Opt-in email marketing is far and away the most powerful method of promotion available to an Internet marketer. Youve heard the saying The money is in the list.

Well its true; even if the list isnt yours. In fact, leveraging other peoples lists can be an extremely productive way of building your profit funnel.

E-zine advertising, article marketing, and joint venture mailings are three easy ways to leverage someone elses mailing list.

E-zine Advertising:

An e-zine is a web-based newsletter or periodical. These publications are generally themed around a specific subject, and therefore offer advertisers an opportunity to promote to a very targeted audience. Response rates to e-zine advertising tend to be greater than most other mediums.

This makes perfect sense, when you consider the fact that anyone willing to spend time reading about a particular subject clearly has a good deal of interest in said subject. Therefore, if you present these readers with a compelling ad that ties into the theme of the e-zine, there is an excellent chance they will take the time to click your link and view your offer page.

I recommend linking your e-zine ads to some type of lead capture page that will pull folks into your own opt-in list. The people you attract through e-zine advertising are already pre-qualified readers, so they are the ideal prospects for your mailing list.

Article Marketing:

The web is full of article directories where e-zine publishers go to find quality content. Writing your own articles and submitting them to these content directories is another great way to take advantage of other peoples mailing lists. If someone finds one of your pieces in an article directory and uses it in their e-zine, they are required to include an about the author resource box that links back to your website.

Naturally a link back from the resource box will result in some targeted traffic to your site. And it will also help with your SEO because you stand to gain a healthy number of link backs from several article directories and ezine sites.

Of course, once people who read your article click on the link in the resource box and visit your site, they will have an opportunity to join your mailing list (because you have an opt-in form on your front page, right?). This is a great way to promote your name and pick up new subscribers.

Joint Venture Mailings:

Any contacts you have made within your business niche most likely have their own mailing lists. If you can offer these people a good enough incentive, you may well be able to get them to endorse one of your products to their list.

Joint venture mailings can prove very beneficial to both parties. For instance, if you have a new product with an affiliate program that pays 50% commissions and someone pitches this product to their subscribers, both you and your JV partner (who will of course join your affiliate program before mailing) will be able to split the earnings this promotion generates.

You might even consider swapping endorsements; i.e. you send a promo to your list for one of your contacts products and they do the same for you. You could also exchange ads on one anothers outgoing autoresponder messages.

There are numerous ways to get together with other marketers and cross promote. This is exactly how the big hitters create a powerful launch for their products; they work together and leverage one anothers lists for mutual gain.

So if your list isnt as big or responsive as you would like it to be at the present time, keep building. And in the meantime look for ways to leverage the lists of other marketers.