Hey people, ive been following this great and helpful post from kickapooh here and of course lots of excited black-hatters hoping they can pay someone to setup a VPS, scrape a few hundred thousand emails and they will buy Ferrari in a few months.
However I think im in a position to offer some additional advice which may help you in your decision making...
As Kickapooh mentioned early on in the thread and in many other comments from people who have tried or trying this method (just like next2doors above) it needs re-itterating, this is NOT a get rick quick scheme and the following needs VERY careful consideration....
ADULT / PORN LINKS CONSIDERATION
One of the biggest potential "issues" with this method is the money is only in ADULT AFFILIATE LINKS, not marriage, love or traditional dating links - POF killed that years ago. This means by scraping emails you will be at some point sending adult orientated (18+) links to minors (under 18), The elderly, pregnant moms, teachers and law enforcement to name a few. I hear some of you gasp but this is a FACT. You simply wont have the demographics of the emails you scrape with this method to avoid this.
Now what do you think will happen to a small percentage of emails that get sent to kids, office workers and moms at home? COMPLAINTS and ABUSE from these people with too much time on their hands! Most will be just swear words, removal requests etc but some will go the extra mile and try to find you or your business and shut you down. This is partly where the "use a false verified paypal account" or "trade emoney to buy your sever" suggestion to pay for your VPS is mentioned earlier because some people and companies get seriously PISSED and you need to cover your ass legally at all ends (and get a good lawyer ;-). (We had a case last year where the guy went all the way to the ISP and subpoena'd them to close our account)
OPT IN AND LEGAL CONSEQUENCES
For the record scraped emails are NOT opt in and depending where you reside may or may not be legal to email market - laws differ all over the globe on this and you should check if you care. IPs are traceable to your home address depending on your ISP and as i mentioned above depending on how pissed some people get they will try to find you, your ISP, or at worst try to take your affiliate account out of business and stop your income. Its luck of the draw. The last Wild west. This is not to scare or gossip, its the truth. Noobs please note Unless a user signs up and confirms they are not opt-in and you wont know which users do as the affiliate program WONT tell you.
AFFILIATE TERMS
99.9% of dating affiliate programs BAN emailing as an affiliate marketing method in their terms. They may well "accept" them for any period of time but there is NO guarantee they will pay you in accordance with the terms of the program. Period. The affiliate employee might be friendly on Skype, might pay you for a month or much more but the RISK needs to be explained and weighed up particularly for the newbies in this thread.
I have read some people talking about spending hundreds or thousands setting this up without and ounce of email or indeed dating marketing knowledge (and it would take $$$$$ unless you are a system admin yourself and v proficient in email) and you need to understand the risk that you might NOT be paid AT ALL for your time and investment if you were to mess any part of it up, dont send the "right" traffic or convert at the right rate, or id the affiliate program just dont like you. Its their call.
TECHNICALLY SPEAKING
Finally, emailing on this scale is full time and HARD work, i know we are all not shy of work but this is technically hard work too -24/7/365. You've already read about the SPF, DKIM, FBL, RBL, Spamhouse, MXtoolbox Sender Score etc and yes some of these could be outsourced at a charge but you'll need to do the work checking and understanding their implementation as ultimately you are the mailer (unless you simply give the technical staff all your lists, knowledge and accounts and hope he doesnt sell or trade them)
As an example of the above, expect to wake up and your entire nights mailing has been lost as they pulled your landing page(s) VPS due to complaints or as kickapoo mentioned you hit bulk or worst "blackhole" (neither in or bulk) and no one sees your messages. Your Sunday is now gone as you need to re-direct and re-setup all your lost mail to a the new server and start over and hope that one stays up. Did i mention you paid up front for the server? I wouldn't suggest running it "part time" on the side at all. It simply will cost you more than it makes in time and possibly money.
Im not poo-pooing the method (excuse the pun) but these essential points of the method have not been covered or discussed at depth.
Hope this provides a balanced point of view and food for thought when taking into consideration the excitement and great shares from this post.
