What's the purpose of having a huge email list?

Main reason to have an email list of any size. Is to build a "relationship" with the people on that list in order to have a list of prospects that would be willing to buy products that you offer. It is also an effective tool for affiliate marketers. When you have a list of people that you can contact about affiliate products that you are promoting, you will likely be more successful. With a list you can repetitively contact people with offers. Without a list you can only rely on traffic to your site.

It is important to understand that an email list is only as good as the relationship that the list owner has with the subscribers on that list. Remember that a list is actually a group of people. People buy from other people or companies that they know, like and trust. Provide value free information or tools that the people on your list will have an interest in. If you can do this on a consistent basis. When you do have a product to offer, you will likely have more people that want to buy from you. It is also important to realize that people don't want to be sold to 10 times a day. All I mean is be tactful in your approach to making offers.

Eric

Yep, couldn't have said it much better myself. Provide tons of value and build trust. Then, and only then will you be able to convert valuable offers to your email list.

And a list is only as good as how targeted it is. If you have a list of 100,000 golfers and try to see them baseball bats, you can only imagine how well you'll do.

Mike

It should also be mentioned that having a HUGE list is not required. If you cultivate a list of 500 people who pay attention to what you say, have purchased your products before, and are responsive to your offers, it can often be better than having a larger list of 5,000 freebie seekers and unresponsive users.

Yes it does need to be a targeted list. But that's like asking, why do I need a bunch of customers in my store?

There is all kinds of stuff you can do with a list - my monthly newsletter goes out to around 26,000 people.

Some of the stuff that I use my list for:

Remind people about your site, and to keep visiting
Notify members of specials and sales
Rent your list out - email people on your list on behalf of others
Monthly newsletter - telling people of interesting post on your site, new youtube videos, any new contest or giveaways.

All of the responses above are fantastic, and I think they have given you a wealth of information. One thing that a targeted email list can do for you is provide you with a valuable asset for your business.

Say you have a list of 10,000, and on average 20% of these people open your emails. That means everytime you want to promote a product or service (your own or an affiliate offer) you can instantly get 2,000 people to that offer.

Very powerful marketing tactic.

having list is about creating relationship with targeted people.
let's say you are in weight loss niche.
there are 1,000 subscribers in your list
you always email them routinely with super value.
one day you review a very good product related with weight loss and email them
there are bigger chance that they will buy that product.why?
because they know you,they trust your, they love your email and they know you are the expert so, since you recommend it, they will buy it through your affiliate link.ka-ching..(it's just an example of monetizing it with aff.marketing).
you can do more to get more money.
hope this helps

Yeah, one can imagine the potential for sales with affiliate marketing when you've got 10,000+ subscribers on a list. That's what I'm working towards.