Let’s begin with a brief overview of the steps involved in collecting opt-in email addresses from visitors to your website. It’s a fairly simple process that begins with three basic elements:

1-A method of collecting addresses (a web form)

2-A way to transfer these addresses to the place where you’ll store them (a script)

3-A place to store them (your email marketing program or your database)

Now, it this sounds a little technical, don’t worry! Here’s how it works when a visitor visits your site:

1-The visitor enters their first name (sometimes their last name too) and their email address into a "web form" on your site (If you’ve been active on the Internet for more than a day, you’ve already seen plenty of these web forms. Either they are static on a web site you visited, or they popped up while you were eyeing a page—called a "pop-up"—or they appeared after you clicked to leave that page—called a "pop-under".) Go here to see a simple-yet-effective web form.

2-The visitor then clicks the "submit" button. (which sometimes says "Submit", but it could say a variety of things like "Send me my free eBook", "Subscribe me to your newsletter", etc.)

3-The information the visitor entered is transferred by a script to wherever you’ll store it.

Now, your web form won’t actually process your visitor’s information—it’s just there to collect names and email addresses. It takes a special script to transfer that information from the web form to wherever you’ll be storing this information.

Once again, don’t worry if designing a script sounds like a daunting task. We’ll soon introduce you to one program and two businesses that do that for work you so you don’t have to deal with "scripts" and "HTML".

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Yes, we know, "It’s not nice to ‘should’ on people" as someone once pointed out. However, our mission with this website is to help you get more BUSINESS SUCCESS. We don’t want you to waste time, money or energy on trying things that we know from our experience—and that of our expert partners—will not work out for you.

When it comes to storing all the opt-in email addresses you’ll be collecting, there are four major options. These four options are the different ways you can set up the tools to build your opt-in mailing list. If you’re going to build an opt-in list—and you really should!—you will have to use one of those four options.

Here are the two you should NOT choose:
1-Use your web host to handle your opt-in mailing list
2-Use a database

Here are—in our expert opinion—the only two viable options you should choose a solution from:
3-Use list-management software
4-Use a web-based list management service

Lets look at these four options in more detail, starting with the two you should NOT consider choosing.

1-Use your web host to handle your opt-in mailing list
BAD idea! This is one of the two options we simply do not recommend. Web hosts are not in the email list business and they just don’t give you the kind of flexibility and control you need to build your list and effectively manage your email promotions. Again, we DO NOT recommend you choose this option.

2-Use a database
Using a database-driven system is a rather complicated option, which we don’t recommend for smaller businesses or people just starting out—particularly MLM business builders as there are so many more efficient ways to use your precious time!

Using a database is not necessarily a bad solution—it’s just a lot more work to set up and manage than you probably need to be doing.

For starters, you’ll need to either have good programming skills yourself or hire a programmer to write some specialized scripts. Enough said. My head is spinning just thinking about it!

Now let’s look at the only two viable options you should choose from:

3-Use list-management software
Generally speaking, small or home based businesses tend to prefer to run their email promotions themselves using a software solution because once you’ve purchased the software, there are no extra costs involved beyond your time.

The right software can make managing your opt-in mailing list a piece of cake. Once you add a web form to your site, the web form will pass all of your subscribers’ names and email addresses to the software, which will then automatically add that information to your mailing list for you.

There are many such software programs available out there, but buyers beware! Not all of them were created equal. Some are less expensive than others, but they are less flexible, and can cause you stress and headaches.

The ONE we highly recommend is called Mailloop. Mailloop allows any business owner, no matter what level of experience you have, to easily manage your email lists.

First off, Mailloop helps you easily create customized web forms using a step-by-step wizard, so you can get started collecting the names and email addresses of your visitors right away.

The custom web forms Mailloop creates will then allow you to automatically add these names and email addresses to your very own personal database (part of the Mailloop software), which stores your subscriber information in a convenient format.

Then, whenever you want to email your subscribers, the software lets you sort them into targeted mailing lists based on the subscriber’s information you’ve collected. And of course, the software then emails all of your customers and subscribers on your behalf, automatically.

For relatively small businesses, or for those people who are just getting started online, Mailloop is a great solution because it offers all of the features and functions of much more expensive programs (and more!) for a fraction of the cost.

We personally know quite a few people who are using it and who are very happy with the software, and the customer support and service offered by The Internet Marketing Center (that name is mentioned on many other pages on this web site whenever we talk about Derek Gehl—Mailloop is one of their most popular products).

Because of that, we highly recommend you get Mailloop if you can afford the initial investment:
Go here to find out more http://tinyurl.com/yoh3cy

4-Use a web-based list management service
There are third-party service companies available that can give you ALL the functionality you’ll need, including customization abilities, personalization of mailings, cross-referencing of lists, autoresponders, email broadcasts, etc.

If you decide to use such a service—like we do—just make sure to read your user agreement carefully before signing up; review both the monthly service fees and the ‘extra’ usage charges you can incur if your usage goes beyond their defined standards.

For most of the solopreneurs though and the home based business builders who use this website for information and guidance, you should not have any problems or surprises if you sign up with either of the two service companies we recommend you use:

      -Constant Contact: with Email Marketing by Constant Contact®, you'll discover that you can quickly create affordable, professional-looking email campaigns that help you better connect with your customers, clients, members, subscribers or prospects. And with Survey, their online survey product, you can better understand their needs and wants.

Best of all, with Constant Contact, you have the same support and personal coaching more than 100,000 businesses, associations, and nonprofits trust to help them manage their mailing lists and build strong, lasting relationships.

We know many of these businesses and organizations personally, and they are very happy with that service provider. Go here to find out more www.constantcontact.com.

      -aWeber: having said all those good things about the other service provider and the list-management software, the one we recommend the highest is this one—the one we use ALL the time.

We use it daily. We use it to store and manage our numerous mailing lists. We use it for ALL our autoresponder emails. We use it for our ‘broadcasts’—which you use when you want to send one special email to EVERYONE who’s on your list(s).

We like the user interface, we like the customer service, we like their pricing structure. We are very happy there and have no intention of moving elsewhere for now.

Go here to check them out yourself and take a free Test Drive http://www.aweber.com/