[epub] worldwidelists.com, themail.com, etc.

[jon7711 <jon7711@xxxxxxxxx>]

I too have been signed up with worldwidelists.com for a little
while now and recently received a very suspicious list of
subscribers from themail.com. After voicing my concerns, they
were quick to apologize and credit my account, however, the fear
of filling my list with junk names remains a reality.

As for the fact that most pay-per-subscriber names come from free
mail sites such as Yahoo, Hotmail, etc., I am not too worried
about this. First of all, many of the subscribers who double
opt-in from my site are also from these services, and frankly, I
can't blame them. Whenever I signed up for the more than 50
newsletters and lists that I now receive I always used my Yahoo
address, in an attempt to "protect" my ISP or website e-mail
address from constant spamming. Combine this with the fact that I
have worldwide access to my Yahoo address, and can access it with
my e-mail client without ever having to visit the Yahoo site, and
I have a very powerful alternative.

Building a list takes a long time, and when you consider the
option of picking up subscribers for under twenty cents each, it
is irresistible. Considering the costs of pay-per-click services
such as GoTo.com as well as the going rate for ads per thousand
subscribers, ten or fifteen cents per subscriber is a steal.

I have slight cause for concern in the fact that my unsubscribe
rate for subscribers that I receive from worldwidelists is more
than tenfold the unsubscribe rate of people who double opt-in
from my site (0.7% versus 7.5%). This is slightly suspicious, and
suggests a possibly sketchy method of acquiring subscribers,
especially since these unsubscribes usually come the same day as
receiving the newsletter. However, at ten cents per subscriber,
it is hard to complain.

Additionally, I use the pay-per-subscriber services of Irv
Brechner, at his newslettersforfree.com and "clone" sites for
sixteen cents per subscriber. A great many of these subscribers
come from themail.com. Initially, I was receiving many very
similar names, and upon contacting Mr. Brechner, was assured that
efforts were being made to ensure that this would not be
occurring again.

I know for a fact that themail.com has an "affiliate program" for
signing up new subscribers, and the person who signs them up gets
paid every time they read an e-mail, down to 16 tiers. You can
check this out here:

http://www.themail.com/howitworks.ghc?ysb=78D5FC74-203E-11D4-A1FF0050049982B6

If this dynamic URL is not working, just go to:

http://www.themail.com

And click on the "How TheMail.com Pays You!" link at the bottom
of the page.

Anyway, it is easy to see now how people are signing up numerous
e-mail addresses, and subscribing these addresses to every
newsletter in sight. How ironic that worldwidelists.com delivered
people a list of names that included bread1@themail.com,
bread2@themail.com, etc. Clearly, someone was trying to make some
quick "bread". This might be much more difficult to catch if
these "geniuses" actually signed up using completely different
names, instead of just the same word followed by a number.

I suggest that anyone who is suspicious of themail.com go over to
their site and sign up their own free e-mail address to
investigate their services, as I have done. You will learn a lot.

BTW, don't forget that Ezinecentral.com also has a ten cent
pay-per-subscriber service. While they have yet to send me any
new subscribers, this is probably because they are actually
running an honest service. Besides, this is a new service, and,
more importantly, it is run by Brian Alt, who publishes
Ezine-Tips and runs Ezine-Tips.com, and if he puts only one-tenth
of the effort into this service that he does into his daily tips
newsletter, I am sure that it will thrive.

My apologies for the long post.

Jonathan Rubinstien
http://www.hotrodders.com
jon@hotrodders.com



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