Answer: Email lists are of utmost importance in Internet marketing. They allow you to build relationships of trust, and people are not likely to buy from you until they have evolved a sense of trust. One way to view the importance of email lists is that they allow you to do pre-selling. It typically takes seven to 12 interactions before people buy the first time. The interactions before the purchase are the pre-selling.
You have to offer something for free in order to get a name and email address. People won't give you that information unless they are getting something out of it. You can advertise the freebie and attract people to your site.
So what sort of free information should you give away? The content had better be relevant to what you're trying to sell. If what you are giving away isn't connected, you're getting the email addresses of people who won't be interested in what you want them to buy.
What form should the information be in? It can be in the form of a report or booklet. It can be a video. It can be an audio recording.
Offering an ezine is particularly useful. An ezine comes in emails, which justifies them giving you their email addresses. The ezine maintains contact. Each issue keeps you in their thoughts. The content of the ezine builds relationships and builds trust. Moreover, in the ezine you get to pitch products and include affiliate links. Alas, an ezine does entail commitment. You are committed to producing a new issue on a regular basis, but you can include articles from ezine article directories without charge, making it easier to meet your deadlines.
If publishing an ezine sounds like too much commitment, you could offer a mini-course. Like an ezine, a minicourse justifies your asking for their email addresses since each lesson comes out in an email message. Unlike an ezine, you have all the emails prepared before hand. You can set it and forget it.
You can combine the ideas of the minicourse and ezine creating a "mini zine". You prepare lessons in the minicourse as if they were issues of an ezine. For example, instead of writing each of the lessons yourself, you can include articles you get out of ezine article directories and include videos that are available free on the Web.
The major problem with including articles from ezine article directories is that you are required to keep the "resource box" intact. Your readers may follow the links to the web sites where the authors are selling their own products or promoting affiliate products. This may give the impression you endorse their products when you don't. And what if you do and want to promote their products with your own affiliate links? You really want to have people follow your affiliate links.
You can get an ezine or a mini-course up quickly and offer it in exchange for emails. Of all the things you can offer, an ezine is the one that commits you to keep in touch, which you want. The deadlines are important. No matter what you offer, if you don't keep in touch with your list, you have wasted your effort building it.
Take a minicourse on using email lists at http://www.onlinemoneymakingopportunity.info/emailList1/ Dr. Christopher is offering a growing collection of online income stream courses and ebooks directed at speakers, writers, and self-employed professionals. See them at http://www.createincomestreams.com/ Dr. Christopher, a Colorado public speaker and seminar leader, prepared these in response to requests from the Speakers In Colorado group.