Copyright 2005 Peter Dobler

After endless hours of writing, designing and programming your brand new web site is ready for prime time. You tested your shopping cart software and you made sure that all your external affiliate links have your affiliate id. You're making sure that you will get the commissions you deserve. This is a very exiting moment. You will expose your writing skills and your ability to design an attractive web site to the whole world. All of you who have a website know what I'm talking about.

Your web site is online and you're open for business. Ready to take as many orders as you can possibly handle. A day goes by and there are no orders. Another day goes by and there are still no orders. You give it a week. People need to warm up to your new business. Still nothing, not even a single visitor. Well, you are about to experience what thousands of webmasters experienced before. Nobody even knows that you are in business or what you're selling.

What is your first reaction to this? Submit the website to as many search engines as possible. We all did this before. It takes weeks, even months, before you appear on the major search engines and your ranking stinks. There are ways to achieve great success with search engine optimization. This is a very complex topic and I will devote another article series to this topic.

Ok, search engines are not the solution you're looking for. The only effective way to instantly create traffic to a brand new web site is through email subscriptions. Of course this is not a free ride, but there are many opt-in email lead providers who offer great service at a great price. My favorites are listed at the end of this article.

You're anxiously waiting for the first list of email leads, delivered by your leads provider. Also you made sure, that you are not spamming. The good news is that all the people on the list want to hear what you have to offer. You could manually send an email to every one of them. This works for a couple of emails, but you probably will get hundreds of email leads. The solution for this problem is called autoresponders. Autoresponders are email robots automatically sending out emails to a pre-defined list of recipients on your behalf. They're taking care of the initial welcome letter and send follow-up emails. My favorite autoresponders are listed at the end of this article.

Now you're on your way to unbelievable traffic to your web site, right? Wrong! What are all these people subscribing to? You are in desperate need of something you can offer to your subscribers. You might have a killer welcome letter, but nothing else. Most of your emails will never be opened, because they never passed the spam filters. The words you're using are not convincing enough to attract readers to your web site.

Worst off all, your headline is so lame that nobody even opens your email. Keep in mind, that most people are using free email accounts for their subscriptions. That's right! The same rules you apply for your own email habits apply to your prospective subscribers. Would you subscribe to newsletters or online offers with you primary email address? Of course not, you guard your primary email address like your bank account. Most free email accounts don't offer preview panels like you're probably used to with your Outlook Express email program. So the headline is your most important asset.

There are many reasons why you still not getting the results you're looking for. This is frustrating, but the name of the game is persistence. Learn as much as you can about effective marketing strategies. Apply proven strategies to your business. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. Stick to what's working for others to achieve the results you're looking for.

The topic on writing effective marketing emails is very complex and is definitely out of scope for this little article.

As mentioned before here's my list of great email services to supercharge your business.

Autoresponders:

- Getresponse, a free autoresponder with great service.

Email Leads:

- ListOpt, pay per lead generator. Seamlessly integrates with Getresponse's autoresponder.

- ListBuilder, another pay per lead generator. Very high quality email leads. They even offer triple opt-in (three confirmation emails before address is send to you and you're billed for it, now that's quality!).

- PushButton leads; unlimited email leads for one low monthly fee. If you write a very deceptive ad for your newsletter, this will probably be the cheapest email leads you can get.

Armed with this knowledge and a killer newsletter for your product, you're on your way to enormous business success.