Building Opt-In List – Why You Should (Not) Buy Leads?

Building Opt-In List is an essential part of Internet Marketing. Every successful marketer online has a personal list of subscribers and is using it to profit online. Building personal list may sound easy – you just purchase an autoresponder service, create a few messages, place subscription form on your site and drive visitors to your subscription form.

Although these steps are very true and simple, unfortunately building list is not that easy. Someone inexperienced in web promotion will have difficulties in driving traffic necessary for building an opt-in list. Traffic can sometimes be a problem even for a more experienced people.

Getting enough traffic for list building is not the only problem. Many people overlook the importance of keeping constant contact with all members of your list. People tend to be forgetful and if you don’t contact them often, they can easily forget that they even subscribed to your list!

Therefore, to solve problem with traffic many people decide to simply buy leads. Buying leads can save a lot of time necessary for list building. They can also avoid the second problem by creating enough pre-written messages to keep up with their leads for a longer time, or they can use broadcast option often. The idea of buying leads is great and many marketers are using this method, but there is a catch.

Many people don’t like the idea of their e-mail, or other contact info being sold. And once when they subscribed, there probably was a privacy statement saying that their contact information is safe and will never be rented, sold, or used for any purpose whatsoever. It is possible though that they were lied to, or tricked. Subscription forms without privacy statement have a lot lower conversion rates and very often these subscribers are not very responsive.

Other very important reason why leads shouldn’t be bought is because you can never be really sure if you are purchasing a safelist. People willing to profit quickly can easily sell blacklists. They use spam robots to collect as many e-mails as they can online, but instead of sending spam, they decide to earn some money by selling those e-mails. This is even worse because marketer who purchased this list will be accused of spam! Although this probably won’t happen since leads are not just e-mail addresses but also names and other contact info, it is possible!

A successful Internet marketer knows a true value of responsive leads and will not sell them. He has worked hard in building his list and creating a certain relationship with all members of that list. It isn’t likely that he will risk his reputation and trust by selling a responsive list. It is more likely that you will get a non responsive list of leads.

On the other hand it is possible that these leads are fully aware of selling and that they agree with it. In that case buying leads is ok, but you never really know…

If you are interested in buying leads, always use your due diligence whenever you come across some lead selling offer. Make sure you are buying opt-in leads (double opt-ins are even better) and that all of them are aware of a new list owner. If you are not sure of the latter, approach your new leads carefully and even consider asking them to confirm their subscription again. You can lose some leads this way, but it’s much better than to risk spam accusations.