About Paying For MLM E-mail Leads
One of the biggest schemes out there are websites that sell e-mail leads (oftem MLM ones, which are ones seeking to start their own at home business opportunity). There are some bad ones and then there are some really bad ones. My advice to you is to stay away from them all, as they really won't get you anywhere. But read on to hear my reasons why and how some are even worse than others.
MLM e-mail leads are basically huge lists of e-mails, phone numbers, names, etc. of people that are sold by the thousands by some companies that specialize in such lists. Some of these companies set up deals with other webmasters to get new prospectives to sign up from their websites, whereas others actually give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (either money or free offers). Even worse, some of these sites actually pay other sites to re-use their own mailing lists. I'm going to tell you why they're all bad.
When sites pay other sites to re-use their mailing lists only to resell them, that means that the individuals on that list not only have probably been contacted by dozens of other companies, but that they may have even signed up several months to several years ago. Even if the lists aren't re-used, another common method of these companies is to give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (such as "if you sign up for 20 offers, you'll get $1"). This means that they'll sign up for anything even if they have no interest in what you are selling, which means that their e-mails are basically worthless.
Some of the more respectable sites that sell MLM leads only to two or three individuals once, and most of the leads from the more respectable sites are often a lot fresher (the sign-ups probably happened several hours to 30 or 60 days ago). These are 100 times better than the ones described above, yet I still am not recommending that you get them. Why? It's simple...
Even if you find a service that offers decently priced leads to only a select few others (or even exclusively to you), these leads did not ask you directly to contact them. Not only is that pushing you closer to being a spammer, but you're probably going to have a very low response rate as well. How many spam e-mails do you get a day? How many of those do you read? Probably few if any (and I hopefully won't have to open those viagra spam e-mails in 20 years from now!). Even if they selected to receive more information in general, they probably weren't expecting it from you.
Take me for example, I run a few different mailing lists, and every single one is double opt-in. That means that not only do you have to request the information initially, but that you also have to click on a confirmation link in a confirmation e-mail that you'll receive. This assures me that you are the original person who requested the information, you're not some computer bot program, and that you actually do receive e-mails and opened at least one of my e-mails. Even with this double opt-in method, which is vastly superior to single opt-in methods (even though you might lose half of the people who sign up, simply because they really aren't interested enough in your stuff to click your confirmation link and just wanted to see if they could maybe get the freebies without confirming), you still won't get a very high percent of sales from it or even people reading it. Of the main two lists that I run (this one on making money online and another one that's related to marriages), both have made me money, but it's not uncommon for only a third to half of the people to even read the e-mail. Then it's not that uncommon to only get a small percent of those even clicking on anything in it.
And this might seem even more astonishing for the mailing list on marriages, as it doesn't sell a thing itself and offers tips and advice that they requested -- often even giving away things for free (much like my free downloads on my making money online newsletter). But don't worry -- that's part of it.
Okay, so back to my point. If the percents aren't even astounding for these methods when people double opt-in to get the exact same newsletter that they requested, then you don't want to even think what the results might be for e-mails sent to people that haven't requested you to do so.
I had a friend who bought over 1 million e-mail leads for a few hundred dollars. The deal sounded great to him -- if he just got a few people out of 1 million to sign up, he'd make his money back plus some. Guess what? Of 1 million e-mail leads, only around 200 of them even read it. Of that, only a select few even clicked on a link to check out his site. And guess what? Not a single one resulted in a sale or even a free sign up to his newsletter.
Leads can range in price from one penny each to several dollars each, but my advice is to keep your money and try to offer people incentives to sign up for your own newsletter or mailing list directly, as even if it takes longer, you'll get much better results in the long run (these things take time). This is especially true if you run a niche specific mailing list (such as arts and crafts, marriages, sports, etc.), where it's virtually impossible to find many good leads other than from your own site or similar sites willing to partner with you.
If my advice isn't enough to keep you away, you might want to check out several of the top autoresponders out there, because they won't even accept 3rd party lists. They won't even allow you to send confirmation e-mails to them. This is because they result in very high spam complaints, which the respectable autoresponders don't want to deal with because they can get everyone in trouble and risk future e-mails from you to anyone being blocked (as in no more e-mails sent to any Yahoo, AOL, Google, Charter, etc. account). There is a reason why they don't allow them. Any autoresponder that does probably has horrible deliverability rates themselves and would therefore be a huge ripoff.
Don't get me wrong, you do want to build up your own list of leads so that you can contact them again in the future when new products or new offers come about (or to release your newsletters to). However, you want to do this the smart way by giving them an incentive to sign up directly from your own site (perhaps a free ebook, or several lessons or tips sent to their e-mail, etc.). It might not be as exciting initially as sending out 1 million e-mail leads overnight, but you'll definitely get more responses and make a ton more money in the future (and you won't get the spam complaints or the empty wallet from paying for those leads).
To check out our relevant article on autoresponders, where we talk a bit about why they are important, why you need one, and which ones are the best, click here.
MLM e-mail leads are basically huge lists of e-mails, phone numbers, names, etc. of people that are sold by the thousands by some companies that specialize in such lists. Some of these companies set up deals with other webmasters to get new prospectives to sign up from their websites, whereas others actually give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (either money or free offers). Even worse, some of these sites actually pay other sites to re-use their own mailing lists. I'm going to tell you why they're all bad.
When sites pay other sites to re-use their mailing lists only to resell them, that means that the individuals on that list not only have probably been contacted by dozens of other companies, but that they may have even signed up several months to several years ago. Even if the lists aren't re-used, another common method of these companies is to give new prospectives an incentive to sign up (such as "if you sign up for 20 offers, you'll get $1"). This means that they'll sign up for anything even if they have no interest in what you are selling, which means that their e-mails are basically worthless.
Some of the more respectable sites that sell MLM leads only to two or three individuals once, and most of the leads from the more respectable sites are often a lot fresher (the sign-ups probably happened several hours to 30 or 60 days ago). These are 100 times better than the ones described above, yet I still am not recommending that you get them. Why? It's simple...
Even if you find a service that offers decently priced leads to only a select few others (or even exclusively to you), these leads did not ask you directly to contact them. Not only is that pushing you closer to being a spammer, but you're probably going to have a very low response rate as well. How many spam e-mails do you get a day? How many of those do you read? Probably few if any (and I hopefully won't have to open those viagra spam e-mails in 20 years from now!). Even if they selected to receive more information in general, they probably weren't expecting it from you.
Take me for example, I run a few different mailing lists, and every single one is double opt-in. That means that not only do you have to request the information initially, but that you also have to click on a confirmation link in a confirmation e-mail that you'll receive. This assures me that you are the original person who requested the information, you're not some computer bot program, and that you actually do receive e-mails and opened at least one of my e-mails. Even with this double opt-in method, which is vastly superior to single opt-in methods (even though you might lose half of the people who sign up, simply because they really aren't interested enough in your stuff to click your confirmation link and just wanted to see if they could maybe get the freebies without confirming), you still won't get a very high percent of sales from it or even people reading it. Of the main two lists that I run (this one on making money online and another one that's related to marriages), both have made me money, but it's not uncommon for only a third to half of the people to even read the e-mail. Then it's not that uncommon to only get a small percent of those even clicking on anything in it.
And this might seem even more astonishing for the mailing list on marriages, as it doesn't sell a thing itself and offers tips and advice that they requested -- often even giving away things for free (much like my free downloads on my making money online newsletter). But don't worry -- that's part of it.
Okay, so back to my point. If the percents aren't even astounding for these methods when people double opt-in to get the exact same newsletter that they requested, then you don't want to even think what the results might be for e-mails sent to people that haven't requested you to do so.
I had a friend who bought over 1 million e-mail leads for a few hundred dollars. The deal sounded great to him -- if he just got a few people out of 1 million to sign up, he'd make his money back plus some. Guess what? Of 1 million e-mail leads, only around 200 of them even read it. Of that, only a select few even clicked on a link to check out his site. And guess what? Not a single one resulted in a sale or even a free sign up to his newsletter.
Leads can range in price from one penny each to several dollars each, but my advice is to keep your money and try to offer people incentives to sign up for your own newsletter or mailing list directly, as even if it takes longer, you'll get much better results in the long run (these things take time). This is especially true if you run a niche specific mailing list (such as arts and crafts, marriages, sports, etc.), where it's virtually impossible to find many good leads other than from your own site or similar sites willing to partner with you.
If my advice isn't enough to keep you away, you might want to check out several of the top autoresponders out there, because they won't even accept 3rd party lists. They won't even allow you to send confirmation e-mails to them. This is because they result in very high spam complaints, which the respectable autoresponders don't want to deal with because they can get everyone in trouble and risk future e-mails from you to anyone being blocked (as in no more e-mails sent to any Yahoo, AOL, Google, Charter, etc. account). There is a reason why they don't allow them. Any autoresponder that does probably has horrible deliverability rates themselves and would therefore be a huge ripoff.
Don't get me wrong, you do want to build up your own list of leads so that you can contact them again in the future when new products or new offers come about (or to release your newsletters to). However, you want to do this the smart way by giving them an incentive to sign up directly from your own site (perhaps a free ebook, or several lessons or tips sent to their e-mail, etc.). It might not be as exciting initially as sending out 1 million e-mail leads overnight, but you'll definitely get more responses and make a ton more money in the future (and you won't get the spam complaints or the empty wallet from paying for those leads).
To check out our relevant article on autoresponders, where we talk a bit about why they are important, why you need one, and which ones are the best, click here.
posted by LeadEvolution Team at
4:15 PM
1 Comments:
Right on man! Unfortunately, I came across your post too late. I tried buying mlm leads and you are 100000% correct. THEY SUCK!!! I thought that out of 3000 leads, I could at least get one sale. I didn't even get more than 4 click throughs!!! I look forward to your future reviews as you seem dead on!
Keep it up!
Someone who has been burned before...
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