In case some of you reading this don’t know what I’m talking about; Google no longer allows affiliates using adwords to send traffic directly to merchants website. Affiliates will now have to send traffic to their own sites first. This is going to make a lot of affiliates angry because now they have to go through extra work of creating web pages.

As e-commerce heats up and changes way business is done in world today, it will become increasingly important to have your own in-house list of prospects and customers. It is most valuable asset a business could have. It is lifeblood of your business and is where lions share of your profitability will come from. Why? To get a new customer is most costly activity you can take part in. When you figure your marketing costs, your costs to convert a customer, your fulfillment costs a shocking truth is revealed. It may of cost you $75 to get just one sale. If your profit on that item is only $25 you're $50 in hole. And no, you can't make it up by "doing volume". :-)

Hopefully you have a back-end system of other products and services to offer that customer so you can take unprofitable transaction and turn it into a profitable relationship.

This is where e-mail marketing excels. With low-cost e-mail technology, what was too expensive in off line world of marketing, such as direct mail, is suddenly very attractive. You can communicate, educate, up sell and resell your customers for pennies. Not for thousands it would cost with postal mail.