Well in my opinion the best tool that you can have at your disposal is an autoresponder.

If you're serious about becoming a highly profitable online marketer, then it's imperative that you have your own list of subscribers you can send emails to. By doing so you can send regular emails offering valuable information which will help build their trust in you and will help you to make more commissions when you send out the occasional promotion for a product you may be selling or promoting as an affiliate.

An autoresponder is of course the tool you will need to build and manage your list(s). You can collect emails by adding a simple opt-in form on your site using the basic code generated for you by the autoresponder provider, and then subscribers will be automatically added to your list when they fill in their details at your website or blog.

Then of course all you need to worry about is driving more traffic to your websites which contain your opt-in forms in order to increase your subscribers, and concentrate on writing your email messages to your existing subscribers.

You can even schedule your messages to go out at a given time, and write hundreds of email messages in advance which go out over the course of several months, or even years.

Alternatively you can send out live messages as and when you feel appropriate, or combine both together, ie scheduled messages and the occasional live message. It's entirely up to you.

The important thing is that you have your own list because this will dramatically increase your earning potential. It's alright having numerous websites but if they leave your sites you may never see them again, whereas if you have an opt-in form on your sites with an incentive to subscribe to your list, such as a free report or bonus, then you can market to these people over and over again.

This is why an autoresponder is so useful because it makes the task of building and managing your list so easy. You can even have multiple lists under one account, so it really is very cost-effective, plus with so many top providers offering an affiliate program, it's very easy to promote their site and earn affiliate commissions which will easily cover your own small monthly cost.