I'm not naming specific companies but I will mention the keywords I used.  In 2005 I typed in "opt-in bulk email" and "bulk email."  There were probably 20 or more companies who offered bulk email to people who opted in for specific categories.  I picked five companies.  All of the same five companies are still in business in 2008.  One offered 500,000 emails sent out for $75 (what a bargain).  Another was 1 million emails for $175.  The other three companies were basically the same crap.  I picked my category "hot internet shoppers with money," filled in my email text, then paid the company with a credit card.  I paid around $700 and MILLIONS of emails were going out to "targeted retail buyers who spend big money online."  Yes it sounds like a scam, but how would I know if it was unless I tried it?  Here's how I know they are scams.

 

The retail website I ran worked like clockwork.  Traffic and sales from day to day fluctuated no more than 5%.  At one point we averaged 1,400-1,500 customers a day in free traffic. It was pretty steady.  If I sent out an email or ran an ad, it might spike up to 5,000 within an hour or 10,000 for the day.  Traffic spikes were very easy to track down to the minute with the software we used.   

 

Well to make a long story short, after all of these emails went out (3 million or more) we still received 1,400-1,500 customers a day for that week.  No traffic spikes, not even 100 extra. NOTHING!  These websites tell you to wait a week to see the full effects of the traffic.  This is a lie.  I've sent out probably 10,000 different emails to millions of customers and I KNOW you'll see the effects in 15 minutes or less during business hours.  If it's a big sale, I would get an order in five minutes!  With these five companies - NOTHING.

 

On a positive note, when I showed these companies my traffic stats, they did refund my money, no questions asked.  These companies are kind of like the utility companies that put an extra $10 charge by mistake on 30 million phone bills and collect an extra $300 million dollars, but they'll gladly refund your $10 if you call and complain.  Half don't call because they don’t notice and the phone company makes $150 million.  These bulk email companies promise the world with an IRON CLAD MONEY BACK GUARANTEE.  They get 300 people to send $100 each, that's $30,000.  If 200 ask for their money back and the rest are too lazy to do it or don’t track their ad results, the company still is left with 100 orders for $10,000 a day.  That's $300,000 a month.  Note: This isn't a new business idea.  It's illegal to sell "nothing" even if there is a money back guarantee.  

 

Now, there was one opt-in bulk email company that charged a lot more money and swore they were legit.  Instead of $50 for 500,000 emails, they charged $800 for 500,000 emails.  I used them and yes I did get sales.  Maybe $600.  So I it wasn't a scam but I lost $200 on the deal and never used them again.

 

Bulk email is an amazing way to promote your business.  If you can reach people that want your product with an email, they'll read it, visit your site, and sales will be great.  The problem is that good email addresses are hard to find.  People change their addresses.  I would say if you have 100,000 good email addresses that you collected from your own website, in six months you'll have 70,000 good addresses, and in one year only 50,000 will be good and at the end of two years maybe 10,000 will be good.  And these are email addresses that aren't supposed to be on any spam lists.  If a bulk email company is sending Viagra and drug emails to an email address daily, how long do you think those email addresses will be good for?  Not long because people are being bombarded with worthless emails so they change their email address.  Even if a company was legit, how long before they would kill all of their email addresses?  As you can see, these companies don’t have good email addresses to send out spam even if they wanted too.

 

A few weeks back, my mother signed-up up for a credit card online with a fresh email address.  Seriously, a week later, in one hour she received 50 credit card offer emails, one after another; not to mention half of them were duplicates.  Then she received another 30 the next day.  My point is, even if you found a legit email company who had access to clean fresh addresses, what would your results be when your email went out with 100 other companies, not to mention the fact that everyone will cancel that address within a day of getting all these emails?  My point is, even if these companies had good email addresses, they don't use them correctly. 

 

There are people who "really" have 50 million email valid addresses and have the capability to send them out, but this is an underground business.  People are sitting in prison right now for doing this too.  Spam is a serious crime when you're playing the game in the multi-millions.  Like I said, jail time could come with it. 

 

If you really want to try Opt-in email, I suggest you use a credit card, that way you can chargeback the sale if the company cheats you.  Also, you MUST use a coupon code and tracking link if possible in the email and try to get a guarantee on the results. You need to have traffic logs too so you can prove the campaign failed to get your refund.  You may still get scammed even if you do all of this, but at least try to do everything you can to protect yourself.