You have heard over and over again just how valuable your opt-in email marketing list is but have never done anything to monetize it. This is like passing up and opportunity to make money online for free! But finally it has sunk in and you want to do something about it. However, it is at this point that you also come to understand that you have some gaps in your knowledge about just how to do that. You may have even tried some things that you have heard work but have not found it to help you make money online.

In fact, you might even be losing money. You might have found that even if you have a big opt-in email marketing list, only a very small percentage actually buy from you and you are not making the money that you thought you would. Being able to make money online for free has alluded you.

So, you find yourself wondering why others can do so well almost “effortlessly” to make money online for free while you have good products or services and struggle. The single most common mistake people make is moving too fast without a good plan. After all, you chose a great topic and knew you would earn money quickly. However, simply writing the people on your list does not mean they are going to buy from you right away.

For those who have started an opt-in list and have failed to realize a profit from it, there is hope to turn things around. You can make your opt-in email marketing list very profitable by adding a few twist to your approach. Following are 3 very simple ways or approaches to take to build a profitable opt-in list.

1) Get your customers to trust you first. Just throwing a bunch of products at your list will not make you an expert and a believable seller. Prepare the way by writing articles or blogs on the subject of a particular problem that your product provides a solution. Write about topics you are familiar with and have used for your business. You can visit forums to gain knowledge about your customers wants, needs and problems. Target those wants, needs and problems. Give free information that offers solutions and your value increases with each helpful bit of information.

2) Join forums and make meaningful comments on competing sites. If your comments are helpful to others you will gain respect and a following from other members. Be sure to have a link to your site in your by line for people who like and appreciate what you have to say to follow to your site. Never be shy about asking other forum users to join your opt-in email marketing list.

3) Provide a product or service that offers people what they want. What people want is generally a solution to a problem. If you offer solutions and not just opinions, you will gain a greater audience because you are valuable to them. If you have a product or service that provides an easy solution to their problem, then you will have more subscribers to your opt-in email marketing list and gain customers and increase your sales.

There is one thing that you can always count on to increase your sales. That is, you will increase your sales only if your subscribers trust you. They will buy from someone they trust and feel they have a relationship with. If what you have to offer is worth the money and solves your opt in subscriber’s problems and they trust you, you will increase your sales. If you want sales, build trust via sharing knowledge, build value via solutions to problems.

Remember this one axiom of marketing, “Pain Sells.” People are very motivated to avoid pain or destroy pain. Do your research well and you would see the profits come in. One of the best ways I have found to gain interest from a prospect is to offer them a way to make money online for free.

You can not look at list building as an overnight way to lots of sales. There are the lucky few who do find that, but for the rest of us it is a building process to grow your opt-in email marketing list to something that is large and profitable. By making sure that you are always providing valuable content to your subscribers your relationship will change from curiosity to trust and respect. That is when you will find your sales growing if you are offering them products or services that provide solutions to their challenges.

The most important thing Internet marketers need is traffic. Without traffic (targeted traffic) how would you make any sales? It doesn’t matter how good your website is traffic is key. You could have the best headlines and sales copy on the planet and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in your bottom line. That is because, without a sufficient amount of traffic you will not do very well. This article is going to reveal four very simple things that can be put to use immediately. These are time tested and proven methods for getting targeted traffic to flow to your capture page.

Write articles. This is an often overlooked technique that does more than just bring traffic to you. It places you in the position to show your expertise and build trust in your prospects’ minds. The value and the implications of this particular concept is often underestimated. People have to trust you or value your opinion if they are going to order from you. People will pass you by if they don’t first feel comfortable with you. Submitting articles is a great way to “break the ice”.

Here is what to do. Write a series of articles relating to your market niche. Distribute two articles per week to major ezines such as ezinearticles.com or goarticles.com. At the bottom of the article you are allowed to have a signature (or bio). You can include a small amount of information about your website and a link to your homepage. If people like the information you give them, they will click the link and visit your site. This is why it’s important to provide useful, high quality information. People will only want to visit your website if you give them something of value first.

Exchange links with popular sites. This method works on several levels. First of all, you will get traffic through your links that are posted on other sites. Also, as additional websites link to yours, your search engine rankings begin to rise. This can be a major source of traffic. Showing up on the first page in major search engines can bring you thousands of visitors per month.

Here is how to get links to your site. Look up sites that relate to the theme of your website. Ask them to do a link exchange with you. In the email provide a link to the page that you are displaying their link on. Now the ball is in their court. They will either accept your offer or not. If they refuse to do an exchange with you take their link off of your site.

Use Pay Per Click advertising. Although Pay Per Click costs money, it can be a very good way to drive targeted traffic to your site. If you select your keywords with care and make proper bidding choices it can be a very cost effective and useful tool to add to your marketing plan. Google Adwords and Overture are the two top Pay Per Click companies. However, Yahoo and MSN offer pay per click advertising as well, often for less cost per click than the “big guys.” To get the most out of Pay Per Click advertising you need to be armed with at least a bit of knowledge on the subject. I suggest buying a book or ebook on the in’s and out’s of pay per click advertising before starting a campaign.

Submit videos to video sites. Videos are one of the best ways to get yourself “found” on the internet. Major league videos can also be made with the most basic equipment. For instance, you can use a small digital camera with a movie mode or an inexpensive webcam. Processing your movie can be done using a free video editing program that is part of your Windows operating system.

Here is what to do. Make a video about your product or opportunity. Upload your video to Youtube and give it a catchy title and description based on it’s content. There are some things you can do with the title and description to make sure that it is seen by as many people as possible. For instance, make sure to do some keyword research and use those keywords or “tags” that laser target the audience that you want to reach. I could go on about that but that is a subject for another article. For now, learn from others that are already on Youtube. Take a look at the descriptions and tags on highly viewed videos and “learn” from them!

The traffic generation strategies mentioned above can make a huge difference in getting you traffic. I suggest using them all. This will give you the most traffic possible in the shortest amount of time. Of course there are many other things that can be done, but these methods mentioned are very easy to impliment and are very effective. Remember one thing, the more effort you put into the methods provided in this article the better they will work for you. Period!