Wait one! Where's link from home page to those lovely links I saw? Uhmmmmmm. Nowhere to be found. One site even had a site map. But it contained no link to link directory.

So here's a fellow (1 of 4, remember) who will gladly swap links with you, a fellow who will never send you even one visitor. The link he wants in exchange, goes to his home page. There's just no way to get to outbound links from there. So he gets hits from my site and I get zip from him. And link checking software would find link still in place.

So if you receive what appears to be a good offer for a link swap, take time to visit site and see if visitors could ever find that lovely link to you. Four of these in one month is a record for me. But hey, maybe it's a "new" thing that's catching on!

Bob McElwain For ANSWERS, click to subscribe to "STAT News"

6) Services. If you perform multiple services, list them along with a brief description and pricing and how to order.

7) Vacation. If you're going to be out of touch for a week or two you can set up an autoresponder to answer your incoming mail, with a canned response of when you'll return.

8) Short Courses. Many site owners use autoresponders to teach lessons or set up a tutorial on a subject, with one lesson being sent every day over a period of a week or two.

9) Sample Chapter. If you sell an e-book, you could offer a free sample chapter to arouse interest and encourage purchases.

10) Articles. Writing articles (like this one) and distributing them online is a great way to promote your website. Setting them up on autoresponders makes it extra easy to offer them to others for possible inclusion in their ezine or on their sites.

If you're in need of an autoresponder service, check out some of these:

Send Free http://www.sendfree.com/ Get Response http://www.getresponse.com/ Free Autobot http://www.freeautobot.com/ Zip Response http://www.zipresponse.com/free.html 123 Response http://www.123response.com/

These are just some ideas for getting mileage from autoresponders. If you take a look at what information is requested most by your business, you'll come up with many more that will suit your need and help put your web-based business on autopilot.