| |
| |
|
Mahavir Information |
| ||||||||
|
Is the IronPort Whitelist Actually An Extortion Tactic?
It appears that Mr. Gates' prophetic prediction that charging marketers to send email across the Microsoft email networks (MSN and Hotmail) to cut down on Sp*m is about to come true. According to CIO Today, Microsoft is now employing "IronPort Anti-Spam Technology." "IronPort" is a paid "white-list" for people who send "mass email" (including newsletter publishers, ezine publishers, affiliate managers, mini-course operators, and basically anyone who has a list of opt-in emails). If you send any type of email where you do a broadcast to everyone on your list, this applies to you. If you want your email broadcasts to get through their filters, you must pay a hefty fee and post a "bond." Here are some facts about this developing story: 1. They charge by how much email you send a month, but the minimum charge is a: $375 Application Fee, plus $500 Annual License Fee, plus $500 "Bond" fee. That's $1,375.00 just to get in the game. If you want to see the complete breakdown, go here https://www.bondedsender.com/fees.jsp 2. If you go over the "complaint" threshold of 1 complaint per month, then they will debit $20 from your bond fee for each complaint to "fine" you for being naughty. Now that sounds good on the surface, but here's a scenario to try on for size: Your competitor / enemy / Net "psycho" signs up for 50 fr~e email accounts at HotMail and complains about you every month when you send your newsletter. 49 complaints (50 - 1 allowed complaint) times $20 a complaint comes out to $980 in fines. Now, can you dispute the fines? Sure, absolutely! But how much will you lose in time, energy and effort disputing the allegations? (My guess is, a whole lot more than that.) You can check out all the "rules" here https://www.bondedsender.com/fees.jsp Here are the details of the program straight from the horse's mouth... https://www.bondedsender.com Here's my take on this whole thing (which dropped on me out of the blue today): First, don't get me wrong... I hate sp~m with a passion! I spend at least an hour a day fighting it (down from 3 hours a day just a few weeks ago before I shut down about 2 dozen email addresses that got harvested by spambots over the last few years). With that said, this whole "IronPort" thing sounds and smells to me like "white list" extortion. Why? Here's the basic premise: "Pay to get your email through our filters, or else you run the very likely risk of not getting your email through at all." In fact, here's a *direct quote* from their website https://www.bondedsender.com/faqs/sender.jsp: "What happens if I don't bond my email? You're rolling the dice and taking your chances with spam filters, black lists and bulk folders. Some days all of your email may be delivered; other days 30-50% could be blocked." Kind of reminds you of a cheesy mafia movie on late night TV: Me: "Hey Bugsy, what happens if I don't pay my 'protection' money this month? What if I stand up to you and refuse to pay?" Bugsy: "Well, maybe nothin' will happen to you because the Boss ain't payin' attention when I tell him you decided not to pay. On the other hand, maybe I'll just smack you around a little bit... or maybe-- I'll BREAK YOUR LEG with this baseball bat! Go ahead and not pay us... then we'll see what happens!" Now, back to my question: "Why should I have to pay a huge fee to send email to people who have opted in to my lists?" The argument from Microsoft (and soon to be other ISP's) is that the uncontrolled sp~m on the web is costing them a lot of money to deliver email nobody wants to read. Well, if that's the case, aren't email users shelling out cash or credit to pay their ISPs for email services (mine charges me $40 a month for cable), or paying for free services like HotMail or Yahoo Mail through viewing advertising on every page? I was under the impression we were already paying to receive email... and last time I checked, there was no place to put a stamp! Okay, even if we make it past that and we accept the argument that legitimate emailers should have to pay a fee in order to get on that big "whitelist in the sky" somewhere... there are still two very important considerations here: 1. First, what about the little guy who starts doing really well? You know, the small newsletter publisher who puts out a great ezine or fr-e report or whatever, and gets a lot of subscribers and then wants to broadcast email to them on a regular basis? Let's say they start making $20,000.00 a year from their ezine... are they now supposed to shell out 6-10% of their earnings in order to get their messages through? (And that's if they never get a fine!) Do they have to be penalized for being successful? Apparently so if this system gains widespread acceptance by all the big ISP's and email service providers! 2. Second, what about the high potential for abuse at the hands of unethical competitors and just plain jerks that populate the Internet! I know it might seem hard to believe, but there are psychos out there who will sign up for a bunch of free email accounts just so they can make trouble. (This is not paranoia! I had a user who signed up, definitely opted-in from my website, had the emails routed through a SpamCop address so I got blacklisted by SpamCop until I could get it straightened out. Oh, and guess who owns SpamCop... IronPort, that's who!) Now, some idiot making waves with 100 email accounts won't put a dent in the pockets of most big players in the email arena... for them it'll just be a business expense. But for the case of the "little" guy, fighting that potential abuse and those fees could seriously cripple and even kill a fledgling enterprise... and that, in my opinion, is a serious problem. In my opinion, all this is going to do is cut out the little guy and make it easier for big companies to email the hell out of the rest of us. A small newsletter publisher will find it cost-prohibitive to pay for the service, and some giant company will just keep pumping the email out because they have the staff and resources to fight the inevitable complaints. And let's face it, if a big company is paying a $10,000.00 a year licensing fee plus posting a $4,000.00 bond, how aggressive do you think the IronTrust people will really be to get rid of them? In my opinion, not very. In conclusion: Despite my ranting, I actually think this is a step in the right direction (albeit a wobbly, drunken, and inconvenient step). Something has to be done to fight spam. However, at this point, this whole system has (in my opinion) too many unanswered questions, especially for us little guys. Namely:
To their apparent credit, Yahoo! is also trying to pioneer a solution, but this one doesn't appear (at this point) like it will cost publishers or subscribers any money (and I like the sound of that). http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys But with so much at stake (on both sides), this issue is a far cry from any satisfactory resolution. Stay tuned for further updates as events warrant... About The Author Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links... Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
MORE RESOURCES:
Acne - Google News |
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
What Is Wrong With Email Marketing? If you are active on the web promoting your products, affiliate programs or services, you probably sense where I'm going with the title of my article. We all put a lot of effort into our internet business. Email MarketingTips - 3 Reasons Why Business Must Use Email Communications Whether a company sells light fixtures to large corporations or provides stock analysis to CEO's they should all be using the power of email on a daily basis to:1. Create customer loyalty2. An Aspirin or an Autoresponder! Tired of silly old email enquiries? Say hello to autoresponders!If there's one thing that drives us all crazy, it's not having enough hours in the day. You need hours to work out your internet marketing, your sales, your budgets, follow up on invoices and god knows what else. Sequential Autoresponders Build Customer Relatonships A powerful reason for making the switch from using the unlimited autoresponders that come free with your web hosting account to paying a monthly fee for an autoresponder service is the building of customer relationships through sequential autoresponders.Although many web hosts offer unlimited autoresponders, each autoresponder is only capable of sending one response. Automatic Responder - The Secret of Super Affiliates Success Congratulations, you just made a sale!Congratulations, you just made a sale!Congratulations, you just made a sale!Wondering how those Super Affiliates make so many sales overnight selling someone else's products?Well, you shouldn't be anymore, because here's how they actually do it.. Achieve Success With Your Own Money - Making Newsletter To be successful with a newsletter, you have to specialize and make it your own. Your best bet will be with new information on a subject not already covered by an established newsletter, or at least your interpretation of existing subject matter. The Opt-In Secret Everyone knows that in order to be successful online you need build a large (quality) list through some type of Opt-In offer.You see them now on virtually every site you visit on the internet, some type of form, whether from a pop-up window or directly on the site itself, that is asking for your name and email address in exchange for some type of offer (newsletter, e-course, free chapter etc. A Lesson In Email: The Money Is In The List... With The Back-End Sales Firstly, back-end sales is eMail Marketing at its best, so for this to work you need to already have a list of customers that have bought from you before.The reason for this is because Back-end sales, are the ultimate way to realize the true 'life-time value' of your customers/list. Why Autoresponders are an Absolute Must With autoresponders, you never have to lose money advertising again! That's right, every ad you place from now on can be a winner -- even when you lose money!I know, I know, you're thinking, "Okay, now you've lost it Glen." But I haven't. 10 Tips for Effective Email Sales Letters 1. Write Your Objective - Before you write your sales letter, write down your marketing objective. 4 Time-Saving E-Mail Tips! E-Mail is still the most widely used Internet tool available today. Virtually everyone who has Internet access has an email account, and for the Internet Marketer this opens up a huge possibility for more business. Converting More Free Downloads to Paid Customers Do you give web site visitors the opportunity to download a free trial of your product or service with the intention that they will come back and purchase? How are you following up with these visitors? Asking them to fill out a form and immediately giving them the download on the next page is not the best way to generate a quality opt-in list. Collecting accurate opt-in information from these visitors is essential to follow up education and making the sale. Personalizing Your Emails? An Amazing Technique That Doubles Your Click Throughs And Profits Are you publishing an ezine or offering an email course? Are you talking with your subscriber through your ezine or email course? If so what are you calling them?"Hello John"? or"Hello friend"? or"Hello"?If you want to feel the difference between the above three, stand infront of a mirror and call yourself with above three ways. Which one is more pleasing for you? The same with your subscriber too!What is personalizing of emails means?At the beginning of the emails instead of starting the message directly we will call the person by name like 'Dear John'. Increasing Email Deliverability Most email marketers know that it is important spam-check email messages before sending them out, as this may identify potential issues that cause emails to be marked as spam.It should be noted however that the results generated by the spam-check feature should act as guidelines only. Use the "Reply All" Function in Email Judiciously Type "email etiquette" into the search bar of any popular search engine and you'll get over one million hits. Because email is used so broadly, it poses certain problems for the professional who is attempting to communicate well. Sucking in Readers: Proven Ways to Increase Reader Interaction You've probably heard this educational philosophy:Tell me, and I'll forget.Show me, and I may not remember. A Review on Email Go Getter System (EGGS) A Review on Email Go Getter System (EGGS) by Martin LeeEGGS is a new autoresponder system that I have started to use recently. The main difference between EGGS and other commercial autoresponders out there is that EGGS is hosted and run entirely on your own web server. Raid Your Autoresponder Attic For Content Why you need new website content.Finding or creating good content for our websites is a chore. NCOA for Email - Is Your Email Address List Clean and Up-To-Date? Introduction Shrewd marketers devote a great amount of attention to crafting their email messaging campaign. They scrutinize the subject line, fuss over the content, and carefully monitor the timing of delivery. Guidelines For A New Sending Paradigm - Part 1 of 5 - Treat Email as a True Risk and Cost Center Sustainable email sending programs in an inherently hostile environment now require great care and planning. Before considering the technical complexities and the marketing tactics, email senders must adopt a basic paradigm shift.
|
|||||||||||||||||
| Home | Site Map Copy Right 2006 Mahavir.com |
| NISL | Herbal Acne Solutions | Promotion Factory | Web Design | Online University Degree | College & University | GtpInfo | VPayU |
