This paper describes a German study which compared eight ways of recruiting members for an online access panel. Two thousand respondents, divided into four groups of 500, were invited to sign up with the panel via email, fax, flier or letter. Half of each sample's invitations offered a cash lottery, into which new panellists would be entered, whereas the other half of the invitations did not offer a lottery. Overall, email was the most successful means of solicitation, followed by flier and fax, which were equally efficient. Very few panellists were recruited via letter. The lottery was effective only with fliers. The composition of the recruited samples differed according to solicitation method. Fax-recruited individuals were older than those recruited by flier and email. Panellists recruited via email had been using the internet longer than flier- and fax-recruited panellists and they used the internet more often than those recruited via fax. After their recruitment, panellists were followed up in the first two studies run in the panel. The probability of their taking part in these studies and of completing these questionnaires was independent of the method by which they had been recruited.