the
Internet. There are also commercial versions of some of the
free software; these commercial versions often provide more
features. Some weblog software is available only as
commercial software. Alternatively, bloggers can create and
maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog
service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the
resulting weblog to their own Website.

There are many blogging softwares available easily on the
Internet. One of the most popular weblogger is “Blogger”
which can be downloaded for free at http://www.blogger.com.
Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation.
However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website
structures and a few technical terms. Besides, creating an
advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML.

So get out there and start your own Blog…it’s free,easy and
can work seamlessly with the rest of your website or
newsletter. Until next time…

Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:

* Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog,
extending life and creating a massive conversation.
* You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get
true, personal opinions on your products and services.
* Company experts can start a blog and become industry
experts, helping your company edge out competition and,
through this interactive forum,draw customers into another
exchange of information and thoughts.
* The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog
with editorial controls.

Blog as a marketing tool

Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly
strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share
knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding.
Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.

A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or
summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a
collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book
reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the
journal of an expedition, and much more. Businesses can use
this tool to effectively advertise their products or
services.

One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by
allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers
of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster
can give posting rights to other people – visitors and
customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before
they are published to the Web page. Customers, in such a way
can post favorable comments about the websites offerings.
Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or
the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but
anyone else can add comments to the posts.

Blogs

In this article we will discuss a relatively new intertnet
tool – the Blog.

Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where
pre-surfer or a blogger “logs” all pages he/she finds
interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains
brief, chronologically arranged items of information.
Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality
of the author.

Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as
news stories, and often include personal rants. They are
maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is
involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.

A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a
particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind
of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many
unique types of blogs as there are people. Blogs can be used
to introduce products to potential customers.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but
the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated
published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com.
Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify
and accelerate the publishing process.

Banner Economics

Business online, like business offline, always boils down to
math: the difference between cost and revenue. If your
banner campaign is costing more than it’s earning, you won’t
be in business for very long. To figure out how your
campaign is doing, you’re going to need to know your Cost
Per Mille, your Click Through Rate and your Conversion Rate.
These are your basic tools. If you don’t know them, find
out!

Let’s say your CPM is $20, your CTR is 1%, and your
Conversion Rate is 4%. (So you’re paying $20 every 1,000
times your banner is shown, it brings you 10 new users, and
you make one sale for every 25 users the ad brings). The
question you need to ask yourself is how much are you
wasting on the 24 users who don’t buy.

Cost per visitor = $20 / 10 = $2 So each visitor costs you
$2, but you need 25 visitors to make one sale, so...

Cost per sale = $2 * 25 = $50 ...if your product is worth
less than $50, you’re making a loss.

That’s pretty simple, and as you can see, there’s not a lot
of room to maneuver here. Margins are tight on banner
advertising and that applies to both the site selling the
advertising space and the webmaster buying it.

Of course, hard cash isn’t the only way to measure the
success of a banner ad, and one reason they’re still popular
is that they’re a pretty effective branding tool. After all,
advertisers spend millions on billboards without expecting
motorists to drive straight through them and make a
purchase! On the Web, those advertisers can even be
reasonably sure that the people who see their ads will be
interested in them. But branding costs money—lots of it—with
no guarantee of results. It’s usually best left to the big
boys.

The banner ads on my sites usually send users to my
affiliate partners, and the banner ads I place on other
people’s sites usually come from my affiliate programs. They
don’t cost me anything and as long I’m making the sales to
pay my affiliate partners, everybody’s happy.

If you do decide to purchase banner advertisements though,
and if you have a very specific market in mind, make sure
they are strategically placed—on sites where the traffic
will most definitely be interested in your product or
service. Find a site that suits exactly your specific
product and you’re going to be appealing directly to your
target market.

That’s it for this week. As you can see, banner ads are not
the guaranteed money making tools that they once were but
they can still be used effectively if targeted properly. Is
banner advertising for you? Only you can determine that.

Banners

In this article we will discuss the ins and outs of banner
ads. Are they worth your advertising dollars or are they a
thing of the past?

When the Web first started, banners were all the rage.
Today, they’re pretty much passé. They’re no longer a
novelty and unless they’re super-clever, users pretty much
ignore them. Conversion rates have dropped through the floor
and many advertisers have found other ways to push their
products.

And yet, every website still contains a whopping great
banner ad splashed along the top or running up the side. In
part, that’s because they’ve become more sophisticated with
better targeting and improved graphics. But in practice,
banner ads tend to be used for one of two reasons: as a
method of gaining/ giving users through an affiliate
program; or as a way of generating revenue—or
traffic—through paid advertising.

Both these methods work to some extent, but the key is
always to make sure the economics make sense. We’ll look
closely at the math in this chapter, but before we go on to
talk about the math of banner ads—and how to tell whether
your banner campaign is worthwhile—let’s just take a look at
the terms involved. You’re going to see these words whenever
you join an affiliate program or take part in any other kind
of online marketing scheme. You should definitely be
familiar with them.
Banner Glossary

* Banner Ad — A graphic ad linked to an advertiser’s
website. These usually run across the top of the page but
can also run up the page (“skyscrapers”). Banners are
usually limited by size.
* Banner Views —The number of times a banner is seen by
users. This is usually the same as "page views," but
counts the number of times the banner is actually
downloaded rather than the number of times the page is
downloaded. Some users click away before the banner
finishes loading.
* Clicks/ Click Throughs — Banners are operated by clicking
the cursor over them. Not too surprisingly these responses
are called “clicks” or “click throughs.”
* Click Through Rate (CTR) — The percentage of users who see
the banner and click on it.
* Conversion Rate —The percentage of people who visit your
site and actually give you money. The higher the better!
* Cookies — Small files placed on a user’s computer. They’re
used for all sorts of reasons and by all sorts of sites.
Banner ads use them to make sure the user hasn’t seen the
banner recently, which banner brought them to the
advertiser’s site, and even which adverts they’ve seen
recently.
* CPM — "Cost Per Mille." The amount you pay for every
thousand times a banner is shown—the usual way of charging
for banners.
* Hits — The number of times a server receives a request for
a Web page or an image. Not a great way to measure
interest. One page can have lots of images and get lots of
hits, even if it’s only seen once. Often, people will say
"hits" when they really mean "page views" or
"impressions."
* Page Impressions or Page Views —The number of times a Web
page has been requested by the server. Much more accurate
than hits: each view is a potential customer looking at a
page of your site. But not necessarily a different
customer...
* Unique Users — The people who download a Web page,
counted by IP address. You want to bring lots of users to
your site so that you can create a broad customer base.
The same user clicking on a banner a dozen times could
cost you money without increasing your sales. Most
reputable sites will check the IP address of the person
clicking on a link and only count it once in a 24-hour
period. If a site doesn’t do this, don’t advertise with
them.

A few avoidable errors when promoting your affiliate program

In this article, I have listed a quick and easy bulleted
list of does and do not’s when trying to promote your
affiliate program.

* Many affiliate marketers make a huge mistake of posting
their ads on forums. Forums can be used to promote your
affiliate programs and your website but in a proper
manner.
Posting banners is very similar to spamming and may
easily
upset forum administrators.

* Always do your research before promoting your affiliate
program to a potential customer. Do not offer affiliate
programs to visitors who are not at all interested in
the products associated with the program. This is a
futile endeavor.

* If you promote affiliate programs offered by other
merchants, ensure that you develop your own advertising
copy. Many websites commit a common mistake of using the
same advertising copy as used by the merchant
themselves.

* Avoid Copyright infringement in all cases. Always use
original content or ask permission to use graphic images
or text found on other websites.

* Do not submit your programs to free websites. These may
be free but your programs would hardly ever be noticed,
especially by Search Engines. Moreover, your own ranking
would get lowered if you submit your affiliate programs
to such websites.

* Avoid using caps on your web page or email ad. Using
caps is symbolic to shouting, which never goes well with
potential customers. A few words may be written in
capital text to give them additional emphasis. However,
such practice should be limited.

* Always respond to all queries sent by visitors as soon
as possible. A slight delay in your response could
easily result in loss of a potential client.

* Do not use pop-up ads along with your webpage. Most
surfers are likely to close their browser if they come
across pop-ups.

* Do not host your website on a free server or use free
email accounts. This gives a negative impression to
visitors. Using free hosts and email accounts looks
cheesy and loses sales.

* Many websites do not have an opt-in list. Create an
opt-in and opt-out list for your visitors. Without
these,there is no way of tracking potential customers.
Visitors should be allowed to opt-in at any time
as well as opt-out at any time.

* Most sites have a poor tracking mechanism. It is
essential that you track all business activities.
Accurate record keeping is crucial. There are many
software tools, discussed earlier in this chapter,
than can automate your record keeping process with
minimal error.

* A 'mall' site is best used as a central hub to send
visitors to your other domains. As a main or only site,
unfocused mall sites don't get traffic from the engines,
and they don't convert well to sales. Highly focused
theme sites attract traffic and sales.

* Offline advertising may not be effective. A lot of money
and effort should not be wasted on offline advertising.
Most people rarely check websites that are advertised in
local magazines or newspapers.

* Avoid focus on animated banner ads. These simply use up
bandwidth, thus making web pages load slower.

* While advertising do not degrade other competitors. It
is recommended that you highlight your products’
uniqueness and superiority but never mortify other
products.

* Banners or text links that expire are guaranteed to
eventually send your visitor to a broken link or show a
broken graphic on your page. Time sensitive advertising
is best used only in email advertising campaigns.

* Never put affiliate links on your homepage. This is
similar to asking your visitors to leave immediately.
Give them a chance to browse, sign up for your
newsletter and decide that they'd like to come back
to your place before introducing them to your
affiliates.

* Technology changes with amazing speed. To keep up with
this rapidly evolving industry, you must invest time and
money in research. The investment is a tax write-off,
and will pay you back many times over in additional
revenue.

Hopefully this list has proven helpful to you and has shown
you some red flags to avoid when it comes time to promote
your own affiliate site. Good luck and take care.

Staying Organized

There are many affiliate networks that provide multiple
affiliate programs and merchants. Keeping a track of all
affiliate programs in a single network is easy. You would
generally be given one username and password as well as a
single interface that controls all the programs. However, if
you have many of your own affiliate programs or you promote
several stand-alone affiliate programs from your website,
the task of staying organized becomes a bit more complex.

There are many software programs available on the Internet
that organize and keep track of all data associated with
affiliate programs. Some of these are My Affiliate Program
2000 and Affiliate Assistant 1.0. These programs maintain
databases pertaining to information about all your affiliate
programs. A typical database would consist of the following
fields:

* Program Name
* Date joined or created
* Contact Name
* URL
* Email Address
* ID
* Password
* 1st Tier Percent
* 1st Tier Sale
* 2nd Tier Percent
* 2nd Tier Sale
* Total Income
* Additional comments

Once the program information has been entered, you can add
information about individual sales made and checks received.
The program then keeps track of sales to date, amount
collected and receivables. Besides, some of the advanced
software programs also provide analysis and comparison tools
for all affiliate programs. If you take the time to input
collected data about clicks, sales, and page views,
impressions, emails sent etc. from your various campaigns
and enter all of it into the program, it will show you:

* Click to Sale Ratios
* Impression to Sale Ratios
* Amount Earned Per Impression
* Amount Earned Per Click

Apart from these are a few other tips that might help you
manage your affiliate programs.

* Always ensure that your website is up and running. On a
Daily basis type your URL into your browser's address bar,
refresh the page and find out. The danger in not knowing
that your site is down comes when you are running a pay per
click advertising campaign. The click costs add up whether
your site is functional or not. If your site is down, you
are paying for advertising, but no one is buying.

* Check your statistics daily, maybe even twice a day. This
will give you a better idea of your income trends and also
highlight affiliate programs that bring your business. Visit
the statistics interface for each network and individual
affiliate partner and input your total revenues into any
accounting software. Using such software frequently will
also keep you informed as to whether certain checks have
become overdue.

* Be prompt in answering any queries from affiliate partners
or customers, especially when these are about your products
or services. This probably means that the customer trusts
your site and is thinking of buying your product.

* One of the main aspects of any affiliate program is
residual income. You've got to make the most of each and
every customer you receive. The best way to do this is by
promoting affiliate programs that offer residual commission.

* This allows you to repeatedly get paid for work you do
once. For example, if a visitor arrives at your site and
purchases auto responder services, newsletter subscriptions,
ISP/hosting services, you will collect a portion of the
monthly fees for as long as they remain a paying customer.
Membership sites are a good way to collect residual
commissions and are steadily growing in popularity. There
are many affiliate programs that offer residual commission.

* A well placed recommendation placed at the end of an
outgoing email can bring in extra sales. Target your
audience, what are their specific needs? If you can offer
them a product they need/want, often times the end result
will be a sale.

* Finally, track all your affiliate links. The best way to
accomplish this is by setting up tracking software for your
affiliate links. There are a number of scripts that will do
the job. Most tracking programs typically allow you to setup
tracking links for any product you promote, telling you how
many hits each product has received, and where the hits are
coming from. A more detailed view of tracking and analysis
is given in the section below.

* It is not enough to have a few banners and classified ads.
You must provide as much help as possible for your
associates if you want them to be successful. You should
have tested and proven endorsements, testimonials, sig
files, ezine ads, and other unique tools and techniques. You
must also make yourself available, either through email or
the phone, to help your affiliates implement these tools and
to answer any questions they may have.

* Whether you run your own or participate in an affiliate
program, you must be able to determine what methods work
best in a particular medium. For instance, which ezine ads
work best and in what ezine; which banner ads produce the
greatest clickthroughs and from which sites or banner
exchanges; and where on your website is the most effective
spot to include a testimonial.

* Some affiliate programs, have implemented unique payment
procedures to get affiliates their commission checks on a
timely basis. Some of these procedures include: online
electronic payment services, direct bank deposits and checks
by fax. If you can solidify your payment procedures from the
start, you will save yourself an administrative headache and
more importantly, keep your affiliates happy and working to
promote your program.


This concludes my series on starting your own affiliate
program. This information should be all you need to start,
manage and track your own affiliate program.

Setting up Your Own Affiliate Program (part two)

This article is the second of a two part series on setting
up your own affiliate program. In addition to starting an
affiliate program, you must manage it and keep track of it.
The following information will show you how
Managing and tracking your affiliate programs

The key to any business is to promote your products and
services to people who need them. Your affiliate business is
no different. In order to earn commissions you must put your
products in front of the people who need them. The beauty of
marketing affiliate programs is that it is anybody’s ball
game. This is the one place you can burrow deep into your
own niche and stick it to the so-called 'big wigs'.

You may create your own affiliate program or you may promote
other popular affiliate programs that are related to your
product or service. The best way to manage and track
affiliate programs is by creating your own affiliate program
website. This is where you can list all your affiliate
programs.

Setting up Your Own Affiliate Program (part one)

This week we will start the first of a two part series on
starting your own affiliate program. Joining an affiliate
program is a neat way to make money from your users. But
just as you can join someone else’s affiliate program, so
you can set up your own program and invite webmasters to
sign up.

So…what would that bring you? The same as you’re bringing
your affiliate partners: deals. Every time someone sends you
a user who gives you money, you give a portion of that money
to your affiliate. It’s an easy way to generate traffic and
earn cash.

And you don’t need to be a programming genius to set up an
affiliate program. There are a whole bunch of companies out
there that offer entire affiliate kits right off the shelf.

Ultimate Affiliate lets you run a fully featured affiliate
program from your website. It integrates with virtually
every payment method, awards down-line commissions, and can
handle high-traffic websites. You can edit the sign-up form
to match the "look and feel” of your site as well as delete
some of the optional fields. The administration area allows
you to edit affiliates and commissions, create printable
reports of money due, export the data to a text file, view
the traffic through your affiliate program, and much more.
Your affiliates can log in at any time and see their traffic
and commission statistics as well as change their
information and get links and banner code.

Once the program is set up you'll only need to log in once a
month to print out a list of the affiliates, their
addresses, and the money owed. You can do this quarterly if
you wish. You can export the payments owed to a text file in
PayPal's "mass pay" format and then just upload it to your
PayPal account to pay everyone automatically. Or, you can
simply write your own checks. If you have to pay a lot of
commissions, there is a check printing service called
qchex.com. Upload the file and they’ll print and mail your
checks for a fee of about 80 cents each.

Alternatively, Locked Area Pro is an advanced member's area
management system offering very good security that’s easy to
maintain. The system provides a huge list of useful features
including automated sign-up, user account validation,
optional random password generation and an administration
approve/decline account feature. It also comes with an
extremely powerful control panel with an online
administration of users, backup, and full customization
facilities from the browser. A statistics system is also in
built in. What more could you want?
5.3 Cooking off the Spam

Any time you run a program where your affiliates rely on
other signups to generate profits, you will eventually have
a problem with spam. One of your affiliates will inevitably
get it into their head to blitz the Web with unwanted
garbage.

When this happens you need to be ready to take
action—otherwise it will cost you! Your Internet company can
boot you off your server and you can find yourself
blacklisted. Not good for business. If you get an email from
someone claiming they received spam with your URL, then take
it as an early warning. I am not advising you to immediately
terminate the affiliate’s account, but be sure to contact
them to follow up on the complaint. Let your affiliate know
you received a complaint and advise them to remove this
person from their list.

If you only get one or two complaints, it’s probably not
spam—the complainants might simply have signed up for an
email list and forgotten all about it. You will know when
one of your affiliates is spamming, because you will get
anywhere from 10 to 100 complaints in the same day all
regarding the same URL. The best thing to do in this case is
to immediately terminate or disable the account of the
affiliate URL that was spammed.


This concludes the first installment of my two part series
on starting your own affiliate program. Stay tuned for
more.

Buying Ads in Other Newsletters

Just as you can sell advertising, you can also buy
advertising in newsletters. You can use those ads to promote
your business or to invite people who read newsletters to
read your own.

Again, you have to pick your partners carefully. There’s no
point just picking a newsletter with the cheapest rates; you
want to make sure you choose an outlet that appeals to the
same buyers as you. You also need to think about where your
ad is going to be placed. In general, the higher the
position the better. And the more the merrier too. Don’t
expect a huge response from a single ad. It’s always best to
think of advertising in terms of a campaign. You’ll get a
better deal—and better results—if you reserve an advertising
slot for four or five issues than if you buy them one at a
time.

That’s it for today. I hope you found this article
useful. Until next time…take care of yourself.

Advertising in newsletters

We discussed earlier the advantages of having advertising
space in your newsletters. In this article we will discuss
advertising in other companies’ newsletters and how it can
be as equally beneficial.

By advertising in other newsletters, you can reach an
audience which is highly targeted and cost effective.
Moreover, you can never be accused of spamming as all the
recipients have subscribed to the newsletter. There are so
many newsletters out there covering so many different topics
that it's easy to find highly targeted ones to advertise in.
So if you've matched the newsletter to the product you're
selling, you've reached your target audience to a tee.

Almost all newsletters are archived, thousands of people
read these archives, and your ad will be seen by these
people at no extra cost. This can bring in exposure and
extra sales on a long term basis. Besides, newsletter
publishers may have already developed a trust between
themselves and their readers. Just by placing your ad in the
newsletter, it's more likely to be read because it appears
in a publication they like and trust.

Newsletter advertising is not only effective, it's cheap as
well. A 5 line ad in a newsletter that goes to 3000 people
will cost you between $5 and $25 per issue. With so little
risk involved, this is definitely worth it.

Introduction to Autoresponders

If you've reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up
with answering the mountain of emails that threatens to
bury you alive every single day, you're ready to learn
about autoresponders.

The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their
email inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to
work continual twenty-four hour shifts, or hire enough
people to constantly monitor incoming emails (while they're
eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news
is an autoresponder is an inexpensive - or even free -
method of quickly responding to emails. What these programs
do is automatically respond to incoming emails as soon as
they are received.

Emails are essential to your business for many different
reasons. Most importantly, these invisible email voices
give you their feedback about your website - for free!
However, if you spend all your working hours answering
these emails, how are you supposed to run your business?
The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders
are programs that automatically respond to your emails
without you so much as having to click on your mouse.

There are a number of good reasons why you need an
autoresponder besides just answering your email. For
example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to
send information about your services or products, price
lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across
large numbers of emails. Maybe you want to offer your site
visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or
relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an
autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your
business and then build stable relationships with your
customers by using autoresponders.

Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with
your email program to a specialized script that runs on
your web hosting company's server. This kind of script may
use a web page form or simply operate with your email
account. This kind of script is programmed to send out a
standardized message whenever an email is received. The
message is sent to a particular script or email address.

Some autoresponders can do more than simply send out
standardized messages. They can send out an unlimited
number of follow-up messages sent at predetermined interval
of time. For example, you can set your autoresponder to
send out a new message every day for as long a period as
you desire.

There are numerous companies who offer autoresponders free
of charge. Your website hosting company often provides
autoresponders as a free service. If this is not the case
with your web hosting company, there are numerous companies
who offer this service for a small fee, or free of charge,
providing you attach an advertisement for their company to
your emails.

To personalize your autoresponder messages, you can attach
a signature. Signatures in this case are much like business
cards. You can include your name, company, all your contact
numbers and addresses, and a brief message.

It's a good idea to attach a signature to every email that
is sent out. This works as a repeated reminder of your
business identity every time a customer sees it. The more
they look at your signature, the more likely your company
will spring to mind when your particular service or product
is needed.

You can create a standardized signature that every employee
in your business uses, or you can go wild, and let every
staff member create their own personal signature. Of
course, like everything in life, there are some rules and
guidelines to creating a personal signature.

Keep the length of your signature between four to six lines
of text, with no more than 70 characters in a single line.
Make sure that your email program does not cut off your
text! The content should include your name, your company
name, your email address, fax number, and any other contact
details, such as 800 numbers. Lastly, always include a
short personal message about your company. It should be a
subtle sell of your services or your products, and possibly
your company's reliability and longevity.

Another specialized use of autoresponders is to create
courses that you can then offer your site visitors for
free. You must choose a topic in which you are an expert
and that precisely targets your potential customers.

Once you have carefully chosen your subject, divide it into
a number of different sub-topics. Then offer your site
visitor a free 10 or 15 day course, each day offering a
different sub-topic. The first topic should always be a
welcome message to your site visitor and an explanation
about what is to follow. Your explanation should be
enticing, getting the point across that you are offering
free, quality information that your target audience will
find of great value.

With every lesson, include the number of the lesson, the
topic title, information about your company and its
services or products. At the end, include a few blurbs
about the next lesson to entice the subscriber to continue
on.

Make sure each topic is packed with essential and valuable
information, and leaves the visitor lusting to know more.
Otherwise, you may lose them in the very beginning.

Of course, you have to write up your course before you can
offer it. Once you have done this, and gone over the
material carefully, employing a professional writer or
editor if necessary, you must transfer your text to your
autoresponder.

There are a number of free autoresponders you can use. Try
http:/www.getresponse.com, or http://www.fastfacts.net. Or
go onto Google and you will find a long list of free
autoresponder companies. Then sign-up for your chosen
autoresponder. Once you do, you will receive instructions
as to how to set it up and transfer your text.

Email is an excellent marketing tool; it is inexpensive and
it is fast. Use it to advertise your business by choosing
your email address carefully. Your website should contain
different email addresses for different contact requests.
For example, use info@yourdomain.com for information
requests, or sales@yourdomain.com for questions about
sales. It's a good idea to set up one for the owner, such
as president@yourdomain.com. This presents your company in
a personal, approachable light and insures that direct
contact is provided.

Autoresponders are an effective and powerful marketing
tool, allowing you to make contact with thousands of
potential customers. This is an invaluable asset
considering how many potential customers you usually have
contact with before you make an actual sale. Essentially,
an autoresponser allows you to automate part of your
marketing campaign.

Creative and Profitable Ways to Use Autoreponders

An interested visitor who has been strolling through your
site has finally come to just what she is looking for and
is about to make a purchase. It's a sunny afternoon, and
her cat, who happens to be sitting on the moss under the
visitor's large fifty-year-old snow-rose bonsai tree,
suddenly jumps down, and the priceless tree topples over.

In the blink of an eye, your visitor exits your site, and
your sale is dust - unless you have had the foresight to
utilize an autoresponder that has captured her email
address. If you have installed an autoresponder, you can
then follow-up with her, and in all probability, make the
sale when the poor woman has finished repotting her
precious bonsai.

Autoresponders are remarkable, versatile programs that do
so much more than just automatically answer your email.
Here are a few ideas that will help you to creatively and
productively use your autoresponder to transform the casual
visitor into a profitable customer. Use your autoresponder
to:

1. Publish a newsletter. Certain quality autoresponders
will manage subscriptions and follow-up with interested
prospects. Your newsletter can keep your visitors informed
about your services or products, while building your
reputation as a credible expert in your particular
business.

2. Publish a newsletter only for your affiliates. Inform
them of current sales you are running and of promotional
material that your affiliates can use themselves to
increase their commissions. Include tips, advice, and
techniques that your affiliates can use to successfully go
out and promote your business.

3. Write reviews. Cover books, software, music, e-books,
movies, etc., and put each review in an autoresponder.
Review your affiliate programs, using a link to your
affiliate's page in your autoresponder.

4. Distribute your articles. Writing and distributing
targeted articles is a powerful tool to build your business
credibility, bring traffic to your site, and increase your
sales potential. If your articles contain valuable
information, many editors will print what is known as a
resource box for you. A resource box contains your bio and
a brief description of your service or product. It can also
contain your autoresponder address. Let's say you've
written fifty articles. Put them on separate autoresponder
accounts and create a master list that contains the titles
of each article, the autoresponder address, and a brief
abstract. Then promote your master list. Additionally,
include your publishing guidelines so your affiliates can
add their articles to your list, increasing the number of
writers who are represented in your article list.

5. Create mailing lists. Inform subscribers to your
articles when you've written new ones that they may want to
publish in their own newsletter or website.

6. Automate your sales process. Use an ad to insure
repeated exposure of your message, which has been proven to
effectively increase sales. In your ad, put your
autoresponder address where a visitor will be exposed to
numerous marketing materials. This multiplies the chances
of converting visitors into customers. For example, if
you're selling a particular product, put testimonials about
how spectacular it is on your autoresponder, and add a
detailed, enticing description of your product.

7. Distribute advertising. Let's say you sell advertising
on your website or in your newsletter or e-zine. Set your
autoresponder to send the information about rates and how
to place an ad automatically to all prospects' email
addresses. Then have your autoresponder follow-up. It can
also send notification of any special deals you are
currently offering.

8. Distribute an email course. Each day, have your
autoresponder send out another lesson. Just be sure that
each lesson has quality content - not a sales pitch. Your
content will do the selling for you, and will do it much
more effectively. You can include tips centered on a
different topic for each lesson, illustrating how your
product will benefit the reader. Include the tangible
benefits the visitor will reap by purchasing your product.
Make sure to include a paragraph or two at the end of each
lesson enticing your prospect to consider making a
purchase.

9. Automate a reminder about your service or product after
a visitor has completed your course. This will increase the
possibility of sales from visitors who have taken your
course but are dragging their feet about actually making a
purchase. You can also use these reminders to promote new
products or services, and the products and services of your
affiliate programs.

10. Distribute free reports. This gives your visitor an
idea of the type of information you can provide and the
quality of your product or service. Make sure these reports
are not sales letters or you will more than likely lose a
potential customer than gain a sale.

11. Create trivia quizzes on your site and place the
answers in an autoresponder. Your visitor will then be
motivated to request your autoresponder, and you will have
a record of the visitors' email addresses who took your
quiz. Or create a contest and have any visitors that enter
send their responses to your autoresponder. Your
autoresponder can be set-up to send them a confirmation of
their entry.

12. Offer a trial version of your product. Give your
prospects a sample of your ebook, course, software,
membership, etc. People who are exposed to a little taste
often end up wanting the whole pie. You can also capture
their email addresses when you offer them a free trial from
your website. Set up your autoresponder to give
instructions on how to obtain their free trial, and then
make sure to follow-up to try and close the sale.

13. Link to hidden pages on your autoresponder. For
example, a hidden page could be your affiliate page that
contains graphics, promotional articles, and text links
that interested affiliates can make use of. Inform visitors
that they may have free access to your affiliate page by
simply requesting your autoresponder. You will then gather
a list of visitors who may be interested in becoming your
affiliates.

14. Use an autoresponder on your order page. Post a request
form for visitors to be notified of special offers or
discounts in the future. This creates a very effective
mailing list that contains the names of people who are
already your customers.

15. Put your links page on your autoresponder. It should
contain up to fifty links that would be of particular
interest to your visitors. Make sure to add your own
promotional copy at the top or bottom of this page.

Now that you have proof that autoresponders can be used
creatively, see if you can come up with some brilliant
ideas of your own!

Using Free Autoresponders

If you’ve looked at the prices of autoresponders that
are available online, you may have decided to search
for and use a free autoresponder for your marketing
needs. Using free autoresponders is acceptable in
certain situations, and in the world of Internet
marketing, any autoresponder is better than not
using an autoresponder at all!

Your first option for a free autoresponder should be
the one that comes with your webhosting account –
if you have a webhosting account. These
autoresponders can easily be set up through the
control panel of your website, and they do not
contain advertisements from the autoresponder
company or webhosting service. If you do not have
a hosting account, or your hosting
account does not include autoresponders, there are
other options that you can pursue.

There are many free autoresponder services to
choose from. These services are free, because the
company makes their money by placing a small
advertisement in each message that your
autoresponder sends out. These advertisements
may appear at the top of your auto responses, or at
the bottom, depending on which company you use.

Many paid autoresponder services offer a free version
as well. These free versions may or may not include
advertisements in the outgoing messages. These
lighter versions of the paid autoresponders typically
do not include many of the powerful features of the
paid versions. But if you don’t need the more
advanced features, this is a great choice.

Most free autoresponders have a limit on the number
of subscribers you can have. Many people start out
with the limited free versions, and then upgrade to
the paid versions once their lists are large enough
to exceed those limits. Many marketers don’t feel
that the expense of the autoresponder is warranted
until the list that they are building is turning a profit.
From a business standpoint, this makes sense.

As the owner of a business, you are the only one
who can decide whether you need a paid
autoresponder service, or if a free one will do the job.
If your list is small, a free autoresponder should do
everything that you need it to do, but as your list
grows, you should definitely consider upgrading.
However, having the small advertisements that the
free services place in the outgoing
messages may present a problem if the ads
compete with what you are trying to sell. They may
even pose a problem if they do not directly compete
with your product or business. Again, this depends
on what you are trying to accomplish with your
autoresponder.

Using Autoresponders Responsibly

In today’s world of unsolicited email and spam laws, it is extremely important that you learn to use your autoresponder responsibly. Autoresponders make our lives much simpler, and they are very powerful marketing tools, but if they are used in a way that they
are not intended, they can quickly turn your life into a nightmare!

First, never add people to your autoresponder mailing list that should not be there. If they have requested information from you, they
should automatically be added, and you should have a ‘double opt-in’ method in place to make them confirm that they have
requested the information. This serves to protect you and them.

Each autoresponder message should include a link that the recipient can click that will automatically remove them from the mailing
list. Without this link, you will be breaking the spam laws, and you risk having your website, your ISP service, your email, and your autoresponders shut down!

We all want to build a list of a million people, but you must do so responsibly, and it does take time. Don’t get in a hurry and break
all the rules and laws in an attempt to build a large list. This will only result in losing your list altogether!

Using an Autoresponder to Publish an Ezine

There are many uses for an autoresponder. One
such use is the publishing and distribution of an
ezine or newsletter. Since autoresponder services
usually are set up to send automatic responses to
the people on the list at certain intervals after they
sign up, setting up an autoresponder to send out an
ezine can be a little confusing.

Depending on the service or autoresponder that you
are using, you will need a ‘broadcast’ feature. The
broadcast feature works essentially the same as the
autoresponse feature, with one big difference. The
messages are not sent out at intervals. The
messages can, however, be scheduled to go out on
a certain day, which has no bearing on when the
subscriber was actually added to the mailing list.
Broadcast messages are ‘one time’ messages that
are only sent to your current mailing list. People
who sign up for your list after the broadcast has
been sent do not receive it, unless the specifically
request it with an autoresponder address, which
you must set up.

Using the broadcast feature of most autoresponder
services, you can simply go and either type your
newsletter, or copy and paste it into the editor, then
choose to send the broadcast to your entire mailing
list. More advanced autoresponder services will
usually have broadcasting features.

Using an autoresponder to maintain a mailing list
and to distribute a newsletter is a wonderful idea.
Your subscribers can easily opt-in, or opt-out, and
all of the distribution is handled for you, based on
the schedule that you set. List maintenance can
become very difficult without the automation that
autoresponders provide. You can write each issue
of your ezine or newsletter well in advance, and
have it delivered to your mailing list, no matter
where you are or what you are doing. That is the
beauty of automation!

Since all past broadcast and autoresponse
messages are saved, you can easily refer back to
old issues, or allow people to request past issues.
You can also use the tracking feature throughout
each issue of the newsletter to determine how
many clicks you are getting for the various products
or websites that you promote in your ezine.

If you have not yet purchased an autoresponder or
signed up with any autoresponder service, make
sure that you inquire about the broadcast feature
first. Not all autoresponders or autoresponder
services have this feature, and as your marketing
progresses, you will find that this is one of the most
useful features of the service or program.

Using Your Autoresponder to Generate Leads

Autoresponders are one of the most important marketing tools that you can have if you are doing business online. In fact, the
only thing more important that the autoresponder is your opt-in list! But all autoresponders start out without a list – the list doesn’t
exist until your autoresponder mailing list starts filling up with names and email addresses!

The easiest and fastest way to build up an email list is to give things away for free. Some marketers will tell you that this is a
waste of time – and if you already have a list of one hundred thousand people that you can market to, then it probably is. But for
those who do not already have a list, this is the way that it gets built! You simply pay for advertisement to promote your freebie.
Don’t think of this as lost money, think of it as an investment in future earnings.

Give away an ezine, free reports, free ebooks, free access to private websites, or anything else that you can think of. The object is
to get people to sign up to receive that freebie, and to agree to receive email from you in the future! It is a win-win situation for
everyone, but you get more than anyone else in the deal. The person gets a freebie. You get their name and email address, and
permission to email them in the future.

But if you do it right, you get even more than that. The freebie that you give away should also be used to promote your products or
services. Even if it just has affiliate links for products or services that are related to the topic of the freebie, it is a way to generate
extra revenue. Then, when you send email in the future, you can again promote your products or services. Just be sure to include
valuable information in the email as well, or you will have people dropping off of your autoresponder mailing list like flies!

Using every opportunity that is presented to you in the world of Internet Marketing is vital to your success. You have the opportunity
to earn money in the freebie that you create, you have the opportunity to earn money when you send the ‘thank you’ email after a
person has requested your freebie, and you have the opportunity to earn money every time an autoresponder message is sent out
to that list in the future! Don’t waste those opportunities, and put it all in automatic mode with the use of an autoresponder.

Tracking Autoresponder Responses

As an Internet marketer, it is vitally important to
know how well your advertising campaigns are doing.
Advertising campaigns cost a lot of time and money,
and campaigns that are not doing well need to either
be changed or scraped. When using autoresponders
for purposes of Internet marketing, you will be able to
tell how well your autoresponder messages are doing
by using response tracking.

Autoresponder response tracking is usually easily
set up with the higher quality paid autoresponder
services. Using the tracking set up tool, you simply
enter the web site address that you want your
readers to visit, and the software generates a brand
new URL. This URL is used track the number of
clicks that you have from the autoresponder message
to the website that you are promoting.

When a person clicks on that special URL, the click
is captured, and they are automatically redirected to
the website that you intended them to arrive at. The
visitor does not know that they have been redirected
in most cases. You can monitor the results
through the control panel of your autoresponder
service account. The control panel will tell you how
many messages were delivered, and how many
clicks were received. Most quality autoresponders
will even include a feature that allows you to track
how many of the emails were opened. This is a
great marketing research tool for mass email marketing.

Not all autoresponder services offer tracking abilities
such as this. If tracking is important to you, you
need to make sure that this is one of the features of
the autoresponder service before you sign up. This
feature gives you the ability to know whether the
message you are sending out is effective, or if
changes need to be made. It also allows you to
see if the sales copy on your website is effective, in
a ‘round-about’ way. For instance, if you are getting
thousands of clicks from the autoresponder
message, but very few clicks from the sales page
to the order page, you know that the
autoresponder message is working, but the sales
copy is failing.

If you have never tracked your autoresponder
responses before, you should definitely consider it.
Again, this information allows you to find out what is
working, and what is not working. It will essentially
make your autoresponder marketing much more
effective and profitable. You will most likely be very
surprised at the results of the tracking!

The Difference Between Autoresponder Programs and Autoresponder Services

Many newcomers to the Internet marketing arena are not aware that there is a vast difference between an autoresponder program
and an autoresponder service. Not knowing the difference, they often purchase the wrong type of autoresponder, and find out too
late that they have wasted money on a program that is useless to them.

An autoresponder program is a program that is set up on your web server. This is usually a free autoresponder that comes with
your web hosting account. Many people don’t like to use autoresponder services; so instead, they use an autoresponder program
that they have more control over. Some of those people don’t like the autoresponder programs that come with their hosting
accounts either and purchase autoresponder programs or scripts that must be installed on their web server.

Other people are quite happy with using an autoresponder service. This is a service that is usually paid for on a monthly or yearly
basis. The fees are ongoing, and everything is browser based. In other words, you can set up your autoresponder messages and
manage your opt-in list through your web browser – just as you can with an autoresponder program that is installed through your
web hosting account. The difference is that the service runs on the autoresponder service’s web server – not yours or your web
hosts.

Beginners are usually better off using an autoresponder service. These services are very easy to understand and to use, and no
technical knowledge is needed to set things up. As a newcomer to the field, however, you might be concerned about the costs of
an autoresponder service. If this is the case, you have the option of signing up with a free autoresponder service.

Free services make their money by placing advertisements in each autoresponder message that you send out. Sometimes these
ads appear at the top of your messages, and sometimes they appear at the bottom. Some of the free services are simply an
enticement to purchase the professional version, and have many of the more advanced features, such as tracking, disabled.

More advanced users often choose to use autoresponder programs, simply because they have more control over the autoresponder,
and they don’t have to follow some of the stiffer rules imposed by autoresponder services, such as sending confirmation to each and
every person who is entered into the autoresponders list.

The autoresponder that you choose is strictly up to you, but in most cases, an autoresponder service should suit your needs. If
you are unsure, look for a service that offers free signups, with the option of upgrading to the professional paid version at a later date.

Powerful Autoresponders – Does Yours Measure Up?

Autoresponders are very necessary when it comes
to marketing or taking care of customers. But the
power of an autoresponder, or the lack of power,
can mean the difference between success and
failure.

When you use an autoresponder service, you must
make sure that the domain that the autoresponder
uses isn’t blacklisted by the spam watch groups. If
it is, your messages probably won’t make it past
the majority of spam filters, no matter how much
you check it with spam checkers.

Also, not having the ability to track responses can
cost you business. If you can’t track response rates,
you won’t have any way of knowing whether your
messages are doing you any good. A good
autoresponder will provide the ability to track
responses. If yours doesn’t, you might want to shop
for a new autoresponder.

The ability to add and remove names to your
autoresponder manually is vital. Often, people will
contact you without going through your
autoresponder. These people need to be put on the
autoresponders mailing list. If you are moving your
list from one service to another, you need the ability
to import names and addresses to your list. Again,
if your autoresponder service isn’t powerful enough
to allow this, look for a different one!

Personalizing Autoresponders

Have you ever walked into a store in your town, and
been addressed by name? This has probably
happened to you at stores that you frequent often.
The shop owner knows your name, and uses it. He
remembers you, and he wants you to know that he
cared enough about you and your business to
remember you. In the offline world, this is just one
aspect of customer support.

Customer service like this is almost impossible to
achieve on the Internet, but some semblance of it
can exist when you personalize your autoresponder
messages. Autoresponder messages can be set up
to address people by their first or last name – or both.
In fact, there is quite a bit of personalized information
that can be added, depending on the autoresponder
that you are using.

The information is included in the autoresponder
messages by using codes. Each autoresponder will
use different codes to insert the information in your
messages. You simply write your message, and put
the codes where you want the personalized
information to appear. For instance, your message
may start out with ‘Hello (code for first name)! In this
case, the person’s first name will be inserted where
that code is.

Personalizing your autoresponder messages will
most likely improve your response rate. Research
has shown that emails that are personalized with the
person’s first name are opened more often, and
those people are generally more receptive to the
contents of the email message. It is usually very
easy to do. You write one message, using the
codes where you want the personalization,
then, no matter who that one email is sent out to,
their personal information will appear where the
codes are.

Of course, the autoresponder must collect the
information first. This is done with the use of forms
that activate the autoresponder. For instance, if you
are giving away a free ebook, and you have your
visitor fill out a form with their email address to receive
the download instructions for the ebook by email, that
form should collect any type of information that you
want for personalization – such as a first name, as
well as the email address. If that information is not
collected, the autoresponder won’t have anything to
insert where that code appears in your messages!

Take a look around the control panel of your
autoresponder, and find out what type of
personalization you can add to your autoresponder
messages. You may be very surprised at the
improved results!

Motivate Your Downline with Autoresponders

Many affiliate marketers have a hard time building a
downline – and an even harder time keeping downline
members motivated and selling. If your income
depends on the sales of others, you should strongly
consider keeping them motivated with
autoresponders.

You can load your autoresponder with positive
messages, sales tips, and news related to the
product or service that is being sold. Many affiliates
fail simply because they don’t know how to market a
product, and they have little or no support from affiliate
managers or up line members! With the use of
autoresponders, all of that can change.

You should definitely write on some marketing tips,
specific to your product or service, and set you
downline members up in the mailing list for that
series of messages. Send broadcast messages
once a month congratulating the top sellers. Send
short motivational articles that will keep your
downline member upbeat.

Failing to communicate with your downline members
is the same as ensuring that they fail at the
business in most cases. If you want to succeed in
affiliate marketing, you have to take steps to help
your downline succeed!

Invoicing with Autoresponders

If you have recurring invoices that you send out, you
can easily automate this process with
autoresponders. Many business
owners find that they spend a good portion the day
sending out invoices, or trying to collect on unpaid
invoices! This can easily eat into the time that you
could be spending generating new business.

If the amounts invoiced are the same each month,
and due on the same day each week or month, you
can easily automate the invoicing process with the
use of an autoresponder. Many shopping carts that
have autoresponders built in work well for this.
Others may take a little time to set up, but in the
end, they will save a great deal of time overall.

Get extra usage out of the automated invoicing
process by adding small messages to the invoices
that alert these clients to new products or services
that you offer. Think about your phone bill – doesn’t
your phone company send out additional sales
material with each bill? There is no reason you
shouldn’t use this same marketing technique with
your autoresponder invoices!

Improper Uses of Autoresponders

Autoresponders are wonderful! They can be used for
a variety of things, but there are several ways that
autoresponders should not be used. Using
autoresponders in improper ways will make things
a bit more difficult for other people, and it could
make things really bad for you!

Having one autoresponder respond to another
autoresponder creates chaos, and in some cases, it
can overload servers. This happens when you sign
up for something, using your autoresponder email
address. You sign up, and a message is sent to
someone else’s autoresponder, which responds to
your autoresponder, which responds to that
autoresponder – and this continues on and on until
it is manually stopped and straightened out.

Some people use their autoresponder address on
purpose when they sign up for discussion lists. In
effect, this causes an their autoresponder message
to be sent to the entire list, or to one person on the
list, each time a person sends a real message to
the discussion list. Needless to say, discussion list
members and owners frown on this practice, and the
autoresponder owner gets banned.

Avoid these problems and use your autoresponder in
ways that it was meant to be used. Do not use the
autoresponder irresponsibly! Not only will you create
problems for others, but you may find that you get
reported for spam!

How Important are Autoresponders to Internet Marketing?

Internet Marketing and autoresponders essentially
go hand-in-hand. In today’s online business world,
you simply cannot succeed at Internet marketing
without the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders
are used to achieve many of the marketing tasks
that are essential to a successful online business.

Internet marketing can be very time consuming.
Whether you do affiliate marketing or market your
own products, an autoresponder is a big part of your
marketing arsenal. Autoresponders are used to keep
in contact with your past customers, and to develop
a relationship with potential customers.

An autoresponder can be used to deliver sales
messages to your opt-in customer list. It can be
used to deliver email courses, to send reminders,
and even to help you build an opt-in list if you don’t
already have one. There are many creative ways you
can use your autoresponder to make more sales and
to build customer relations.

Any successful marketer will tell you that there are
two tools that are vital to any type of online
marketing – an opt-in list and an autoresponder. In
fact, most marketers will agree that you could take
away all of their other marketing tools, but they
would fight to the death to keep the list and the
autoresponder!

Give Potential Customers A Preview With Autoresponders

Building customer interest and excitement is the first
step to successfully marketing many products.
Autoresponders play a vital role in building this
interest and excitement. For instance, if you were
developing an ebook, you may want to start telling
your website visitors and opt-in subscribers about it.
Start building interest; tell them what this product
will do for them, and how soon it will be available.

Do more than build interest by telling them about it.
Use an autoresponder to let them preview your
product! Even though you will be selling the product,
you can allow your potential customers to preview
the information. Have you ever seen previews for
movies that will be playing intheaters soon? It is the
same concept.

Load one chapter of the ebook into an autoresponder,
and put a form on your website where your visitors
can enter their name and email address to receive
the preview chapter free of charge. This gets their
name on your list of potential customer. Each
week, send a reminder email, letting them know how
close the release date is, and what they can expect
from your product – keep building interest and
excitement.

Finally, a couple of days before you are ready to
launch your product offer those that received the
preview the option to buy a pre-release copy. You
canopt to offer a discounted price, or leave the price
as it will be on launch day – the choice is yours.

Take a look at the list of people who signed up to
receive the preview. How many of them are still ‘
subscribed’ to that list? They’ve had the option to
stop receiving notices about your product, but they
chose to keep receiving the information you were
sending. These are highly targeted prospects for
your product. They have already shown you that
they have an interest in your product, and a large
number of those people are simply waiting on the
autoresponder broadcast message that will let
them know that it is time to pick up their copy of
your product!

Isn’t automation a wonderful thing? Using an
autoresponder, you are able to see how much of a
market there is for your product, and build a great
deal of interest in it before it is ever released. This
isthe key to making sales on launch day. Use
autoresponders to build the interest. Get your
prospects excited about what is about to come –
andon launch day, give them what they are waiting
for andwatch the sales pour in!

Getting Your Autoresponder Messages Through The Spam Filters

In light of the spam problem, most email clients now
have spam filters installed. These filters catch spam
email and either move it to a ‘spam folder’ or
automatically delete it. After spending a great deal
of time laboring over your series of autoresponder
messages, it would be a shame to find out that the
majority of the messages that are sent out end up
in the spam folder, or are automatically deleted as
spam!

You can avoid this in two ways. First, when anyone
signs up to receive information from your
autoresponder, have them automatically redirected
to a page that gives them instructions for ‘white
listing’ you. Email clients have an actual white list
where the owner of the email client can add specific
addresses that should never be considered spam.

The other way to make sure that your autoresponder
messages get through the spam filters is to check
them using one of the various spam checkers that
are available online. These programs are often web
based, and free to use. They check your message
for words or phrases that commonly trigger spam
filters in email clients. Don’t send out any
autoresponder messages without doing a spam
check first!

Formatting Autoresponder Messages

Have you received emails that were all broken up?
These emails have one or two words on one line,
then eight or ten words on the next line. In some
cases, one word begins on one line and ends on the
next. These emails are very hard to read, and they
appear to be very unprofessional. Is this what you
want your autoresponder email messages to look
like?

If not, you need to learn how to format your
messages. Start by reading the instructions for your
specific autoresponder. Each one operates a bit
differently in the way that it handles text. For
instance, some autoresponder messages will be
messed up if you do put a ‘hard line break’ at the
end of each line, while others will be messed up if
you don’t! Find out what the right option is for your
autoresponder!

Because each email client is different, you should
not allow any line in your message to exceed 65
characters. This will help prevent lines from breaking
up, and it is achieved by hitting the ‘enter’ key at
the end of each sixty-five character line. The best
way to be sure that your autoresponder messages
are delivered in the correct format is to send them
to yourself, before you send them to your list!