As seen on my blog http://www.andrewdesilets.com

In this post I am going to let you know why you should not buy an email list from anyone and an alternative to safely promote using a list that belongs to somone else.

Bought lists are almost 100% of the time built from scrapped email addresses.

These emails are harvested by automatic "bots" that search the net for any email address that it can find, regardless of where it comes from.

The email addresses are then compiled and sold off to anyone who wants to buy them.

These lists are spammed to death with everything under the sun. Most people end up abandoning their email addresses all together as there is no way to opt out of it.

So.. you end up sending emails to dead addresses.

You will get next to no return from this, you are literally throwing your money away!

So what are the alternatives if you don't want to build your own list, but still market via email?

Buy ad space on other peoples mail outs and newsletters.

How to go about this (This is one way)

1. In google or other search engine, type in your keyword and then ezine or newsletter or opt-in etc... basically you are looking for sites that take sign ups. By adding newsletter, opt in etc, you are asking the search engine to search for the text in the actual opt in form. Adding your keyword ensures that you will get sites that are on topic.

2. Once your list comes up, you will now need to do a bit of research, click on each site and see if they are on topic, collect opt ins and have an "advertise with us" or contact us link.

3. If they have an advertise with us link, they will tell you how to go about advertising with them, if they don't send them an email to their "Contact us" link.

The email you send the site owner can be something like this:

hi,

I am writing to find out if you accept advertising in you email newsletter mail out?

I have a quality product that I believe your subscribers would be interested in.

If you do accept advertising on your newsletter, can you tell me how many active subscribers you mail to and what your rates are or if you would be interested in negotiating a commission for
each one of my products sold?


Thanks for your consideration.

Your Name

4. Wait and see what happens.

5. If the person is interested in doing business with you, your next step would be to see about inserting a small ad in their news letter. Depending on the format of their newsletter, you may submit a image ad or a text ad (like a google adwords style ad). Text ads are ideal, promoting your offer or product.

6. The price you pay can very, start as low as you can, $10-50 for an see what sort of response you get from it. If it is successful, you may want to go onto the next step.

7. The next step would be a solo ad on your part. Basically you would write a sales email, like you would send to your own list. Write the email, submit it to the list owner and have them send it to their list on your behalf.

So there you go... an alternative to buying an email list.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Des

Visit my blog http://www.andrewdesilets.com