April 12 03 SBC Small Business Newsletter

April 12, 2003

Table of Contents

Staff Article - ANNOUNCEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS
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Staff Article

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS

I'm going to use this section of our newsletter this week to make some announcements and observations to subscribers of both our Small Business and Home Business newsletters. This issue is also going to be very short because I want to focus totally on the following issues.

SOMETHING NEW COMING NEXT WEEK

Publishers have been fighting an uphill battle for months now because of the proliferation of filters and the enormous problems created by sp^m. I know all of you are probably as sick of this email scourge as we are. Since Peak does nearly no email advertising at all, it hasn't affected us much, yet, but it has been clear for some time that changes and new technology are needed.

Paul Myers has created a very neat piece of technology that fits the bill. It's a product called "Newsmon" and it's fr^e to anyone who wants to use it. It totally eliminates the need to send newsletters by email. It puts the control in your hands as to what newsletters you want to read, when you want to read them, and whether you keep them archived or not. When you want to unsubscribe, you simply delete the entry in Newsmon and you do not receive any more updates for that ezine.

When an updated newsletter is available from the ezines you subscribe to, the Newsmon icon in your system tray will blink letting you know that you have received updates. You click on the icon, Newsmon opens, and you select the update you want to read. It will connect you to the website where you can read the newsletter online.

I know this is a very brief description of this program, and you may not understand exactly how it works. During the coming week, I will put full instructions, including screen shots, on our website so you can read more about it. For now, let me just say it's very simple to set up and use, and really is a great little program.

I plan to make this available to you next week. Of course, you may still continue to receive the email version of our newsletters if you prefer. I would recommend, however, that you at least download and try Newsmon to see how it works. I'll give you the URL for the instructions next week along with the download URL for Newsmon. I think you're going to like it very much, and most of the better ezines online will be offering this service.

Paul will also be providing an ezine directory on his site that will list the ezines available using Newsmon. It's not ready yet, but should be soon.

PROBLEMS WITH YAHOO EMAIL ADDRESSES

I wasn't going to mention this, but I have to. Apparently last week Yahoo announced an "email promotion" whereby its users get entries into a sweepstakes to win a year of Yahoo Email Plus fr^e for each piece of sp^m email they report using Yahoo's "This is Sp^m" link. Obviously, some people are going to be reporting emails they receive without regard for whether they really are sp^m or not. Such a promotion is simply adding to the madness. Many innocent people are likely to be hurt by this witch hunt.

Many publishers I know are simply deleting all Yahoo email addresses from their subscription lists. Period. Enough is enough. I decided not to do that. Most of you have been with us for a long time, and I do not believe for a minute that any of you would do anything underhanded. When you subscribed to our newsletters, I told you that you would never receive any "special announcements," solo ads, "exclusive mailings," and other annoying extra mailings as a result of your subscription, and I have kept that promise. As a result, I feel like we have developed a good working relationship so I will not worry about such things.

I did want to mention the issue to you, however, because it highlights another reason why a program like Newsmon has become a necessity. The online world has forever been changed and we have to learn to change with it.

I also wanted to mention it to you in case any of you do any email marketing and have Yahoo addresses on your lists. If you do, be careful.

AN UPDATE ON HABEUS

Habeus not only raised the price of the business license on their "header" that allows emails through the filters, as predicted, but they have just sued ClickBank and an online program because ONE of the online programs users used a Habeus header on an email that, in their opinion, did not conform to their rules.

This is the type of "sue everybody in sight" mindset and hands around your neck control that makes such a program so dangerous. It not only will never work, but it is going to create major problems for all legitimate small businesses eventually. As I've said before, the sp^mmers will not even be slowed down by such tactics. They'll continue full force unabated in spite of filters and Habeus.

A VALUABLE LESSON FROM ALL OF THIS

There is no doubt that email marketing is out of control. It's not only the annoyance of receiving lots of email you never asked for, but it's becoming such a bandwidth hog that it seriously threatens the viability of using the Internet in the manner we've become accustomed to.

But humans are a resilient lot. Products like Newsmon are an example of a technological response to the problem that actually works. It was only a matter a time before someone came up with a solution that puts control back into the users hands and does it without charging the users a single dime. And that's cause for hope.

ONE LAST THING

I considering changing the format of our newsletters and I'd love to have your input. If you could, please send me an email and tell me what you would like to see changed. Would you like it shorter? Should I cut out some sections and address the main topic being covered in more detail? Would sending it out every other week instead of weekly be okay with you? What type of content do you most like to read?

I would greatly appreciate any input you can give me. We've kept the same format now for 16 months and I feel like it's time for a little change. Obviously, I would like to change it in ways that make it more useful to you. Thanks in advance for helping me with this.

Till next time,
Cary Christian

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