The most effective way to drive traffic to your squeeze page is through article marketing. It is also a completely free strategy with no downside. By writing and distributing your articles to high traffic article directories you not only generate back links to your website you also have the opportunity to provide your readers with information related to your products or services. This way, you can be sure that people who click through to your site from an article are actually interested in what you have to say. Effectively, by using article marketing you will have well targeted visitors who will be far more likely to respond to your call to action whether by purchasing or signing up for an offer.

However, article marketing will only work if it is done well. A poorly written, unprofessional article will have the opposite effect and cause people to shy away from you and your business. It is therefore very important that you only submit high quality, professional articles to top of the line directories such as ezinearticles.com. You can either write your own articles or pay a professional writer to do it for you. Not all web writers are good, however. If you are going to pay a freelancer to write for you, make sure that they are well versed in English, preferably a native speaker. Many online writers come from countries where English is not the first language and these writers are able to write for less than the average native English speaker residing in a first world country. Even the better of these writers who do not speak English as a first language, do not write naturally or colloquially and readers can tell the difference. The quality of your articles will only reflect on you so make sure it’s a good reflection.

If you want to use article marketing to drive traffic to your squeeze page, you need to be prepared to be prolific. It also pays to write a variety of different types of articles that appeal to different types of readers and therefore different segments of your market. For example, you can write product reviews, book reviews, news stories related to your industry as well as informational articles which are relevant to your product or service.

When it comes to article distribution, there are widely diverse opinions as to whether it is best to mass distribute using an article submission service like articlemarker.com or submission software, or whether it is best to personally submit your articles only to a few high profile article directories. By trialing different article distribution methods and monitoring resulting visits to your squeeze page, you can determine which approach best suits your product or service.

While article marketing can certainly direct a lot of free targeted traffic to your website, only you can convert those visits to sales or sign ups. If you are getting visits but they are not responding positively to your squeeze page, you may need to rewrite your page. You should also reevaluate whether or not there is an actual demand for your offering. However, if you have a good product and a well designed squeeze page, article marketing is a guaranteed way to attract visitors and increase your profits.

The first rule of an email marketing driven website is that your list of qualified subscribers is your "bread and butter" .  You recommend products to your list, they buy the products, and you make money off your affiliate program links.

However, populating that list is something of an ethical dilemma.  You want to make sure that your list is populated with quality subscribers. You've already heard about how to use squeeze pages to get peoples email addresses…but unless you have some method of confirming the email address, you're only buying trouble.

Single opt-in used to be the rage in the mid-90s, when internet marketing was in its infancy.  You get an email address (some even harvested them from news groups…) and you send a message to it, people respond, you make money.  That's how it was supposed to work, anyway.

You can see the actual results of this course of action whenever you open your inbox, or look at your web mail account and see hundreds or thousands of spam emails filtered out.

Single opt-in can be a hazard to your business and can get you shut down if you are not careful.

What you need to do when getting someone signed into your list is send an email confirmation that  the subscriber must click on to confirm their subscription.  This is called "double opt-in".  It filters out the people who put bogus email addresses up, and ensures that your list is clean. 

Think about it… You want the people on your list to be people who are interested in your offerings, who will stick with you in the long haul.  It doesn't matter how big your email list is if the majority of addresses on it are dead end accounts. 

There's another excellent reason to go with double opt-in subscriptions beyond the straightforward business case:  More ISPs are cracking down on spam emailings.  The one vendor you cannot afford to offend, or make abandon you is your Internet Service Provider.  They track how many "bounced emails with identical subjects" come back to your account, and will shut you off without any notification if they think you're doing a spam assault. 

The third benefit of double opt-in is legitimacy.  Most major internet businesses out there are not using single opt-in any more.  Consumers expect to get a confirmation email, proving that you're a legitimate business who takes their time seriously.

Setting up a double-opt-in subscription system does require that you write a simple welcome message.

Here's a basic example:

"Dear <name>, in order to use our services, we have to be certain that you're giving us a valid email address. Please click on the link below to complete your registration." 

Something else you should do with your email list is provide, at the bottom of every email you send out, a way for someone to unsubscribe that doesn't cause them to jump through lots of obstructions.  Easy opt-out options help your list clean itself – after all, if they want off your list, they're not going to buy anything you recommend anyway.  All you're doing by not letting them unsubscribe easily is giving them a reason to mention your business in a negative light on blogs and forums about the products you sell.

In the end, there are established, and well recognized, good business practices for being an ethical internet marketer.  It's always in your best interests to follow them, to make this work for you.  Your customers will stick with you if you do so, and will leave within moments of you stepping off the straight and narrow.

One of the heralded pieces of Congressional legislation of 2003 was the CAN SPAM act, which became effective on January 1, 2004.   The Act provides strict regulations and guidelines about what information you need to provide in your commercial email solicitations.  The fines per infraction to the sender are $11,000 per instance, and that will make any small business owner sit up and take notice. 

The reason for anti-spam regulation is that somewhere around 80% of all emails are unsolicited commercial sales pitches – the same ones you shovel out of your inbox every morning.  This is seriously degrading network traffic, and it costs countless hours of productivity in deleting email, as well as providing a ripe ecosystem for viruses and worms and zombie attacks to flourish in.  (Sadly, internet zombie attacks can't be stopped as readily with shotguns…)

As a small business owner, you have to take great care in preserving your credibility to your customers.  Even worse, your credibility means you have to be easily identified, and that makes you an easier target for lawsuits than someone running a server in Croatia.  It's in your best interest to be aware of what the requirements are, and to follow them religiously.

The relevant federal organization regulating the CAN SPAM act is the Federal Trade Commission, which is the federal level consumer protection agency.  The Act also lets the Department of Justice enforce its provisions, which is where the teeth come into the law.  It also opens the door for ISPs to sue abusive customers for violating it, and state level agencies can use it as a hunting permit as well.

In general, as a commercial emailer, you must do the following:

1) Make sure that your header information in emails is unambiguous and not forged.  You must provide an email address, domain name and routing information that leads back to your business and your servers.
2) Your subject line on the email must provide real information about the contents of the email, including information on any attachments included.
3) You must provide an opt-out method, that is not needlessly obscured, or presented in such a way that it's not visible in the email.
4) You must provide a valid return email address, or another internet based method for your recipients to opt out.  It may lead them to a menu where they can choose which services they opt out of, but one option must always be "Remove me from all email solicitations from this business.
5) When you receive an opt-out, you have 10 business days to comply. You cannot help another entity send emails to that address, or have another entity send email on your behalf during those 10 days, or afterwards. 
6) You may not sell your opt-out lists to a third party.
7) Any commercial solicitation must be clearly marked as advertising, and include the sender's valid postal address.

In addition to the requirements above, there are also stringent penalties for companies or entities that harvest email addresses for commercial resale, or use techniques like the dictionary attack (generating email addresses by throwing random letters and numbers onto a domain name), or the spammer shotgun method of registering for multiple accounts to send commercial emails, or doing unauthorized network relaying of emails, something which most ISPs have turned off in the US anyway.

The good news for you is that as a respectable businessperson, these are all fairly easy to comply with.  Also, if you can document a prior business relationship, it's much harder for someone to make a spam case against your firm. With high profile cases going to court with damages measured in the millions of dollars, it's definitely worth your while to do so!

Save Time And Money With Autoresponders

In the world of business, whether it is a brick and mortar business, an online business, a person that is self employed – time is money! When you find ways to save time and money you will increase your bottom line with ease. Implementing a good autoresponder into your business is a good way save time and money.

Brief Explanation Of An Autoresponder –

An autoresponder is a simple program that will automatically respond to messages sent to you. You can pre-write the responses that your autoresponder sends back. One way online businesses have been using this tool is to send their customers a confirmation of their online purchase from their website. This helps to set the customer at ease knowing that their order went through just fine.

General Uses For Autoresponders –

Many companies allow their employees to use autoresponders to let contacts know that the service representative will get back to them as soon as possible. Some employees will also use them to let customers know that they will be out of the office or on vacation. This helps to let contacts know that their message was in fact received. It also lets them know that they will not get an immediate response if the employee will be out on vacation for some time.

This amazing tool can help you and your online business run smoothly, effectively and efficiently.

How To Save Time And Money With Your Autoresponder –

Increase Conversion Rates:

Increase your conversion rates with your autoresponder! Many online marketing experts will agree that it takes about seven contacts with a customer in order for a business to create a sale. By using autoresponders to help you follow up with your customers automatically you will be creating more sales for you and your online business.

Increase Customer Loyalty:

Increase your customer loyalty. Autoresponders will help make your customers feel more satisfied, help you keep current customers, and market to and engage new customers. This will help your online business increase sales, and your customers will return the favor by becoming more loyal to your website.

Reduce Your Data Entry:

No more data entry for you…well, in emails anyway! Your autoresponder will automatically enter your customers’ names and emails for you. Plus, it will keep a database of your customers’ email addresses and names for you!

Set Your Online Business To Autopilot:

Go on vacation with no worries about how your online business will do. Your online business can easily be put on autopilot with your autoresponder. It will work for you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Your autoresponder will automatically send your prewritten messages for you while you are away. This includes: thank you messages, order confirmations, invoices, welcome messages, free reports, free Ebooks, other free digital material, your email newsletter, and anything else you have already set up. Go on vacation or take a break from work worry free!

Get More New Customers:

Cold leads online are a hard sell, but it does work! When people are interested in the products you offer you can be sure that they are interested in any related content, resources and information. This is why you should have an email newsletter so your customers get more out of your website business, feel more connected to your online business, and are reminded about your business whenever you have your email newsletter sent out. All you have to do is set up your email newsletters with the proper content and tell your autoresponder when to send it out to your subscribers. Email newsletters help nearly every online business increase their sales. Most online businesses that have an email newsletter admit that they would save their email contacts over anything else in their online business!

Conduct Your On Market Research:

Do some market research. You can send out surveys to see what your customers think about your website, your products, your services, etc. You can improve your online business with these surveys.

Autoresponders are affordable, easy to set up, easy to use, and keep track of everything for you. They save you and your online business time and money easily. They help your business run more efficiently and more effectively. They do not cost much and there are a variety of autoresponders out there. Find the best one for you and your business and get started on saving time and money!

When it comes to online marketing, one of the most important strategies is email list building. Of course, when you are working on building up your email list you want to be sure that your list is specifically targeted to your market. Once you build up a great email list, you open up huge potential for making money; however, first you have to work on building that list. The following are four very simple steps that can help you out with email list building.

Step #1 – Develop a Squeeze Page – If you want to be a marketing success, then you need to build up an email list with as many email addresses as possible in your target market. One of the best ways that you can do this is develop a squeeze page. Make sure that you capture the email addresses of those who visit your site. Once you get their email address, then you have the option to later follow up with them, showing them other services and products that you have. This will help you to increase the amount of profit you are making.

Step #2 – Contact Friends and Family – You should never forget about friends and family when it comes to email list building. Take the time to contact all of your friends and family member that may be interested in your specific market. If they are interested, then ask if they would like to join you emailing list.

Step #3 – Social Networking Sites – When you are trying to build up an email list, one great way of email list building is to join and use various social networking sites online. Some of the sites that are worth trying include Squidoo and MySpace. Using social networking sites can help you to draw more traffic to your website. Be sure and send them to your squeeze page that you have already developed so you are sure to get their email addresses when they visit.

Step #4 – Start a Blog – Blogs are almost imperative when it comes to email list building today. Taking the time to blog will get your name out there, and the more people that read your blog, the more visitors that you can send to your page. You may even want to put a nice opt in form on your blog so those who read your blog can also sigh up to be on your email list as well. Many blog readers are loyal consumers and many of them have money that they are willing to spend. So, taking the time to build a blog can help you build your email list, which can be quite lucrative.

Keep these four great tips in mind, and no doubt you’ll be on your way to building up a great email list. Remember, email list building is important if you want to be successful in online marketing, so work hard to build a quality list.

Using Aweber's service, you can set up email newsletters, ezines, squeeze pages, autoresponders sequences, email marketing campaigns and a lot more.

For only $19.95 a month, you can be up and running in a matter of minutes.  And one of the best benefits of this system is that they have some of the best support online.  When I had questions, they answered them quickly and effectively.  

What’s even more impressive is that Aweber has added flash demonstrations of their tools for those who learn better by seeing it in action.  These flash demonstrations are also excellent for anyone who is new to an autoresponder system.
 
Each major section of Aweber included descriptions and the interface has a tabbed view for navigation.  This makes it very simple to navigate.  It features a step by step user guide, quick stats, and the flash demonstrations mentioned earlier. 

Aweber features include:  message scheduler, inline message editor, unlimited broadcasts, unlimited follow-ups, unlimited campaigns, and last but certainly not least, unlimited autoresponders.
 
This product also allows for an easy creation of your user list.  You can enter contacts, import contacts, collect contacts by a form, or pull them from your inbox. 

It also contains an incredible form generation tool.  It allows for pop-ups, pop-unders, exit pop-ups, un-blockable DHTML slide in pop-ups, and more.  Form creation itself is simple and only requires a single line of javascript in your website to function. 

Also it supports 25 custom forms for you to collect data like subscriber names, subscriber gender, and subscriber location.  You can also segment your lists based on criteria.  For example, you can single out all of the men in your list or all of the people in a certain location.  This can be extremely handy. 

Creating the actual email message is also a snap.  If you can use Microsoft Word, you can use Aweber.  It includes a spell checker and the ability to include custom fields (which is very valuable in creating a personal message).

You also have access to an incredible broadcast feature.  This is an email message you can send to your entire list of contacts.  These broadcasts messages are different from the autoresponder messages and follow-up messages that Aweber sends out.  This is important to note here because some other products do not offer the broadcast feature.
 
Some additional, yet just as important features are Aweber’s ability to tell you if an email was opened or if any links in your email were clicked.  It also provides a Spam Assassin score which will give you an idea about how well your email will pass spam filters and how to change it if it doesn’t pass.

One of the best features in all of Aweber’s arsenal is their reporting tools.  With this great feature Aweber details every important piece of information about your campaign or campaigns.  You are given information collected monthly, daily, and weekly.  You are given new leads, stats about broadcasts, verification times, and method of subscription.  This page is a stat lovers dream come true!

Based on the research done on Aweber and compared to other autoresponders and their effectiveness, the conclusion is made that this product is by far a superior system.  It is an incredible tool used by veterans and amateurs alike. 

Aweber is highly recommended. If you join Aweber today, I will give you 3 free bonuses.

Click Here Now To Join Aweber

- Know your purpose and be realistic: Before starting one of your own email newsletters, do your homework, know your goals and what you’re trying to achieve. Are you trying to market your website? Are you selling some type of product? Who will your audience be and how will you connect with them? Are you able to offer unique and interesting information in each issue? Are you able to meet deadlines?

- Create a section devoted exclusively to customers/subscribers: If it makes sense for your particular niche, feature a regular section that’s devoted to your readers and showcases their work or business in some way.

- Routinely ask for feedback: Readers like it if they feel they are a part of the “creative process” and that they have a voice that wants to be heard. Create surveys or simply ask for feedback about what your subscribers want to read and learn about the most.

- Offer something for free: People love getting things for free, and what better way of attracting the attention of your readers than by giving them something for nothing? Depending on your type of business you could offer free samples, e-books, software downloads, or other incentives to keep your subscribers interested and coming back for more.

- Offer useful information: Email newsletters that are full of fluff, repetitive, or out of date information, or are filled with graphics, useless charts and advertisements are routinely deleted and never read.

- Use an appealing, professional format: Pass on the exclamation points or capital letters and instead use an easy to read, visually appealing format that conveys a sense of professionalism. Short, succinct paragraphs work best, and important points should be emphasized with simple bullet points.

- Be accurate: Religiously check your work for grammatical errors, typos, broken links or other problems. It helps if you are able to have someone else edit your work as it’s often difficult to catch your own mistakes, especially if you’ve been working on the same thing for a while. If you’re editing the newsletter in addition to writing it, walk away from it for a day or at least a few hours, then re-read and look for any mistakes you may have missed before.

- Provide contact information and working links: Besides being the law, it’s also good business practice to be sure that each issue contains a way for subscribers to remove themselves from your list, or to get in contact with you. Some business owners choose to send out newsletters with all of their information such as their physical address and phone numbers, while others opt for links to email addresses and their company’s website.

In Internet marketing and promotion there are so many choices all available at your fingertips. You have probably already used marketing articles, press releases, website advertisements, search engine advertisements, and more.

However, you might be looking over an important tool for your Internet marketing and promotion for your online business – autoresponders. These are simple, easy to use, and convenient automatic email responders. Many people use them to inform a sender that they are on vacation, will be out of the office, or even that they will get back to them as soon as possible. Many people use them, even those who do not have an online business.

Not Just Vacation Responses Anymore –

Autoresponders have come a long way since just using them to let email senders know that you will be on vacation for such and such a time. Online businesses that are in business to help the millions of other businesses on the World Wide Web have improved the use of autoresponders to help them increase their marketing and promotion efforts. They are not just for letting people know that you will get back to them as soon as possible anymore.

Autoresponders Give You And Your Customers More Options –

Autoresponders can help you promote your online newsletter with ease. When someone visits your website and chooses to sign up for your email newsletter they will enter their email address so you can send them the free stuff you are offering your subscribers. You should always offer something for free when you are promoting an email newsletter. Your email newsletter will help you market and promote your website products and services. Giving something for free when people subscribe to your email newsletter is essential in growing your email list faster and better. However, how will you be able to send all of those subscribers their free Ebook, free report, or free email course?  It would take a lot of time to send out those free things to each subscriber individually! That is where the autoresponder will help you save time, as well as money. We all know time is money after all. You can set up your autoresponder to automatically send your subscribers their free Ebook, free report, or free ecourse. Your autoresponder will send your subscribers their free stuff immediately after they sign up no matter what. You could be sleeping, off the computer, or even in another state. Your autoresponder will send what you tell it to.

Autoresponders Save Precious Time –

Autoresponders are a real time saver for all online business owners. However, that is not even the half of it for autoresponders. These amazing tools can help you market your products, promote your products, and even increase your sales! The best part of it all is that autoresponders are affordable, easy to use, easy to set up, and – with the right copy – can help you sell more products!

Autoresponder Opportunities –

When someone sends you a message or subscribes to your email newsletter you can have your autoresponder automatically send them a message with marketing and promotional copy to help you sell more with a simple email. When someone visits your website and purchases a product from you this is a great opportunity to get your customer to come back for more. In your autoresponder you can offer your customer a product with free shipping, a coupon code, a discount on their next purchase, and more. Whatever you can think of to offer you can do so in your autoresponder.

10 Steps To Keep In Mind For Your Autoresponder Copy –

1. Make sure your marketing and promotional messages are clear
2. What you offer is important – spell everything out for your customers
3. Make sure your copy is of high quality to ensure more sales
4. Personalize your autoresponder’s messages
5. Test your autoresponder before you put it up on your website
6. Use good quality graphics in your messages
7. Send thank you messages with your autoresponder
8. Make sure there is information about unsubscribing
9. Create copy that makes your customers want to respond immediately
10. Always choose quality over quantity

Autoresponders have really come a long way. If you are not using them with your online business you are missing out on a lot of potential sales, and even return customers. Autoresponders can help you increase your sales, increase your customers, increase repeat customers, and so much more. Plus, they are easy to use! So, what are you waiting for?

There are three principal objectives to starting an e-zine –  (i) it helps drive traffic to your website; (ii) you can make some money out of publishing it; and (iii) you can establish a kind of rapport with your readers, who in turn will spread the good word about your website. E-zines are considered as low-cost, high-impact Internet marketing tools, and that is why every other website has an opt-in field that asks the readers to subscribe to the website's newsletter for receiving some great content.

So, How Do I Start An E-Zine?

Starting an e-zine is not all that simple a task, but it is not too difficult either. Here is how you must go about publishing your e-zine:

· Plan the content: The content in the e-zine must be entertaining, informative and relevant to your website. Now, generating quality content needs careful thought – if you have the budget, then you must get a professional team of writers to generate original content. If budgets do not permit original content, then you can always get content for free from reprint directories that allow you to publish their content provided you give them credit and place a small link back to their website. Some popular reprint directories are: Ezine Articles, Article City and Idea Marketers.

· Plan the format: Once you have planned what content will go in and where you are going to get it from, you now need to focus on the format. The ideal e-zine is made up of an introduction, interesting snippets with powerful headlines that link back to your website, space for advertiser's/sponsor's message, and miscellaneous items such as unsubscribe information and information about your website. Typically, you must send your e-zine in html format because readers prefer to see a snazzy, well laid out e-zine.

· Managing lists and sending newsletters: The next step now is to create or rent a database that will store your subscribers' details. If you have programmers working for you, then you can always program a database. However, renting a database is far more convenient as you do not have to worry about any programming glitches and server issues. When you sign-up with an opt-in list service provider, you will get a nifty subscribe box to place on your website, access to your database admin area, and newsletter-generating tools, using which you can create your newsletters and shoot them off to your subscribers with a single click. Click here to get a free bonus for signing up with one of these autoresponder opt-in list services. 

That was how you must go about planning and executing your newsletter. You must know that you're not going to get subscribers out of the blue – you have to promote your newsletter to get the subscribers going. So, get a grip on the tricks of promoting a newsletter before you actually publish one, and once you know the promotion tricks, then you're ready to roll out.

One of the most effective Internet marketing strategies you can implement is setting up and driving traffic to a squeeze page. A squeeze page is simply a landing page with one purpose, to capture the name and email address of your visitors.

The reason for setting up Squeeze pages is because they give you a ton of leverage. Instead of getting traffic to your website once, you can setup a squeeze page to capture  visitor information. This allows you to contact them over and over again. It's like recycling your traffic. You can tap into it any time you wish.

The leverage you gain from capturing you visitors information is so great that many marketers focus primarily on driving traffic to squeeze pages instead of a product sales page.

Once a visitors information is captured they can then be sent over to the sales page. The great thing about capturing visitor information is that if the visitor does not purchase the first time around, you can continue to contact them by email raising your chances of making a sale.

What does a squeeze page consist of?

Most squeeze pages are just really short sales letters.

These are the basic component:

1. Catchy headline to grab the visitors attention.

2. A quick paragraph or two explaining the reason they should sign up.

3. several interesting bullet points to entice the visitor

4. The name and email address form. This is where they enter all of their information.

That's basically all there is to it. You want to keep it nice and simple focusing only on capturing the information and sending them over to the sales page.

To increase the chances that a visitor will give you their information you should offer some kind of incentive. You can offer a free report, ebook, video, newsletter, free trial, etc.. Just give them a good reason to join your list.

Here's the basic squeeze page model:

Traffic ——> Squeeze Page —–> Sales Page —–> $$$