I have made many mistakes in Internet Marketing over the last 9 years but one really stands out as it hurts a lot! Most marketing experts say the #1 activity anyone interested in building a profitable online business should do is build a list. They say if they were to lose everything but one thing this is what they would keep. Why? Because if done right, a responsive list of newsletter subscribers and readers will be almost like growing money on trees. At least, that is what they say.

You see my story is a little different.

After many years I managed to build an ezine subscriber base to 25,000+. However, the big mistakes or mistakes I made were two fold...

1. Using only single opt in

2. Offering freebies to entice their subscription

Many so-called 'gurus' will tell you that is the way to build your ezine or lists fast.

But what you get are people who subscribed for only the freebie and had no intention on spending any money with you or anyone else. What that means is a very un-responsive list. No response to your ads in your ezine...no money in your pocket.

That of course, is the reason you started your newsletter right? To make money! Yes, some newsletters are only published with the intent of imparting information to its subscribers. But 90% of the ezines are publishing to add to the bottom line.

But my list of 25,000 was not buying my offers. They were good offers and would be of value to anyone interested in making money online. But the response was usually .05% or less!

So, what I did was bite the bullet and basically deleted the whole subscriber list! I offered a different list to those that wanted to stay subscribed (my ezine was good and I put a lot of time and effort into it).

But of the 25,000 subscribers I only received a few hundred that took the time to click on the new link and verify their email address.

Boy, did that hurt! Now I use nothing but double opt in and no freebies! Now the pop ups or web forms to sign up has enough of inducements to attract a steady flow of new and eager to spend money on valuable tools and resources.

One side note: I do offer incentives on Amazing Marketing Videos as this is not an ezine or newsletter but a series of hot, valuable business building videos and David Valliere's excellent 7 week lesson, "How To Make Money Online". Depending on your web sites purpose you can offer freebies and still profit.

Don't make the same mistake, get a good autoresponder with double opt in, which requires the subscriber to verify their email. Make a loud point of telling them in your thank you page to not use free email accounts...Yahoo, Hotmail etc. as they aggressively filter out non-spam emails. Don't offer a freebie or any other kind of enticement except a newsletter that will deliver what you promise.