Without automation in my online home business I would not be making a full-time income from home. That is a fact!

Automation is important to all businesses. The less time we have to spend doing small tasks, the more time we have to make money – or we could spend that time doing something besides working. Putting an online business on auto pilot isn’t difficult at all – as you will find out!

I don’t have any employees and there simply would not be enough hours in the day to do all I need to do on a daily basis to make a success of my business.

There are many ways to automate your home business from promotions and marketing, right down to the ordering process and delivery of your product. If you are selling a digital product then you barely need to have a hand at all other than to cash your monthly check.

One step in the process of automation are online auto-responders. I have been using an auto-responder in one form or another from my earliest days in internet marketing and now run numerous auto-response accounts.

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Can you imagine how laborious it would be to have to send out mailings manually to all your customers and prospects? Remembering to do this alone would be a somewhat impossible task – that is where an auto-responder comes in!

Auto-responders are a great way to close the sale after someone visits your site. If you do not have an email capture form on your website then you are neglecting one of the basic principles of Internet marketing. If a prospect visits your site and leaves, mosts time they are gone forever. However, if you give them the opportunity to leave their email address then you can contact them as many times as you like(until they unsubscribe) in order to convert them into a return visitor and eventually a customer.

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Once added to your email list you can have your auto-responder send them out occasional emails, the interval set by you, for days, months and even years.

It is important that you send your subscribers useful info or they won’t remain subscribed for long BUT don’t forget to leave a link to your website and your recommended products.

You can also keep in touch with your subscriber through the broadcast function in most autoresponders.

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Auto-responders are also really effective to send out free reports, ie. a 7 Day report can be set to go out every day for a week. Again the main jist is to encourage your visitors to leave their email address.

You can see the power in automating this task across many markets. Without mutiple auto-responders set to go out on auto-pilot you can forget about it.

By: Mal Keenan

Article Source: http://www.approvedarticles.com

There is a bit of confusion around the online
community surrounding autoresponders. Some people
think they are a piece of software for loading
email addresses into so you can then blast thousands
upon thousands of people your message and promote
your business.

Nothing could be further from the truth!

What they were designed for is to allow you to collect
the details of visitors to your web page. The way
you do this is by offering a gift in exchange for
the person’s name and email address. You can actually
collect a large number of details but on the first
visit you would not want to try to collect their
home address as you may not have much luck.

When the visitor completes this form they are
giving you consent to send them information
about your business and to deliver the gift that
you offered. An autoresponder is a tool that you
can have up to several hundred pre-written messages
stored to be delivered at pre-determined intervals.
This is a great way to build a relationship with
your future customers.

When someone opts into your list, usually they will
receive a message immediately, then several more a day
or two apart and gradually the messages will get further
apart up until they are around 1 week between mailings.

You will then be able to follow up with broadcast messages
every time you have a special offer for your list or some
content to pass on. The sole purpose is to create and
maintain interest in your prospect. Your list is your
customer base just like in an offline business.

Lets look at some other ways autoresponders can be used.

1. Training- When a customer buys your product or joins
your team you should be collecting their details. You
will provide them instructions to use the product or
train them to build their team if they have joined
your business.

2. Recruiting Affiliates- If you sell a product you
will find that your best affiliates will be a happy
customer. After you collect the details of your customers
you should be reminding them that you have an affiliate
program and that they can make some extra money referring
people to your website.

3. Delivering The Product- You can use the autoresponder
to deliver the digital product. You can add attachments
to the messages like any other email or simply send them
a link to the download page. Directly after the payment
page you will ask the customer to enter their details
so they can get the product delivered and be kept up to
date with software upgrades or whatever is applicable
to your product.

4. Reduce Refunds/Returns- After collecting your new
customers details you would send them at least one
unadvertised bonus. This would not be mentioned in
the sales page and means you would be ‘over-delivering’
on your product. Another method I have seen is offering
extra bonus products at say 15 or 30 days after the
sale. The autoresponder can handle this easily and
your refund rate should plummet if you can create
extra value in these bonus offers.

5. Promote Back End Products- It is a lot easier
to make a sale to someone who has brought from
you before. You have their trust and as long as
you recommend good products that make their life
easier or help them build their business this
be the easiest way to maintain your income.

There are many more including collecting
testimonials, checking up on your customers,
surveying your customers and more. I am sure
you would have just got your own idea after
reading this article and are ready to get your
own business on auto pilot by using an
autoresponder. To get a free autoresponder go to

http://tinyurl.com/ydcv7o5

Thanks for reading,
Randy Tucker

http://tinyurl.com/n2g4ty

Thanks for reading,

Randy Tucker

Have you ever been advised to do this:

“After joining my program under me…”
Step 1. Go buy some leads
Step 2. Import them into an autoresponder
Step 3. Sit back and wait for the money to come in
Step 4. Goto step #1.

Honestly those were the same instructions (more or less) that I saw yesterday being sent to someone’s downline as a “how to make money online” message. Sheesh! Either the sponsor is the one selling the leads, or they’ve been told the same thing from THEIR upline sponsor and are just passing it along. Giving out those instructions to a new marketer is sort of like saying “Start with the most inefficient and costly marketing method, then do nothing and hope it works, then do it again”. On the positive side, it sure looks easy to do. In reality, it doesn’t work like that and you’ll quit if you try and do it. DON’T FALL FOR IT!

The problem is the “shortcut mentality” that is out there that dictates that since you need leads to build your business, it’s better to skip the steps of actually generating leads and go right to the followup. What you might not realize is that it’s actually NOT a shortcut. It’s actually faster, cheaper, and more profitable to do it the right way.

Yes, emailing to bulk leads can have a place in your marketing plan but you need to know a bit more about it before you can just go at it. Point being you should NOT be importing leads as your MAIN method of generating leads for your business. Here’s why..

There are many variables that come into play with regards to blasting emails to leads lists that you have purchased.

1. Lead quality – exclusiveness, age, country, origin etc.
2. Outgoing letters / subject lines / spam trigger words
3. Quantity of leads
4. Consistancy of mailings
5. etc..

One of the complaints I’ve had about email blasting is “I’ve imported 10,000 leads into your mailer and haven’t had one single signup. What’s going on?”

My answer: “Because you’ve only imported 10,000 leads and your leads are probably crap.”

Any time you’re dealing with “bulk” anything (leads,traffic,signups,clicks..), you need to keep in mind the number 1,000,000 (yes one million). That is how many leads you’d need to blast to in order to have any idea of the quality of those leads and the quality of your email campaigns. I guess the point here is that importing and blasting emails to people that probably don’t want to hear from you is not a very efficient way of advertising anything. It is “a” way of advertising, but shouldn’t be “the” way in your overall marketing strategy.

As a side note. A few months ago I spoke on the phone to an online marketer that ONLY does bulk email to generate her income. She was sending around 1.2 MILLION emails PER DAY through various email servers that she was paying for herself, to leads she was purchasing herself. She told me she was barely earning a full time income and she was now earning half of what she was earning a year ago, doing the same thing. Sound like fun?

Fact: Your money would be better spent in other kinds of advertising.

I’ll give you an example. Generally speaking, in this industry you should aim to spend between $1 and $2 per generated lead. A “generated lead” would be (in our case) someone that enters their name into one of your NPN capture pages as a double opt-in lead. These leads would be generated from your own advertising.

So… If you bought 10,000 leads at 1cent per lead (which is really cheap) you would have spent $100. Out of those 10,000 you might get a couple people that say they might be interested in your opp. Maybe you won’t get any. A percentage of those leads will never see your email due to spam blocking, and a percentage will bounce back as undeliverable. To get to the $1-$2 per lead point, you would need to get 100 of those leads to optin to your capture page. I’m sorry but with cheap leads, that will not happen. Period. You’ve just wasted $100 and the time it took you to find, purchase, and to import the leads. This is where the frustration and the blame game starts kicking in.

So what’s your solution?

Answer: solo ezine ads, safelist ads, traffic exchange hits.

First off, what am I talking about here..

What is an “ezine”? An ezine, is, essentially, an “electronic” magazine. What exactly does that mean? Like a magazine, an ezine is something you subscribe to and it is “delivered” to you via email (ie. not spam). The beauty of an ezine lies in the fact that you receive articles, information and more, “specifically” on the topics that interest you. The owners of these ezines often sell advertisements either in the newsletters themselves, or as “solo” ads sent to their entire ezine database.

What is a “safelist”? A safe list is an email list you can join for free, and in return for joining you are allowed to email out to the entire list of members that join. Usually most safelists have different levels of memberships you can join at, and each different level will allow you to email more members more often. The best type of safelist to join is a ‘credit-based’ safelist. In this case the members would need to earn their mailings, racking up credits by clicking email ads from the other members. Most safelists sell ad credits as well which can save you from clicking all day.

What is a “traffic exchange”? A traffic exchange is similar to a credit-based safelist except that to earn credits you would be viewing other people’s websites for a determined amount of time (usually 15-30) seconds. Traffic exchanges will also sell you credits which would allow you to avoid having to click on other people’s websites all day to earn credits.

Now, for your $100 that you wasted on leads, you could have put out a number of targeted solo ads to probably thousands of people. And remember that these people are already expecting to receive emails like yours since they’re already active and in the same industry as you (The leads you bought are not). You would use your ezine ads to direct prospects to your NPN capture pages (or your own capture pages) where they would opt in and become generated leads.

The same can be said about safelists ads, and traffic exchange credits.

As I said above, you should aim to spend between $1-$2 per lead. So if you purchase an ezine ad for $20, a good return on your investment would be 10-20 leads that signed up through your capture page. You may get less, you may get more. If you don’t get as many as you’d like, change your ad, change your subject line and run it again. Use the NPN Ad-Tracker to see where your leads are coming from. Re-run what works, don’t run what doesn’t work. DON’T take your next $20 and buy leads. Remember that an ad that doesn’t work in one ezine, may work wonders in another ezine. Test, test, test. It’s what successful marketers do.

Basically, you will get more out of placing these types of ads than you would EVER get in buying and blasting to leads lists. I guarantee it. And it will even take up less of your time, and less of your money – which sounds good to me. We all want to make more money, perhaps we should do it the right way?

Have a great day.

And please please please don’t pass information to your downlines just because your sponsor sent it to you – unless they are actually using it and actually making money with that information.

- Geoff Global NPN
For more info about Global NPN Click on the NPN Banner on the Right.

P.S. The guy you bought the leads from has already made more money from those leads than you will, just by selling them to you.

I thought I’d heard it all until this morning on my way to work. I thought I would run the car into a ditch when I heard the news that President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. “For what”. Excuse me for my ignorance, but aren’t you suppose to do something extraordinary to get that prize. I mean didn’t Ronald Reagan have something to do with the fall of the Soviet Union. That was extraordinary__ I think. Did he get the prize? I don’t think so.

George Bush delivered Millions of Muslims from the brutal regime of Saddam Husein, and as much as the media would like to paint him as a killer, there is no telling how many lives of innocent people may have been saved by his courage of conviction in the face of all the naysayers. Did he get the prize? I don’t think so.

Even with the case of Jimmy Carter (now the 2nd worst President in U.S. history) had to wait till after his presidency to receive his prize. At least he did something to promote peace. Al Gore as much as I believe in my soul he is wrong about just about everything, actually did something to win the prize.

But this President, has done nothing  remotely,  deserving a peace prize. I mean nothing. Oh, did I say nothing? I meant NOTHING!

The nerve of these people. If Alfred Nobel were alive today I think he would blow his brains out with his own Dynamite. Which reminds me of the story of Alfred Nobel.

The story goes that as you may know, Mr. Nobel invented Dynamite. Well, his brother died but the newspapers thought it was good old Al that died and printed his Obit by mistake (talk about a lawsuit if that happened today). Well, when Al read is own obit and how they painted him as being responsible for all the lives his invention had taken and all the damage he was responsible for he decided he didn’t want to be remembered that way. And so it goes that most people know him for his peace prize but not many know him for his invention of TNT.

Getting back to the Darling of the media. Can anyone tell me of one promise he has kept (not that I want him to). Or even one thing he has accomplished in his almost 9 months in office. Nothing. I mean nothing. Which means a lot for the society he wants to create, to reward underachievers and non-achievers. And take from the rich and give to the poor. Robin Hood Economics, that’s the ticket as Tommy Flanagan would say.

Speaking of Saturday Night Live. Where do they get off picking on a Democrat President. That should be reserved for Republicans.

Well, I feel better now that I got that off my chest.

Thanks for reading,

Randy