As you get ready to start an opt in email campaign, you’re probably wondering how you can go about getting the email addresses of potential customers, those folks to whom you will send your email marketing messages.

And that’s an excellent question.

The short answer is that you want to send email marketing messages only to those people who have “requested” them. Sending emails to people who have never contacted you, who don’t know you, who never asked for you to contact them, can easily move into  spam. And, as you know, sending spam is a huge no no. So I recommend you refrain from purchasing an email list.

But how do you get people to ask you to send them emails?

Short answer: offer them something in return for their email address. On your website, offer them a newsletter.. A free e-book. A short, free report. They’ll sign up for the freebie with their e-mail address.

And they’ve just “asked’ you to send them emails. This is called an “opt in.”

Yet, if you’re brand new to the Web; if your website has just been launched and no one knows you exist, how do get people to visit. No visitors, no opt-ins.

First, make sure your site has been keyword optimized, so that it may rank well when people do a search for the kind of service or product you sell.

Then, you can try one or more - or all - of several different ways to get traffic to your site.

You can start a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign with one or more search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN.com, etc. Potential customers will see your ad, click on it, arrive on your site and then, you hope, stick around, like what they read and ask for more information via your newsletter, free report, etc.

You also can write keyword-rich articles and submit them to article directories (ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and so on) and, at the bottom of your resource box, direct them to your website. If they like what they see when they get there you may pique their interest enough that they “opt-in” to receive your free report or newsletter.

As you start sending email marketing efforts to your email list, you’ll need to be sure they can “opt out” of receiving e-mails from you. At the bottom of each e-mail, you should have a link to a place where they “unsubscribe.”