Internet Marketing: A Beginner's Perspective

As a newcomer to Internet and Affiliate Marketing, I admit I still have a lot to learn about how all of this works. I paid for a program, that has given me extensive, detailed, step-by-step information, how to go about trying to do this for myself. You can take a look at the program I joined here.
http://www.virallinktracker.com/vlt/links/4886

There are still many areas that I don’t know much about or even what my next steps are supposed to be. Here’s a look at some of the things I’ve experienced so far.

SAFE LISTS

The program I paid for, recommended that I join safe lists. A safe list is a listing of other people who have opted in to receive information about that specific topic. In Affiliate Marketing, as a member of that safe list I could send email advertisements, promotions or newsletters to other members about web sites, products, or services that I’m promoting. Those emails are not considered to be Spam, since everyone agreed to receive that information, when we “opted in” by joining that safe list.

Since I’m doing this on a limited budget, I joined one safe list as a free member. Soon I was receiving a large amount of emails, that other members wanted to promote to me. These were emails hoping I’d sign up, join this program, click on that link and most important of all, pay for the products that other affiliate marketers were promoting to me.

As a non-paying member of this safe list, I was allowed to post one promotional email ad per week. That didn't seem quite fair. It soon became an unbalanced ratio of emails I was receiving versus, what I was allowed to send out. I’m receiving fifty or more emails a day as opposed to my one promotional email I could submit each week. What’s wrong with that picture?

Nobody told me how much time I’d be spending reading those many emails. Many did lead me to learning about other useful products and programs that I would never have known about. But soon, I asked to be removed from that safe list. I couldn't’t keep up with all the emails I was receiving daily. And that was from only one safe list.

What would have happened if I had signed up with several of them? It might have caused an email explosion at my email address.

It also made it difficult for me to find the emails I might actually need to look at, such as someone inquiring about actually buying one of the products I was promoting, for instance.

Affiliate marketers, seemed to be promoting their products to other affiliate marketers. Was this the way Internet Marketing was supposed to work? Didn’t that leave out a large portion of 0f the population, who weren’t affiliate marketers, who weren’t promoting anything?

It seemed to me, that as affiliate marketers, we were spending our time and efforts promoting to each other. Why would the other members of that safe list buy any products from a newcomer like me, when they were doing the exact same thing that I was doing? They also had more experience doing it, then I did.

I’m sure there are some positive benefits to signing up with safe lists. I certainly learned some helpful things, and learned about products and services I would never have known about or even where to look for them. But I was spending more time, reading those emails and clicking on all those different links, and less time writing my own promotional ads or articles.

I’ve read that you’re supposed to start building lists: one about your potential prospects, and another list of your customers, who have actually purchased a product or service from you. I just don’t quite understand how other affiliate marketers would fall into either one of those categories, when they’re doing the exact same thing that I’m trying to do.

Maybe I’ll have one of those “light bulb” moments, when I have a clearer understanding of all the benefits I can receive my being a member of a safe list. I haven’t yet had that “aha” moment however.

I’m still learning how Internet Marketing works. After all, I’m new at all of this!