Myths concerning opt-in subscribers - Get Articles by John K. Flynn |  |
> Get Articles > Ezines and Email Newsletters > Myths concerning opt-in subscribers Myths concerning opt-in subscribers Download as PDFJohn K. Flynn xerostariinet.net.au How to create MIDI-eBooks http://midi-ebooks.com Myths concerning opt-in subscribers by Dr John K. Flynn Being a conscientious entrepreneur, I have explored many ways to advertise the products that I sell. One thing that is consistently recommended by most marketing Gurus is that to be successful, you must start to build your own list of email addresses. An opt-in email list of your very own! This is a list of people who for some reason or another have accepted your offer to send them advertising material, be it a bi-weekly newsletter, monthly ezine or just occasional snippets about something they are interested in. They are members of your opt-in mail list. It's important that they are given the choice of cancelling their subscription (opting out) at any time. So I started out building my list, one by one, day by day adding 2 or maybe even 3 email addresses to my list. These were people who had shown some faith in buying one of my products. Having recorded their names and email addresses, I ventured to send them my monthly ezine. I launched my monthly ezine with enthusiasm and a feeling of optimism. Wow, I sent it out to my huge list of 60 subscribers including friends and relatives. Thankfully very few people have cancelled their subscriptions. The friends and rellies dare not! It's possible that they simply delete my email each month and don't bother to unsubscribe. I don't get any feedback and I assume that is a sign of disinterest or just plain apathy. The list was growing, but at 2 or 3 a day, I was starting to get impatient. So when I saw the advertisement: "build your email list for 10 cents per subscriber" I took a second look. .. The advertiser, "www.xxx_lists.com" were offering to send me thousands of fresh new opt-in ezine subscribers every month who were hungry for my products and would just love to receive my free ezine. I signed up immediately and was delighted to receive a huge list of email addresses which I added to the paltry list that I had gathered over previous months. I gloated over the now fattened list like Mr Bean with his Xmas turkey. I Checked the number of addresses daily, rubbed my hands together and hummed with glee! A month went by with billing being less than $60 and I felt quite pleased with myself, thinking of all the sales I was going to make. Although I already owned a mail program capable of automatically handling my email, I continued to enter all email addresses by hand. Gloating .. I have already suffered so many disappointments with scams on the Internet, I became suspiciouis when I saw the many unusual email addresses with strange names and a large proportion included unwieldly numbers. Who would ever have a regular email address like: "booboo32867monkeysuncle.com" After the first "big" mailout to nearly one thousand opt-in subscribers, I received an avalanche of returned email stating "mail box full" or "user not found". Then I remember seeing the ads that typically read "make money by reading email". Then it dawned on me .. Thousands of busy bees are out there signing up to receive emails using monstrous numbers of free email accounts opened with false names. The popular ones being with AOL, YAHOO and HOTMAIL. I believeo opt-in ezine list sellers are paying the busy bees a proportion of their income to pretend to be opt-in subscribers. Actually I suspect many smart ezine list sellers are actually creating the opt-in lists themselves, it wouldn't be difficult and much easier to control. Being an optimist (or fool) I thought "oh well what's a hundred less out of a thousand, I can make that up 5 times over with next months new opt-in list" I was assuming that a large proportion of the subscribers were genuine. Big mistake .. The following month was even worse, more returned emails, more users not found etc etc. I decided to cancel my order for more addresses from the opt-in list supplier. Month after month my opt-in email list has shrunk away as all those addresses I had originally purchased became un-reachable in some way. Many optimistic entrepreneurs are falling into the same trap, wasting huge amounts of money in a vain and impatient attempt to build their opt-in lists. I believe many entrepreneurs have systems that are on auto and are unaware of what is happening. They assume that they are getting value for money. If you pay a higher fee, you can receive "double" opt-in lists that appear to be all genuine addresses. However I believe that these addresses are just linked to larger mail boxes with less likelihood of rejection.. Maybe there are a handful of genuine email addresses in there somewhere, I don't know. My advice is don't bother buying opt-in lists. The only way I know, which is also flawed to a degree, is to offer things for free on the Web. People are so spoiled these days, they always expect something for nothing. FREE is the operative word in advertising. I give away a free MIDI-eBook. Many people come to my website, take the free gift and leave a false email address! Fortunately there are many honest people who do leave their genuine email address. These are the people I want to deal with .. I think it's time to pull out that auto email program and stop worrying. I'll just concentrate on targeting genuine new subscribers. As with most things in life, to be successful in marketing .. - there is no easy way just the hard way. - or the smart way - and purchasing opt-in lists is not smart. ********************************************************* Dr John Flynn publishes a monthly HTML ezine called: "The Xerostar Times" and his motto is "caring for creative people" You can subscribe to the ezine at: http://xerotron.com/Subscribe.html His free MIDI-eBook "The Xerotron Story" is available at: http://midi-ebooks.com mailto: xerostariinet.net.au ********************************************************* How useful did you find this article? This article can be downloaded freely from http://www.get-articles.com and used on your website or in your ezine so long as the author is credited and their resource box left intact. You should not change any links in the article, and where the article is used on a website it's links should be clickable. 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