The move itself went well.  I installed PHPlist via the Simple Scripts installation process.  I exported the list from the old system and imported it into the new system.  I copied and pasted templates and the like.  We were ready to go!

Of course, that’s when everything fell apart.

The customer’s mailing list has about 550 names.  When I sent the newsletter everything looked normal.  Then I noticed the system saying that it had NOT sent emails to 415 members of the list.  I called BlueHost to ask about it.  The technical support person was pleasant, but not helpful.  I did some more investigation and called a second time.  Again, this person was pleasant, but didn’t have any answers.

In the meantime I tried sending the email again.  The system said it sent 150 emails, but 265 emails could not be sent.  Hmmm . . . 150 seemed like a pretty round number.  I looked in the BlueHost knowledge base for “150″.  Guess what I found:

There is a default limit on all hosting accounts of 150 email messages sent per hour. This is a policy to help control spam on the Internet and does not apply to your inbound email. You can receive as many emails as will fit in the email account’s quota.

I called BlueHost a third time and my customer’s limit was immediately raised to 750.  So the problem is solved, but I am very disappointed with BlueHost.  The first technical support person I called should have been able to solve this problem.

Did the newsletter really go out? Earlier this week I assisted a client with his newsletter.  He was going to send out the newsletter email later in the day.  I subscribe to the newsletter so I knew something was amiss when I didn’t receive it.  I asked the client about it and he investigated.  There had been a problem with the company that sends out the emails for the newsletter.  The newsletter didn’t go out as planned and the client didn’t know until I asked about it.

What does the newsletter look like? There could be hundreds, if not thousands, of people on your mailing list.  Don’t you want to know what they’re seeing?

What’s the sign up process like? I want website owners to go through the same process that their clients do when they sign up for a newsletter.  Is it easy?  What information is required?  Do people know what to expect after they’ve signed up?  A newsletter can be an invaluable tool.  You need to make the most of it by making sure the sign up process goes smoothly.

So what’s a person to do?  We can have faith in ourselves and in the future. That’s the subject of an ezine article written by one of one of my fabulous customers, Claudette Rowley.  This article is too inspiring not to share.  I hope you enjoy Claudette’s message as much as I did.

By the way,  I was a fan of Claudette’s long before I became her website developer.   I highly recommend her monthly ezine.  You can sign up here.

STEP FOUR: Get Paid

In this section the article talks about adding shopping cart functionality to your website via PayPal. Don’t get me wrong. I think PayPal is a great product and I help my customers with it almost every day. However in order to work with PayPal you have to deal with HTML. Most people don’t like to even look at HTML, never mind actually work with it. (If you have any doubts about where you fall on this issue visit Welcome to My World.)

Also, what if you need something a little different than “out of the box” PayPal code? One of my clients faced this with her line of birthstone pendants. I modified the PayPal code to make a drop down box to allow people to select the month that they want.

As with many other things in this article, putting in PayPal code isn’t for beginners.

STEP FIVE: Get Sponsors

I don’t recommend that business websites have sponsors. You want customers to focus on you, not on the ads provided by Google Adsense.

If you have an informational website then ads are acceptable. I even do this myself. I place ads on LitQuotes, my quotations website. However it’s not the walk in the park that the WSJ article talks about:

It’s easy to add advertisements to your Web site to make extra cash.

While it is easy to add a few ads or put up an Amazon.com aStore it’s not easy to make a steady income from advertising or selling things on your website. Take LitQuotes for example. I work with 3 different ad agencies in order to get enough ads for the site. I have to “chain” the ad code so that if Advertising Agency One doesn’t have an ad then Advertising Agency Two has a shot at it. It moves down the line. Doesn’t it sound like the type of fun only a Geek Girl could love?

Also in order to get any money at all you have to have a large number of visitors to the site. This brings us to the final section of the article.

STEP SIX: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

OK, the article actually calls this section “Get Known” but what they’re talking about is getting your site to show on the first page of search engine listings. That’s called SEO.

While the information provided by the WSJ is sound they miss a few important points:

1. SEO is like doing the dishes. You’re never done. There will always be more to do tomorrow. Just because your site scores well today doesn’t mean it will score well three months from now. Search engines are constantly changing the way they score sites. You’ve got to be able to keep up with the changes.
2. SEO is such a big topic that there are people who have jobs JUST working on SEO. Some SEO tactics involve the HTML. Others deal with getting other sites to link to you. The newest SEO techniques involve blogs and other social media. It’s enough to make your head spin!
3. Different search engines score sites in different ways. What works well in Google may not work as well in Yahoo or MSN.

Website SEO needs to be done (and reviewed every three months or so) but it’s not easy. And it can take a lot of time.

STEP SEVEN – Website Statistics

Website statistics are important and Google Analytics is a fine statistics program. However in order to add it to your website you’ve got to place some HTML in every page. Because most people can’t deal with HTML this might be difficult to implement. The way I deal with it is that I have my customers sign up for an account with Google. Then they send me the HTML that Google gives them. I put it into their website for them.

A CASE STUDY

The reason that the WSJ article upset me so much is that I know people will read it and think that the only responsible thing for them to do is put up their own website. If you like computers and the idea of putting up a website fills you with happiness then go for it! But this isn’t the case for most people. Most people are like my friend “Linda”.

I’ve known Linda since fifth grade. About five years ago she opened up a cute little shop in our hometown. She knew that she needed a website but she wanted to do it herself. I was baffled because I knew that Linda didn’t like computer stuff. But she’s my pal so I helped her as best I could. We talked about domain names and website hosts. For two or three years that’s all her website was – it was just talk.

You see, as a small business owner Linda had her hands full. She was so busy taking care of her business that she didn’t have time to devote to learning HTML or doing icky technical things. The website just never got done.

I’m not sure what finally changed her mind. One day Linda called and sounded very decisive. “I want a website and I want you to do it!” With that we were off. I put up a website and a short time later I added some newsletter software. Linda hasn’t looked back since. What she has had time to do is offer more classes and expand the size of her shop. It’s still cute but it’s not little. The online newsletter has saved her time and serious money when compared to her print newsletter.

The moral of this story is that small business owners don’t need to do everything themselves. Sometimes hiring someone to help you is the best move you can make.

One of the people on the newsletter had a wine joke he wanted to share. So he hit reply and sent his joke. With a proper newsletter the person who owns the list would receive the joke. That’s all. Sadly the wine shop newsletter wasn’t set up correctly. Every person that subscribed to the newsletter received an email from the jokester. After that things quickly went from bad to worse.

Another member of the group had a joke he wanted to share. Everyone on the mailing list received it. It really wasn’t a good joke. (I wasn’t the only one that thought so.) People clicked reply and complained about the joke. Everyone on the mailing list received the complaint emails. People began to catch on to what was happening. They urged people to stop replying. We all got their helpful hints but not everyone listened. People started complaining about getting spammed from the wine shop. About ten emails in someone asked to be removed from the mailing list. When the newsletter misadventure finally came to a close a lot of people had asked to be removed from the list.

I visited the owner of the wine shop in day two of the crisis. I’d never seen him looking so tired. His web developer was working on the problem he said. His best guess at that point was that he was going to end up losing a quarter of his list.

What went wrong? My guess is that the newsletter had been set up using a group email address. In a group email box situation you’d set up one email address that will distribute to a number of email addresses. This would enable to you to send one email to a lot of people at once. It’s fast and easy but as you can see, it’s very risky.

To avoid newsletter nightmares you need to use a proper newsletter system. I’ve worked with various systems and I have three to recommend:

1. phplist – This is the system that I use for my newsletters. The software is free and is constantly being updated.
2. Constant Contact – This is a very popular system. With this there is no software to install. Instead you pay a monthly fee based on the number of people in your mailing list.
3. 1ShoppingCart.com – This is a great system if you’re also selling things on line. The system can be a little challenging to use at first because it does so much. 1ShoppingCart.com charges a straight monthly fee.

No matter what system you end up using the important thing is that you use a proper email system. As the local wine shop owner will tell you, this is not an area to pinch pennies.

If you have questions about newsletters please contact us.

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Once the software is installed visitors to your site will be able to sign themselves up for your newsletter. The system is totally automatic. You can even import your existing mailing list into the phplist system. You can either sent out HTML or text newsletters. (HTML newsletters look more like a web page and text newsletters look more like a regular email.)

I like phplist because it’s a well-supported system that works like a dream. The fact that the software is free is icing on the cake!