If you have been trying to get into online marketing for more than five minutes, I’m sure you have come across the ads: “1,000,000 e-mail addresses for just $29.99.” It sounds tempting – after all, everyone tells us that “the money is in the list”, so the more people you have on your list, the better – right? And a million names would sure make a good list – right?

Well, actually, in both cases only partly right.

For a start, those 1,000,000 e-mail addresses have probably been “harvested” by bots – programs that troll illicitly through the internet
, grabbing e-mail addresses from wherever they can find them, without ever asking the owner’s permission, much less receiving it. Most of the people on those lists don’t even know that they are on them – until they start receiving a load of unwanted spam. (I get at least half a dozen e-mails a day offering me discount men’s enhancement products – and I’m a woman!!)