When you're starting your journey down the list building road, you may see offers for buying a list, just buying a list of email subscribers. Wait! Don't ever do that!

Why? you may be saying to yourself. It's the easiest and fastest way to make money.

But is it?

When you buy a list of email addresses, that's all they are--a list. The people on it don't know who you are and may not care a hoot about what it is you're selling. So, where does your message go? Into the recycle bin with the rest of the spam.

Because that's basically what it is--spam.

You haven't given the people on the list a chance to decide. You haven't told them that you have a newsletter about fishing. They haven't chosen to be on your list because they want more information from YOU. Heck, they may not even be fishing people! If they aren't, guess what's going to happen on the very first email? You got it! Unsubscribe.

To make any money at all from an email list, you have to have people on it who trust you. I doubt very much that a list you buy will have anyone who knows you, let alone people on it who will trust you.

Even worse, you may get into big trouble for spamming. If you buy this list, will you be able to prove the date, time, and ISP that each member signed up from?

There's also the issue of getting them into your autoresponder. Some autoresponders will take input lists, but others frown on importing names and addresses. If an autoresponder service does it at all, the email addresses will have to be approved by the administration, and then, your list will have to opt-in again. How many of them will? Probably not many.

So, OK... an autoresponder is included with this list, maybe.

Is it worth the risk of losing your own ISP for spamming? How much money will you make from a bunch of people that don't know you from the cat up the street? I mean, really? How much money will you lose, if this is what you're going to base all your list building efforts on?

Lots.

But don't get buying email lists confused with co-registration. Those are two different things. With co-registration, people at least have the benefit of opting in to whatever it is you're getting them to opt in for. If you're list building with a newsletter, they know what it's all about. If you're list building with an ezine, they know what it's about. And here's the big thing...

It's something they're interested in.

If you want to start out right with list building, co-registration is a good alternative to doing it organically. By organic I mean, putting up a squeeze page and driving traffic to it. That's probably the best way because not only are your visitors going to be highly targeted, they're interested in what you have to say. Co-registration is just faster.

Don't spend a lot of money on buying email lists. List building should be done with the viability of the list member in mind at all times. If you aren't list building around an interested crowd, you really aren't list building.

Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. Learn how to build a powerful and responsive list quickly through his premiere list-building course, MyFirstList.com.