eCommerce Tycoon

**rentown** · 12-11-2008, 01:39 AM

Hi,

I'm Looking to make an email marketing website like icontact, constantcontact, or aweber.

I have researched all over the internet about this business and i need more info about this service.

One of the things that i need to know is if i make this kind of website how can i keep my website not get blacklisted from ISP's?

How can i keep spammers from joining the website?

Also Any Information besides the above questions about this business will be really helpfull.

Please let me know.

Thanks.

**witnesstheday** · 12-11-2008, 04:34 AM

email marketing is low-conversion stuff - you should do it if

1. you are desperate
2. you want to court spam-hell-danger
3. you have no better way to make money

that's just my view. of all the email spam that i ever get only sitepro news ever was actually read by me, everything else just goes straight to junkmail. well even that does, but sometimes, once every 6 months, i might be peeking into the junkmail and i might spot an interesting sitepro article and then go to it - but normally i just treat it all as one generic load of rubbish.

have you thought of paying for advertising? or do you think that something for nothing is the ideal expectation to have in life?

some of us only eat because there are people who actually feel that advertising is a commodity with a pricetag and treat it that way.

**Feydakin** · 10:33 AM

Except, services like aweber are 100% legit and require an opt in to receive email from them.. They are NOT spam.. They are managed mailing list / newsletter providers.. A far cry from spam..

Companies like aweber have arrangements made with the major ISPs to help keep their servers from getting flagged.. They also precheck your outbound mail to see where it falls on filters like spamassasin and warns you if you are scoring too many point with your email..

These are great services and worth the money rather than self hosting a large mailing list..

**witnesstheday** · 11:02 AM

i KNOW that! but perception is everything. the million people on your list don't have the advantage, as we do, of being experts in the ins and outs of what's black hat and what isn't!

i'm not accusing you or calling you spam. i don't talk to spam. spam is beneath contempt (except when i do it) (just kidding). (well my first posts here on webmaster-talk were linkdrops and got binned).

i bin anything i didn't ask for, and i don't ask for anything. at some point i must have asked for sitepro news. my strategy is to keep private email addresses and only use THOSE for people i actually want to be able to receive spontaneous emails from. the rest is fair game, and for much of the year i don't even go near it.

what people want is to believe that you're the good guy. if you make it hard for them to do that, you will by default be the bad guy

(people, i'm sorry i never use capitals - perl got me into a permanent habit of small letters - and also.. in my sales manual by jerry vass it says that I is a swearword in sales, and it is - i isn't much better but it's a little bit toned down - if i start a sentence with you i do try to capitalize. but if i'm selling something, hell i remember how to write properly just like that!)

THE IDEAL CUSTOMER - is one you don't have to go to, don't have to email, don't have to reach out to in any way - they come to you! It's the thing to strive for. You were asking whether what you're gonna do is good and I'm just saying - due to perception and the flood of REAL spam that makes it much harder for you and even me (even though i don't use email marketing) - there are better places, more reliable, less risky, and of course the biggest factor is conversion rate. Email marketing has a loooooow conversion rate.

**Feydakin** · 12-11-2008, 11:29 AM

Then I think you didn't read his post very well..

He wants to create a site like aweber.. And he wants to keep the spammers out.. Then you went on a tear about spamming being bad..

And for the record, my opt in newsletters have a rather high conversion rate.. That's why I have them..

**rentown** · 12-11-2008, 04:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Then I think you didn't read his post very well..

He wants to create a site like aweber.. And he wants to keep the spammers out.. Then you went on a tear about spamming being bad..

And for the record, my opt in newsletters have a rather high conversion rate.. That's why I have them..

Yes Feydakin,

Thank you for clarifying what i'm looking for.

and thank you all for the input.

But what i'm looking for is to make a website like aweber or constant contact.

I want to keep my isp clean while i do that. and keep spammers out of my website.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feydakin

Companies like aweber have arrangements made with the major ISPs to help keep their servers from getting flagged.. They also precheck your outbound mail to see where it falls on filters like spamassasin and warns you if you are scoring too many point with your email.. ..

This is great information.

This is about what i was looking for.

So how can i get this kind of arrangement with my isp form getting flagged?

also how they can precheck each clients outbound mail to filter spammers?

Thank you For your great input Feydakin.

Ps: Any other Constructive input would be greatly appreciated. thanks to all

**Feydakin** · 12-11-2008, 05:31 PM

Start with your current ISP and tell them what you want to do.. If they are ok with it, some won't be because it could adversely affect their other clients.. That's the first step..

From there you will need to contact larger ISPs like Yahoo and ask them what their process is for approval.. It won't be fast or easy..

**witnesstheday** · 06:47 PM

"a rather high conversion rate."

i don't believe a word of it without figure
i convert 25 to 50 users into a sale, EVERY time
how many users do you need per sale? how many users SEEING your adverts - i.e. how many emails do you send to get a sale?

i get a sale in 25 to 50 users. i suspect that you CANNOT from the experiences i've had outside the machine i settled on, get a sale in less than a few 100 or a few 1000. non-targeted email would surely take at LEAST a few 1000?

but surprise me - you seem so confident. what are the figures?

(it's like that scene in city slickers... "go ahead, challenge me!" "scoop of chocolate, scoop of vanilla, don't waste my time").

but assuming you have to admit to a "loooow" conversion rate by my standards, let's move on to a good example I thought of -

sitepro news is a brilliant site with loads of good information but they send me emails, which i OPTED INTO, and i almost never read them

webmaster-talk is a place I found on the web, and whenever I'm wondering about market trends in this field I come here and talk and ask and read and write. I very RARELY seek site pro news's info even though time and again, over the years, they've given me so many gems

they have good quality content - brought in from true experts

AND YET even though I opted in to receive it, I don't perceive it as something I "like" going to - strangely. I just ignore it by default because everything that comes to my mailbox that isn't a friend or relative, or customer, is "2nd class" to me. It's a knee-jerk reaction.

I'm not accusing you, and I did read the post, i do understand the purpose of the site, but the whole basis is flawed when you consider how MUCH people hate ANY email other than friends, relatives, customers - there's just too much real spam, the rest gets absorbed into it - site pro's emails land in a pile with 140 offers of viagra, and these days constant attempts to sell me some strange thing called a rol$x!

sure it's unfair, but in the end what do you care more about, what's fair to you or what's profitable to you? Screw fairness. People rarely treat other people in accordance with how they truly deserve to be treated. You have to fight for what's already yours. So if something can undermine your fight... just be wary, that's all.

This is like 3 more posts than I wanted to write. I must hit it and quit. There is a LOT of work for me to do. Nice talking to you guys. Hopefully I won't be back for a few weeks! It's too addictive, letting the thoughts out of your mind every which way. I have data to clean, programming to optimize, and exercise to catch up on! Oh, and I better sleep as well, at some point. Not sure when, maybe Sunday?

**Feydakin** · 12-11-2008, 08:18 PM

Sorry, I don't play the who's is bigger game..

You are welcome to your thoughts on what works and doesn't.. I just disagree with you..

**witnesstheday** · 12-11-2008, 08:48 PM

Hey man it's not a who is bigger game!? We're comparing conversion rate figures for types of marketing. I'm saying that the conversion of emails into sales can never be below 300 emails, rarely below 1000 - per single sale and yet 10s of 1000s of sites who draw traffic in from the web rather than email get rates which start at a much higher/better number of sales per 1000emails.

I'm not being bad to you? I'm sharing profitable data! And I am curious to know if you really can get anywhere near 1 in 50 even, which is about as low as I go. I can never limbo down to 1000. I haven't the stomach. It seems like such a waste of 999.

Anyway, you should watch Eddie Izzard's darth vader sketch if you get a chance, darth vader death star canteen - there's a brilliant point where he says "this is not a game of who the f--- are you?" which is quite funny and i hope captures the spirit of how i am taking your momentary belief that this WAS a game of "who the f--- are you?"

I just get a little ennervated in my language when I'm working really hard because my testosterone goes wild... and I'm in the middle of a work binge! Don't mind me. Anyway, nice chatting. I'm temporarily not at my desk for a week's business projects involving a lot of travelling (via my browser mainly). Good luck to the guy with the email thing. Try and get a few extra baskets for your eggs. The more baskets, the more eggs, the bigger the bulge in your wallet.

**Feydakin** · 12-11-2008, 09:34 PM

I track metrics differently than most people.. I care about how much I spend vs how much I make.. Not traffic.. That is irrelevant to me.. What I do know is that for every dollar we spend on the internet, and that includes payroll, development, and marketing, we make a little more than $8.00.. To some people that isn't a big deal.. To us it is, we actually make and sell our product.. So we can't grow exponentially, it has to be steady and moderated..

But I also know that our clickthru rate on our newsletter crosses 70% on a regular basis.. I also know that only 20% of our site traffic comes from search engines.. Our customers tend to be repeat customers, and that monthly newsletter is a huge part of making sure that happens..

If you are running a generic website selling a generic product, that may not be the case.. But to simply write off a proven marketing technique simply because you don't like email, seems a bit short sighted to me..

**witnesstheday** · 07:13 AM

That's a brilliant ROI.

As for conversions of email-to-sale, the reason I'd want to know is that if you told me that it's possible to get anywhere inside 1 in 100 to 1 in 300 (1 sale per 100 emails) I would almost certainly dedicate 3 or 4 of my domains to opt-in email newsletter production.

My experiences may be too limited - maybe I only ever saw the worst levels of email marketing performance. I just don't know. However an educated guess would be, from my pov, the figures I suggested - i.e. absolute best = 1 in 300, average = 1 in 1000 to 1 in 5000. Median level = 1 in 25,000.

ROI is a different measure to that and I can see why you are happy with your business at 800% ROI. Nonetheless, my main measure is my conversion rate.

Rewriting my company's mission statement this morning I produced this, which explains why I am quite an extremist with regard to protecting my conversion-rates...

Quote:

By protecting potential clients of our clients from aggressive sales and marketing systems and ideologies, by helping provide accurate and streamlined information to people with purchasing power across the Western hemisphere, we have retained our record ROI and conversion levels for the last 5 years

If I thought I could get 1 in 100 to 1 in 300 from email marketing, I would consider it an acceptable methodology for my business to embrace.

So again... do you, or does anyone, have any evidence that email marketing can achieve that conversion rate? And if so, how often, in what markets and under what other circumstances?

Quote:

But I also know that our clickthru rate on our newsletter crosses 70% on a regular basis..

That is definitely an indication that the conversion rate is probably higher than I give email markets credit for. When you say clickthru do you mean clickthru from email to article (I suppose you do) rather than email to advertiser.

I won't go into any real detail about it, but my clickthru rate of "delivered targeted traffic (to my site)" to "outbound affiliate traffic" (to my advertisers) is often more than 100% - i.e. on average each person who comes to me goes off to MORE than 1 of my advertisers.

Anyway. something for me to think about another day. I WOULD try email marketing if I thought it could make as much money for my server in terms of revenue-per-kilobyte-downloaded!

I do think it's DANGEROUS to ignore traffic figures in your estimation of business performance. How do you know that with a higher-converting modus operandi you wouldn't have a 2500% ROI? Anyway. Take it easy. I wasn't supposed to come here today, but I wanted to see if you had any figures, and you did - and 70% is nonetheless better conversion from email to article than I'd have expected. Article to advertiser conversion, I bet, must be around 5% So you can see, with my infinite conversion of emails to site-pages (i send no emails, but get people to site pages, so i get a conversion rate that multiplies out as infinity) and my over 100% conversion rate of users to advertisers, and my 4% to 8% conversion rate of users into sales, I remain still 70% as sceptical as i was before I saw your figures.

But 800% is good. Nonetheless, even 120% is good, sometimes you have to double check to see if, in each specific case, 120% is a more longterm, permanent, reliable mechanism than something that does 800% (I'm not saying it is, but the times I made 800% ROI and more I found those methods and systems dried up or closed down one way or another, whereas my present method has remained the way it is for 5 years, through thick and thin, low traffic or high).

By the way, what South Park character is that guy in your avatar? Assuming it is a South Park character? Boy have I missed a lot of television over the years. Still, 99 in 100 times that's a good thing.

**Feydakin** · 12-12-2008, 11:21 AM

I know that a higher conversion rate, or the same rate with more traffic is BAD for us because we handcraft high end jewelry.. There is no shortcut, no off shore vendor, no way to get more product in faster than taking the time to train a new jeweler to work the way we work.. And that can take more than a year.. So we have to very carefully moderate our traffic.. But I also know that our buy rate from our newsletters is more than 1%.. We sent out a Thanksgiving Day 3 day sale newsletter to 3000 of our best customers and made almost 200 sales.. That works out to about 6.5% conversion rate.. Not bad for a newsletter.. It costs me $100 bucks / month to run the newsletter service through aweber, and that 200 sales earned us just over $100,000 in sales..

Now, when you are dealing with affiliate traffic I'm sure will never see the numbers that we see.. You are in a crowded market being spammed from 18 different directions.. Standing above the crowd there is hard.. And since the affiliate market is so overrun by spam I can see why you don't like it.. It's a different market..

And this is why I think that telling someone to not run a newsletter service simply because it doesn't work for you, or is something you don't like, is a bad idea.. Because in the right markets it is incredibly successful..

As for my avatar, that really is me.. Mostly.. Not a south park character, just the same style..

**Learning Newbie** · 12-12-2008, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Feydakin

I track metrics differently than most people.. I care about how much I spend vs how much I make.. Not traffic..

Traffic is money, but there's not a consistent exchange rate.

It used to be fairly expensive to move bits around the interwebs. Hosting plans used to include 1 GB, and such. Now, most claim to be unlimited. As long as your server doesn't strain (noticeably) under the load, you can amortize the $25 a month a good hosting plan costs, and traffic really does become free, essentially. (To support, not to get.)

I would personally not start a blast email service, for many reasons, including the perception of spam. But if I planned to, the first thing I'd be concerned with, would be my infrastructure - whether I'm actually able to keep up with the millions (?) of emails per day (?) my clients would expect me to send on their behalf.

**rentown** · 12-12-2008, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I would personally not start a blast email service, for many reasons, including the perception of spam. But if I planned to, the first thing I'd be concerned with, would be my infrastructure - whether I'm actually able to keep up with the millions (?) of emails per day (?) my clients would expect me to send on their behalf.

Good point there. However if there are many hostings that claims to have unlimited bandwidth, the millions of emails per day wouldn't take care of itself?

Mostly the main concern here are spams and bandwidth.

However bandwith is unlimited on my hosting. So the only thing left its the spammers.

Does anyone knows the ratio that is accepted by the isp"s.

For example. For every 1000 emails is acceptable to have 10 spam complains. By which could be that someone forgot that they have subscribed or they do not wish to receive anymore and clicked as spam.

that would be 10% of complaints. I'm sure must have a limit of complaints that you can have.

Does anyone know the ratio?

Thanks

**chrishirst** · 12-12-2008, 04:52 PM

There isn't one.

your hosting provider has no idea how many emails sent by you get blackholed/reported, just as the mail provider at the recipient end has absolutely no idea how many were sent in that particular "batch".

**Feydakin** · 12-12-2008, 04:59 PM

I'd also bet that your bandwidth is not "really" unlimited.. Try sending 2gb a minute for hours on end and see how them take to turn you off..

**Learning Newbie** · 12-12-2008, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rentown

Good point there. However if there are many hostings that claims to have unlimited bandwidth, the millions of emails per day wouldn't take care of itself?

Absolutely not. Just like, while it's illegal to mow people down with a car, or drive recklessly, those laws don't mean it's wise to walk across a street before making sure it's safe.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rentown

Mostly the main concern here are spams and bandwidth.

However bandwith is unlimited on my hosting. So the only thing left its the spammers.

Bandwidth really isn't unlimited. That word has two meanings. Your host is taking it to mean "more than we expect you'll want to use," not what you take it to mean.

Relying on another company's guarantee for your business, isn't always the best idea. Have you looked at the details (legalese) in your contract, about how bandwidth is delivered? CPU caps? Et cetera? If you have a Hostgator type account, I can promise you these things are in fact limited, that you will not be able to scale to the type of numbers that are implied by a blast email service.

And here's the kicker - if your customers pay you to send 10 million emails on their behalf (guessing wildly at #s here) and you get half a percent out the door before your host shuts you down - telling them "well, it said unlimited in their marketing literature" won't calm your irate customers down.

Words to the wise.

**witnesstheday** · 12-13-2008, 08:29 PM

Quote:

We sent out a Thanksgiving Day 3 day sale newsletter to 3000 of our best customers and made almost 200 sales.. That works out to about 6.5% conversion rate.. Not bad for a newsletter.. It costs me $100 bucks / month to run the newsletter service through aweber, and that 200 sales earned us just over $100,000 in sales..

Okay. This is interesting. So if I sent 1000 legit emails to targeted users I could get over 50 sales! You'd make about £15000 in sales from that (so maybe £5000 profit)... I'd make... £125 to £250 profit if I was selling clothes. But of course if I was selling jewellery too... I'd get 5% of the cart total... so 5% of £15000... which is £750... so a fair bit lower than your profit.

Quote:

Now, when you are dealing with affiliate traffic I'm sure will never see the numbers that we see..

Oh, you'd be very surprised. "affiliate" is a swear-word to some. To others, in the know, it is just another synonym for "gold" or "diamonds" or "really big bank balance"!!! The profit comes out of the fact that we operate with no overheads.

Competition in this sector is not the way you'd imagine. There's a HUGE spread of utterly rubbish affiliate marketing which is like a sort of ocean, and then there is a minority of skillful marketers who are sort of like ships on that ocean! (And there IS the occasional submarine, of course).

As with all things in human society it probably fits a fairly regular bell-curve distribution with the bulk of people right in the middle, making a reasonable but unsubstantial profit, and the minority on the last stretch of the curve, making 80% of the money!

I think I might start dreaming up a scheme to try out a bit of legitimate targeted opt-in email marketing! I'm sure I can find a niche to exploit.

**SexySamantha** · 09:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rentown

Hi,

I'm Looking to make an email marketing website like icontact, constantcontact, or aweber.

I have researched all over the internet about this business and i need more info about this service.

One of the things that i need to know is if i make this kind of website how can i keep my website not get blacklisted from ISP's?

How can i keep spammers from joining the website?

Also Any Information besides the above questions about this business will be really helpfull.

Please let me know.

Thanks.

You are better off being a reseller for an email marketing company such as www.StreamSend.com. This happens to be the cheapest email marketing company I have ever came across and they offer private-labeled reseller packages if you purchase 100k+ monthly email packages.

In most circumstances starting your own online email marketing business is practically impossible unless you have a huge amount to invest and get started. You would need to get top-end dedicated servers with 100% uptime. You will also have to worry about spammers signing up and ruining your servers reputation and causing your good clients emails to not reach their clients. 1 bad client can ruin your whole business even if you have domain keys, SPF records etc.

However, If you do start an email marketing company with 99% + delivery rate that is cheaper than StreamSend...which is what I am currently using, Let me know and I will be your first life-time customer.