Fat chance.

I'm not saying that all publishers do this; I know many that clean their lists on a regular basis. The long-time publishers who have grown their lists by traditional means certainly do. That's why they can command good prices for advertising - and get it.

But how many of you have guts to do what I did?

MAKE THEM RE-CONFIRM EVERY YEAR.

Go ahead - I challenge you.

Make them take some sort of action that REQUIRES them to say "Yes, keep me on your list." Or else they don't get newsletter. Period. No exceptions.

Watch those subscriber numbers drop like a rock - and watch your "open rate" climb.

Because what you're really after is sustained, loyal readership. Trusting subscribers who know that you are going to provide them with good, solid information.

And you're going to have to give it to them - otherwise, you'll never accomplish what it is you intended to do when you started publishing your newsletter.

Like making money.

Dogs often dig holes in ground and bury their treasured bones to keep them safe. Similarly, we list owners should also constantly utilize backup function on our listservers (or manually backup on our own if such a function is unavailable) to retrieve our valuable list of emails and bury them somewhere safe.

This goes for ALL important data, including your website, articles that you have written, important passwords, and anything of value that you don't want to lose.

If you have an extra hard drive, a CD-writer, or one of those not-so-popular 100 MB disk drives, now is your chance to put it to use! Provided that your backup device has not already rusted or rotted from ages of dust, having a backup in hand is always better than nothing.

Backup your important files as frequently as possible as you will never know when something terrible will happen to your treasured mailing list, website, or hard drive. As lazy as I am, I do it AT LEAST once every two weeks.

Don't count on your webhost or list hosting company to backup your data for you; do it for your own peace of mind.

To be successful online (and that includes being a good mailing list builder), we must learn to be a BIG DOG. And BIG DOGS always bury their bones in safest of places.

About the Author:

Sean Wu is the founder of MoneyALLY.com, a newly launched website aimed at helping people make money online. To check out his site that's JAM-PACKED with incredible online money-making tips, FREE E-books, and profitable secrets, visit: