Autoresponders - What They Are & How They Work

 By Jonathan GS Edwards
Autoresponders are fantastic tools & will save you a lot of time when it comes to sending messages to everyone in your list. When someone goes to your website that has an opt-in box, fills in the opt-in box with name & e-mail address, clicks submit/subscribe, their details are sent to your autoresponder and stored there.
What is a list?
A list contains peoples names & e-mail address. When someone goes to your website and fills in the Opt-in fields to subscribe to your product/service, their details are sent & stored in a list, which is stored in your autoresponder. Autoresponders will send follow-up messages automatically after a chosen period of time and when requested, send broadcast messages to everyone on your list by the click of a button.
Follow-Up Messages
Your autoresponder will then send a follow-up message to that person(s), e.g. 'Thank You for registering your interest in my product/service. Your autoresponder will then automatically send another followup message to each subscriber after a certain period of time after the last e.g. 2 days later, 3 days later and so forth.
Broadcast Messages
If you have something that you want to share with each subscriber in your list. Your autoresponder will allow you to send a 'Broadcast message' to each subscriber in your list, regardless of the number of subscribers in your list. Broadcast message is a message that is sent to all subscribers at once, with a Broadcast message, you write it in the form of a friendly e-mail & then once finished, save the message.
Instead of have to re-write or copy & paste the same message over & over, you simply type the message once, save it & then click on the 'Queue' button, your autoresponder will then queue all the messages to be sent & you will receive a message informing you of the date the broadcast will be sent. On the day the Broadcast message is sent, everyone in you list will receive the message sent, whether its 20 or 1000 subscribers.
Broadcast message should always have a structure to them
1) Introduction
2) Offer Value (Offer them something for free)
3) Option to move forward (Link to your website)
4) Sign off (Your name & you website links)
There are many autoresponders out there & you can search for them on Google but the one I use and highly recommend is AWeber (www.aweber.com).
Autoresponders will save you hours of manually writing or copy & pasting messages. Imagine how long it would take to re-write or copy & paste say, for example, 300 people. An autoresponder does it all for you at the click of a button.

Jonathan is a home based marketer dividing time between family life and coaching a team of elite marketers beneath him.

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TrafficJam Pro Traffic Exchange Report

TrafficTaxis - Frequent surfing bonuses. Cash and credit jackpots and contests.
Hit2Hit -  Upgraded members sites are rotated in over 40 exchanges. Big membership and Great Owner with a personal touch.

HitsBoosterPro - Well established exchange with active ownership. Lots of prizes while surfing including cash, credits, and upgrades. Get 1000 credits to join.

HighHits - Get 1000 credits to join and upgrades are reasonable. Great Owner

Hits4Surfers - New exchange with active owner. Contests and great deals on credits and upgrades. get 'em while there hot.

InstantXchange - Great new exchange with great features. Ground floor opportunity to establish position. Ownership is responsive to new ideas. 7 day Gold membership to join. Games and bonus credits.

TheTrafficDance - Do you like Disco? If so, you'll love The Dance. Fun exchange with chat and active members. Upgrade is a bargain.

EasyHits4U - Of of the largest membership traffic exchanges Unique features like geotargeting and blogging. Random referrals are plentiful and responsive. Great for banners.

TrafficERA - Social networking in teams, forums & groups. Rewards for promoting your referral URL. Team surfing competitions. Same deal as TS25
Soaring4Traffic - Random credit and cash surfing bonuses. Disallows PTPs and autosurfs in rotation. PowerSurf partner. Win up to 150 credits in word search.
HitSafari  - Big membership. 6 referral levels. Paula's really cool and Doug takes care of Customer Service. Part of PowerSurf. Win up to 150 credits in fast moving word search.
RealHitz4U - Dynamic surf ratio. PowerSurf bonuses. Doug is the MAN!
TrafficG  - Geotargetting and banner exchange. Huge membership, 99% unique visitors.
TrafficSwarm - One of the biggest traffic exchanges. Directory-style surfing. Great banner site.
TezakTraffic - Unique script, fast credit delivery and up to 70% cash commissions from referrals. If you ever get any....lol. Innovative ownership.
TrafficSplash - Huge membership. Cash contests & bonuses keep coming.
StartXChange - Surf bonuses, banner exchange and social networking features. Rewards for showing your referral URL. 

TrafficWitch - Dynamic surfing ratio. High cash commissions if upgraded. Not a very friendly exchange.
ILoveHits  - Big membership. Rate increases as you surf. Where are the referrals???
BootScootinTraffic - Texas themed site. Monthly contests and surfing games.
DragonSurf - Variable surfing ratio. Really slow and cheap on the credits.  Good referral site for upgraded members.
WebmasterQuest - Geotargeting, traffic statistics, banner impressions and gambling for credits. You could spend a lot of time here and lose more than you gain. Surf and leave.
ClickVoyager - Surfing contests with credit prizes. Rewards for showing your referral link. Best games around for surfers. One of my favorite stops.
TopSurfer  - Huge TE with banner & text link advertising and cash for surfing. This exchange has everything. You can spend hours playing games, sending emails and having fun.

Sweeva - New exchange with unique format that borders on social media and game show. Members critique each others sites. Can make for great fun and also hard feelings. Lots of referrals but access to your referrals is limited.

LotsOTraffic - Brand new exchange challenging for position. 6 second timer for upgraded members.

TrafficSpeedway - Car themed exchange with lots of credit prizes. Upgrade is a real value.

TrafficPunk - Another car themed exchange that has super graphics and oversized click icon. Great bonuses for surfing.

TS25 - The twin of Traffic Era. Team surfing, chat and a slow timer. It's like watching paint dry....lol. The peeps on the teams are great and upgrades are reasonable.

Traffic4WebMasters - Humanitarian theme, part of money earned goes to animal rescue. Great Owner with great deals. Roll technology for easier surfing PTC section too.

Social Bookmarking

Today, we are going to look at something that is still relatively new in the Internet Marketing arena: Social Bookmarking. Social Bookmarking is essentially using a social bookmarking service to bookmark your webpages or blog posts, so that other users of the bookmarking site can visit. When you bookmark a site, you tag it with keywords, and people can search for the keywords that reflect their interests at the social bookmarking site.

Does it work? Absolutely! In fact, this is a very fast way to generate really good traffic to your site – for free. Again, you will want to try to get them on your opt-in list, once they arrive at your site, so that you can bring them back again and again. Notice that I said ‘really good traffic.’ This is good traffic because the visitor finds your site by searching for the keywords that you’ve used when you bookmarked it. They are essentially looking for you. For this reason, it is important to use keyword tags, for each page, that are absolutely relevant to the content on that page. Don’t try to use unrelated keywords, this tactic simply won’t work.

There are numerous social bookmarking sites out there, and hitting them all, to bookmark each page of your website, could literally take days, if not weeks. Fortunately, there are social bookmarking services that will send your bookmarks and tags to numerous social bookmarking sites in one fell swoop.

You want a service that targets the best social bookmarking sites, and that service is Only Wire, at http://www.onlywire.com. Only Wire is free to use (another bonus). Getting set up with Only Wire takes a couple of hours, because you will need to go to each of the social bookmarking sites that it lists, register, and then put your username and password for each site into the list at Only Wire.

Once that is done, you will add the Only Wire icon to your browser toolbar (very easy to do – you just click, hold the mouse button down, and drag and drop it up there). Now, you are all set up. When you are ready to bookmark your pages, first go to the Only Wire site and login. Leave that window open. Open another window (tabbed browsers work great for this), go to your site, go to a page that you want to bookmark, and hit the icon.

You will be taken to the Only Wire add a bookmark page. Here, everything is filled in, except your keyword tags. List the keywords that are associated with the page you are bookmarking, and hit submit. You’re done with that page – move on to the next one. Nothing could be easier, and again, it is very effective.

Homework Assignment: Join Only Wire at http://www.onlywire.com . Register for each site on the list, and get Only Wire all set up. Add the bookmark icon to your browser toolbar, and go to each page of your website, click the icon, and add it to the social bookmarks and tag each page with keywords

Great Ways to Compile a Mailing List For Your Business

Many of today's successful online marketers will say that the reason behind their success is probably down to the returning customers. These customers were brought about by the successful mailing lists that they had compiled.
So how on Earth have they managed to compile such great mailing lists? And how have they convinced so many people to give their mailing details to complete strangers? Well here are a few good ways to compile a mailing list for your business.
1. You really need to convince the prospective subscriber that they are under absolutely no obligation to purchase anything. Not only that, but they are also free to opt out of the list anytime that they wish to do so.
Give your potential subscribers total control over what they can and cannot do once they are on the list. By showing them how easily they can opt out and re-iterating that they do not need to ever buy anything, you should see more subscribers.
2. Convince your potential subscribers that you have information that could be helpful to their success. Awesome high quality content and information is a sure fire way of growing your mailing list.
By giving away some useful free content to your subscribers you will soon become popular. As your popularity grows, so does your potential customer base. Set up some blogs that you can direct your prospective mailing list to for the information.
Video's and PDF's are also a great way to get the important information across to your potential subscribers.
3. You have to entice your potential subscribers in by giving the unique nuggets to capture their attention. Do not use the same stuff that other marketers are using as this will give your subscribers a negative impression of your business.
If you can be different and stand out from the crowd you should be able to entice subscribers to your list.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Greg_Astin

Joint Venture Giveaways

In this, day three of the five part traffic generation course, we are going to discuss how joint venture giveaways will help you generate traffic to your site. In fact, they do more than generate traffic. Joint venture giveaways will also help you build a large opt-in list, in a very short period of time, and you can bring those visitors back to your site time and time again.

Joining a joint venture giveaway is easy and free. You just need to find a giveaway, and these can be found through joint venture related forums, or through the search engines. Once you’ve found a giveaway, you need a free gift to give away.

This can be something that you create yourself, or have created for you, such as a free report, an audio, a video, or an ebook – or even a piece of software. It can also be a Private Label Rights product that you have. The important thing is that your gift has value to the people that will be downloading it.

You need an autoresponder and a website. Set up an opt-in page, which is often called a squeeze page or a capture page, on your site. Connect it to your autoresponder, and in your autoresponder, set up a list for the giveaway. Create your confirmation email and download for the gift email in your autoresponder.

Determine where the visitor will go, once they hit the submit button on your opt-in page. They can go to the first page of your site. They could be sent to a sales page for an affiliate product that you sell. You could set up a One Time Offer, or OTO, where they have one chance to purchase a product from you, at a special price.

Finally, when you are all set up on your end; submit your information to the host of the joint venture giveaway event. They will typically want the name of your gift, the URL of your opt-in page, a description of that gift, and the link to the graphic that represents your gift, such as a graphical ebook cover or CD cover.

While you will build a nice big list with the joint venture giveaway, remember that your purpose is to generate traffic as well. You don’t want people showing up, getting their gift, and leaving – never to be seen or heard from again. Your list resolves a lot of this, because you can use it to bring them back.

But at the same time, when your visitor is redirected after submitting the form, try to have them redirected to a page on your site that will immediately capture their attention, and keep them there for a while, even after they have been given their free gift.

Homework Assignment: Visit some joint venture related forums, and find at least one joint venture giveaway to participate in. Create your gift, create your opt-in page, and any other pages that you need for the giveaway, and watch the traffic roll in!

Article Marketing and Forum Marketing

You’ve probably heard about Article Marketing and Forum Marketing. In fact, you may even be sick of hearing about it. But are you doing it? The reason that you hear so much about these two marketing techniques is that they work!


Yes, article marketing and forum marketing builds traffic slowly. There are faster ways to get traffic. But, when you build traffic using these methods as well, you are also building your credibility. You are drawing responsive people to your site, and if your site is doing its job as well, and you get those people on your list, you can draw them back time and time again.


Note: If you are not collecting email addresses at your website, the traffic that you bring there is essentially wasted. By building an opt-in list, you can bring traffic back to your site over and over again, and this is essential to online businesses. Email addresses and first names should be collected with an opt-in page, or with subscribe boxes located on every single page of your website!


Now, let’s start generating some traffic with articles. The concept is that you write an article, which should be anywhere from 350 to 750 words in length. You include an author’s resource box at the bottom of your article, and your website link is included in that resource box. You submit the article to article directories and ezine publishers.


If you can’t write, you can get article written for less than $10 each by a ghostwriter. If you don’t have the time it takes to submit articles, you can hire a service to do that for you as well. It is essential that you do article marketing, because it is viral. Your articles will be used on other people’s websites, blogs, and in their ezines – spreading the word about your site.


Forum marketing is also important. To do forum marketing, you find good, well populated forums that relate to your niche. You simply participate in those forums, and include a signature file at the bottom of all of your posts, that lead people to your website. Forum marketing does not take much time at all, once you’ve found the forums that you want to participate in.


Again, these are slow, but effective (and free) ways to generate traffic. But no matter how slow they are, they are essential to your overall online business because of the virility of these techniques, and the credibility that it gives you.


Homework Assignment: Write and submit one article, each week. Participate in your niche forums on a daily basis, posting one message in each forum per day, using a signature file that brings people to your website.

Introduction to Traffic Generation

Welcome to the first installment of the five part series Traffic Generation Course. Today, I want to discuss the various things that you need to check to ensure that your site is ready to receive traffic.

Think of this: If you were expecting company at your home, there are certain things you might do in advance. You would make sure your home was clean, that there was fresh soap and clean hand towels in the bathroom, and you might prepare some snacks, or even an entire meal.

Preparing your website follows the same concept. You want to make sure that things are neat and tidy. Make sure that your navigation follows a logical sequence. Make sure that you have plenty of good content, and that everything is spelled correctly.

You also want your visitors to be able to participate in your site – to take action. Look at each page, and determine what type of action your visitors can take. Do you have a forum or blog? Do you conduct polls or surveys? Do you have a subscribe box for your opt-in list on every page of your site? Make absolutely sure that your website is ready for company! Also make sure that your pages lead your visitors to take the action that you want them to take, no matter what that action may be.

That is the first and most essential step of traffic generation. If your site isn’t pleasing and welcoming, any traffic generation activities you do from this point on are wasted! Take the time, and put forth the effort to make your site as good as possible – and learn to look at it from your visitor’s point of view!

After you do this, make sure that you are using all of the best known Search Engine Optimization techniques, such as making sure that you have clean HTML code, that you’ve used your keyword effectively, that you have keyword rich text links and alt tags, and that the title of your website, in your HTML code, has your main keyword or phrase as well. Take some time to explore SEO techniques, so that you can draw natural search traffic as well.

Once your website is ready for company, you are ready to start inviting that company. You do not need any special tools for traffic generation. What you need is your computer, an Internet connection, your mind, a willingness to do the work, and knowledge. That’s all it takes.

Homework Assignment: Make absolutely sure that your website is ready to receive traffic. Do you have an opt-in page? Do you have a subscribe box on every page of your site? Look at each page, and determine whether there is enough content, and if there is an action for your visitors to take on each page. Make sure that your site is optimized for the search engines.