Without a mailing list, you would not be able to send out your offers to anyone no matter how good your offer / product is. As in most case, visitors do not buy the first time around. Your mailing list would provide you with a means to follow up with your potential customers and turning them into buyers or even perhaps to promote future upgrades or products.

So, how do we get a "mailing list"? As with any business, the most effective way is advertising. Well, you could also consider buying leads but buying leads could be expensive, budget dependent and may not even be effective. This is also true for most direct advertisement.

However, there's still a way to get free and effective advertisement. How..? ... Ever heard of article marketing? Yes, writing articles with the intention of leading "would-be" subscribers to your own or affiliate website. Subscribers thru' this form of advertisement are usually effective since they are willingly subcribers as opposed to spamming.

As a newbie, you may think that you do not know enough to write an article, but trust me, it's not that difficult. The fact that you are reading this article shows that you are likely to have been reading and searching thru' the internet for information about internet marketing. In fact, you may already know more than you think or at least more than the average layman! Anyway, you could always surf thru' some of the major article directories for relevant articles as basis for your articles.

There are a lot of article directories out there which are more than happy to publish your articles for free as long as they are your originals. In return you would be allowed a insert a "by line" at the bottom of your article advertising and directing your readers to your website. However, you should look for established and reliable article directories to submit. However, you may have to comply with the regulations stipulated by the respective article directory. Just insert "article directory" into any search engine if you are not sure which site to submit your articles to.

Though you may still be successful without your own website, having your own website has many advantages. Research has shown that it takes several follow-ups before any visitor would or consider to sign up. Hence it would definitely give yourself a boost if you could have a well positioned "opt-in" box on your website to collect your vistors' particulars for subsequent follow-ups and conversions. For this, you'll need to have an e-mail autoresponder to automatically manage your mails for you.

Now, the idea is to submit as many articles as you can. This would also help in the ranking of your website with the search engines. Mailing list building does need effort and considerable time regardless of what other "guru" might tell you.

So now that you have a means of free advertising, ACT NOW! Procrastination is a dream killer and will only breed regrets!

Don't worry about "doing things right the first time" but rather "doing the right things the first time".