Can 4 Million Emails for $5,000 Be Legit? - Need your help before my brother wastes his money

Well, there ya go.

If your brother seriously wants to buy opt in emails, he can purchase from getresponse. At least they are a well known company. You don't directly purchase the emails but you pay per opt in and they handle everything. I advice your brother NOT to pay for any kind of service like buying emails, even they are opt ins. It will be money thrown down the drain for him since you don't know for what service all those people opted in. Never spend money on untargeted traffic or emails, you will be disappointed. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks Steveka and LB. I appreciate the advice.

Do not purchase opt-in emails, unless you wanna get in trouble with the can-spam law. You don't have permission from the contacts to send them emails.

Let's just put it into more realistic terms...these types of deals are typically either fake (auto generated) or harvested emails.

If it's the former then you might as well burn your money because no one will be reading anything...if it is the latter then not only will you get shut down by your ISP but you could face legal problems as well.

But just to be practical...let's do the math. 4 million emails...harvested. Right away, slash that number in half because most of them will be expired, changed, or "throw away" type emails (remember, these are not legitimately collected emails...they are essentially "stolen" without the users' permission).

So right way you're at 2 million. The minute mail starts hitting these addresses you're going to get blacklisted and the email itself will get added to spamassassin and similar services. MAYBE 10% will get through before that happens and to folks who aren't using those services through their ISP.

So now you're down to 200,000 emails...to people who don't know you, never heard of you, don't care about you and are probably irritated that they're even receiving your mail.

Maybe 10% of them will even open the mail as it will be seen as SPAM. Now we're down to 20,000 people seeing your message.

Now...how often do you click on a SPAM email link...never? I will be super-extremely generous and say 1% of these people will click on a link (it will likely be almost ZERO) but for the sake of argument...1%.

So now we're at 200 people who actually make it to your site...if the good Lord smiles down upon your errant ways maybe one or perhaps two of those misguided souls will purchase from you.

So you just dropped $5,000 to make 2 sales. Maybe. I mean...really, really, really maybe. And in the process your host probably shut you down and your ISP probably canceled your account.

Worth it?

Love the feedback. Let me play devil's advocate.

This guy says that the emails are rented from legitimate lists owners who have agreed to receive emails on the overall topic. Due to bulk renting and scale, he's able to offer the prices his company does. In addition, he claims to have done some great work for a key competitor. The emails would be sent from his servers. We just supply the creative.

Are there any legitimate players in this area?

(I don't think so but want to make sure I'm taking a realistic view and not advising him to bypass a real opportunity.)

Even if it was, the quality would be farmed from any where, it would be a pointless adventure.

Site is of very poor quality compared to their "portfolio".

Thanks for the great insights. Really appreciate the feedback.

Thanks man for your advice. Such impossible claims do seem like a scam.

Tell your brother to put his money in his mouth and pray for lockjaw.