Many people come online for the sole purpose of seeking out a way to earn an income online? Can it be done, seriously? Of course it can.

Thousands of people are doing just that. You can find lots of tutorials out there (free and paid) that give you the nuts and bolts about earning an income online.

I'm going to go a somewhat different direction in this article.

What many people try to do is set up their business like a traditional business. Perhaps they want to have consulting service. If they are graphics designers, they set up a graphics shop. If they are gardeners, they set up a gardening service online.

But there are a few problem with the traditional approach.

* No momentum. You stop putting in effort. Business dries up. No one really cares if you're gone. There's always someone else ready and eager to take your place in the niche.

* You have to do it all - all the time. Each new client needs to be given your full time and devotion.

You should consider enhancing your business with methods and tools that will let you overcome these two problems.

You may have heard that you should start building a list of people who desire to receive your emails.

The reason you want to do this is so they can buy your products or service you have for sale. Additionly, if you do it correctly, you'll build relationships with people on your list.

This in turn will let you not only sell to them, but open opportunities, perhaps, joint ventures, or help you solve a problem, etc.

Here are a few recommendations for doing this the right way:

#1 - Use a good sequential autoresponder to automate and manage your list. There are a few good autoresponder services available. Two of the more popular are:

Aweber http://aweber.com

GetResponse http://getresponse.com

If you want total control, you can purchase the software, install and maintain your list on your own server. I personally use:

AutoResponse Plus http://trinale.com/recommends/arp.php

#2 - Create or get rights to an autoresponder series that combines both information and a sales pitch for a single product. Don't mix up a lot of different products or you'll dilute the power of repetition.

If you're no good at it or if you are nervous about writing, you may have to farm out the task. You can go to a website like Elance to find someone willing to work with you at very reasonable rates.

Freelance Writing http://freelancewriting.com/elance/

The autoresponse series automates the building of a relationship between you and the people on your list. Once it concludes, you can either start it all over again, or you can simply send them periodic emails that relate to the same topic.

Advanced hint: you can combine several series sequentially. For example, emails 1 - 5 could be about product #1. Email 6 could tell what you just covered and set up Emails 7 through 15 that could sell product #2. Email 16 could set up selling product #3 and so forth.

#3 - Sign up with various affiliate programs that YOU have reason to like. It is a must that you respect these programs or it will come back to bite you in the long run. Your credibility is at stake so do your homework here. Now as you sign up for these, you can incorporate them into your AR series.

#4 - Similar to #3, sign up for various multi-level programs. Again, make sure you like and respect them or your credibility is sure to suffer. The beauty of these programs is that you begin to leverage the work of those who sign up under you (your downline). If you attract go-getters, this can pave your way to a very impressive passive income.

Once you have at least the first two items in place, you can now start promoting your site. You'll need to come up with reasons for people to sign up for your ezine, but that subject (copywriting) is beyond the scope of this article, and we'll cover it soon in another email.

As people sign up for your list, they'll start receiving your series. You won't have to mail them individually. They'll just plug themselves in and the system does the rest.

The power of this system is that while you do a good deal of work to get it set up, once it is set up, you should have very little to do, other than to tweak it here and there to make it perform better.

With the time you will eventually get, you be more able to promote your site. And as people get into your funnel, you start making money.

Then you can begin tweaking your sales copy, increasing the effectiveness of your ads, and more.

Do this and you'll enhance your business far beyond the traditional ways. You'll generate momentum that persists even if you take some time off, you'll automate the building of relationships with members of your list, and you'll be able to build on what you've got.

You are free to reprint or modify this article and use it for personal or commercial purpose on your website under your name. Modify the resource box and change the author's name to yours.