Once you have decided that you want to start building your own opt in list you will need to create a plan of action and use the most reliable tools for your campaign to ensure that you achieve long term success and consistent profits.

If you are serious about building a successful business for the long term you will need to invest in certain tools that will make it easier for you to progress. To get started you will need a reliable auto responder such as Aweber and a website hosting account so that you can set up the squeeze page for your list.

Its essential that you build your list the right way from the start with the best tools because if you don't you will encounter problems in the future. This is why its not a good idea to use free auto responder and website hosting services as they are extremely unreliable which will make it harder for you to succeed.

The first thing you will need to do is create a free report or email course that you can give away to people who subscribe to your list. This is the most important part of your list building campaign because it will determine how successful you are and how quickly you build your list so you will need to provide information that people crave.

So you need to look for a niche market that you can target and find out what people who are interested in that topic want and need. You can do this by visiting forums that are related to the niche market and monitor what people are talking about and what the common themes are (you can also ask what people need to learn more about by posting a new tread).

The next thing you will need to do is create a squeeze page which will be used to convert visitors to your website into subscribers to your list. A squeeze page consists of a headline, bullet points, and a subscription form for your auto responder so that you can collect the name and email address of each subscriber.

To achieve the best possible conversion rates you need to tell people why they should subscribe to your list and how they will benefit from the information you are providing. Even though you are giving away the information for free you still need to write a short sales letter to actually get people to subscribe.

After you have set up your squeeze page you can start sending traffic to it and track how many people subscribe so that you can calculate your conversion rates and make modifications to achieve better results. Then you can start adding follow up messages to your auto responder in the form of articles and product recommendations to generate sales.

This is a brief overview of what you need to do and what tools you will need if you want to start your list building and email marketing campaign. Its important that you do as much research as you can before you actually start your campaign because this will give you the best chance of success.

About the Author

This article was written by Simon Akers who is the editor of the Marketing Oasis newsletter, a free internet marketing ezine packed with tips to help you succeed and increase your profits: http://www.MarketingOasis.com