You've probably read 1000 times that "the money's in the list."
If you're an Internet or email marketer, that's only partly true.
The truth is that the money is in properly written emails,
that get delivered to your list members. That last part is
what most online marketers are missing!

An article in the June 2004 issue of Time Magazine reported
that 40% to 70% of email sent to the four major ISPs is
deleted at the server. Those ISPs are MSN (including Hotmail),
Yahoo, Earthlink and AOL.  That simply means that there's a
very good chance that your legitimate email is not getting
through to those subscribers using those ISPs.

The bottom line for you and I as email marketers is that
building huge opt-in lists, seeking JVs, or publishing an ezine
is largely futile, unless you correct the above problem first.

So how do you correct the problem?  Many people who send
emails know that many ISPs score emails as they arrive at the
server. Email that scores above a certain score is identified as
probable spam, and is deleted. So, many of us go through
our email messages before sending them out and delete or
modify trigger words.

I'll let you in on a big secret.  Most of the words that you see
cleverly disguised (often with extra spaces or characters) aren't
what causes most of the problem.  It's combinations of words
that causes the problem.  It's those combinations of words and
a few other major mistakes that gets your email killed.

To find out what those major mistakes are, you can get a free
report called "The 21 Deadliest Spam Filter Violations" here:
http://myQuickPayPro.com/qpp.cgi?adminid=3054&id=91007
The typical ezine that I see makes over half of these mistakes
every issue. Does yours?

There are two major things that you can do to avoid having
your emails "eaten" by the filters.

The first one is to have your list members "white list" you
or add you to their address book when they first subscribe.
Right on your confirmation page, instruct them to add your from
email address to their address book or to their approved list.
How they do this is different for each ISP.    Generally adding
the from name and/or email address to their address book or
approved list will do the trick. Also tell them to periodically
look through their junk email folder to confirm that your email
is getting through. If they want what you're sending them, 
they will do this. Often moving an email into the inbox will 
cause the system to stop filtering your email too.

You can also tell new list members to do this in the confirmation
email, but that's a little late, since they may never get that
email.

The second thing you can do is run every email that you plan
on broadcasting (or even some personal emails) through a
system that scores the email. Email above some magic score
(around 5 at many ISPs) is guaranteed to be deleted.

There are a lot of tools for scoring your emails. The one that 
I prefer is called E-filtrate.  You can check it out at:
http://myQuickPayPro.com/qpp.cgi?adminid=3054&id=91007
which is where you can also get the report mentioned above.

What I like about E-filtrate is that it's a browser-based system
that allows you to score an email, suggests 3-7 substitutes for
each trigger word (that you can make right within the program),
and even allows you to do test sends to confirm that your email
will get through.

The system also allows you to check to see if your domain/IP
is blacklisted. If your domain is blacklisted, then all email
from that domain is blocked by certain ISPs. So you could 
have a "perfect" email, and it could still not get through.  The
solution there is to get the domain de-listed or to send from a 
different domain.

Once you have a reliable system in place for "quality
controlling" your email communications, *then* you're ready 
to put your list building on steroids. Then you're ready to set 
up all kinds of joint ventures, and benefit from that huge, 
responsive list.

Implement the simple steps outlined above today and you'll be
pleasantly surprised.  Something this simple can multiply your
profits many times over. It can actually be the one thing that
turns a struggling business into a major success. ;-)