Getting your email list the right way.

There is an art to ethical email marketing that most people who try to get their business started aren't even aware of. My oldest son wanted to make some money (he's 12) so I asked him what he thinks would be a way to make some money on Internet?

Like most of my clients, he shrugged and said, "I don't know." That, by the way is the correct answer. He then proceeded to come up with some ideas for products he could sell door to door to make money. I stopped him right there. I told him that the amount of time it would take and the money involved in getting started would be ridiculous for a kid without working capital.

So I sat him down and treated him like any other client that came to me. I said, "What would you love to do two hours a day if you could and make all the money you can spend?" The answer came out before I was able to finish the last word.

"VIDEO GAMES!" he blurted out.

So we came up with an idea. He's going to create a resource for video gamers who needed cheat codes, he'd also create game reviews and sell books on gaming.

I told him that there is a step by step process to the launch of any new business idea and we would work together to make it happen. He agreed to work with me on this.

Step number one is the market. Is there a market for the product? We decided to find out. The search term video game cheats turned up over 38,000 searches in a month. I told him that this was pretty good. The next six related search terms made the prospects even better, they still came up above the Dennis Francis de-markation line of 6,000 searches. I use several programs for this kind of research but my favorite is Traffic Travis from www.traffictravis.com.

So being the chip off the old block, my son asked me how we were going to build the website and how we were going to get people to buy stuff? I referred to the first rule which was "We were going to take this one step at a time". We now needed to do some testing.

That required seeing how many people would willingly give up their names to a list for something free on the Internet that fits their interests. It was time to do some research. We needed to see how long it would take to collect 100 names and email addresses of people who were interested in videogame cheat codes.

I believe that the best way to test a product or service idea is to first see what kind of response the targeted consumer will give you if you made them an offer. In this case, what kind of offer could we give to the marketplace that would be of benefit? That was his assignment.

So to obtain a really good email list, first check to see if there is a sufficient market for your idea. Then see if there is something you can offer to that market online that will cause at least 100 interested people to contact you for a free offer.

Next, we'll see how we can reach the right target audience with our offer.