For those who have been in Internet marketing for any amount of time, you have heard how important it is to own a list to email. You can read it on just about every Internet marketing website on the Internet “The Money Is In The List”. But the question is, do you need to grow your own mailing list or can you employ safelists.

Here we’ll address this question and hopefully give you a clearer idea on how you should run your email marketing.

Let’s go over safelists. A safelist is a group of people who agree to be sent emails from other people in the group. Typically, you have the choice to join for free but 99% of these websites have additional features for individuals who prefer to pay for them. Once you join you will be receiving emails from other people who are likewise a member of the site. For the most part, each email you receive will contain something referred to as a credit link that you must click on to earn credits, this is known as a credit based safelist. At this juncture, you can trade your credits for mailing other members, and when they get your email they must click the credit link to earn credits and they see your site when they do.

The main concern with safelists is that no one is there to purchase anything. Honestly, you can earn money selling goods on safelists, but you’re not going to make enough money there.

On the flip side, you can make use of safelists that is worth your time. Now, if you are interested to have your own list, safelists can help you build it. You can collect people’s email addresses by giving stuff away and having people provide you their name and email address in order to have access to the free item. In no time at all you will have a list of your own you can email each time you want without having to click safelist links to get credits.

When it comes to building your own mailing list, if you aim to succeed in the long run as an Internet marketer, this is something you need to do. Just about any successful Internet marketer will tell you that every individual on your own mailing list is worth about $1 a month. While that may not seem like a lot of money, think about what happens if you have your own mailing list of 5,000 or 10,000 people?

This also doesn’t mean that everyone on your list sends you $1 every month. The way it is works out is, when you have people on your email list they are more likely to buy from you as long as you give quality, and you should be able to sell 1 product per month to every 1 person out of 50 who are on your email list. Hence, if you have 50 people on your list and you sell just 1 item worth $50 to someone on your list in a month’s time, that is how you get your average, and when you think about it, it’s not that hard to do.

You can even mail a different offer to your email list every day. You can likewise build your list however big you would like it to be, where safelists just let you email so many people every 3 to 7 days. Also, you are not limited on how you grow your list, feel free to employ any strategy you want. Safelists are merely one way to help you get going.

You can incorporate a web form on your blog so people can be updated, then you can email them also and your mailing list keeps growing. It doesn’t stop there though, you can use any method or program you like that can help you grow your list. In essence, the sky is the limit when it comes to building a list.

So, safelist or your own mailing list, which one should you devote your time and effort on? You should be using safelists but only to the point where it is helping you build your own mailing list.