It's all about numbers - or so some ezine publishers would have you believe.

10,000 subscribers and counting! 20,000 subscribers and counting! 30,000 subscribers and counting!

You get picture...or do you?

Now let me ask you - how many of those are actually READING your newsletter? Do you even know? Have you checked?

You might really be surprised!

I've got bad news - especially for those publishers who use free ads to entice their readers to subscribe.

If your publication is business-oriented, you're lucky if 10% ever lay eyes on that wonderful work you labored so long over. And if it's filled with dozens and dozens of ads from all free and low-cost ad placement programs now available, I have three words for you -

- can you say, "scan and delete?"

Because that's exactly what majority of your subscribers are doing. I promise.

That is, those who are even GETTING your newsletter.

Now I know that most of you, especially ones who are currently still running those free ads, know that what I am saying is true.

While subject of successfully building a mailing list has been widely covered and discussed, it is surprising that very few ever mention about how to protect your hard-earned list.

Anyone who has been building a responsive mailing list for sometime will definitely recognize time and effort that must be sacrificed in order to obtain thousands of subscribers. For new list builders, sometimes getting a few hundred subscribers means weeks of late nights and consistent promotional efforts.

Why then, do I always hear news about successful list owners losing their entire subscriber base due to a crash on servers hosting their lists?

Recently, I've heard news of a successful list builder who have been building his list for over 5 years that lost his entire 10,000+ subscriber base due to an unrecoverable crash on server his list was hosted on.

While idea of losing 10,000+ subscribers almost overnight sends a spine tingling shiver through backs of most list builders, I rarely observe list owners making constant efforts to backup their lists. In most cases, it is only when they've heard about other people's tragedy that they run out and utilize "backup" function on their listservers.