If you’ve ever seen an “autopilot income” program, you know it can be tempting to jump on board and give it a shot.

The programs appear to produce fantastic results with only minimal work.  But, affiliate marketer beware!

The majority of these programs depend heavily on automated email marketing – building a massive list of leads, pummeling them with email until you get signups.

They’re supposed to be “autopilot” because once you build your list, your autoresponders will do all the work for you… and you just cash the checks. Sad to say, this type of business model goes against the grain of the reality of the web today.

The fact is, today’s spam filters, blockers, and destroyers are making it almost impossible to “autopilot” your way to Internet riches.

Both ISPs and providers of free email addresses (like Yahoo.com and Hotmail.com) now turn their spam filters on to medium – or higher – by default. That means your target market has to be savvy enough to CHANGE their spam settings from the get-go. If they don’t, NONE of your marketing messages will get through.

Add to that the higher expectations of ALL of today’s online markets, and the old-fashioned “autopilot” business simply doesn’t exist any longer. As the vast Internet community – which includes millions of opportunity seekers – gets more sophisticated, they also expect a lot more from the people who market via lists.

The promoters who are doing well today do more than blast endless emails to their lists. These promoters write blogs and articles, provide custom marketing tools, and offer support or even personalized coaching. All that is WORK – and it’s not really autopilot.

This doesn’t mean you can’t automate as much of your online business as possible. There’s nothing wrong with automation — it’s not only convenient, it’s necessary.

But the realities of today’s Internet marketplace requires you to nurture an opt-in list with meaningful messages and relevant offers.  Pre-load your autoresponder with content-oriented emails that are interesting, that focus on a primary product, and be sure to track clicks. This way you won’t be shooting in the dark, and your automation will be working for you, not against you.