As an aspiring internet marketer or an internet marketing guru, one of your main goals always remains constant whatever niche you may be catering to.

The goal is to build a large, targeted, responsive list of hungry prospects.

It has been said many times by many different marketing masters that the money is in the list. The reason being is that studies have shown that most people will buy from any particular sales strategy on or after the seventh contact.

It is for this reason that most savvy internet marketers will employ an autoresponder (an email program that sends scheduled broadcasts at regular intervals automatically) to capture the names and email addresses of visitors to their web sites.

One of the biggest problems facing these marketers is traffic. Most often traffic generation can be an expensive proposition. Marketers should always be looking for inexpensive and, if at all possible, free alternatives.

There is one such alternative that has been gaining momentum in recent months that can greatly benefit anyone participating in it. For the most part these events are geared towards the internet marketing crowd but if properly executed may be moved into any other niche.

So what are these events?

Free giveaways.

These consist of anywhere from a few to several hundred marketers banding together and offering one of their products for free to any one who joins the event as a member.

So how does offering one of your products for free benefit you, as the contributor? By requiring the member who wishes to download your gift to leave their name and email address in the autoresponder form on your thank you page, thus building your precious list.

These events are hugely important and beneficial.

By joining as a contributor you are labeling yourself as an expert, or at the very least a serious marketer because you have a product with your name on it. This builds name recognition.

It is highly important that your prospective customers see your name and possibly face at least a few times before you ever throw a sales pitch at them. This is an excellent way to get your name in front of a lot of targeted prospects.

Another reason these events are so big is that all of the contributors are advertising the giveaway. They do this because it is in their best interest to make sure that the event as a whole gets as many visitors as possible so that they too have a better chance of building a large list.

This dramatically cuts down on your own personal advertising costs because now you may have several hundred people sending traffic to the same event.

With a little skillful copywriting touting your product and a few email blasts to your list, through safelists and maybe a little paid advertising you can greatly benefit and see a tremendous impact on your list size and your bottom line.