Subscribers to the feed on my personal blog got a surprise message in their email — a business message I did not intend for them to receive and a message they probably did not care to receive.

And you know what THAT means… LOST subscribers.

So, what did I do wrong (THIS time)?

Well, I failed to set up my Feedburner feed to exclude posts from a particular category. When I posted to that category, the list on my Aweber account that uses the Blog Broadcast service, emailed that post to all the subscribers on the list.

Here’s an example.

If I don’t want NPT newsletter subscribers to receive posts that I make to my XOX (personal) category, that category must be removed from the Feedburner feed.

Here are the steps to take:

1. Sign into WordPress
2. Go to “Categories”
3. Mouse over the name of the category you want to exclude and take note of the ID in the status bar as shown below. In this case, the ID is “381“.

   

4. Now log into your Google Feedburner account and click on “Edit Feed Details” for your feed.
5. Under “Original Feed Details” add ?cat=-318 (or whatever your cat ID happens to be) to your feed URL.

   

6. Now test your Feedburner Feed and you will that posts from the ‘offensive’ category no longer appear.

If you would like to remove 2 or more categories from a feed, simply add an ampersand before each category number ( @amp; ), i.e. http://netprofitstoday.com/blog?cat=-381@-642

Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!

Cheers,

Here’s a traffic generation question / comment from Kenny that was spot on!

Rosalind, it is inconceivable that you have time to utilize all the techniques in your ebook.

So, in an effort to follow your lead, so to speak, if you were to narrow down the five most consistently effective marketing / promotion / advertising processes that you use primarily, what would you say those were?

In advance, thanks.

Kenny Love

GREAT question, Kenny!

You’re absolutely right – I’d go bonkers if I tried to do ALL of the marketing techniques ALL of the time.

So, here are the 5 traffic generation or marketing methods that I use most consistently:

1. Blogging for Search Engine Placement
2. List / Email Marketing
3. Social Media Marketing & Community Activity
4. Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)
5. Article Distribution & Marketing

Blogging for Search Engine Placement

Essentially, my first priority is to publish fresh content to my blogs on a regular basis (some of which are more regular than others). Although I don’t engage in keyword stuffing, (which makes for horrible reading), the content of each blog post has to be tightly focused on one subject so that keywords and keyword phrases in the article are closely aligned and thus the post is more likely to get picked up and listed by the search engines, resulting in free traffic.

List / Email Marketing

The post is then distributed by email to the relevant subscriber list either through a blog broadcast (using Aweber / Feedburner combined) or through a link in a weekly newsletter.

Social Media Marketing & Community Activity

Engaging the audience personally through either blog commenting, forum posting or social media marketing comes next. I will respond to comments and answer any questions posted by my own blog readers and subscribers, which enhances information contained in the article and adds still more ‘fodder’ for the search engines to notice. My social media marketing efforts are fairly scant – using applications like TwitterFeed to broadcast the post’s title and link to Twitter for some more free traffic. From time to time, I’ll post a comment to a high-profile blog or forum in response to a topic relevant to my original article, along with a link to that article.

Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC)

Depending on the response from blog readers and subscribers, I may incorporate PPC marketing at that point. If the conversion rate is better than average for the audience, I’ll do the math to assess whether it’s worth driving traffic to that particular post or page with PPC, starting with Google Adwords and/or Yahoo! Search Marketing depending on the demographic. If the response is just ‘good’, PPC may still be worth the effort if enough of that traffic joins the list.

Article Distribution & Marketing

Article marketing comes in 5th and last, because I don’t post the same articles to my site as I would distribute to article directories so they require some re-writing, which takes time. Furthermore, the traffic isn’t as targeted as it is with your own list or with PPC marketing… but it’s traffic none-the-less and every click counts for something… eventually.

After that’s all said and done, it’s probably time to write another post — or more likely, take another vacation.

With all my affiliate site posts queued up for the next 2 months and some time on my hands this weekend, I decided to get to work making the Super Affiliate Handbook available as an online tutorial, through a membership site.

My primary concern was how to set up a membership site easily.

Gail and I use Amember on PrivateLabelCentral.com. The setup is relatively simple for someone who has worked through installation directions more than a few times, but I did manage to mess things up with some bad file permissions that required another intervention by my favorite geek and host master extraordinaire, Steve Hetrick. The temporary downtime aside, I am quite happy with Amember.

However, I recalled reading that there might be a plugin available that could turn a WordPress blog into a membership site.

What could be more perfect, especially since the main focus of the tutorials is affiliate blogging.

My search brought Wishlist Member to the top of the results.

Per the sales page, the list of features include:

• Unlimited Membership Levels
• Simple Installation With New or Existing WordPress Blog
• Flexible Membership Options
• Sequential Content Delivery
• Control Viewed Content
• Shopping Cart Integration
• Easy Member Management
• Multi-Level Access
• Total Content Protection
• Secure RSS Feeds
• Subscription Length Control
• Login Redirection
• Create Your Membership Site Using WordPress & WL Member
• “Sneak Peak” Content Display
• Custom Error Pages
• Partial Content Display

On confirming that Wishlist Member could be integrated with my shopping cart of choice (Clickbank) and my Aweber autoresponder, I decided that it was worth a try. Note: Wishlist Member also integrates with 1ShoppingCart, PayPal, Cydec, Autoresponseplus and GetResponse and generic systems.

The single licence version of Wishlist Member is $97 and the multiple licence version is $297. With a 30-day refund policy, I opted to buy the multiple licence version – realizing that if the plugin worked as well as promised, I would definitely want to use it on other blogs.

My experience with Wishlist Member

After buying Wishlist Member, I purchased a new domain, set up hosting, did a 1-minute WordPress installation, uploaded the plugin, installed the theme that came with the plugin… and was off to the races.

Within 30 minutes, I’d watched a few of the tutorial videos, set up 8 modules using Pages (you can restrict member access by post, page, categories and comments) , a sequential upgrade that drips content over time and input some articles. By the way, the video tutorials are accessible without having to purchase the product.

The video below shows the results of those 30-minutes, as well as how membership content is protected, even when someone is smart enough to figure out the URL of a higher-level module.

If you’d like to view a larger sized video, it’s available on YouTube.

The only thing that would make Wishlist Member absolutely perfect, is if it could be integrated with the more popular forum software, such as phpBB or vBulletin. I haven’t heard that this is planned, but with all the other features that were integrated after user suggestions were submitted, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that option turn up at some point — or at least, I’m fervently hoping it will — Are ya listening, Stu?

Other than that,  Wishlist Member is a GREAT choice for bloggers who want to set up their own membership sites, especially in terms of ease of set up and price.

Wishlist Member gets a 2 big thumbs up from me and my HIGHEST recommendation.

You’ve probably seen email capture forms similar to that shown in the graphic here to the right at least a million times.

When someone enters their name and email address, it triggers an autoresponder.

The autoresponder automatically responds (ergo, the name ‘autoresponder’) by sending a preprogrammed / prewritten message to the email address entered in the form.

Autoresponders are sometimes used by individuals to notify those who send them emails that they are away on vacation, i.e. an ‘out of office‘ reply is sent.

Autoresponder services are more commonly used by online businesses to build client mailing lists and to provide their web site visitors with followup and new information about their products and services.

Autoresponder service features most often include the ability to preprogram an unlimited number of prewritten followup responses that are sent at predetermined intervals. For example, the first message is sent immediately after a person subscribers, the second message is sent 2 days later and message number 3 is sent three days after the second message… and so on and so forth. This is known as an ‘autoresponder series’.

Autoresponder service clients may also send out broadcast messages to their subscribers on an ad-hoc basis.

In recent years, autoresponder services have added a feed to email feature that allows webmasters to send published posts from their blogs (and other feeds) to their mailing list subscribers.

Although there are many autoresponder services available, I personally recommend Aweber – a service that I’ve been using without complaint since starting my online business in 1998. Aweber is without a doubt, the world’s leading autoresponder service in terms of features and customer service.

I now have almost 200 subscribers transferred over from DinerDeals.com and I am ready to send out my Diner Dave Digest e-newsletter.   In this newsletter I will combine some of my best ideas from the old DinerDeals.com “Eat-Mail” Newsletter and add blog posts and fun contests from DinerDave.com website.  

To Template or Not to Template…That is the Question

I’ve gone round and round on whether to create my newsletter using a fancy HTML template with sidebar links back to the website and include my logo for brand building.  In the end I decided to go with a plain, no graphics, newsletter.    I get a LOT of newsletters in my personal Outlook inbox and the ones with heavy HTML graphics show up as a bunch of red “x”s with “right-click here to download pictures” written all over the page.  It’s very hard on the eyes! 

I would prefer to keep it simple (for now) and give my subscribers an opportunity to view my newsletter in the preview pane without having to “right-click” to see graphics and pics.  Plus, I have found that newsletters that are heavy in graphics do not make it through the spam filters of business email boxes (half of my subscribers use their business email address).

Diner Dave Digest Content

Having some experience with broadcasting e-newsletters, I have found that you absolutely cannot send only emails with just merchant offers!  Occassionally, I will send an email with only one  merchant offer.  However, it must be a “you’ve gotta see this limited time offer before it’s too late” message. 

Every one of my email newsletters will include these 3i tems:

1)   My most recent blog posts – usually I am able to write 1 or 2 blog posts per week.  My latest blog post “Dining Out and Gift Ideas for Dads and Grads” was included in my latest newsletter.  I think it’s very important to include a couple of articles in each newsletter so it’s not just “buy, buy, buy!”   You lose subscribers REAL fast when your newsletters are just weekly sales pitches.  I’ve had to unsubscribe from quite a few newsletters for that very reason! 

2)  Merchant offers – a fella’s gotta make money, right?  But, I also help my subscribers SAVE money by including coupon codes for most of the offers on the ”Diner Dave’s Daily Deals” page. 

3)  Contests to win a free meal - After I started including a brain teaser contest where I award $25 restaurant gift certificates to 3 winners I found that more people were opening my emails.  Plus, it makes the emails more viral since they forward it to their friends.  More forwards = more subscribers = more traffic to the site!

“What’s the Frequency Diner Dave?”

I did a survey using surveymonkey.com almost 2 years ago with 8,000 subscribers of DinerDeals.com and asked them “how often would you like to receive your newsletter?”   I gave them the following options:  daily, twice a week, once a week or once every other week.  The response from 83% of them was once a week.  The people have spoken and I am listening!   When you subscribe to the Diner Dave Digest, you only get an email once a week from me…unless there is a “limited time” offer that they cannot live without! 

AWeber and the Spam-o-meter

AWeber's Spam-o-meter

I absolutely LOVE this feature on AWeber! 

You put together your newsletter and immediately after you save it, you can see how likely it is that your email will end up in your subscriber’s spam or junk mail folder.  If you get a spam-o-meter score above a 5 then it is likely that your message will be blocked by email content filters.  If you get between a 3 and a 5 then it is POSSIBLE that it might be caught by the email content filters.  Rosalind gave me a couple of great tips to keep my spam-o-meter score well below a “3″:

• Do not overuse these words:  free, win, contest, and coupon
• Avoid putting too many dollar signs ($) in your email

The problem is that I have to use these words and dollar signs in my merchant offers and contests.  However, after receiving a spam-o-meter score of 3 (email may get blocked),  I was able to pare down a few of these red flag words and decreased my score to ZERO!   This is a great tool and will definitely increase your open ratio (mine is currently 43%!).

Click on the pic below to see the entire Diner Dave Digest newsletter:

So now you know how I use my email newsletter to make money on merchant offers and to get more traffic to my site.  My next order of business will be to write a blog post on Diner Dave with a link to a Clickbank e-book offer that pays out $10 per sale.  Stay tuned for my next post on NPT outlining the results of that project.

For those of you who need to get up to speed on the “Diner Dave Diary”, here are all the previous posts:

• Introducing Diner Dave!
• Diner Dave Does Market Research
• Diner Dave Writes Content
• Designing the Diner Dave Website
• Diner Dave Works his Email Marketing Plan

Once upon a time, I made a HUGE mistake with one of my subscriber lists.

You’d think after half a decade (at that time) as an Internet marketer that I would have known the email marketing formula like the back of my hand.

Tried-and-True Email Marketing Formula

Here’s the tried-and-true formula for email marketing success:

An Autoresponder Series
+
a Weekly, Bi-Weekly or Monthly Newsletter
=
Repeat Visits to Site and MORE Sales

It’s a Win-Win situation all round. Subscribers receive valuable offers of interest to them and the list owner generates income from purchases through their own, or affiliate links.

The formula is perfect. It works like a charm each and every time – but only when you use it, and use it regularly.

That last point is key and I’ll tell you why.

I started my ‘Singles eScene’ [SeS] newsletter for my dating service review site in 1998. At the time of my serious email marketing mistake, the [SeS] had 103,000 subscribers.

One day, I sent my subscribers an offer to attend a free John Gray teleminar. John Gray, Ph.D., is the author of 15 best-selling books, including ‘Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus‘ and is a relationships expert.

Relationships – something singles are interested in, right?

Then why did more than 14,000 people unsubscribe from the [SeS] within a few days of receiving that message?

There’s only one good explanation.

Too Much Time Between Mailings

I had let more than 7 months elapse between mailings! Most of those subscribers were probably wondering, ‘What the heck is the Singles eScene?’ and/or ‘I didn’t signup for this!’

So, they got busy clicking those unsubscribe links.

OK, there is a bit of a bright side to ‘culling‘ your list. My autoresponder service, Aweber, charges 9.95 per month for each additional 10,000 subscribers. So, by losing 14,000 subscribers, I saved $120 over the coming year.

But the truth of the matter is that my laziness cost probably me much more than $120.

I know that on average, two of every 100 [SeS] subscribers buys an annual dating service membership for $70.00, and four more purchase recurring monthly $24.95 memberships that they keep for an average of 6 months. With a 50% commission rate… I just tossed $4440 down the drain over the next twelve months.

The lesson therefore is simple.

People buy from people they know, like and trust.

So, build your list with your autoresponder series AND regular newsletter broadcasts… and let them get to know, like and trust you!

After 1 month of prep time, DinerDave.com has content and, thanks to Juscott Media, a fantastic new look! My next order of business is to build up my subscriber base so I can start sending out articles and promoting my merchant programs in the Diner Dave Digest e-newsletter (using AWeber of course). Obviously, the best place to start is to solicit my current subscribers on DinerDeals.com.

Transferring Subscribers from DinerDeals.com to DinerDave.com

I am so happy that I chose AWeber as my email broadcast service because their support is amazing! I utilized their online help chat sessions and a couple of phone conversations to learn how to create a “transfer request” email and send to my existing DinerDeals.com subscriber list. My last provider, oemPro, provided NO SUPPORT for any issues with my subscriber list (my issues with them could take up an entire post altogether!).

I learned that I could import up to 2,000 subscribers a day through AWeber, AFTER I had an opt-in confirmation email prepared. The only issue that I had with their confirmation email setup was that I was limited to 500 characters in the intro before the confirmation link to subscribe to DinerDave.com. I wanted more space to really sell my subscribers on transferring from DinerDeals to DinerDave.

I created a 1 page “sales letter” asking my DinerDeals.com subscribers to check out DinerDave.com, sign up for the Diner Dave Digest newsletter and receive my special report (more on that later). I was only able to use a few sentences from the sales letter in the confirmation email that would be sent to my DinerDeals subscribers. Here is the official AWeber request to transfer email:

My First Obstacle – The OLD Mailing List

As I mentioned earlier I had several problems with my old email broadcast program, oemPro, and was unable to send emails to my DinerDeals subscribers for about 6 months (VERY FRUSTRATING!). As a result, my subscriber list was not “cleaned” and there were a few undeliverable email addresses. When I attempted to import certain sections of my old subscriber list through AWeber I was unable to do so because there were a few “bad” email addresses. AWeber, being ever vigilant in the fight against spam, refused to import a couple of sections of my old subscriber list because, in their words, “invalid addresses have not been tracked and removed from the list over time. This causes the list to become extremely stale and will cause significant email deliverability issues if emailed”.

I completely understand and agree with their reasoning behind this, but I’m a little disappointed! It took me almost 5 years to gather 15,000 email addresses! In fact, I have personally signed up hundreds of my subscribers face to face at food and wine events and at local restaurants. Fortunately, I was able to import about 2,500 email addressess (so far…this is still a work in progress). I still have over 8,000 more subscribers to notify and I have been able to import about 50% of the list through AWeber. The other 50% were rejected due to undeliverable email addresses. I guess a lot can happen to a subscriber in 5 years – they can change jobs, change residence, or decide to use a different email provider. Let this be a lesson to you…make sure you use a reputable email broadcast service like AWeber so your list is always current and any invalid email addresses are promptly deleted from the list.

Overcoming Rejection

Now I need to figure out how I can spread the word about DinerDave.com to the VALID email addresses on the rejected portions of the DinerDeals subscriber list. I decided to get nostalgic and manually review the list, which had subscribers from 2005 to present. I quickly realized that I have personally met or corresponded with hundreds of these subscribers. I KNEW that these familiar subscribers were going to want to continue to receive my newsletters with dining out tips, coupon codes, restaurant gift certificates, and fun contests! So I decided to send them a PERSONAL note and attach the 1 page sales letter (see above). I was confident that once they checked out the “new and improved” DinerDave.com, they would sign up for the newsletter directly from the site.

Word of caution: I do not condone sending emails to your subscribers using your own email provider (Yahoo, Gmail, etc..)! Always use a reputable email broadcast service like AWeber or Constant Contact.

The ONLY reason that chose to send my “request to transfer” email to a select few subscribers using my personal email account is that I KNOW these subscribers and am confident that my request will be well received.

Creating Incentive for New Subscribers

I’ve noticed that a majority of the websites or blogs that I visit have newsletter or RSS feed opt-in form where visitors can subscribe PLUS they receive a special free report as further motivation to subscribe. I started wondering “what special report could I create to entice visitors to subscribe to my newsletter?” Then it hit me! I’ll write a report focusing on one of the most powerful words on the internet: FREE! Over the last 5 years many of my subscribers have requested information about free meals, free restaurant gift certificates, buy one get one free meals, etc… So I decided to write a report with “secret” tips on how to dine out and get free meals.

If you want to learn these secrets, you’ll have to subscribe to the Diner Dave Digest Newsletter on DinerDave.com. Plus, if you subscribe, you will get see my newsletters firsthand (shameless plug: with tips and advice on how to “Dine MORE & Pay LESS” from your pal, Diner Dave!)

Stay tuned for my next post on how I created the Diner Dave Digest newsletter – with tips from Ros on lowering the “spam-o-meter” score.

Lastly, if you are interested, you can follow my progress here in my previous posts:

• Introducing Diner Dave!
• Diner Dave Does Market Research
• Diner Dave Writes Content
• Designing the Diner Dave Website

So now I have a hosting service, I’ve done my market research, and I’ve written pertinent content based on that research for DinerDave.com. Now it’s time to design the layout and look of the site. Once again I turn to Ros for recommendations on who could create a professional looking blog.

WHO Will Design DinerDave.com?

I reviewed dozens of WordPress template sites and became frustrated that I could not find the perfect “skin” for DinerDave.com. Then I read a case study on Doglirious.com in the latest revision of the Super Affiliate Handbook (Feb 2009). I was very impressed with the layout and functionality of this particular site and knew right then and there that I wanted the EXACT same layout for DinerDave.com! Well, as fate would have it, one month later Ros recommended Justin Parr, the creator of Doglirious.com, to create these beautiful StudioPress theme sites for her subscribers. After checking out Justin’s portfolio of work on Juscott.com and the templates available on Studiopress.com I was hooked! I made up my mind that I would use Justin to create the Diner Dave website, rather than trying to spend hours trying to learn CSS, basic design and editing templates.

Selecting a Theme and Design Package

That afternoon I purchased the same StudioPress “Lifestyles” theme that Justin used to create Doglirious.com (with the bonus “Streamline” theme for free…I can use that for another website later). I uploaded this theme through NetProfitsToday link and selected the Gold Package from the design services page on NPT. I did so because I wanted a strong foundation for the Diner Dave site and that included all the advanced plug-ins and features included in the Gold Package for email marketing, social bookmarking, tag cloud, etc…

Ros said in her recommendation for Justin’s design services, it is “preposterous to pay $5000 to have someone create a website” and then not know how to change links, upload pics, or perform any other simple updates. I agree! As someone who has actually spent thousands of dollars to create a static website I’m here to tell you that $999 for Justin’s Gold Package I selected is a steal! It is possible to find web designers on Elance.com or Rentacoder.com to create WordPress sites for the same price or maybe a little lower, but I prefer to hire a person that is recommended by someone I trust (Ros) AND that guarantees their work.

Creating the Logo

Creating a logo was the only service offered by Justin that I did not select. I created the logo a few weeks before Ros’ post on Justin’s design services. I reviewed several logo creation sites like 99designs.com before selecting logoloft.com to create the Diner Dave logo. The main reason I selected them was because of their impressive portfolio of work AND they were running a $99 special on logo creation. I contacted them and described exactly what I wanted. After a few revisions, I received the finalized Diner Dave logo. I was very pleased with the results! Now it was time to get started on the site.

Justin Works his Magic!

After contacting Justin via email we set up a phone and online meeting (via Yugma.com) to discuss how I would like the design and layout of DinerDave.com to look. I already knew what content I would be adding to the site…it was just a matter of organizing it in a website for ease of use and arranging merchant offers on each of the pages. I started by creating a map of the home page on an Excel spreadsheet (because I couldn’t email him a cocktail napkin!). Here is a copy of that spreadsheet:

After discussing my vision of the layout and design of DinerDave.com, Justin had a checklist of items for us to cover before he started in on the design work. The list included:

• Color scheme – I chose red, a color that invokes passion. Plus, I wanted to make sure the color scheme matched my logo. He matched the primary and secondary colors to those displayed on the site.
• Layout – Obviously, I wanted to place the AWeber email / RSS opt-in collection form at the top right of every page. I know from experience that I will make 100x more money on merchant offers with my email subscribers than random visitors to the site. I also needed to make sure that my revenue producing merchant offers/reviews were featured close to the top of the page (ie the “Diner Dave Daily Deals”). I relied on Justin’s recommendations to determine where to place the remaining content.
• Google ads – There are several locations in the Lifestyles template where you can place Google ads, but I decided I only wanted one area in the right column for these ads. I really want the emphasis of Diner Dave to be content over ads.
• Category and tag selection – Once again I chose the categories I selected based on my market research. The categories are based on what people are looking for on google and other search engines: restaurant coupons, restaurant gift certificates, restaurant reviews, etc… Moreover, I already had content for each of these major categories.
• Navigation menus – I selected a 2 tier navigation menu to give visitors a broad overview of the dining out tips and advice featured on the site. The primary navigation bar contains broad topics: tips and advice, web discounts, the about us page, and contests to win a free lunch (a popular concept I started with DinerDeals.com). The secondary navigation bar lists the most popular categories with my merchant offers – THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT to monetize the site.
• Pictures and graphics – Justin was a huge help when it came to selecting the perfect pictures for the featured article box on the home page! He also taught me how to find and download these pictures myself using sites like Dreamstime, iStockPhoto, and Stockxchange. Plus, he advised me on how to use tools like SnagIt and Picnik.com to capture and edit screen shots, photos, tables, etc..
• Plug-ins – I added the SEO All-in-One pack and Ninja Affiliate Links to my admin section to optimize the site for search engines and to cloak affiliate links.

After my data dump, a few dozen emails back and forth, and a couple more phone conversations, here is the result of our collaberation (drumroll please…..):

I can tell you that one of the great things about dealing with Justin is that he will patiently walk you through how to use WordPress to create and edit posts, create pages, optimize your site for search engines, create categories, and everything you need to know to become a self sufficient blogger. I HIGHLY recommend him to anyone that is looking to create a new website or transfer an existing website to WordPress!

Getting the Word Out

Now it’s time to let my DinerDeals.com subscribers know about the NEW DinerDave.com! Look for the next post that deals with how to motivate existing subscribers to join my new list.

Bad news for search affiliates (arbitragers) out of Amazon today.

Here’s what was posted to their Associates Alerts.

After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you’re not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs.

As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search.

This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions.

So the PPC affiliates get slapped again.

Although I sincerely hope that no one reading this is singularly dependent on Amazon product sales through PPC, if you stand to lose even a small percentage of your affiliate earnings due to this new policy, this is definitely the time to change your strategy – or at least add to your current arsenal of marketing methods.

One thing you might consider is running those Amazon feeds on a niche focused blog with a product like Datafeedr. Get some (core) content to add value. Build a list and connect with your readers regularly.

In other words, build a business blog that doesn’t run the risk of getting slapped by the likes of Amazon or Google.

Research has shown that the average person needs to be exposed to an ad at least 7 times (and often many more) before they will buy a product. You therefore need to remind visitors to come BACK to your site, making an autoresponder service essential for your online business.

Below I’ve listed those autoresponder services that I and other Internet marketing professionals have used and trusted for years.

TOP PICK: Aweber Communications

Having used their service since 1998, Aweber’s autoresponder service is my TOP pick and the one I most highly recommend. Just some of Aweber’s features include detailed email web analytics, activity based segmentation, geo-targeting, broadcast split-testing and an easy-to-use email setup wizard. Try Aweber risk-free for a month to get
more email subscribers, enhance your subscriber relationships, and increase your sales.

Visit Aweber | Read my Aweber Review

Constant Contact

Constant Contact’s service includes customizable website visitor sign up form; Over 100 professional HTML email templates (newsletters, promos, invites and more); List management and hosting (including unsubscribe and bounce mgmt); Automatic delivery in the correct format, HTML or text; Real-time reporting (including opens, who clicked on which links and more); You can try it free for 60 days. Every free trial includes a subscription to their email marketing best practices newsletter and email campaign coaching tips.

Visit Constant Contact

Get Response

Get Response is the email marketing / autoresponder of choice by such top-notch Internet marketers as Michel Fortin, Marlon Sanders and Yanik Silver; and has been used by over 500,000 internet marketers since 1998. With GetResponse, your email marketing campaigns are protected by their Delivery Guard™ technology that monitors your mailings 24/7. Support service is also 24/7.

Visit Get Response