An autoresponder is an automatic email system. You can use it to follow up with customers who have expressed an interest in whatever it is you are offering. Or you can use it to send out a pre-written newsletter at intervals determined by you. Or you can use it to send a news broadcast to your contacts.

At its simplest, an autoresponder is a service for sending out emails without you having to remember to do it. You can split up your lists, so that people who contacted you about, say, weight loss don’t get sent messages about growing vegetables or whatever.

The better services also allow you to put in rules so that when a potential customer turns into a buyer, the list they are subscribed to is changed. So instead of getting messages asking them to buy a product, they get messages on how to get the most from it.

So which autoresponder should you use?

You can get software that runs on your computer. This was probably a good idea a number of years ago but with the ever increasing amount of spam, it isn’t a solution I’d suggest nowadays. As soon as you get a good size list, you’ll be using up processing power on your computer and opening yourself up to spam complaints with your internet service provider.

Which brings me on to services you run on your hosting account. These involve uploading an autoresponder script such as the cheap Autoresponder Unlimited and then sending out emails from your hosting account. Whilst it sounds a good idea initially, do you really want the hassle of running a script and dealing with all the spam complaints and bounces? Not to mention the heartache when your program drops all your emails for no apparent reason (Autoresponder Unlimited has been known to do this).

Even though they cost a monthly subscription fee, using an autoresponder service is far and away the best way to build your business. The service you use will ensure that the email deliverability you get is high – they will work with all the major email providers such as AOL, etc to make sure that your emails get through. You’ll also get stats and other tools to show you how successful your campaigns are.

In my mind, there’s no option but to use a reputable autoresponder service.

So which one to use?

Check the autoresponder comparison below:

AWeber

This is the service that I use. They have a high deliverability and are generally thought to be the best on the market. You get an unlimited number of autoresponders for your monthly fee, so you can segment your campaigns to your heart’s content. You can choose to send plain text messages or HTML formatted ones or a mixture. Personally, I send plain text messages as these are viewable in all email programs.

You also get a spam score against each message you’re thinking about sending, so you’ll get a good idea of how likely your message is likely to get trapped in a spam filter.

You can send “broadcast” messages to your lists – either to individual lists or to several lists at once. These broadcasts can be set to be sent immediately or at some time in the future. So, for instance, if you’re doing a series of emails before a major event such as Christmas you can write them all at once but send them out over a series of days.

You can also track how many clicks your links get. If you’ve ever received an email with a URL starting with http://clicks.aweber.com followed by what seems like a set of gibberish characters then you’ve received an email from someone using this service. These links seem to have got uglier and I’m slowly switching across to using links on my own sites instead. The tool I’m using is Affiliate Linker,  which is good so long as you’re happy installing a script on your web host. But if you’re not technically inclined then check out Cloak and Tracker instead. It’s simpler to use, works on as many websites as you want and doesn’t require any technical knowledge from you. The links look like they lead to a page on your own site so you’re more likely to get clicks.

AWeber also offer easy to design email sign-up forms. These include regular forms to include in your web pages and those irritating forms that pop up when you go on to a website. Don’t rule out pop up forms based on your own personal preferences. Test to see whether your response goes up when you use them. The forms provided include ones that can’t be blocked by pop-up blocker software and you can control how often they pop up, whether it’s only once ever, once per visit or every X visits (where X is a number you decide).

Get Response

These are AWeber‘s main competitor and offer a very similar service. I’ve not used them personally but there are a large number of marketers who use Get Response for their campaigns.

Both AWeber and Get Response offer lots of ways to personalize your emails so that you get the best response possible.

These two are the main firms on the market. Stick with one or other and you’ll get a reasonably priced service and high deliverability of your emails.

Squidoo is a simple way to boost your affiliate sales.

It lets you create as many one page websites as you like. Each one is focused on a single topic – Squidoo call the web pages you create a “lens” because of this focus.

You are then free to do near enough whatever you like on your lens, including adding affiliate links into it.

You get a heap of modules that can be added into your Squidoo lens. These include:

• Basic text modules
• Lists (you can make a list in a text module as well, these just make it simpler)
• Polls
• Attention grabbers such as yellow “sticky” notes
• YouTube videos (these can be your own or other people’s)
• Flickr photos
• Wikipedia entries (good for the boring but necessary factual information)
• Amazon lists
• Plexos (lists where your lens visitors vote the entries up and down)
• Guest book

There’s more you can do as well – just explore them when you sign up to Squidoo for free.

There are several things you should know about Squidoo:

• Most of the time, Google and the other search engines like Squidoo lenses. Which means it’s fairly easy to get indexed high in the results for your chosen keywords. Obviously this will be better if your keywords aren’t about ultra high competition words such as “diet”.
• Near enough all article directories allow links to your Squidoo lens from the article resource box. So you can use articles to promote your affiliate links in Squidoo. This is a neat way to get around the rules that often prohibit you from linking your article to an affiliate link.
• You can join groups in Squidoo. These will get extra links to your lens from other Squidoo pages, boosting your incoming links and helping your search engine results.

When you start out, you should be able to create a decent Squidoo lens in around 2 hours. This includes writing about your topic – you should aim for about three short articles (say 250 words or so each) in your lens, each targeting a different keyword phrase related to the main product you are promoting.

You don’t have to restrict yourself to just one product unless you want to. I’ve done single product lenses and multi-product ones (all on the same theme in any given lens) and both have worked well.

The only negative I’ve got with Squidoo is that you can’t directly put in an email signup form. This is because they had problems with spammers and had to put an end to this option. But you can put in a module that is one click away from your signup form, so it’s still possible to build your list this way. Offer an incentive such as a free ebook and you’ll get people to do this.

If you want to take your Squidoo lens building seriously, the best author I’ve come across on the subject is Tiffany Dow. I’ve bought several of her books on Squidoo and found them to be easy to read and full of practical information. The best of the bunch is this one: Social Networking on Squidoo. It will get you up and running in no time at all.

Whatever affiliate product you’re promoting, it’s quick and easy to add a Squidoo lens to the tools you use to promote it.