The Answer To An Ezine Publisher Problem
Author: Dave Everett

When you first make your decision to publish your own ezine, one of the first problems you will face is how to get each issue out to your subscribers.

The simple answer to that problem used to be to employ the services of an autoresponder provider, but it is just not that straightforward these days.

For most of the life to date of this ezine, the subscriber list has been hosted with one of the major autoresponder companies. When I signed up with them I considered that I had found the perfect list host.

The aspect I particularly liked was the ability to use many different forms of tracking to know where your subscribers are coming from. This knowledge can be indispensible when deciding the marketing methods you will use to promote your ezine.

I still believe that they provide an extremely worthwhile autoresponder service, but not necessarily as a vehicle for ezine distribution. I encountered two major problems.

The first problem is that you cannot import a list of subscribers without an email being sent to them requesting confirmation that they do indeed wish to become a subscriber to your list.

I can understand the reasoning behind this. This rule is enforced to stop spammers adding just anyone to their list, whether they have requested inclusion or not.

However, as an ezine publisher you will encounter many perfectly honorable methods of obtaining subscribers that do not involve the new subscriber subscribing directly to your list. These new subscribers will come to you either via email or a web link and need to be added manually to your list.

I receive subscribers from a service known as OptinBank. Once every two weeks, the details of the new subscribers are made available to members via a web page.

There are services available that will send you subscribers in exchange for you giving them a free ad in your ezine. There are also co-registration services where you can buy subscribers.

All of these services are supplying you with opt in subscribers who have already agreed to be placed on your ezine mailing list. But... if you then expect them to reply to yet another email asking for confirmation of this, many of them will not bother.

If you have just paid out $200 for 1,000 subscribers, I guarantee you won't be very pleased to lose the majority of them as "confirmation casualties".

It would be only fair to point out at this stage that this is not a problem that is exclusive to the service that I used - the majority of autoresponder providers have adopted this stance in an effort to combat spam. They don't really have a lot of choice and I would do exactly the same in their shoes.

The second problem encountered is that of broadcasting. If you elect to use the free autoresponder services, you will likely find that you do not get broadcasting facilities. This means that you cannot mail out the issues of your ezine to your subscribers.

The major paid-for services do allow broadcasting, but the service I was with only allowed up to 1,000 messages to be sent per day. Any more than that and there is an extra monthly fee payable. So woe betide you if your subscriber list rises above 1,000.

So, given these problems, what is the answer?

There are, of course, professional list hosting companies, but these tend to be beyond the budget of the fledgling ezine publisher.

During the course of this past week, I think I have finally cracked it. I am hosting the list myself on my own server.

I have found what appears to be, at first sight, a very reliable script that takes care of everything for me.

Forms on the website, pop-up optin boxes, subscriptions via email - all are available and run automatically. The script I am using is the Add2it Mailman Pro.

I would like to say installation was a breeze - well, it was almost. I must confess that the errors I made during the install were all mine - I can't blame the script. And I did eventually get it installed without screaming for any help. But even if I should have needed help, there is a forum available where most questions have been answered already.

Using this script has totally eliminated the two problems detailed above. I can broadcast anytime I want and to as many as I like, plus I can add as many subscribers as I need to without them having to complete a second confirmation.

You can get full details of this script and the others that are offered by Add2it by going to:
http://www.add2it.com

Dave Everett, Publisher of Your Marketing Letter ...
http://yourmarketingletter.com

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