The Lockwood Letter

You might have heard about one of the “listbuilding” sites that sprouts up every so often, with some wild claims about building a list of 5000 people overnight.

I got a bunch of emails telling me how great this “free” site is, so I signed up as a free member to see what was there.

It looks like just another safelist to me. (A safelist is an arrangement where you get a bunch of email you don’t want in exchange for being able to send your messages to people who don’t want them.)

If it’s YOUR list, why do you have to send the emails from their site, why do your messages say they are from that site rather than from you, and why do you not know who your messages are being sent to?

Another indicator that it’s a safelist is that it claims it is NOT a safelist. (If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but insists it’s a swan, it’s probably still a duck after all.)

The ads I got assured me that the site had a powerful set of listbuilding tools, even if I didn’t take one of the paid upgrades. I checked, but all I could find were tools for promoting the site itself. Where are the tools to build MY list?

The biggest problem with sites like this is that you’re not building your list, but the site owner’s list.

You do get to email other members, but since they are chosen at random, you would be emailing different people each time rather than building a relationship with them. And since many people who join these sites use email addresses they never check, so hardly any of your messages will be read.

After all, the other people joined so they could send their messages, not so they could read yours.

Did I mention that you only get to send emails if you buy a paid upgrade or send members to the site? Why work to send people there instead of to your own sites? Maybe in the hopes that some will buy paid upgrades which will be as useless to them as what I’ve described already?

Did I mention that even if you send people to the site and they buy upgrades, it seems that you only get paid commissions if you are a paid member yourself? In other words, you have to pay for the right to receive commissions, which I could have sworn was illegal in some areas.

Throw in all the charts and talk of levels and matrixes and so on, and it sounds very complicated and pyramidy to me. Probably complicated enough that it will lure in many people who don’t know better.

Now to be fair, there are some people who will make out like bandits with this site: the owners and the big list owners who jumped on board right away.

I’ve found sites like this to be marginally useful, if you use the mailings to offer a free report or some other incentive to join your list. But the only reason I was able to mail to more than a few people was that I got a paid upgrade as a bonus to something else.

I knew about the site before it launched, and I could have bought a paid upgrade, then sent you a copy and paste message about how you need to join right away. I could have gotten a bunch of people to join, and some would have paid for upgrades, and I would have made some nice commissions.

But knowing how useless sites like these are for the vast majority of people who join them, I couldn’t do that. I feel much better just telling you the unvarnished truth, like I’m doing here.

You might have seen some emails from people claiming they already made back several times their investment… which is amazingly similar to the first people who join a Ponzi or pyramid scheme. Early “investors” always make money, which is how more people are lured in. (Also very pyramid sounding are the comments about how you have to get in right now to be successful with it.)

I believe their claims, by the way, but what they aren’t pointing out is that they already have huge lists, so the way they made their easy money is by promoting the site to those huge lists.

But what about the little guy? Isn’t this site supposed to be about listbuilding? Yes, but it’s about building the site owners’ list, not yours.

Am I saying this new site is a pyramid scheme? No, just pointing out some similarities. My real objection is how many unsuspecting people will waste their time and money on this and get sidetracked from working on their businesses.

Many of the people promoting this should realize that as well, so what does it say about them that they are trying so hard to push this on you?

My recommendation? Check out the site if you want to, but don’t pay for an upgrade. If you find those amazing free listbuilding tools, please let me know.

I’m not even going to give you a link to it, since no doubt you’ve already been sent plenty of them.

If you want to get involved with a matrix, stick with the Keanu Reeves movies.

And if you want a real course in building your own lists from someone who’s a real expert at it, without gimmicks or the need to push questionable programs on others, this is the single best one I’ve found: Best Listbuilding Course. It won’t cost you an arm and a leg, either.