Tiffany Dow is becoming a well-respected and well-liked Internet marketer for using her common sense to look out for the best interests of customers.

Her email today rails at the extremes some marketers go to in their quest to obtain optin email addresses.

Like her, I’m annoyed when I go to a sales page, get involved in reading the first paragraph, and then am interrupted by this optin box requesting my email address. The least offense always are blocking my view of the sales letter. Then there’s a type of optin box that “freezes” the entire page, forcing you to respond to it. As she points out, some of them now move around the page, forcing you to chase it to click on the close button.

Marketers are taught from day one that the money is in the list, and that obtaining an email address is, in the long run, better than obtaining an immediate sale. I guess that’s why so many seem unconcerned about annoying prospects while they’re reading sales letters. I’m sure I’m not the first person who’s clicked away from a sales letter I wanted to read, just to escape the optin box annoying me.

And I do subscribe to many Internet marketing lists - I’m probably on hundreds of them. So I’m not afraid to optin, if only to get rid of the box.

So what. I got news for Internet marketers — having me on your email list is not such a triumph, especially if it cost you an immediate sale. If I don’t remember you from a product I liked, I’m not any more likely to buy your next product.

And if I remember that I opted in because you twisted my arm, I’m just as likely to opt out soon anyway.

Tiffany goes on to criticize the practice of forcing people who are already on your list to optin again for some kind of free report or other info.

That is why I’m no longer on Ken McCarthy’s list. Every time he sent out an email announcing a free call to promote the next System Seminar, he forced you to opt in. Look, Ken, I was already on your list, so what was the point of that? If the free call is for everybody on your list, don’t make us opt in to your list over and over again.

For leads not already on your list — sure, make them opt in.

I finally got tired of opting in for every allegedly free call and unsubscribed. The aggravation wasn’t worth it.

Such tactics actually convince me that having an email list is not the surefire way to a lifetime of Internet marketing residual riches as is claimed.

See, I’m an old hand. I’ve seen these tricks and I’m tired of them. They work on the newbies, on the continual stream of people who decide they want to make money online but don’t even know the basics.

So the gurus with huge lists are finding — I suspect — that people are unsubscribing in droves, forcing them to add more people in any way they can.

Relying on a steady stream of newcomers to the field is the only explanation I can figure for the way gurus maltreat their lists and yet sell products for two grand.

I don’t know whether this game will ever end, but I do know that it’s not the easy, permanent residual income that it’s made out to be.

Next: learn how to improve your health, feel better and have more strength and energy using the Pilates Performer and Pilates mats.