If you have been online for any amount of time as an affiliate marketer, then it is a safe bet that you’ve considered offers to purchase email lists of millions of email addresses. And, you almost certainly know the benefits of list building. Consequently, it likely seems like an painless strategy to generate a huge list. However should you purchase an email list? Before you respond, let’s have a look at a number of items to consider.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could develop a list of millions of people that never ever purchased a single thing from you? Of course not! And yet that’s just what can happen if you let some other person blindly produce leads for you. And that is assuming they are using reputable means to capture those leads. Regrettably, it is usually rather difficult to verify what techniques are being used by the supplier that is selling the lists.
Any kind of ongoing results with a list is dependent on how pertinent the messages are to the recipients. When you let someone else collect email addresses for you, you surrender the ability to keep relevancy in check. Perhaps the most common technique to get leads for resale is to offer a vague assurance of getting some money. Not anything improper with that. But suppose you happen to be offering a program on product creation. You might be telling people how to make money, yet unfortunately most of the folks joining quite possibly didn’t have that in mind – and may not know how you have their details.
Since you are running a business, you must do whatever you can to protect it. If you buy email lists, it’s generally a definite ticket to disaster. You will soon discover you are barraged with spam problems. This can lead to being shut down by your internet service provider in addition to getting dropped by your web hosting service company. No matter how “clean” they claim their list of millions is, you simply don’t have any way of knowing. That is definitely not worth endangering your livelihood for.
There is, however, one exception to the above that works for some marketers: established vendors that specialize in offering targeted leads. The drawback is that they are in most cases prohibitively costly for beginning marketers. However, if your funding allows, and you have a firm grasp of who your target market is, then you may choose to think about one of these companies. Though, you will probably pay $1 or higher for each and every email, compared to the $20 for 1,000,000 addresses the scammers try to sell.
Even with the one exception mentioned previously, it is not a good idea to purchase email lists. Getting it may look like a shortcut, and it is. Then again shortcuts have a way of producing limited returns. List building is not actually that hard. Plus the more control you have over the complete process, the better you’ll be able to maximize the final results.
