Ah! Lawyers! I love lawyers the way most people love dentists.

My original thought was the privacy policy we so often read that states, “blah-blah marketing hates spam and we will never share your email address with anyone else.”
To me, I interpret that as the list is the property of blah-blah marketing or Blogger-Boy’s Blog and not personally to the owner or any future owner (or Blogger-Boy himself.) I have a friend who works as a sole proprietor of 2 different businesses and she would never cross lists even though there is a strong relation between the two entities so I see where you’re coming from.

As an end-user, the only time I’m really annoyed with an opt-in is if the RSS feed and the email are identical since I prefer RSS feeds. I guess it all goes back to idea that, “Content is King,” and if I don’t want to be perceived as a spammer with pop-up opt-ins or mini-videos that launch every time a user visits my site, I just shouldn’t act like one.

I have never heard a pro blogger or Internet Marketing pro that didn’t have a positive experience with Aweber and I will probably use them if/WHEN I start building a list.

Just an FYI here on the “spamminess” of the IM industry. Of the multitude of email addresses I use for subscriptions and on-line accounts, the one with the most spam is the one I set up for job hunting. You Internet Marketing pros got nothing on those vultures!

Now that’s out of the way…:) I relied on AWeber to guide me when I chose to sell a couple of sites that had a list of subscribers attached to them. I trust AWeber know the laws around email subscription and transfer of those addresses; to my knowledge they are the market leader in the industry. Their response to me was that I could transfer a list of subscribers to another AWeber account if that account was in good standing.

Good standing was defined around, but not limited to, things such as no high spam score and the account invoices being paid and up to date. Because I sold the websites that the subscriber emails were submitted to, I felt it was reasonable to pass on the associated email addresses. If I simply gave the list to someone unrelated to the websites then I would think that’s highly inappropriate. Amazingly, the buyer of the sites didn’t want the subscriber lists. Still, I would never sell the list or give it away or even pitch to it myself.

It’s easy to think of list building as some sort of spammy marketing method but you only have to look at some of the most popular websites in the world. They have newsletters and all kinds of offers that get people onto their lists, the subscribers want the newsletters and updates though…it’s a service to be kept up to date via email you see?

I really dislike RSS and much prefer to be sent an email update myself, but a lot of bloggers/sites don’t do that. My own figures from my old blog prove I’m not the only one who prefers email updates to RSS.

It’s all those spammy emails we’ve gotten that makes us feel like email marketing is not wanted, but we tend to be more exposed to it given we’re studying Internet marketing. Don’t deny your site visitors the convenience of being updated of news, special offers etc; if they like your content they’ll happily opt-in.

You, along with everyone else, almost have me convinced that I should put in an opt-in to build a mailing list on my sites – just trying to move my mindset from “hobby business” to “pro business” here.

My question is in regards to selling a site. Given privacy laws, is it legal to include that list in the sale? It’s obviously a great asset but I have to wonder how the people on the list would feel and if they should be given a heads up about the sale with the usual “unsubscribe” option.

If you could address this in a future post, that would be great.