How To Avoid Mistakes When Creating Your Subscriber List by Anne-Marie Ronsen Before we talk more about the steps you should take to build your subscriber list, let’s make sure we are clear on what you should NOT do when building your subscriber list. Many newbies fall victim to scams or programs offering free traffic that will boost their sales. Unfortunately many of these programs are nothing more than scams and may end up costing you more money than they make. They can even prevent you from restarting your business and achieving the success you deserve. So let’s make sure you do not make these common mistakes. Let’s start by looking at some things you should avoid when trying to build your list. There are certain things you should never do when trying to build your subscriber list. The #1 mistake list builders make is buying bulk emails. Here is a tip: NEVER BUY AND SEND BULK EMAIL TO PEOPLE You won’t make any money sending bulk emails to people. Why? Because they are garbage. They are worthless. By now you must have done some research on list building or you wouldn’t be reading this book. You may see ads that promise thousands of email addresses for less than $50. If you see ads like this, know you are working with a bulk mail company. While having thousands of subscribers would be great, it isn’t great if you are getting your names from a bulk mailing list. Bulk companies get their email addresses by using automatic tools, including robots on the Web. If you buy the list, there is a very good chance you are buying a list of names of people that don’t want to be advertised to for the product you are offering. You risk being labeled a spammer. If no one asked to subscribe to your mailing list and you send them an email, what are you doing? You are spamming them. Spamming people is the number one way to fail at building your subscriber list. Bulk mailing ads are useless. Avoid them at all costs if you want to run a successful campaign. Bulk mailing lists also are not targeted. Targeted lists are lists that have the names and contact information of people that would have an active interest in buying what it is you have to offer. If you buy a bulk list, you run the risk of trying to sell a female hormonal cream to a man interested in sports gear. Not a good combination. Now let’s look at another popular scam used on the web to pull new business owners in and trick them into spending their hard earned money on traffic and list building programs that don’t work. Guaranteed Traffic Scam Many new business owners are tempted by offers of "guaranteed" traffic for a very low price. Now, these companies may send 100,000 or more visitors to your website, but you may not get a single subscriber or make a single sale. Why? Traffic is generated by pop up windows appearing on other websites. Your website is loaded into a pop up window. So, someone may be surfing the net and your website pops up below the site he is searching. This results in sending out your website to thousands of untargeted customers. The key to success in list building is creating a list of TARGETED customers. Targeted customers are customers that are most likely to be interested in buying your product. They have, in some way, offered their information and stated that they have an interest in a product. Let’s say you sell beauty products. You want a targeted list of consumers, mostly women, interested in buying beauty products on the Web. If you get a list of untargeted customers, your business will go nowhere. Most untargeted customers won’t buy anything, and they don’t want to be hassled by traffic generating pop ups. Summary In this chapter we learned even more simple tools for building your subscriber lists. Many people use their subscriber list to build their mailing list. While there are many places you can buy mailing lists, you have to look long and hard to find one that is worthwhile. In addition, if you do find one that is worthwhile, it will cost you a LOT of money to buy a list. Most of the advertisements you see that offer cheap lists will not benefit your campaign. Yes, for $39.99 ABC Company may send 100,000 visitors to your site. However, the chances are high these visitors are not targeted. They likely have no interest in your product at all. There are some legitimate companies that do offer targeted lists you can buy, but generally these are very expensive for that reason, and when starting out you probably do not have a lot of capital to spare. That is why it is so important you work on building your own targeted list of subscribers and a targeted mailing list. A targeted list is jam-packed with people eager to hear what it is you have to say and what you have to offer. So make sure you work diligently on creating your own mailing lists. With time, your lists will grow well into the thousands.