Mailing lists are normally “rented” for “one-time-use” only and because they’re just a list of names the mark-up is quite high. Unfortunately, there’s a big difference in quality between the names managed and sold by professional list brokers and the names being sold in the moneymaking and opportunity magazines. If you haven’t seen the mailing list ads in the opportunity publications, you’ll find that you can buy thousands of names for dirt-cheap. Plus, many of these ads offer to let you “Double or Triple Your Order Instantly” and absolutely free! How can they do this when list brokers are charging $500 or more per 1,000 names? Easy.
The names being sold in the magazines are
(a) lower quality names and
(b) mailed into oblivion by people promoting chain letters, pyramid schemes, and other worthless junk.
Becoming a dealer for these type of low-cost mailing lists is a bad idea. While you may make some money, your customers will ultimately come back to you, unhappy with the low response and the high number of undeliverables. My advice is to leave the mailing lists to the professional list brokers who know what they’re doing. If you want to truly get into this business and become a professional list broker, understand that you’ll have to invest a chunk of money into computer equipment and spend a lot of time networking to break into the field. Organizations that have established relationships with their list management companies aren’t likely to move to a new, unproven start-up.
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