I spent the time going through each one reading their whole "dear friend" spiel, clicking on all their links, and reading their affiliate pages. At first, I thought mailing list it was cool, I felt like I had my finger on the pulse of marketing - getting the information before it was to hit mainstream. Although soon I was receiving more than one email a day from 18 of those lists, none of them ever was giving me real information.
They just pushed some new (and sometimes old) affiliate programs down my throat. As the weeks progressed, it got worse, there were these "ramp up" sales pitches, you know which ones I'm talking about. Such and such is about to launch mailing list his "great new affiliate program", it's going to make millions, be one of the first to sign up, it doesn't start till 6 hours from now.
Two hours later and I receive another email from the same mailing list basically restating what it said the first time only with 4 hours to go. What the heck dude? You think I don't remember the first email you sent two hours ago? Now not all of them mailing list were this way, I had two lists that I am still on today. The reason I chose to stay on those two lists were that they did not make me feel like sheep.