More than likely the first time visitor is not going to purchase your products or services immediately. If you want your visitor to return, you must give the individual a compelling reason to return. You can accomplish that task by influencing the individual to voluntarily give you his or her email address so that he or she can receive up-to-date information about your site.

You need your visitor's email address. How do you get your visitor to voluntarily give you his or her email address?

Well I suggest you use a small form which invites your visitor to leave his or her email address so that he or she can receive your company's ezine or email newsletter.

You may want to do the following: once the visitor enters his/her email address in your form and hits the submit button, the visitor is then taken to a confirmation page. This page notifies the visitor that this page is being used to insure that his or her email address was not sent without his or her permission or knowledge. The prospective customer will be asked to enter his or her email address one more time. Once the visitor clicks the submit button, the visitor will be sent a confirmation auto responder message. (Auto-responders are primarily used as a follow-up mechanism. They can be programmed to send follow-up messages several times during specified intervals.) The visitor will be simultaneously sent back to your home page.

The method described above is called "opt-in email". You are building a voluntary email list. This is probably the best way to avoid being labeled as a spammer. You now have a list of people to whom you can send notices about other products which you have available. You are not spamming those people because they have requested to receive your company updates and other company information. If they decide that they no longer want to receive email or ezines from you, they can choose to opt-out of your mailing list.

The second page of the process serves as a security blanket for you because the person will receive an automatic reply to their submission notifying him or her that he or she subscribed to your ezine. The bottom portion of the auto responder message will contain an opt-out link if the person should change his or her mind. This automatic reply should help the person remember your email address and ezine. So when the person begins to receive your ezine, he or she will not think it is spam.

Spam is when a person receives unsolicited email. In other words, the person is receiving email which he or she did not request. This protects both of you.

Once you have your visitor's email address, you are then in a position to send your visitor continuous updates. Marketing research has shown that a person must be exposed to what you have to offer 6 or more times before the individual decides to buy from you.

I suggest you do what I have done and what I continue to do. I study hundreds of web sites on a monthly basis. I analyze how they structure and arrange their pages. I look at how they incorporate their opt-in sign-up form. Some have an exclusive page with many topics which the prospect can choose if he or she would like to have articles sent to him or her which gives useful information about those topics.

I also visit and participate in various discussion groups. Discussion groups offer a wealth of information. You will discover that is not hard to find people in the discussion groups who are willing to share their knowledge and experience with you.

I also use the search engines to learn more about opt-in email. I simply type "opt-in email" and click search. Within seconds, pages of information appear before my eyes.

I also spend countless hours studying literally hundreds of email newsletters or ezines. Ezines come in two formats. They are produced in a text format and they are also produced in a HTML format. Some sites produce both types of ezines.

When I am studying an ezine, I look at how it is structured. I study the ads. They help me discover the products and services which your prospective customers may want. I look at where the classified advertising section is placed. I suggest you let your classified advertising section be the last section in your ezine.

From my research, I have discovered that most subscribers to ezines quickly become annoyed when they have to skim past a page or more of classified ads before they can get to the article which they want to read.

They want their thirst and hunger for effective, powerful, and useful information to be satisfied first. They do not want to surf over an ocean of ads before they can get to read what they hope will be relevant, useful, and helpful information.

If the subscriber's needs, wants, or desires for powerful information is satisfied first, that subscriber may be more inclined to go to the classified ad section because the subscriber will feel confident that the ezine will have quality classified ads.

I also study each ezine's disclaimer and un-subscribe instructions. I try to determine the ezine author's strategy. I ask how does the author turn his or her subscribers into customers? The most important ingredient is to have well structured articles cramped with relevant, powerful and useful information.

Suggestion - at the end of your ezine, ask your subscriber to recommend your ezine to a friend. I also suggest that you look for sites which can complement your site. Personally contact the web master of each site and explain to him/her what it is you offer on your site and how the both of you can benefit by having reciprocal links. You can also use the search engines to find sites which will exchange links with you. Simply type "reciprocal link exchange directories" and press search. You will be presented with pages of sites which you can sift through to find the sites which you feel will fit into your goals and plans of making your site a success.

I am presently posting ads in opportunity magazines which simply ask writers and publishers to contact me if they wish to have their articles published in my ezine. I am also hitting the colleges in my local area. There are literally hundreds of qualified student writers on various college campuses who are bursting with fresh and creative ideas. They possess a wealth of constructive, innovative, and useful information in many areas.

In exchange for giving me reprint rights, they can have a 10 to 12 bi-line at the end of the article.

I personally read 30 to 40 ezines a week. Many of them have polls in them. Those polls contain one or more questions about a particular topic. They ask the readers to send them their opinions about the questions. That is an excellent way to add interactivity to your ezine. Your readers are being given a chance to participate in something which they may consider to be socially significant. Most of the ezines post the results of their poll within one to two weeks. That is another creative way to influence people to see your ezine as one which has social, entrepreneurial, and economic significance.

TEAM BUILDING=> In order to be successful, you must be a team builder. If you can build a marketing alliance with sites which complement your products or services, then you stand a better chance of reaching a larger segment of the internet market. Remember!! Everything is negotiable; banner ad placement, reciprocal links, ezine classified ad placement, ebook classified ad placement, ....etc.

Think of all the things you can negotiate which you believe will help you realize your success goals. Show the web masters how your proposition is a win-win proposition.

You may want to contact online marketing associations if you have a service or product which you believe will appeal to a specific market. They can also help you to establish strategic alliances. I went to Lycos and typed in "online marketing associations". Here is a partial list of what I found:

**** ASSOCIATION OF ONLINE PROFESSIONALS
Home Page: The association of Online Professionals is the principal U.S. trade asosociation for internet access, business and electronic commerce.
http://www.aop.org/

**** ASAE GATEWAY TO ASSOCIATIONS ONLINE
Search the American Society Of Association Executives(ASAE) database for Executive Association home pages. Results provide links to ASAE member home pages http://www.asaenet.org/

**** ARTBA ONLINE BUYER'S GUIDE
Trade Associations http://www.artba.org/publiclic/buyguide/TradeAssns.htm

**** BOOK ZONE
This site offers a tremendous amount of resources which can help you write your own book about almost any topic. It provides FREE information, advice, and tips on a wide range of publishing related topics which include:  The Business of Publishing, Marketing, Legal Issues, Writing, etc. http://bookzonepro.com

**** MARKETING TRADE ORGANIZATION LOCATORS
Directories from KnowMarketing - Information resources reference and links for locating marketing trade organizations. Ideas and advice for those involved in marketing, selling, advertising, promotion and e-commerce.
http://www.knowthis.com/groups/tradelocators.htm

**** DIRECT SELLING ASSOCIATION
Direct selling is the sale of goods and services in a face-to-face manner away from a fixed retail location. This site offers consumer tips, statistics on size and scope of industry, Code of Ethics and company directory. http://www.dsa.org/

**** DIRECT MARKETING SOURCES
Associations & Publications - Site Map Maximizing your Internet User Opportunity Table of Contents Home Intro Opportunity Examples Challenges Our Program Rapid Payback Ethics Credentials Customers, http://www.bradley-companies.com/Resources/

**** MARKETING RESEARCH ASSOCIATION
MRA is dedicated to promoting excellence in the marketing and opinion research. Find membership info, industry news/events, links to leading research firms, jobs in marketing research. http://www.mra-net.org/

Everyday we are bombarded by commercials which use celebrities or well known corporate CEO types to endorse a variety of products. Well you can do the same thing. As you begin to experience internet success, you can attain recognition by endorsing other people's products or services.

As your success and expertise begins to take on a life of its own, you will start to have many people ask you to endorse their products or services. Be very careful. Do your homework. Do an exhaustive study and test of the product or service which you may be asked to endorse. Get a list of people who have used the product or service. You do not want to endorse a bad product or someone who has a bad service reputation. A bad endorsement can adversely affect your reputation.

If you intend to use your ezine as an additional marketing tool to help you attain internet success, then you are going to have to be prepared to spend hours studying other ezines. You must be on a continual search for knowledge. As Socrates once said, "a wise man is a man who knows that he knows nothing".

Once we realize that we all do not know anything, we should then be driven with a burning passion to continue to seek and find knowledge which will help us grow and become wiser individuals. If you intend to be an internet success story, then you will have to be willing to sacrifice a large portion of your time in the initial building and shoring stages of your business. There is absolutely no way around that. Success comes with a price!!!!