An autoresponder is probably one of the most important marketing tools you can have when you’re doing business online. In fact, there‘s probably only thing more important than an autoresponder, and that’s your opt in list. But as you probably know: autoresponders and opt in list go hand-in-hand: the list doesn’t exist until your autoresponder mailing list starts filling up with names and email addresses!If you want to build an email list, the easiest and fastest way to gather email addressess is to give things away for free: give away an ezine, free reports, free ebooks, free access to private websites, or anything else that you can think of.

Your goal is is to get people to sign up to receive that freebie, and to agree to receive email from you in the future! This way, you create a win-win situation: the person that’s subscribing gets a freebie and you get his name and email address, and permission to email him in the future.But if you give it some extra thinking, you could get even more than that. The freebie that you give away can also be used to promote your products or services. For example, if it just has (your) affiliate links for products or services that are related to the topic of the freebie, it is a way to generate extra revenue. You also need to make sure to include valuable information in the emails you send, or you will have people dropping off of your autoresponder mailing list like flies!