Would you like to send your commercial emails to people you do not know, but are expecting to receive such mail from you? That does not sound right. How can this be? It is simple, if you know what is really going on. Everybody who is on these lists, also known as safe lists, knows that they will be receiving mail from other members. This is possible because that is one of the conditions of their “safe list” membership. And those who join these lists are willing to agree to this condition because they themselves would want to send out their own commercial emails to the others on the list. The result: everyone is sending emails to each other but no one is reading them! It gets worse when some savvy members sign up for the membership using a free or less-frequently-used account to store the useless emails they will never bother to open and read. Having said that, it is always wiser to start your own mailing list and build it with opt-in subscribers, no matter how tempting safe lists can be or how many members there are in a safe list. Using Free Reports to Build Your List. Aside from pre-selling your products and affiliated offers, the other purpose of your free viral report should be to build your mailing list. This is because if you are unable to pre-sell, let alone sell, the products and services featured in your free report, the last ditch effort should be to collect leads. In short, if you cannot convert the reader into a ready buyer, you should then attempt to convert him or her into your subscriber. In that manner, you can still follow up with your reader on future offers and have a chance at converting him or her into your customer, preferably lifetime. You can do so by offering a lifetime update to your report or a unique notification list your reader will be interested in subscribing to, which leads to having him or her subscribed to your mailing list. One of the few success factors in viral marketing of your free report is quality. If your readers find your information worth sharing, and you encourage them to do so by giving them the right to give your report away for free, you will be able to have your name, status and links within the report passed around without any effort on your part – simply because others are willing to do so for you!