Do you own an online business? A web site? Are you promoting affiliate programs? Then you should be writing articles.

Why? Let me ask you, what is main purpose of your web site?

Of course it’s this: to make sales. And to make sales you first need traffic. You somehow need to get visitors to your web site if you want to be successful.

And here’s thing...writing articles and publishing them on Internet is a very effective way of achieving just that!

Instead of spending your time and money on ineffective means of advertising, write a short article every now and then.

Write about recent developments and trends in your niche or area of expertise, about product or service you’re selling. Teach people how to do something, or give them practical tips. Predictions work well, too. The list of possibilities is almost endless.

There are numerous article directories out there, and they will be happy to add your article to their online directories.

Where people like yourself look for good content to reprint on their web sites or in their newsletters. So your article gets read and readers learn about you, your business, your web site, your product.

But that's not all.

It gets distributed and reprinted over and over again, constantly reaching new readers! Without any effort from your part, besides submitting your article to a few directories!

The positive effects could last for literally years.

Just about every successful Internet Marketer will tell you that, "The money is in list". But, how do you go about building a good-sized email list? Here are several wise ways that you can use to start building your own large list of email addresses.

Wise Way #1 - OFFER A FREEBIE

You have to give in order to get. If you want people tooffer up their email address, you`re going to have to offer up an incentive. Nothing works better than something that`s complimentary (you spell that f-r-e-e). You can give away no-cost reports, books, software, or even sample pages of a book.

Wise Way #2 - USE POP-UPS

Pop-ups are one of most common methods you can use to capture email addresses and build your email list quickly and with ease. Simply construct a web page containing code for a form and set page to open (pop up) when visitors enter or exit your site.

Make sure pop-up offer is something that`s valuable enough to motivate visitors to take time to give you their contact information. Your offer can be a complimentary report, download, or ebook that arrives instantly through your autoresponder to their email inbox when they give you their email.

Be cautious when using pop-ups. Most computer users consider them to be annoying. Multiple pop-ups on a site can really turn off a potential customer, so limit yourself to one pop-up per site.

Wise Way #3 - USE POSTCARDS

If you have a mailing list that contains snail mail (street) addresses, convert it into an email list by sending out a postcard and inviting people to visit your website to receive a gift of some kind -- a report, a discount coupon, etc. Visitors don`t have to pay in order to receive their gifts, they simply need to enter an email address.