Earning an income online is absolutely possible, and more and more people are doing it every day. But did you know that doing one simple thing can significantly increase your earnings? And that not nearly as many people are doing it as they should?

Having an email list is one of the best ways to increase your online income. Why? Because you can market to your list over and over again. And you can use your email list to build a relationship with your customers, and offer them valuable information and products.

So how do you do this? It's actually quite simple. If you already have a website up that is getting traffic, all you need to do is put an opt-in form on your site for visitors to enter their email address. This means they are giving you permission to contact them via email.

Of course, you will need something to manage your list, and something to send them! The way to do this is to sign up with an autoresponder service.

This can be hosted online for a monthly fee, or you can purchase the software and maintain the list on your own server. If you are just starting out building your email list, there are even free services that remain free while your list is under a certain number of subscribers.

What will happen is that when someone signs up to your email list, their contact information goes into your autoresponder system. Then, they are signed up to your autoresponder -- a sequence of emails that will go out automatically to them. You will also be able to send them email broadcasts that are not scheduled.

For example, your autoresponder series could be a newsletter that you write and send once a month. Or, if you are selling a product or service, it could be a series of upsell emails in which you encourage them to buy your product or purchase upgrades for additional products/services.

So how do you get people to sign up to your email list? The best way is to offer them something for free, such as a special report, software tool or ebook. To get it, they have to enter their name and email address. You can create these offers yourself, or hire someone to create them for you. You may also be able to buy rights to materials that already exist, and brand them with your own business.

You can increase your chances further of earning an income online by joint venturing with or becoming an affiliate of other companies that your list would get value from. Send out emails telling them about offers, and when they buy you get a commission from the sale.