"The Money is in the list" - that's what the gurus tell you and they're right, but very rarely do they tell you the whole story.

Internet marketing is about selling.  Sorry if that offends you, it is.  At some point to succeed you are going to have to close sales.

You can't spend all day on the phone, nor can you call and visit people every day.  You need a vehicle that can contact them regularly with reminders about your products and services whilst simultaneously offering helpful advice and information.  In short, you need to build an ongoing business relationship with the prospect via an auto-responder service.

You won't see results immediately with an autoresponder. In fact, in some cases, you may not see any results for months, but providing you are providing value and integrity in your emails, you will be building trust and creating a buying environment with your readers.

The key of course is to get subscribers to opt in via your squeeze page and then to regularly over deliver on the promises that you made to your prospect.  Give stuff away.  (I'm sure you've got files gathering dust on your hard drive that you've purchased resale rights to)  Offer bonuses to purchases.  Warn  them about products that don't seem right. Tell them when you goofed, there's nothing like a little honesty to spark a connection with your readers.

So what autoresponder should you use?

I personally use Traffic Wave and have used AWeber and Autoresponse Plus in the past.  All three of them offer quality services and have some distinct unique features.

However, Traffic Wave is the only option for serious Internet Marketers who are taking a wide view of their business.  The reason is that they offer great deliverability rates, an ad tracking service and a compensation plan that can legitimately build a long term residual income stream all on its own.

Before we proceed I would like to debunk some myths associated with emailing to a list.

Emailing a prospect that has agreed to receive more information from you is not spam, provided that prospect has "double opted in" and  your email contains a legitimate means of unsubscribing.

Purchasing leads IS the fastest way to get listed as a spammer.  Don't do it, unless you know exactly what you're doing and have a specific strategy to get those leads to legitimately opt in to your mailing list.  The subject is beyond the scope of this book and if you would like to pursue this practice, I sincerely recommend the strategies and tactics recommended by Graham Hamer in his classic eBook Traffic Jam

As a general rule you should treat bulk emailing services as spamming machines - do you really think that anybody could get 1000000 opt in subscribers?

So you must start building your own personal list and you should be working at giving them value and quality.