The reason is that there are so many list building services on offer out there. If you head on over to a search engine, and do a search for list building methods, you'll be attacked by all sorts of products and services, most of them I hate to say it, don't work. The old have a 100k mailing list by the end of the week type of service, which some of us fell for in our early years for example. What you'll find however, is that buying leads and all that fluff aren't so important. You know why? I can tell you that with a mere five thousand people on your list, if you follow this guide here, and take it slow and steady, you'll find that you out do most of the 20k lists out there, because your list is of better quality. We don't want a huge list of fifty thousand freebie-seekers, or fifty thousand people that are there and are untargeted, or people that have even been paid or bribed in some way by a lead generation company or some such business to join your list. All you'll find yourself doing is sending mails out to thousands upon thousands of people that never respond to you, at a great cost to you and your pocket, but to the gains of whoever you paid for these leads.
I should say at this point that there are people out there who do make their living through unsolicited email, numbers over quantity. They pick up servers in other countries that don't have anti spam laws, or are not restrictive in any way, and send out millions upon millions of mails, and sure they make money. In my eyes however, this is not online marketing. It's not ethical, it doesn't build a solid business base for your future, and it gives those of us with legitimate lists a bad name. It just makes our lives harder than they need to be. If this is the kind of info you're looking for, you won't find it here. We're looking at real business.