The most time consuming role of being an internet marketer is building a legitimate subscriber base. Due to anti-Spam regulations in the US, where you face serious fines and penalties, you are no longer permitted to purchase lists of customer details (email address) that have been harvested via spamming robots.

Building a legitimate subscriber list requires that people respond to an offer where they provide their name and email address in exchange for information or products that you can provide them. As an internet marketer, this provides you with a legal covering for collecting a customers details.

This is called permission based emailing.

At the time of collection, you will also need to pick up the customers IP Address and Data and Timestamp, which is handled automatically by an autoresponder. These two pieces of information allow you to demonstrate that you collected their email details from their computers IP Address, on a certain date. If you want to avoid facing heavy penalties and possible ban from the authorities, you will need to ensure that you have these two pieces of information.

There are two types of signup forms that can be used to collect name and email details, and they differ in their usage. They are called single opt-in (or just opt-in) forms, and double opt-in forms.

Opt-in forms are also commonly called squeeze pages, or gateway pages. The purpose with opt-in forms is to offer some information or a product in exchange for a customers email details. With single opt-in forms, a user just enters their name and email address into the place fields and can retrieve the information or product straight away.

The risk with single opt-in forms is that anyone can submit a false (someone elses) email address in the email fields, and retrieve the information. Even dummy email addresses can be used to obtain the information or product.

As a result, the internet marketer may experience two types of problems:
1. SPAM complaints if another email address is used that is not the owner, the actual person may complain to the authorities and get the website banned, or face huge fines.
2. Dummy emails they do not provide any method of future contact with the customer, and the list of subscribers doesnt grow.

Double opt-in forms, on the other hand, eliminate SPAM complaints and reduce the number of dummy email addresses down to zero. This is done using an interim step in the sign up phase. Instead of providing the information or product directly upon signup, an email is sent back to the subscriber with a confirmation link that they need to click.

This confirms that they are actually the owner of the email address that they provided, which reduces SPAM complaints. In addition, this allows the list owner to build a legitimate customer base.

Using double opt-in forms for customer sign ups is the recommended way to legally build your subscriber base.