Now that you have a web site up and running, complete with a squeeze page (Step 12), you need an auto responder.

What is an auto responder?

An auto responder is simply a piece of software that manages your subscriber list and emails your subscribers preset letters at preset intervals.

Basically, it automates the correspondence you will have with your opt-in subscriber list.

Why do you need an auto responder? Because without one you will be emailing your contacts one at a time when you have something to recommend. That is fine for your first 10 subscribers, but after that it becomes a little crazy.

There are basically three types of auto responders available:

1) Personally hosted auto responder. This is an auto responder that you download on your own computer and use it to send your emails out.

For small lists, this may be OK, but two things occur long-run. 1) If you are sending out 10,000 emails a day, your personal Internet service may not like it. In that case, they may ask you to stop, or even shut down your account.

2) Email providers, after they receive a few SPAM complaints about you (and you will get complaints, even if your list is double opt-in, meaning that not only do people have to request your email, but they have to confirm that request personally), may block your personal IP address (the identifying information from your computer) so that none of your emails reach their email clients. After awhile, very few of your emails are getting through to your list.

3) Web-hosted auto responder. Many of the web hosts offer an auto responder service through their website. The problems with this are similar to hosting the auto responder yourself.

Although they usually don’t limit how many emails you can send, you will still develop a problem with the IP address of your web site or web host.

4) 3rd party auto responder companies. These are auto responder companies whose main business is delivering emails.

They host their own auto responder, handle all of your correspondence, track how many of your emails are actually delivered, and work with the email companies to make sure your emails are consistently delivered.

When you are first starting out, this is usually the best way to go, and you can get a decent 3rd party auto responder service for about $20 per month.