The money's in the list is a phrase often quoted by internet marketers, but for good reason. If you don't have a way of collecting email addresses through an opt-in form on your site, then you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

When people visit your website and leave without buying anything, you may never get the chance to sell to them again if they don't come back to your site. However, if people opt in to receive more information from you through occasional emails, then you can send follow-up messages, and dramatically increase your chances of making a sale in the future.

There are many ways of building a list, but in this article I want to focus on a strategy often overlooked by the majority of marketers, and that's through Ebay. When you see listings for $0.01, there's a good chance the seller is using backend sales tactics or trying to encourage you to join their newsletter, otherwise they would be losing money for every sale, due to Ebay's fees being higher than the sales price.

A good way of generating a lot of sales, and therefore potential subscribers is to get your hands on some ebooks which offer resale rights, and listing them on Ebay. There are numerous sites where you can pick them up, often for free. If not, there are membership sites, where for a one-off fee you can get access to hundreds of ebooks all with resellers rights, or you could of course buy one of these ebooks offering resellers rights on Ebay, often at a ridiculously low price, then resell it yourself.

Unfortunately, you won't get rich just from selling many of these ebooks on Ebay alone, because the sellers have forced the prices down to very low levels. However, you can benefit very nicely financially from persuading the buyer of your ebook to subscribe to your newsletter or ezine.

It's estimated that every subscriber in your list is worth $1 per month, so if you had 1000 subscribers, you could expect, on average, to earn $1000 per month. This figure obviously varies a lot depending on your sales copy, and the quality and credibility of your mailings, but even so it's easy to see why having your own list is potentially very lucrative.

The key is to offer on your main site several quality free bonuses to each new subscriber that opts in to receive your newsletter. Then when a buyer buys an ebook from you, and you send them the email with the download link included, you can upsell your newsletter by mentioning the further free bonuses they could receive on top of the ebook they've just purchased, and including the link to your main site where the opt in form is located.

I've had great success doing this, because the majority of people, myself included, love freebies, and the buyer will be more than happy to receive extra free ebooks, on top of their original purchase, just for filling out a simple form.

The only thing to bear in mind is that the sale price of your ebook should cover any Ebay fees, although there's nothing stopping you from offering it for $0.01 just to hopefully guarantee a sale. You will lose money on every sale, but it all depends on how much each subscriber is worth to you. If you have a top-quality newsletter or ezine with hardly any unsubscribe requests, then it may be worth doing because you are likely to make any minimal losses back many times over in the future.