If you don’t have a website you are probably one of the thousands of people who think the only way they can make money online is by affiliate marketing. And affiliate marketing is great. I’m an affiliate marketer too!

But did you know you’re not limited to affiliate marketing even if you don’t have a website?

Well you’re not because it is possible to resell products online from a free blog on blogger.com and ebay.

You see, there is an affordable online ecommerce solution you probably haven’t heard about that can solve the biggest problem you have when you want to resell products and have no website. And that problem is, a secure place to host your product for instant product delivery. The free file hosting services I mentioned in “How To Build Email List – Ways To Deliver A Gift Without A Website” aren’t secure since people can pass around your download link.

Now to be totally honest with you I haven’t used this ecommerce solution since I own several sites. But then I haven’t used blogger.com for a couple of years for the same reason. I did however login to 1 of my old blogs to see if you can still upload images and put payment buttons in a blog post. And you can.

Anyway, I have been very diligent and checked them out. From what I read on the Warrior Forum and sites using this service, it is highly recommended and Aweber recognizes them as a viable payment processor option. It’s affordable at $5 a month, uses Paypal and a few other payment processors, it’s easy to set up a product for sale and create a buy now or a shopping cart button and it’s secure because it gives the buyer an instant download link that can expire if you want. Oh, and it hosts the downloadable product on it’s secure server and if you use Paypal it deposits the payment straight into your Paypal account.

Plus…

Want a bonus benefit for selling through this ecommerce solution?

Ops, sorry. I got carried away with all the sales email I’ve been reading lately. But they do have 1 more feature you’ll like.

You can set up an affiliate program for each of your products. They do all the affiliate tracking just like paydotcom.com and you pay your affiliates through Paypal.

Ready to check out this service? Go to e-junkie and tell them Susan sent you. They won’t know who I am but that’s OK. You can tell them anyway.

Update: If you use the coupon SusanSentMe when you register you’ll get a 60 day trial instead of 7 day trial.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Here are 3 videos showing you how easy it is to set up and use e-junkie.

How To Add A Product To Your E-Junkie Account

How To Set Up An Affiliate Program In E-Junkie

How to Integrate Aweber and E-junkie

P.P.S. Here are 2 places where you can get resell products at a really good price.

http://www.dollar-saver-deals.com/Clearance/
http://www.susancarrollhome.com/prudent-resellers/

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Earlier this year Frank Bauer posted a blog article that caught my attention, “Warning: Did Aweber turn into PayPal?”.

Now if you’re not an Aweber user you may think this article doesn’t pertain to you or your business but you could be wrong. True, the article talks about Frank’s Aweber experience however the information is pertinent to everyone using a paid aurtoresponder service.

Briefly, here are the 5 reasons Aweber closed 2 of Frank’s accounts without warning:

1. “Spam complaints about mailings done via other systems that pointed to sites with Aweber forms on them.”
2. “Attempting to hide the unsubscribe link in messages.”
3.”Batching of subscribers thru non native forms.”
4. “Numerous blacklisted URLs contained in messages.”
5. “Feedback loop contained rates.”

To get all the details about what each of these means and how to avoid them you can read Frank’s article.

However after reading the article I had 1 major question left unanswered.

In the article Frank stated he was using the Butterfly Marketing script on one of the sites where his account had been closed and asked Tom Kulzer, the owner and CEO of Aweber, if using this script was considered “batching of subscribers.” This question was left unanswered when Tom replied that the Butterfly Marketing script was not being used and the question was irrelevant.

Since I use Aweber and have installed the Butterfly Marketing script on 1 of my sites I really wanted an answer to Frank’s question. In addition I know there are other Aweber users using similar scripts that allow people to fill out 1 form and have the information collected for their own database while sending it on to their autoresponder service.

So I went in search of an answer and here’s what I found in the Aweber FAQs:

Can I Submit Subscribers to AWeber via Another Script?

Submitting subscribers to AWeber via a server-side script (PHP, ASP, ColdFusion, etc.) is not permitted.

This also applies to any membership software or server-side shopping cart software that you may have installed on your site.

And the reason they have this policy makes perfect sense. They are in the message delivery business and need  to keep their delivery rate high. To do this they must have an audit trail for each subscriber to prove to ISPs that subscribers actually went to a site and requested information.

While the Aweber answer gives much more information including an alternative to using an automated script the answer wasn’t the easiest thing to find. It’s not stated as a direct and easy to understand statement in their service agreement. And because they don’t mention the names of any of the popular scripts you can’t use any of those names to search their FAQs and find it.

In the end Frank decided the best alternative he had for not using one of the major autoresponder services and running the risk of losing his subscribers was to use his own software on one of his own servers. And that’s a good way to solve the problem if you happen to own your own server and have the time or staff to install and maintain your own autoresponder.

Conclusion:

Most of us don’t have the resources necessary to implement Frank’s solution. Therefore I recommend you use an established and reliable paid service like Aweber and follow their rules. If you decide to use some type of automated script to send subscriber information to your service find out if it’s allowed. If you can’t find your answer in the service agreement or FAQ’s then do what I would had done if I had not found the answer – contact their tech support.

What Do You Think?

From the tone of Frank’s article I concluded that he felt having his accounts terminated was unjustified. And while I do sympathize I understand Aweber’s position.

A better solution may have been for Aweber to suspend his account and send him a warning about cleaning it up. However while some things happen quickly online others take a lot of time and effort, like keeping a good reputation with ISPs,  so I don’t know if this option is even possible.

Therefore, as another Aweber user who doesn’t want to be affected by Frank’s actions, I am glad Aweber did what was necessary for the good of their other clients.

What do you think?

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. Here are 3 more important things you should know:

1. If you use more than 3 – 4 blank lines before your unsubscribe link in messages it can be considered an attempt to hide the unsubscribe link.

2. “Feedback loop contained rates” has to do with the number of spam complaints you receive. Aweber has a posted policy about spam rates however I know from personal experience that they take other things into consideration. Here’s what Tom told Frank about how they used Frank’s 5 violations, including his spam rates, to decide whether or not to close an account.
“Any single one of the issues mentioned above may not get an account terminated, even sometimes more than one may not. However, when we see an extensive trend of abusive traits about a campaign or an account, then they add up.”

3. Frank mentioned that Aweber gave him a copy of his subscriber list when they terminated his account. For Frank, this allowed him to keep his list because he was moving it to his own autoresponder software. For those who would have to move to another service you could expect to lose approximately 90% of your subscribers. (Again, I speak from personal experience. And no, I’ve never had an account terminated due to policy violations. I made the move decision every time except once when the service I was using closed down.)

Although there’s already a ton of information online about why having an email list is important, how to build a squeeze page and how to set up an anutoresponder, information about where to start when you want to begin building your list. isn’t as readily available.

And because your email list is possibly your biggest business asset, you need to know the basics of how to start one.

The first step to building an email list is to make a mailing list plan and you should do this for every email list you create.

Your email list plan should include:

1. Your target market and what they want to know about.

2. Products your market will be interested in.

3. The type of mailings you will be sending, i.e. strictly follow-ups for a single product or a combination of follow-ups and broadcast messages.

4. The primary content type of your messages, such as informational content like an ezine, daily quotes, jokes, new product announcements, etc.

5. The minimum frequency you intend to send mailings.

6. An email ideal list. This is the list of things you already know you want tell your readers about and as you find new things of interest you add those to this list.

7. And although it’s not mandatory, I recommend drafting at least the first month’s worth of emails you intend to send. This exercise is recommended because it will give you an idea about how long it will take you to write your email content and makes you start researching for new content.

8. Your plan for driving traffic to your sign-up page.

9. What you’re going to give your new subscribers when they sign up and how you’re going to deliver it. If you’re giving a product you need to put it where it’s available for them to get it. If you’re giving an emailed report or course you need to have it written and ready to put into the follow-up message queue for your list.

10. The welcome message to you new subscribers. Remember to include the information about where they can get their gift or the first message for the emailed report.

11. The list management system (autoresponder) you will use. Unless you’re a technical person with time to spend on uploading and maintaining an autoresponder on your own site, I recommend you use the best service you can afford. For a paid service I recommend you use 1 of the biggies like Aweber or GetResponse because of their reputation and service. If you must use a free service I recommend you try ListWire because it offers more paid-for features than any of the other free services I’ve found and at the time of this writing, the only ad included in the emails is for the ListWire service.

After you have a plan for building your email list you’re ready to take action and set up your autoresponder account and create your squeeze page. Once those are in place you can start driving traffic to your opt-in page.

Yes, building your own email lists is an important step to having a successful online business. It is unfortunate that many never start their own list and of those who do, most will jump into the fire of list building without doing the first step. Create a plan.

To Your Success,
Susan

P.S. If you have started building your list please leave a comment with your thoughts on creating a list building plan.

If you haven’t started building a list I hope this article will get you started. If you need more information about anything I said above please leave a comment with your questions.

As we all know, to get someone to subscribe to your email list you usually have to offer them something. Many people offer free ebooks, videos or memberships. And all of these gifts are available immediately as soon as someone signs up.

However when you’re first starting your online business you may not have a hosted web account that permits you to upload gifts to give to your subscribers. Should this hold you back and keep you from building your list?

Absolutely not!

While having your own site so you can give free digital products or memberships is good, there are other ways to give gifts without having your own hosted web account.

4 Ways To Give Subscriber Gifts Without Delivering A digital Product From Your Own Site:

1. Offer free information in a report or course you can email them. Simply load the information in 1 or more email messages that will be sent automatically to everyone who joins your list.

Others might recommend you send a digital product as an email attachment however I don’t. Because many people have had their machines infected by viruses and trojans contained in email attachments, a lot of people won’t open them. So rather than have them opt-out of your list because they’re afraid to open your gift, just email them the information in the body of your message or messages.

2. If you have a physical rather than digital gift you can snail mail it to them. I’ve never done this because it involves more upfront costs and ongoing manual labor to get every gift addressed and mailed. However if you have free samples to give from a MLM or network marketing company you may want to consider it.

3. Since I have always had my own hosted account I have never used a free file sharing service so I can’t personally recommend any of them. I did however find a couple of sites that do make recommendations: 10+ Best Free File Hosting Service Providers and The 5 Best Free File Hosting Services To Store Your Files!

4. If you are using a professional autoresponder service you can offer gifts from some membership sites.

Free members of Traffic Leads and Sales provide 6 digital ebooks available for immediate download to everyone who joins your list through a signup page they provide. They currently support list building through many of the most popular autoresponder services and if the service you’re using isn’t on the list you can submit a support ticket to have it added. Click here to watch a video for the details.

Free members of Viral Ebook Explosion get brandable ebooks to give away however you must upgrade to the next level to have them host your squeeze page, download page and download product. They support Aweber, GetResponse, 1ShoppingCart and Email Aces autoresponder services. You can see an example for 1 of their download page templates by clicking here.

Not having a hosted web account should not prevent you from building your own email list. I’ve just listed 4 ways to deliver gifts to those who opt-in to your list.. If you know other methods for delivering a gift please leave a comment.

To Your Success,
Susan

This morning I read a blog article about the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines that went into effect on December 1, 2009.

As you know, these guidelines are a revised set of rules that apply to online marketers and they govern what marketers can and cannot say when they’re marketing, endorsing a product or even writing a blog post.

Although the article was short it did provide some information and a valuable link to a free tool that can help you write a disclosure statement for your blog.

I recommend you read the article and try the tool. I did and found:

1. It only took a couple of minutes to answer the few multiple questions.
2. The only  personal information you must provide is the name you want included in the statement it generates.

Here’s a copy of the FTC disclosure statement it generated for me:

“This policy is valid from 23 December 2009

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact  Susan Carroll.

This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content may not always be identified.”

Not being a lawyer I have no advice about the quality of the disclosure statement provided. However, I do advise you to always obey the law and comply.

You can read the article and get the link to the FTC disclosure statement tool here.