Manager Buzz

June 16th, 2010

Spam Not

Posted in Net Hall

“Spam not, lest ye be spammed.” ~Mari Peckham

Just yesterday, I received over 40,000 emails from a person who had harvested a contact email address from one of my websites. The person may or may not have personally secured my email address, but since I use it only to receive email feedback from my website and never to send mail, I know that it was a harvested address. Because of the nature of my use of this email address, I also have a “Thank you for contacting us.” autoresponder message in place there.

My server was mad at me. My entire system was mad at me. I couldn’t conduct my normal business and send out email that needed to be sent out, because my computer was hard at work downloading email upon email.

How can something like this happen?

Simple enough, really. My email was picked up off of my website and added to an autoresponder. If it had been a regular email account, I would have received an unsolicited message that I would have easily deleted, no big deal. But since my email address was attached to an autoresponder, it started a vicious cycle of email autoresponse.

The person who had sent me the email - well, they ended up with 40,000 “Thank you for contacting us.” emails in their box from me.

I’m sure that that wasn’t very pleasant for them, either. And the fact of the matter is that they may have not even realized that they had done anything wrong.

Spam is bad. Not all spammers are bad people, though. Some of them are just misinformed or inexperienced Internet marketers.

I’m the first to admit that marketing can be frustrating. Just when you’ve hit the wall and can’t think of another fresh marketing idea to get new people to your site, along comes a company that offers you a list of 100,000 email addresses for just $24.95 or some other unbelievable deal. Wow! What an opportunity! Affordable, even! It’s hard not to jump all over an offer like that.

But beware! It’s hard to say where those email addresses are coming from.

Many unscrupulous companies use “harvesting” software that spiders the Internet and lifts email address off of websites. They then compile lists of these email addresses and sell them as “opt-in safelists” for profit.

As a marketer, using these lists can get you in tons of trouble. Once labeled as a Spammer, it is hard to rid yourself of that reputation, whether you were spamming on purpose, or you were a victim of a bad “list”. You can be dropped from your hosting service or ISP. Companies that you are promoting using Spam will cancel your accounts.

Bottom line: If you are not sure that it is NOT Spam, then don’t do it. Develop your own list of opt-in subscribers by offering a newsletter, free information, or something else that will get people to take notice of you. Both YahooGroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/) and Topica (http://www.topica.com) offer free, easy-to-use service that will manage your subscribers for you. You can find other similar services on the Internet. This is one of the most responsive forms of advertising, because you have the opportunity to develop a relationship with your list members.

You can also use a mailing list building service, such as Free Mailer 2000 (http://www.freemailer2000.com), although you will need to advertise your mailing list builder site in order to build your mailing list.

Safelists can be another safe way to get the word out about your business, but vary in responsiveness. I recommend the services of SafeListBoys (http://www.safelistboys.com) to help you find lists and easily manage your safelist activity for a small monthly fee. You can also find new safelists by entering “safelists” in any search engine, but watch out for those “BULK” mailing list services that may fall in the unscrupulous SPAM category. Rule of thumb, if you aren’t a member yourself and know for a fact that the list is opt-in, don’t use it!

If you are choosing to spam, stop immediately. It may be getting you a handful of responses right now, but the painful consequences of your actions can cancel out any benefits that you may find.

If we, as an Internet marketing community, would all agree to market responsibly, the Internet would soon be a better place to work and live. What comes around goes around. Spam not, lest ye be spammed.

May 25th, 2010

Online Entertainment with Wild Blue Wireless Internet

Posted in Events + Entertainment, Net Hall

In the past, televisions, stereos, and game consoles were considered good entertainment. PCs and the existence of the Net have transformed all that. As much brilliant entertainment as you can handle could be brought directly to you with ISP Wild Blue. Is there anyone who would want to be prevented from surfing their favorite pages? With Wild Blue and unobstructed views of the southern sky, you’ll can browse as much as you like. Have you thought about visiting out CNN’s web page? Go right ahead. With Wild Blue internet, the world is your oyster. If you’re stuck for applications, the Net is where you’ll find them. You can choose from thousands of distinct applications including costless word processors, conversion calculators and thesauruses. Who wouldn’t want to find more friends? If you sign up to Wild Blue internet you can find acquaintances from all over the world. Gossip and share info on pages such as Facebook or Twitter, or use YouTube to watch, make and share videos. Many internet browsers view social bookmarking pages to check what the current fashionable internet fad is. Forums are great for somebody who wants to have their say while blogs are fantastic if you’d enjoy reading someone else’s opinions.

Streaming music with the Wild Blue ISP and online music platforms such as iTunes allows you to you relish the tunes you want while passing over those you dislike. Get killer songs without needing to purchase fillers. Also ready to download are audiobooks, podcasts, movies and many other electronic wares. If you’ve missed episodes of your favorite tv program or you have a need to watch a film but don’t fancy the drive to the video rental shop, Wild Blue internet lets you catch the shows you want from your own house. It’s all available to stream from both free and paid pages. Get online today and experience the joy of immediate entertainment.

Want to play with your pals in an MMORPG? Would you prefer to have fun on a more relaxed gaming web page which offers a gigantic selection of card, puzzle and arcade games? No matter what you’d prefer, the internet makes it happen. With such a wide range to pick from, isn’t it about time you joined an awesome direct tv wireless internet provider? Should you have an unobstructed vista of the southern sky then wild blue in mississippi can offer you an inexpensive and highly dependable service.

November 10th, 2009

SPAM, Spam & more SPAM

Posted in Net Hall

SPAM, AND NOTHING BUT SPAM. by Gillian Tarawhiti, Community
Training Centre, http://www.millionairerippleeffect.com For the
new and possibly the old netpreneurs SPAM is the common term for
electronic ‘junk mail’ - unwanted messages sent to a persons’
email account or mobile phone. The SPAM act (CAN-SPAM ACT,
EUROPEAN SPAM ACT, AUSTRALIAN SPAM ACT) identifies SPAM as
unsolicited commercial electronic message(s). The act covers
email, instant messaging, SMS (mobile phone text messaging) and
MMS (mobile phone graphic messaging). Under the SPAM act all
commercial electronic messages must meet the following
conditions. Any message that doesn’t meet all three of these
conditions is defined as SPAM. 1.You must have CONSENT 2.You
must IDENTIFY yourself 3.You must provide a way to unsubscribe
If we use this forum as an example of all three, you will find
that in order to gain access to this forum in terms of posting.
You had to complete a registration that in part advised that you
agreed to certain terms and conditions. In doing so you
EXPRESSED CONSENT. By registering to this forum you have also
IDENTIFIED yourself beit as a non-de-plum In terms of
unsubscribing, every email that you receive from this forum has
a unsubscribe in it, also you have an ‘ignore’ facility which in
part as the same effect. COMMERICIAL ELECTRONIC MESSAGE To
decide whether an electronic message is ‘commercial’, the Act
looks at all of the following: •the content of the message •the
way in which the message is presented; and •any links, phone
numbers or contact information in the message RAMIFICATIONS OF
SPAM TO YOU! If you have been accused of SPAM activities you
will be asked to prove that you have not committed the offence.
If you are unsuccessful in that approach you IP (Internet
Provider) will withdraw all services to you i.e. close your
website. If you are using an autoresponder to hold your
subscriber list and are sending messages via that service, your
autoresponder will automatically suspend your account unless you
can prove your innocence. Penalties for breach of the Act range
up to $1.1 million per day; the legislation also allows for the
making of orders for spammers to relinquish profits and pay
compensation to spam victims. So in short, there are 3 things
that can keep you in the clear of such violations. 1.Get Consent
- Expressed or Inferred 2.Identify yourself 3.Provide a way for
people to unsubscribe from receiving further emails Before I
finish this article, I would like to add that this is just a
brief overview of the act and that it would be in your best
interest to actually read and implement the practices.

December 12th, 2008

Identify Brilliant Broad Band Packages for your own Residence

Posted in Net Hall

Broad band will often loosely be defined as eye-opening speedy worldwide web and has all but taken over from old fashion dial- up www access. annoying dial- up internet connections, which were the first web systems to supply dwellings with worldwide web access through a dial up modem, use all of the available phone line & usually run at only 56 kb per second. Broadband technology, which uses ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) technology through usual copper telephone lines, is able to give you at least two times that dial up modem speed which is incredible & as if this wasn’t enough already it will commonly not produce any trouble to the phone line.

Broad-band has become progressively more affordable & available over the past four and a half years or so and 2 now regularly used by the majority of home net users in the United Kingdom. There are a massive assortment of www providers who propose high speed broadband packages, every offering numerous priced deals with a miscellaneous number of advantages. One of the big time current focus points for Super fast broadband is the speed, with the users nowadays becoming more and more concerned in acquiring the best ever connection available as online games, music & videos turned out to be more & more fashionable & broadly possible on the net. The dial up modem speed of a broadband internet connection depends on a number of things, the most important being how near the Flat is 2 the nearest telephone exchange box & the quality of the copper cable between the box and the home. Compare broadband dealsand find the best deal for you.

One of the ways High speed broadband dial up speed can be very much enhanced 2 with the use of fibre optic cables, 2 do not suffer from speed depreciation over larger distances. an assortment of other countries in the world have large distances. fibre optic networks & some, like Japan and South Korea, are providing broadband top speeds of up to 100mbps all that is truly superb The Country is keen to bring itself in line with all these countries and people might well be satisfied to know that British Telecom just released plans to provide an extensive fibre optic network for the rest of the entire country at a cost of 1.5 billion pounds, al the way up to 10 million homes by 2012 & supplying speeds of up to 100mbps in your homes, with an average of 40-50mbps.