Newsletters are best way to generate sales and will be for years to come. It is critical that you offer a FREE subscription to a newsletter on your web site and every person you meet. Your subscription information should be on your web site and in your signature file.

People that subscribe to your newsletter will become very loyal customers as long as you show them you are honest, credible, and that you know what you are talking about. They will not only buy from you now but they will buy from you in future because you built a good rapport with them.

You may be thinking, "I don't have a newsletter." Well, you will want one because they bring in tons of cash if you use them right. Think about this situation:

Someone is surfing web for accounting software and comes across your web site, and you happen to be selling software they need. If you don't stir their interest in first few seconds, they will be gone.

But what about this situation:

This person surfs to your web site and sees offer of a free monthly newsletter on tax tips and accounting software shortcuts. They sign up, which retains person's interest in your site a little longer, and it gets them interacting with it. Even if they move on you have their email address so you can send them your newsletter and other offers each month.

Remember, as you get subscribers for your newsletter, they are potential clients with whom you have built credibility. By doing this you have established a base to offer your other products and services.

Ok. I know I have to create a newsletter. What should I call newsletter? The name you come up with should tie into what you are providing at your site. It should highlight you as an expert in your field of endeavor.

The information contained within could be articles, tips, anything of interest about your field or occupation. Of course, no matter what you put in newsletter make sure you put in a blurb about one of your products and/or services.

To run a newsletter you need a place or person to run it. One such company or site is Listserve or Majordomo. You can go to http://www.listserve.com for this service or just type in majordomo in any search engine.

The most important marketing weapon any business needs is their own opt in mailing list. Why?

To answer that, first we must define what opt in means. An opt in list as I use term is a list of people and their addresses (can be either snail mail and/or e-mail addresses) that you built yourself. These are contacts who have come to your web site and have requested information from you. Or they have responded to an ad you placed either on line or off line. The particular way they contacted you is not really important for this article but fact that they requested your information is. They have given you consent to send them information.

Why is it important that they have requested that information? The answer is NOT what most of you are probably thinking right now. I'm not talking about Spam here. The importance lies in subscriber's receptivity. If I request information I will be much more inclined, first, to read it and, secondly, to follow through with it.

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A side bar here! The fact that some government agency or your ISP disapproves of my marketing tactics is not relevant. What is important is that, sending mail to someone who did not request it, that is, someone who did not show any interest in your information, is counter-productive for YOU and a waste of YOUR time, YOUR effort and YOUR money. -----------------------------------------------------------------

I want to stress word "information" here. Your subscribers did not request to be bombarded with nothing but blatant advertising. If you use your list to send ONLY advertising, your list will disappear very quickly. Most people get enough pure advertising via their mail (and for this article "mail" includes both snail mail and e-mail) to last them a lifetime. They really are not asking for more.

What you need to provide for your list is important, valuable, and relevant content. The criteria you must use to determine if this content is valuable or important or relevant is not whether YOU think it is, but whether your subscribers think so.

How do you determine what your subscribers think is important or valuable or relevant?

First of all, demographics of your list will give you some general ideas. When you set up your list, you must define a "target market" Who do you want on your list? Not specific names, but you need to pick some specific characteristics) you want all your subscribers to have in common. Perhaps, they should all be dog owners or hot rod fanciers or people who raise bees.